Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Julian got to the library door before anyone else did, and that, Amelia would think later, was the only mercy the evening had left to offer.
Amelia and Sebastian stood several feet apart now, the intensity of what had passed between them still hanging in the air. Neither seemed quite certain what to say next.
Then footsteps sounded in the corridor and Sebastian looked toward the door. Amelia frowned.
"Who is that?"
He did not answer.
The footsteps came closer and Julian appeared. His expression had changed.
"Sebastian."
Sebastian straightened.
"What is it?"
Julian looked past him toward Amelia.
"One of your father’s servants saw you enter my carriage and followed. Your father is downstairs."
Amelia's face drained of color.
"My father?"
Julian nodded. "He is coming up."
"Oh, God."
Sebastian moved toward her instinctively.
"Amelia—"
"No." She stepped back. "What am I going to do?"
Before Sebastian could answer, another voice sounded from the corridor.
"Amelia."
Her father's voice.
"Papa."
Her father stood in the doorway of the library, and whatever composure he had carried into that house was already gone by the time his eyes found her, in that room where the two of them had been clearly and unmistakably alone.
"Get your cloak." His voice did not rise. It did not need to. "We are leaving."
"Papa, nothing happened, we were only talking—"
"I do not care what you were doing." He said it without looking at her, his eyes fixed on Sebastian with a fury she had never once seen him direct at anyone.
His voice dropped.
"Do you understand where you are?"
Amelia swallowed. "Yes."
"No. You don't."
"You are unmarried, you left your home in secret, unchaperoned, to come to a house that exists for precisely the reasons everyone in London whispers about it.
I find you secluded with a man. That is the whole of what matters tonight, Amelia.
Not what did or did not happen behind this door. We are going."
Sebastian stepped forward. "Dr. Hartwell, if you will allow me to explain—"
"There is nothing to explain. I have no wish to hear from you, Your Grace." Her father's voice shook on the title, contempt riding underneath it. "Amelia. Now."
She followed him out. There was nothing else to do, no argument capable of undoing what the simple fact of being in that room had already done, and she felt every eye in the front hall find them as her father walked her out, felt the murmur start behind them before the door had even fully closed, low and delighted in the way scandal always sounded.
The carriage ride home passed in absolute silence.
Her father stared out the window the entire way, jaw tight, and Amelia sat opposite him with her hands folded in her lap, watching London slide by in the dark and understanding, with a cold, sinking certainty, that whatever this cost her, it would not stay contained to one night, or one house, or one carriage.
"By morning," her father said finally, not looking at her, "every drawing room in this city will know exactly where you were tonight."
"I know."
"Do you." He turned then, and the anger in his face had given way to something worse, something closer to grief.
"I have spent your entire life trying to protect you from precisely this, Amelia.
Not because I do not trust your judgment.
Because I know precisely how little judgment matters, once a house like that one has your name attached to it. "
She had no answer for that. She sat with the truth of it the whole rest of the ride home, and did not sleep at all that night. By the time the sun came up she understood exactly how right her father was.
"His Grace, the Duke of Ravensmere."
Barrow's announcement fell into a breakfast room gone entirely silent. Her father's newspaper lowered by inches, her mother's teacup paused halfway to her mouth, and Amelia's pulse climbed so fast she had to set down her fork before her hand betrayed her.
"Send him to the drawing room," her father said, after a pause that stretched a beat too long. "I will speak with him first."
Amelia endured what felt like an eternity, her mother saying nothing, her father's absence saying rather more, until Barrow returned to fetch her with an expression carefully arranged to give nothing away.
"His Grace would like a private word, Miss Hartwell."
The drawing room felt smaller with Sebastian standing in the middle of it, dressed with his usual precision, though nothing about his bearing carried its usual composure.
He turned the moment she entered, and something in his face, tight, unguarded, told her before he said a single word that this was not a courtesy call.
"Your father has given us a quarter hour," he said. "I do not intend to waste it."
"Then say what you've come to say."
"I owe you an apology. Several, as it happens.
" He stepped nearer, then stopped, as though uncertain what claim he still had to the distance he'd once closed so easily.
"I walked away from you in the park because you saw something I did not want seen.
I told myself I had matters to attend to.We both know that was a lie.
Do you believe I am capable of changing, Amelia?
Truly? Not as an argument. As the truth. "
"I don't know." She kept her voice steady, though it cost her considerably to do it. "I would like to believe it."
"I would like that too." Something eased in him, briefly, before the next weight settled back over his face.
"The second apology is for last night. I did not bring you to that house, but what happened in the library was as much my choice as yours.
I should have considered what discovery would have cost you before your father was standing in the doorway.
I take full responsibility for and what it will go on costing you if this is not addressed properly. "
"Addressed."
"I should have protected you from that."
She gave a small, bitter laugh. "You cannot protect me from society."
"No." Sebastian's voice hardened. "But I can refuse to let you face the consequences of the mistake alone."
Amelia looked up.
"I have already spoken with your father." He said it plainly, without flourish, and she felt the floor tilt slightly beneath her even before he finished the sentence. "I intend to marry you, Amelia. I have told him as much this morning, and I meant it."
The words landed exactly wrong. Some part of her had been hoping, foolishly, for an entirely different sentence, and this one, however necessary, was not it.
"Because of the scandal."
"Because it is the right thing to do, given what happened."
"That is precisely what I said. Because of the scandal.
" She heard her own voice go flat, and hated how quickly the warmth from the library had curdled into this.
"You are not offering because you wish to marry me, Sebastian. You are offering because society requires it of you, and duty is the one demand I have never known you to ignore.”
"That is not fair."
"Is it not." She looked at him steadily, though it cost her everything to keep her voice from shaking. "Tell me plainly, then. If no one had found us. If there were no scandal at all this morning. Would you be standing in this room asking me to marry you?"
He did not answer immediately, and the silence, however brief, told her everything she needed to know.
"I thought as much," she said quietly.
"Amelia—"
"You do not need to explain further. I understand the position we are in.
I understand what happens to a woman found alone with a man in that house, whatever anyone believes occurred inside it.
" She lifted her chin, holding herself together through sheer force of will.
"I will marry you, Your Grace. There is little else to be done, and I am not fool enough to pretend otherwise.
But I would ask you not to dress the arrangement up as anything warmer than obligation.
I find I would rather know exactly what I am agreeing to. "
She forced a smile that did not reach her eyes. "If this is what must happen, then I will do it."
"That is not what I wanted."
"Isn't it?"
"No."
She looked at him.
"Then what did you want?"
He opened his mouth. Nothing came. And that silence told her everything she believed she needed to know.
Her smile faded.
"Very well."
She turned toward the window.
"I will marry you."
Something in his face went very still, some argument rising behind his eyes that he did not, in the end, give voice to, and the quiet that followed felt considerably colder than anything that had passed between them in the library the night before.
"As you wish," he said finally, and the formality of it landed like a door closing somewhere she had not meant to let one close at all.
The morning passed with an uncomfortable sense of inevitability.
By noon, Dr Hartwell and Sebastian had settled upon the necessary course: a special license, obtained as quickly and quietly as possible.
Sebastian found himself standing outside the Hartwell residence once again, waiting for Amelia to join him.
He had not seen her since their conversation. He was beginning to regret every word he had spoken. The front door opened. Amelia stepped outside. She wore a dark cloak over a simple walking dress, her gloves already buttoned, her expression composed.
Too composed.
Sebastian inclined his head.
"Miss Hartwell."
"Your Grace."
He nearly winced at the title.
"Are you ready?"
"As ready as one can be for a morning spent arranging one's own marriage."
His mouth twitched despite himself.
"I deserved that."
"I know."
She walked toward the carriage. He followed. For several seconds, neither spoke.
Then Sebastian opened the carriage door for her.
"Thank you."
She climbed inside. He followed. The door shut.
And suddenly they were alone.
The carriage ride to Doctors' Commons passed in the tense silence of two people who had a great deal to say and had agreed, without either of them stating it outright, to say none of it.