Chapter 17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
By the time the performance concluded, a storm had rolled in over London, rain hammering the opera house steps hard enough that the departing crowd scattered for their carriages with unusual haste.
Sebastian saw Lady Henswick to her carriage, and the couple rode home together in comfortable quiet, rain streaking the windows, thunder rumbling somewhere distant over the rooftops.
At Ravensmere House, Sebastian paused at the window overlooking the garden, watching the storm with an intensity that caught her attention.
"You enjoy this," she said, coming to stand beside him. "Admit it."
"I admire the architecture of a good storm. That is a different matter entirely from enjoying it."
"That is precisely the sort of answer a man gives when he is too proud to simply say yes." She nudged his shoulder with hers. "Admit it, Sebastian."
Instead of answering, he took her hand and led her straight out the garden doors into the downpour.
She gasped as cold water struck her face.
"Sebastian!"
"You wished for an admission. I find I would rather show you instead.
" Her dress was already beginning to cling to her, her hair dampening around her face.
Sebastian's usually immaculate coat was dark with rain.
His shirt soaked through in seconds, droplets running from his hair and down his cheeks and he pulled her into something between a waltz and an undignified spin, laughing, breathless, soaked through in moments, their titles and responsibilities forgotten in the wet, dark garden.
"You are completely mad," she gasped, laughing so hard she could barely keep her feet.
"Thoroughly," he agreed, spinning her again, water flying from her skirts, "and considerably happier than I have been in years."
They stumbled more than they danced. Amelia nearly slipped, catching herself against his shoulder. Sebastian steadied her, laughing beneath his breath.
Amelia looked up at him, suddenly aware of how close they were, and Sebastian's smile faded into something softer.
Neither of them spoke. Then another shiver ran through her.
Sebastian noticed immediately.
“That is enough.”
Amelia frowned. “Enough what?”
“We're going inside. You will fall ill, and I refuse to explain to your mother how her daughter caught a chill dancing in my garden in the rain."
"You started it."
"I am ending it, which is considerably more responsible."
He took off his coat and wrapped it around her shoulders despite the fact that it was already soaked.
“Come.”
He guided her back toward the house, keeping one arm around her as they climbed the steps.
Inside, the warmth of Ravensmere surrounded them.
Sebastian immediately summoned a servant and ordered that the fires be stoked, and warm towels brought to Amelia's room.
“You need to change before you catch a chill,” he said.
He then proceeded to make her laugh all over again, soaked hair plastered to her face, entirely, foolishly happy.
By the time Amelia returned to the library in dry clothes, her hair still damp, and loosely pinned, Sebastian had built up the fire properly and ordered a tea tray that sat, on the small table between two chairs he'd drawn close to the hearth.
"You look muchwarmer," he said, glancing up from the book already open in his lap.
"I feel much more sensible than I did an hour ago, dancing in a thunderstorm."
"You were the one who demanded the admission."
"I did not ask you to drag me bodily into the rain to provide it."
"No," he agreed, "that part was entirely my own inspiration," and returned his attention to his book with a small, satisfied smile that told her he regretted none of it.
She settled into the chair opposite, opened her own book onto her lap, and for a long while neither of them spoke at all, the fire crackling low, rain still ticking gently against the windows, the whole house settling into a quiet that asked nothing of either of them.
She found, turning her own pages, that she did not miss the argument, did not feel the usual restless need to challenge some point of his or defend one of her own. The silence itself felt like its own kind of conversation, comfortable in a way she had not expected marriage to be.
She caught him watching her once, over the top of his book, his eyes lingering a moment too long before he returned them hastily to his page, and she pretended not to notice, though the small, pleased warmth of it stayed with her.
"You are doing it again," she said eventually, not looking up from her own page.
"Doing what."
"Watching me instead of reading."
"I am reading."
"You have not turned a page in a while, Sebastian."
He said nothing to that, though she heard, a moment later, the soft, unmistakable sound of him closing his book, setting it aside, content, it seemed, simply to watch her without the pretense of reading to disguise it.
She let him, glancing up once to find his gaze steady and warm on her face, and felt, in the quiet of that firelit room, a peace she had not known to expect from a marriage that had begun in scandal and argument and had somehow, against all odds, arrived here instead.
"The Dowager Duchess of Ravensmere."
Hopkins’ announcement dropped into the morning room like a stone into still water, and Amelia watched her husband go rigid over his coffee, cup halfway to his mouth, before he set it down with a precision that betrayed how little composure he actually felt.
"Send her away."
"I have already shown her into the drawing room, Your Grace." Hopkins’ face gave nothing away, though Amelia thought she caught something apologetic in the set of his shoulders. "She was quite insistent."
"She is always quite insistent."
Amelia rose with him, uncertain whether her presence would help or hinder whatever was about to happen, but unwilling to let him walk into it alone.
She knew, in the broadest strokes, that mother and son were estranged and she decided to watch the Dowager Duchess with considerably sharper attention than she might have offered a mere unwelcome relation.
"You are not welcome in this house." Sebastian said flatly, the moment they entered and Amelia felt the temperature of the room drop several degrees.
"That is a rather cold greeting for a mother who has traveled across London to meet her son's new wife."
"You have had years to play the devoted mother, and chose instead to keep your distance." His voice stayed level, though Amelia could seewhat that levelness cost him. "I fail to see why my marriage should change the arrangement now."
"Because it is natural for a mother to wish to know the woman her only son has married.
" The Dowager Duchess turned to Amelia, her gaze assessing, sharp, entirely unlike anything Amelia had encountered from an older woman before, more calculation than warmth in it.
"Miss Hartwell. Or I suppose I ought to say Your Grace now, though the title still sits oddly on my tongue for anyone but myself. "
"Your Grace." Amelia inclined her head, carefully neutral, watching the tension coil tighter in Sebastian's shoulders beside her.
"I confess I am curious what sort of woman finally persuaded my son toward marriage when all my efforts on the matter failed."
"One who did not try to persuade so much as offered an honest conversation, Your Grace," Amelia said carefully, and watched something flicker behind the older woman's eyes, quick and assessing, as though filing the answer away for later use.
"Mother, I would ask you to leave before luncheon."
"No silly, I will stay for dinner, at the very least." His mother's voice carried the same flat, unshakable certainty Amelia was beginning to recognize as a family trait, however differently it expressed itself in mother and son.
"One day, Sebastian. Surely even you can extend that much courtesy to your own mother. "
He did not answer. He turned and left the room, and Amelia understood, from the set of his back, that the argument had merely been postponed.
Dinner was served at eight, the temperature of the room no warmer for the intervening hours.
"You have grown thin," the Dowager Duchess observed, halfway through the soup.
"I am precisely as thin as I have always been."
"You have grown thin and short-tempered, which I attribute to the same cause, whatever you insist otherwise." She set down her spoon with deliberate care. "I had hoped marriage might soften some of what your father's death hardened in you. I see it has not yet managed it."
"Do not speak of my father at this table."
"I shall speak of your father wherever I choose, Sebastian.
He was my husband for four and twenty years, and I have rather more right to his memory than you have granted me credit for.
" Something sharp moved behind her composed expression.
"You have never once, in ten years, allowed me to explain myself regarding the estate. "
Amelia set down her own fork, listening now with her full attention.
"There is nothing to explain. I found the accounts myself, Mother. I found what Grimshaw had done with the tenant repairs, what the solicitors had bled from the investments while you signed whatever they placed in front of you."
"You are quite the harsh critic, Sebastian. I signed what I was told to sign because I had buried a husband I loved and had no earthly notion how to run an estate. nI four and twenty years of marriage, I had never been permitted to learn a single thing about, , because your father believed such matters were not a woman’s concern.
" Her voice cracked, and the composure Amelia had watched her wear like armor finally showed its seams. "I did the best I could do, with men who had served this family for decades and whom I had no reason to distrust until it was already too late to undo the damage. "
"You cared more that London never saw the cracks than you cared about the tenants living in them."
"I cared about protecting what remained of this family's name, because I understood, even then, that a scandal on top of mismanagement would have finished what Grimshaw had started.
I made the best choices available to a woman with no training and no allies, and I have never once heard you acknowledge that once I understood what had been done, I did everything in my power to set it right, for years. "
"You gave those years to appearances, not to repair."
"I gave those years to my son," she said, and her voice had gone entirely unsteady now, "who has spent every day since deciding I was the villain of this story rather than another person that estate very nearly ruined."
"You gave it to protect the title. You have always made every choice to protect the title."
"That is not fair."
"It is entirely fair, and you know it, because you have spent what little time we’ve spent together since, reminding me of my duty to the succession and never once asking whether I was actually happy, which tells me precisely which concern actually governs you.
" Sebastian's voice had risen, rougher now, years of careful control finally giving way at his own table.
"You do not get to arrive here, unannounced, and demand I simply set aside a decade of resentment because you have finally decided to explain yourself. "
"Sebastian!"
"Enough." Sebastian stood, his chair scraping hard against the floor. "I have heard quite enough for one evening." He walked from the room without looking at either of them again, the door closing behind him with a finality that left his mother visibly shaken.
Amelia sat a moment, turning over everything she had just heard, understanding, with a clarity she had not possessed an hour before, precisely how deep and how tangled this wound ran. And how neither mother nor son had ever managed to speak of it without turning pain into accusation. .
"Your Grace." She kept her voice even, watching the older woman's hands, which had begun, very slightly, to tremble. "I think it would be best if you retired here for the evening. Hopkins will see that a room is prepared."
"You think me the villain too, I imagine."
"I think you are both carrying a version of that story that has never once been permitted to sit in the same room as the other's, long enough to actually be compared.
" Amelia rose. "I do not know yet which of you is right.
I only know my husband cannot hear any moretonight, and I mean to respect that. "
Amelia inclined her head. "Good night."
She left the older woman sitting alone at the long table, and went to find her husband, carrying with her a far fuller understanding of the complicated past that had shaped him.