Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
They walked back toward Mayfair rather than summon the carriage, the morning bright and unhurried, and Sebastian found himself matching his pace to hers without any conscious decision to do it, the way he always seemed to when they walked anywhere together.
I have not walked this city simply for the pleasure of walking it in years.
The thought arrived with some surprise, and he turned it over as they passed a flower seller's cart, a boy selling papers, an old woman feeding pigeons on a low wall, all of it ordinary, all of it somehow more vivid than he remembered London ever being.
Fenn's bookshop drew Amelia's attention the moment they passed its window, and Sebastian watched her slow, then stop entirely, her eyes already tracking the shelves visible through the glass with the hunger he had come to recognize as entirely, wonderfully hers.
"You may go in," he said, before she'd even asked.
"I did not say anything."
"You did not need to. I have watched you make that exact face over a shelf of books more times than I can count, and I have learned to simply open the door before you work yourself up to requesting it."
She laughed, and went in, and Sebastian trailed her through the narrow aisles, watching her gather volumes with the same quiet, focused pleasure she brought to dismantling an argument, a history of the Athenian assembly, a slim book of essays she'd apparently been wanting for weeks, a translation of Sappho she touched with something close to reverence before setting it regretfully back on the shelf.
"Why are you not buying that one?"
"It is dear, and I have already chosen two others."
"Buy all three." He said it simply, and watched her hesitate, torn between wanting and some old, careful instinct he recognized instantly, because he had spent eight years cultivating a version of it himself. "Amelia. Buy the book."
"I do not wish you to think I am taking advantage, Sebastian. Simply because we are married does not mean I ought to treat your purse as though it exists purely for my enjoyment."
She thinks this is a transaction too, the same way I once thought withholding was safety.
The realization landed with more weight than he expected, some old, careful part of himself recognizing its mirror in her hesitation, and he reached for the Sappho himself, before she could set it any further from her own reach.
"I do not offer this because I wish to purchase your affection, if that is what concerns you. I have watched you deny yourself small pleasures more than once now, out of some notion that wanting things makes you a burden rather than simply a person with tastes of her own."
He held the book out to her properly this time.
"I want you to have things that make you happy, Amelia.
Not because I owe you a debt for the scandal, or because I am attempting to buy some version of your regard I have not already earned honestly.
Simply because I have begun to care, rather more than I expected to, whether you are happy, and this is one of the few languages I have ever actually trusted myself to speak fluently. "
Something in her expression shifted, understanding arriving slowly, and she took the book from his hands at last, holding it against her chest the way she might hold something more fragile than paper and binding.
"You are not trying to make me happy?"
"Yes." He watched her realize it fully, watched the careful guard she'd been holding since he’d paid everything at the modiste's shop finally ease. "I am simply trying to care for you in the only way I have ever properly learned how, clumsy as it apparently still is."
"It is not clumsy." She held the book a moment longer, then set it atop her other purchases, something warm and unguarded finally settling into her face. "It is rather the loveliest thing anyone has ever said to me."
He paid for all three books, waved off her last protests with an ease that made her laugh despite herself, and they walked the rest of the way home with her arm looped through his, three new volumes tucked under her free arm, both of them quiet in a way that felt, for once, entirely comfortable rather than fraught.
Sebastian thought, watching the sunlight catch in her hair as they turned onto their street, that he had spent years building a life no one could reach, and had somehow, without ever quite meaning to, let this one woman walk straight through every wall of it in the space of a single month.
"Welcome home, Your Grace." Hopkins held the door with the particular stiffness of a man determined not to smile and failing rather badly at it. "Both of you."
"Thank you, Hopkins." Sebastian handed off his hat without looking at it, and Amelia watched the butler's eyes move between them, quick and assessing, the way she imagined servants had been trained for generations to read a house's temperature from its master's face alone.
We must look thoroughly transparent, she thought, feeling heat rise in her cheeks despite herself, married but one month and already wearing the whole of it plainly enough for the staff to read.
She felt absurdly pleased that even a man who had been a stranger not so long ago, at least to her, could see the change that had come between her and Sebastian. Her pleasant thoughts were interrupted by the sight of a footman crossing the hall at a pace that could only be described as fleeing.
"Is something the matter?"
Hopkins’ expression did something complicated. "Her Grace the Dowager Duchess has been waiting since half past nine, Your Grace."
Sebastian went still beside her, the whole loose, unguarded ease of their walk home draining out of him in the space of a single sentence.
Amelia felt it happen through the arm still looped with hers, the sudden rigidity of him, and understood, with a small sinking clarity, that whatever ground they had gained in that narrow bed last night was about to be tested rather sooner than either of them would have chosen.
"She is still here."
"In the morning room, Your Grace. She asked to be informed the moment you returned."
"Of course she did." Something flat and dangerous had crept into his voice, the tone she had learned to recognize from that first ball, the sound of a man bracing for an argument he had not asked for. "Thank you, Hopkins. That will be all."
He did not move toward the morning room. He stood in the hall, jaw working, and Amelia watched eight years of careful distance reassert itself across his face in a matter of seconds, watched him retreat behind it the way she imagined he had a hundred times before she ever knew him.
He is going to walk in there already furious, and she is going to meet him exactly the way she always does, and neither of them will hear a word the other says.
"Sebastian." She kept her voice low, steady, and felt him startle slightly, as though he had genuinely forgotten she was still holding his arm. "Look at me a moment."
"Amelia, I do not have the patience this morning for —"
"I am not asking you to have patience for her.
I am asking you to have it for me, , before you walk into that room.
" She turned to face him properly, and watched the anger flicker, just slightly, uncertain of its footing.
"You do not have to forgive whatever she is about to ask of you.
You do not even have to be pleasant about it.
I only ask that you let me stand beside you while you refuse, instead of leaving me in the hall to hear about it afterward. "
Something in him eased, fractionally, the tightness around his eyes softening into something closer to tired than furious. "You make it very difficult to remain properly angry."
"Good." She smoothed the front of her pelisse with more composure than she felt. "Shall we?"
The Dowager Duchess rose the moment they entered, and Amelia had exactly enough time to register the sharpness of her gaze, moving from Sebastian's face to Amelia's and back again with an assessment so thorough it felt almost indecent, before the woman spoke.
"You are still here." His voice had lost every trace of the warmth she'd grown used to over the last hours, hardening back into the flat, guarded tone he apparently reserved for his mother.
"I told you I would leave in the morning,and I had a matter of some urgency to discuss before I go."
"You look considerably improved," she said, to Sebastian, in a tone that suggested she had drawn several conclusions from the observation and intended to keep every one of them to herself. "I confess I did not expect that, given the state you left in last night."
"Mother—"
Do not rise to that. Amelia felt Sebastian's temper spike beside her and reached, deliberately, for his hand, lacing her fingers through his before he could finish saying something sharper.
"I am pleased for you. Truly." And she did look pleased, for a moment, something almost soft moving behind the assessing eyes before it was folded neatly away. "However. That is not why I have been sitting in this room all morning."
"I gathered." Sebastian's hand found the small of Amelia's back, not quite pulling her forward, simply anchoring himself. "Say what you came to say."
"Ravensmere House has not entertained for the better part of a decade, Sebastian.
Your father withdrew from society in his final years, and you have spent every year since burying yourself in other activities rather than maintaining our name.
I have watched shun society for years while you told yourself it did not matter. "
She did not raise her voice. She did not need to, there was a precision to her words that landed harder than volume ever could.
"And now you have married under circumstances the ton is already whispering about.
I am telling you plainly that if this family does not host a ball, and soon, the whispers will curdle into something worse than gossip. "
"I do not answer to the ton's whispers."