Chapter 25
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
He woke reaching for her before he was fully conscious of doing it, some old, unconsulted instinct expecting the warmth of her shoulder beneath his hand, and found only cold linen and the grey light of a morning he had no wish to be awake for.
The house was silent in a way it had not been silent in weeks.
He lay for a long moment listening to the familiar sounds of the house stirring around him, and beneath it all the lack of the most important sounds of all, from the one who mattered most. In her place only silence, only absence.
Eventually he rose, because lying still with the silence was unbearably worse than facing it on his feet.
Her books sat on the drawing room shelf where she'd left them the day of the bookshop, the familiar spines now left untouched.
The blue room's small sitting area held her needlework, abandoned mid-stitch.
Even the study smelled faintly of her, some trace of lavender water she favored, and Sebastian stood in the doorway of his home a long while, understanding, fully, for the first time, precisely how thoroughly she had filled the house he had spent eight years occupying alone.
He did nothing about it for a week.
I have no right to ask her forgiveness. The thought repeated itself daily, a justification he wore like armor against the far more frightening alternative of attempting to earn it back.
He buried himself in estate correspondence he did not need to answer so urgently, avoided his own reflection in the hall mirror, and told Hopkins, each morning, that he required nothing, wanted no callers, expected no letters, though he checked the tray each evening regardless and found it disappointingly empty.
Julian arrived on the eighth day without being announced, letting himself into the study the way only his three closest friends ever did.
"You look worse than you did the night of the ball."
"I have been occupied."
"You have been hiding, which I recognize, because you’ve done it since Eton. " Julian settled into the chair opposite, unhurried, though his expression carried none of its usual mildness. "Do you intend to do anything about your wife?"
"She has every reason to refuse me."
"She may well refuse you. That is not the same question as whether you ought to try.
" Julian leaned forward. "You are in love with her, Sebastian.
I have watched you become an entirely different man in the space of two months, warmer, more honest, considerably less determined to argue every feeling into submission before it can touch you, and I have watched you throw the whole of it away in a single evening because an old fear finally caught up with you before logic and reason could stop it.
You are destroying the best thing that has ever happened to you, and you are doing it from a chair in this study, accomplishing nothing except confirming every fear you have ever held about your own unworthiness. "
Sebastian said nothing for a long moment, the truth landing in a way he could not easily argue with.
"What if she will not see me."
He looked away. He had known even before Amelia left the house that he’d made a grave mistake, the comparison was false. That was perhaps the ugliest part of it. He had not mistaken her for his mother. He had simply been frightened enough to reach for the accusation he knew would wound her most.
"Then you will have lost nothing more than you had not already lost by staying in this chair." Julian rose. "Go, Sebastian. Today. Before the fear convinces you it is already too late to try."
He was in his carriage within the hour.
The Hartwell townhouse looked exactly as it had the first morning he'd called there.
The footman who answered the door recognized him, and something in the young man's face suggested he had already been given instructions regarding precisely this eventuality.
"I am afraid Miss— Her Grace is not receiving visitors, Your Grace."
"Please tell her I am here regardless. I do not require an audience with the household. I require five minutes of her time, or less, if that is all she can bear to give me."
The footman disappeared and returned some minutes later with an expression that told Sebastian everything before the words arrived.
"She declines to see you, Your Grace."
He waited an hour on the front step before her father appeared, grim-faced, clearly under some obligation not to simply have him removed, and informed him, with considerable coolness, that Amelia had no wish to see him today, or, as far as her father understood it, any day soon.
"I will wait regardless, sir, if you have no objection."
He had, evidently, several objections, none of which he voiced beyond a long, assessing look that reminded Sebastian uncomfortably of his own mother's scrutiny, before retreating back into the house and leaving him on the step in the cold and whatever patience he could summon.
He waited three hours.
He did not leave. He sat instead on the front steps, in full view of the street, dignity entirely abandoned, and waited, and when an hour had passed without any word, he simply began speaking, loud enough, he hoped, to carry through whatever window she might be standing behind.
"I was cruel to you, Amelia, and I have no defense for it beyond the truth, which is that I was afraid, and fear made me say the ugliest thing I could find rather than sit with what actually frightened me.
" He kept his eyes on the door, though he had no notion whether anyone stood behind it listening.
"I compared you to the one person who wounded me most, in the very moment you had given me everything I have ever wanted from another, and I do not expect to undo that with a simple apology.
I am only asking for the chance to prove, that I understand what I did, and that I am capable of becoming a man who deserves what you offered me. "
The door opened, finally, not to admit him, but simply enough that Amelia stood in the gap, her face carrying none of its usual warmth, though she had clearly heard every word of it.
"You are still here."
"I intend to remain here as long as it takes.
" He rose from the step, aware of how thoroughly the cold and the wait had disheveled him, aware that he had never in his life presented himself to anyone looking less like a duke than in this moment.
"Amelia. I do not ask you to forgive me tonight.
I ask only that you allow me to start making amends for my complete lack of judgment. "
"I am listening." She did not invite him in, and he understood, how much of that distance was his fault.
"I was cruel to you." He said it plainly, without the softening he had spent the carriage ride rehearsing and abandoning.
"I stood in a ballroom you had exhausted yourself preparing, and instead of thanking you for it, I made you answer for fears that were mine alone.
I compared you to the very thing I have spent my whole life running from, which was not merely unkind.
It was untrue, and I knew it was untrue even as I said it, and I said it anyway because facing what actually frightened me was harder than wounding you. "
"You told me to go home to my family."
"I know." The words had cost him dearly, but this time he didn’t look away from her.
“I told you to leave because I was angry and afraid.
And because sending you away was easier than admitting that I was the one who lost control.
I knew what those words meant, and yet I said them anyway.
I cannot take them back, but if you allow me, I will spend however long it takes proving that they are not what I want, or the man I intend to be with you. "
She said nothing for a long moment, and he watched her war with herself the way he had once watched her war with a difficult argument at a ball, weighing something with real care rather than simple anger.
"An apology does not erase what you said to me, Sebastian."
"I know that."
"I believed you had finally stopped hiding from me.
And at the very first test, you handed me the ugliest version of yourself, and told me to leave rather than let me stand beside you through it.
" Her voice, when it finally cracked, cracked quietly, more devastating for the restraint around it.
"I do not know how to simply set that aside because you have been standing on my father's step for four hours in the cold a week after I left. "
"I am not asking you to set it aside. I am asking for the opportunity to prove I understand it.
" He held her gaze, steady despite everything, refusing to look away from whatever verdict she was building.
"Whatever it costs me. Whatever you require of me to believe it.
I will do it, Amelia, because losing you is the only outcome I find I cannot survive contemplating. "
" I cannot simply forgive that because you have come and made a fine speech about fear."
Her voice shook, though she held herself rigidly composed.
"I am not asking you to forgive it today. I am asking for one opportunity to show you I have changed, in whatever manner you believe would actually prove it, rather than simply telling you I have."
She said nothing for a long moment, studying him with an expression he could not entirely read, and the silence stretched long enough that he began to believe he had already lost whatever chance his speech had bought him.
"I will consider it," she said finally, quiet, giving nothing else away. "That is the whole of what I can offer you tonight."