PROLOGUE

 

 

Seven Years Before

 

Harriet had made a terrible mistake.

She knew it the moment the words left her mouth, the moment she heard her own voice reading aloud in the Fordshires’ drawing room, too loud and too earnest in the genteel hush. But Richard had asked…had begged, really, with that particular expression he deployed when he wanted something, equal parts charm and mischief and she had never been able to refuse her brother anything.

“Just one poem,” he had said. “Lady Thornton was asking about your writing, and I may have mentioned that you’re brilliant.”

“You shouldn’t have.”

“Too late. I already did. Now you have to prove me right.”

And so here she was, eighteen years old and trembling slightly, a sheet of paper clutched in her hands, reading her most personal work to a room full of people who were probably just being polite. The poem was about stars, about looking up at the night sky and feeling both infinitely small and infinitely significant. She had written it last winter, during a particularly dark stretch when she had wondered if anyone would ever see her as more than just another debutante waiting to make a match and be led to the altar.

It was, she knew, the best thing she had ever written but it was also the most vulnerable.

The room was quiet as she read. Lady Thornton nodded along encouragingly. Richard beamed at her from his position near the fireplace, pride evident in every line of his face. And Sebastian Vane, Richard’s closest friend, four years Harriet’s senior, impossibly handsome in that careless way that seemed to come naturally to men of his station, stood near the window, his expression unreadable.

She had been watching him all evening, though she would have died before admitting it. There was something about Lord Vane that made her nervous in a way she couldn’t quite articulate. He was overly observant and carried an air of self-possession. When he looked at her, she felt seen in a way that was almost uncomfortable, as though he could read every thought in her head, including the ones she hadn’t admitted to herself.

She wanted him to like her poem. She wanted it desperately, with an intensity that embarrassed her.

She finished reading. The final line hung in the air: And so I learned to love the dark, for only in darkness can we see the stars.

Polite applause. Lady Thornton murmured something complimentary. Richard was grinning, already moving toward her, ready to tell her she had been wonderful.

But Harriet wasn’t looking at Richard. She was looking at Sebastian Vane.

He had turned away from her. His shoulders were shaking.

He was laughing.

The realisation hit her like a physical blow. Her face went hot, then cold. Her hands, still holding the poem, began to tremble for an entirely different reason.

He was laughing at her. At her words, her feelings, her heart laid bare on the page for everyone to see. She had exposed herself completely, and he found it amusing.

She heard a sound, a choked, breathless noise that might have been a sob if she had let it escape. She didn’t. She was a Fordshire. She had been raised to maintain composure in any situation.

But she couldn’t stay here. She couldn’t stand in this room for one more second, watching Sebastian Vane laugh at everything she had dared to feel.

“Excuse me,” she heard herself say, her voice remarkably steady. “I need some air.”

She walked out of the drawing room with her head high and her spine straight. She made it all the way to the garden before the tears came.

 

***

 

Richard found her fifteen minutes later, sitting on a stone bench beneath the old oak tree, her face blotchy and her eyes red.

“Harry.” He sat down beside her, using the childhood moniker that no one else was allowed to use. “What happened? You were brilliant. Everyone loved it.”

“Not everyone.”

“What do you mean?”

“Your friend.” She spat the word like a curse. “Lord Vane. He was laughing, Richard. I saw him. He turned away and laughed at me.”

Richard’s brow furrowed. “Sebastian? That doesn’t sound like…”

“I saw him. His shoulders were shaking. He couldn’t even look at me, he was laughing so hard.” Fresh tears spilled down her cheeks. “I’ve never been so humiliated in my life.”

“Harry, I’m sure there’s been some misunderstanding. Sebastian would never…”

“Don’t.” She held up a hand. “Don’t defend him. I know what I saw.”

“But…”

“He’s cruel, Richard. Your friend is cruel, and I never want to speak to him again.” She wiped her face with the back of her hand, a gesture their mother would have deplored. “I never want to see him again.”

Richard was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was gentle. “I’ll talk to him. I’m sure he didn’t mean…”

“I don’t care what he meant. I care what he did.” Harriet stood, smoothing her skirts with hands that still trembled. “I’m going inside. I’m going to tell Mama I have a headache and I’m going to bed. And tomorrow, I’m going to pretend this evening never happened.”

“Harry…”

“Please, Richard. Just… let me go.”

He let her go. He always let her go when she asked, even when he disagreed, even when he thought she was wrong. It was one of the things she loved most about him, his willingness to respect her choices, even the foolish ones.

She didn’t know, as she walked back to the house, that she was making the most foolish choice of her life. She didn’t know that the story she had told herself, Sebastian Vane, laughing at her poetry, mocking her most vulnerable self, was a lie built on a moment’s misinterpretation.

She would believe that lie for seven years.

She would let it harden into hatred, let it calcify around her heart like armour,layer upon layer of resentment, each perceived slight adding to the weight of it, until she could no longer remember what it had felt like to stand in that alcove and talk to him as an equal. She would see him at balls and dinners and house parties, and she would look through him as though he were made of glass. She would hear his name and feel her stomach clench with anger.

And when years later her brother Richard died, thrown from his horse on a grey autumn morning, gone before anyone could reach him, she would blame Sebastian Vane for that too. Not because it made sense. Not because he had any hand in it. But because grief needed a target, and he was there, and it was easier than facing the truth: that some losses have no villain and that some pain has no cause…that sometimes the people we love simply leave us and there is no one to punish for it.

 

 

 

CHAPTER ONE

 

 

“I would sooner share accommodations with a rabid badger.”

Lady Harriet Fordshire delivered this pronouncement with the sort of crystalline clarity that had, over five London seasons, earned her a reputation as either refreshingly forthright or terrifyingly blunt, depending entirely upon whether one was the target of her observations.

The innkeeper, a weathered fellow whose face suggested he had witnessed every variety of human folly and found none of it particularly surprising, merely blinked. “I’m afraid, my lady, that we’ve no badgers available. Rabid or otherwise.”

“A pity.” Harriet shook the rain from her travelling cloak with rather more force than strictly necessary. “For I suspect a badger would prove more agreeable company than Lord Vane.”

Behind her, she heard a sound that might have been a laugh, if laughs could be rendered in ice and served with a garnish of barely concealed contempt.

“Your confidence in my social graces is, as ever, overwhelming.” Lord Sebastian Vane’s voice carried that particular quality of aristocratic boredom that suggested nothing in the world could possibly be interesting enough to warrant genuine emotion. “Though I confess some curiosity as to what the badger has done to deserve such an unflattering comparison.”

Harriet turned, which required rather more effort than she would have wished to admit. The journey from London had been rather odious, the roads a testament to England’s apparent belief that travel should be as punishing as possible, and her every bone ached with the particular misery of twelve hours spent in a jolting carriage. That she should arrive at this middling establishment only to find him already installed in what was apparently the only remaining room seemed less like coincidence and more like evidence that the universe harboured a personal grudge.

“Lord Vane,” she said, investing his name with approximately the same enthusiasm one might reserve for announcing an outbreak of plague. “What an absolutely unexpected displeasure.”

Sebastian Vane stood near the fire, because of course he did, he had probably commandeered the warmest spot in the establishment the moment he’d arrived, being the insufferable man that he was. The flames cast flickering light across features that Harriet had always thought were wasted on such a disagreeable personality: dark hair that curled slightly at his collar despite what she suspected were vigorous attempts to tame it, grey eyes the colour of winter storms, and a jawline that belonged on a classical sculpture rather than on a man who had once laughed at her poetry.

Not that she noticed such things. She simply possessed excellent powers of observation, which she employed equally upon friends and enemies alike. That Sebastian Vane happened to fall into the latter category was entirely incidental to her assessment of his physical attributes.

Seven years, and she could still hear that laugh. Could still feel the hot flush of humiliation climbing her cheeks as she’d stood in her mother’s drawing room, seventeen and foolish and so terribly proud of the verses she’d composed, only to watch Richard’s closest friend dissolve into barely suppressed mirth.

He had apologised, of course. Eventually. After Richard had elbowed him sharply in the ribs and hissed something that Harriet hadn’t quite caught but which had made Sebastian’s face go peculiarly blank. But what good was an apology extracted under duress? The damage had been done. She had locked away her poetry and her softer feelings alike, and she had never quite forgiven him for being the one to teach her that vulnerability was dangerous.

“Unexpected?” Sebastian raised one dark brow, a skill Harriet had never mastered and secretly envied. “I believe we are both travelling to Fordshire Park. The roads being what they are, it would seem rather expected that we might find ourselves seeking shelter at the same establishment.”

“The displeasure, my lord, remains unexpected. I had hoped foolishly, it now appears that the storm might have swept you into a ditch somewhere between here and London.”

The innkeeper made a small choking sound. Harriet ignored him.

Sebastian’s expression didn’t change, but something flickered in those grey eyes, amusement, perhaps, or possibly the barely restrained urge to strangle her. Harriet found she didn’t particularly care which.

“Alas, the ditches proved most unhospitable. They quite refused to have me.”

“Ditches,” Harriet said, “clearly have excellent judgement.”

A gust of wind chose that moment to rattle the windows with considerable violence, as though the storm itself wished to remind them all that nature cared nothing for human quarrels. Rain lashed against the glass in sheets so thick that Harriet could barely make out the courtyard beyond. Her carriage, or rather, the hired conveyance she had been forced to employ when her own vehicle had thrown a wheel somewhere outside Maidenhead, sat in the yard like a dejected beetle, water streaming from its roof.

The innkeeper cleared his throat with the desperate air of a man who had wandered into a battlefield and was now seeking any available exit. “If I might, my lady, the room in question does have two beds, separate to be exact, on opposite sides of the room, in fact. It’s our largest accommodation, used often by travelling families…”

“Absolutely not,” Harriet and Sebastian said in unison.

They glanced at each other. Harriet felt a flash of irritation that even their refusals should coincide. Could the man not even allow her the dignity of rejecting the arrangement first?

“The lady may have the room,” Sebastian continued, his tone suggesting this was a matter of supreme indifference to him. “I shall make other arrangements.”

“There are no other arrangements to be made, my lord.” The innkeeper’s face had taken on the harried expression of one who had explained this particular point several times already. “The storm has driven half the county indoors. We’ve guests sleeping in the parlour, the private dining room, and I believe Mr. Weatherby has taken up residence in the stables with his horses, though whether by choice or necessity I couldn’t say. The man does seem uncommonly fond of the animals.”

“Then I shall join Mr. Weatherby,” Sebastian said. “I’m certain the horses will prove superior conversationalists to most of the company available.”

“The stables are full, my lord. Every inch of space has been claimed. I could perhaps offer you a place in the kitchen, near the hearth, though Cook does rise at four and is not known for her gentle temperament…”

“Upon my word!” The words escaped Harriet before she could stop them. Both men turned to look at her, and she felt heat climbing her cheeks, not from embarrassment, she told herself firmly, but from the fire and the lingering chill of the rain. “This is absurd. We are adults, are we not? Capable of behaving with appropriate decorum?”

Sebastian’s eyebrow climbed higher. “Are you suggesting what I believe you’re suggesting?”

“I am suggesting that the alternative to sharing a room appears to be you sleeping in a kitchen and being murdered by an ill-tempered cook at four in the morning, which, while not entirely without appeal, would create complications I am not prepared to manage.” Harriet drew herself up to her full height, which was not particularly impressive but which she had learned to deploy with maximum authority. “The room has two beds. We shall maintain appropriate distance. We shall not speak of this again once we depart. And if you snore, I shall smother you with a pillow and claim it was self-defence.”

The innkeeper’s expression suggested he was not entirely certain whether to be relieved or alarmed by this development. Sebastian, for his part, was staring at Harriet with something that might have been surprise, or might have been reassessment, or might have been nothing at all as the man’s face was infuriatingly difficult to read.

“Very well,” he said finally. “If Lady Harriet has no objections, then neither do I.”

“Lady Harriet has numerous objections,” Harriet replied. “But she is also cold, exhausted, and unwilling to sacrifice a proper night’s sleep to the demands of propriety. The room, if you please.”

The innkeeper practically fell over himself in his haste to lead them upstairs.

 

***

 

The room was, as promised, quite large. It occupied the entire eastern corner of the inn’s upper floor, with windows on two walls that would have provided a lovely view had they not been currently obscured by sheets of driving rain. Two beds stood on opposite sides of the space, separated by a considerable distance and a small writing desk that seemed to serve as a sort of neutral territory. A fire crackled in the hearth, casting warm light across worn but clean floorboards and walls papered in a faded pattern of climbing roses.

Harriet stood just inside the doorway, acutely aware of Sebastian’s presence behind her, and wondered what on earth she had been thinking.

She had not been thinking. That was the problem. She had been reacting to the cold, to the exhaustion, to the maddening impossibility of the situation and now here she was, preparing to spend the night in a bedchamber with a man she had spent seven years despising.

It is one night, she told herself firmly. One night, and then we need never speak again.

“I’ve taken the liberty of ordering supper,” Sebastian said, moving past her into the room. He kept a careful distance as he did so, she noticed, skirting wide around her as though she were a piece of furniture to be avoided. “The innkeeper’s wife is apparently an acceptable cook, and I presumed you would prefer to dine here rather than in the common room.”

“You presumed correctly.” Harriet moved to the fire, holding her hands out to the warmth. Her travelling dress was still damp despite her cloak, and she could feel the chill settling into her bones. “Thank you.”

The words emerged stiffly, reluctantly. Sebastian paused in his inspection of the room and turned to look at her.

“Was that gratitude, Lady Harriet? I hardly know how to respond. I believe the last time you thanked me for anything, we were both in leading strings.”

“I was attempting civility. Clearly, I should not have bothered.”

“On the contrary, I found it rather charming. Like watching a particularly fierce cat attempt to purr, the effort was visible, if ultimately unconvincing.”

Harriet turned to face him, her retort already forming on her lips, but something in his expression gave her pause. He was watching her with that inscrutable look he so often wore, but there was something else beneath it, something that might have been weariness, or wariness, or both.

“You look tired,” she said, and immediately wished she hadn’t. It was too personal an observation, too close to concern.

Sebastian’s lips quirked in what might have been a smile. “The roads were not kind. I left London at dawn, hoping to outrun the storm. As you can see, I failed spectacularly.”

“Why the urgency?”

The question slipped out before she could stop it. Sebastian’s expression flickered, there and gone, too quick to identify before settling back into careful neutrality.

“Business matters,” he said. “Your father’s solicitor contacted me regarding some of Richard’s affairs that were apparently left unresolved.”

Richard. The name sent its familiar pang through Harriet’s chest. Her brother had been deceased for three years now due to a singularly ill-judged misfortune involving a horse and a stone wall and a morning that had been perfectly ordinary until it suddenly, devastatingly, wasn’t.

“What sort of affairs?” she asked, her voice sharper than she intended.

“I’m afraid I cannot say. Mr. Thornton was rather vague in his correspondence, and I suspect he wishes to explain the matter in person.” Sebastian moved to the window, his back to her. “I imagine you are travelling to Fordshire Park for similar reasons.”

“My mother is unwell.”

“Ah.” He turned, and his expression had softened slightly, or perhaps it was merely a trick of the firelight. “I’m sorry to hear that. Lady Fordshire has always been remarkably resilient. I’m certain she will recover.”

“You don’t know that.”

“No. But I have observed that the women of your family possess a certain… tenacity. I should be very surprised if a mere illness could defeat her.”

It was, Harriet supposed, meant to be comforting. And perhaps, from anyone else, it would have been. But from Sebastian Vane, every word felt like a potential trap, every kindness suspect.

“How long has it been?” she asked abruptly.

Sebastian blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

“Since we last spoke. Properly spoke, I mean. Not these little barbs we exchange at parties.”

He was quiet for a moment, seeming to consider the question. “Three years…at your brother’s funeral.”

“You tried to say something to me. After, but I don’t remember what.”

“Neither do I.” His voice was flat, carefully emptied of emotion. “It was a difficult day for everyone.”

Harriet remembered that day in fragments: the grey sky, the black clothes, the endless parade of mourners offering condolences she couldn’t hear through the roaring in her ears. She remembered Sebastian approaching her in the garden, his face pale and drawn, and his mouth forming words she had refused to let herself understand. She remembered telling him to leave as his presence was unwelcome, and the way he had flinched… actually flinched, before nodding once and walking away.

She had not felt guilty about it. Not then, not in the months that followed. He had laughed at her poetry. He had laughed at her heart. Whatever he had wanted to say that day, she had not owed him the chance to say it.

But now, standing in this room with the storm howling outside and the fire crackling between them, she found herself wondering. What had he been trying to tell her? What words had she refused to hear?

“I was not kind to you,” she said. “That day.”

Sebastian’s expression didn’t change. “You were grieving. I did not expect kindness.”

“Even so. I might have…” She stopped, unsure how to finish the sentence. Might have what? Listened? Forgiven? It seemed presumptuous to suggest either, given that she still wasn’t certain he deserved forgiveness at all.

“It was a long time ago,” Sebastian said. “We were different people.”

“Were we? I feel rather the same, all things considered.”

“Then perhaps you should look more closely.” He said it quietly, without malice, but something in his tone made Harriet’s breath catch. Before she could respond, a knock at the door announced the arrival of supper.

 

***

 

They ate in awkward silence, seated on opposite sides of the small writing desk. The meal was simple but well-prepared: roasted chicken with herbs, crusty bread still warm from the oven, a wedge of sharp cheese, and a bottle of surprisingly decent wine. Under other circumstances, Harriet might have enjoyed it. As it was, she found herself merely pushing food around her plate, too aware of Sebastian’s presence across from her to summon any real appetite.

“You’re not eating,” he observed.

“Neither are you.”

“I’m pacing myself. The wine is better than expected, and I should hate to squander it by filling up on bread.”

“How very aristocratic of you.”

“I do try.” He poured himself another glass, then, after a moment’s hesitation, topped up hers as well. “You might as well drink. It will help you sleep.”

“I never have trouble sleeping.”

“No?” Something flickered across his face, that same unreadable expression she had noticed earlier. “You are fortunate, then. I find sleep rather elusive, most nights.”

It was more personal information than he had offered in years of acquaintance, and Harriet found herself momentarily wrong-footed. The Sebastian Vane she knew or thought she knew did not admit to weaknesses. He did not confess to sleepless nights. He maintained his wall of sardonic indifference and let nothing through.

“Why?” The question emerged before she could consider whether she actually wanted the answer.

Sebastian shrugged, a gesture of studied carelessness that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “The usual demons. Regrets. Mistakes. The endless catalogue of things one should have done differently.” He took a long sip of wine. “I imagine you’re familiar with the phenomenon.”

“I try not to dwell on the past.”

“Do you? I confess I find that difficult to believe, given…” He stopped abruptly.

“Given what?”

“Nothing. Forgive me. The wine is making me imprudent.”

“You’ve had precisely one and a half glasses. I hardly think that qualifies as imprudent.”

“You don’t know my tolerance for wine.”

“I know you once consumed an entire bottle of champagne at Lady Whitmore’s ball and showed no effects whatsoever. Richard told me about it afterward. He seemed rather impressed.”

Sebastian went very still. “You remember that?”

“I remember most things your brother told me. He was…” Harriet’s voice caught unexpectedly. “He was very good at telling stories.”

“Yes. He was.”

The silence that followed was different from the awkward pauses that had preceded it. This was grief, raw and shared, hovering in the space between them like a ghost neither wanted to acknowledge.

“I miss him,” Harriet said quietly. It felt like a confession.

“So do I.” Sebastian’s voice was rough. “Every day.”

They sat with that for a moment, the fire crackling, with the storm raging outside, the weight of loss pressing down on them both. It occurred to Harriet, not for the first time, that Sebastian had lost Richard too. That he had lost his closest friend, his confidant, his brother in all but blood. She had been so consumed by her own grief that she had never stopped to consider his.

“He spoke of you often,” she found herself saying. “In his letters. He was always telling me about your adventures together. The time you got lost in the Scottish Highlands and had to shelter in a shepherd’s hut. The wager you made about who could learn to waltz faster…”

“He won that wager, as I recall, by cheating.”

“He said you were the one who cheated.”

“He would.” But Sebastian was almost smiling now, a real smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes and made him look, for just a moment, like someone Harriet didn’t recognise. “Your brother was constitutionally incapable of losing gracefully. I once beat him at chess, and he refused to speak to me for three days.”

“That sounds like Richard.”

“It does, doesn’t it?” Sebastian’s smile faded slowly, replaced by something more complicated. “I keep expecting to see him. Isn’t that strange? Three years gone, and I still turn sometimes, thinking I’ve heard his voice.”

“I do the same thing. Especially at Fordshire Park. Every corner holds some memory of him.”

“Is that why you’ve been avoiding it?”

The question caught Harriet off guard. “I haven’t been avoiding it.”

“You haven’t visited in over a year. Your mother mentioned it in her last letter to me.”

“My mother writes to you?”

“Occasionally. She was… kind to me, after Richard died. When others weren’t.”

The implication hung in the air between them. When others weren’t. When Harriet had sent him away and refused to let him grieve alongside the family he had loved.

“I didn’t know,” she said.

“Why would you? We’ve hardly been on speaking terms.”

“No. We haven’t.”

Another silence, this one heavy with things unsaid. Harriet found herself studying Sebastian’s face, the sharp lines of his cheekbones, the stubborn set of his jaw, the way the firelight caught the silver strands she hadn’t noticed before, threaded through his dark hair. He looked older than she remembered. Worn, somehow, in a way that had nothing to do with physical exhaustion.

Perhaps you should look more closely, he had said. And now she was looking, and she wasn’t entirely certain she liked what she saw.

Not because he was disagreeable. But because he wasn’t entirely, not the way she had always believed. There were depths here she had refused to acknowledge, complexities she had dismissed. The villain of her imagination was proving rather more human than she had allowed.

It was deeply inconvenient.

“We should sleep,” she said abruptly, pushing back from the table. “The hour grows late, and tomorrow will be difficult regardless of the roads.”

Sebastian nodded, rising as well. “I had the innkeeper arrange for a screen. For your privacy.”

He gestured toward the corner, where a folding dressing screen had been set up near her bed, providing a barrier between her sleeping area and the rest of the room. It was a thoughtful gesture, the sort of consideration she would not have expected from him.

“Thank you,” she said, and this time the words came more easily.

“Of course.” He moved toward his own bed, on the far side of the room. “I shall face the wall while you change. You need not worry about your modesty.”

“I wasn’t worried.”

“No, I don’t suppose you were. You’ve never struck me as the worrying type.”

“What type have I struck you as?”

Sebastian paused, his back still to her. When he spoke, his voice was strange and quiet, almost thoughtful.

“The type who builds walls,” he said. “Very high ones. And defends them fiercely.”

Before Harriet could formulate a response, he had disappeared behind his own section of the room, and she was left standing alone with the fire and the uncomfortable feeling that he had seen rather more than she had intended.

 

 

 

CHAPTER TWO

 

 

She did not sleep well.

Oh, she tried. She changed into her chemise behind the screen, slipped beneath the covers of her bed, and closed her eyes with every intention of surrendering to exhaustion. But her mind refused to quiet. It kept circling back to the evening’s conversation, to Sebastian’s unexpected vulnerability, to the way he had spoken about Richard with such obvious grief.

I keep expecting to see him. Isn’t that strange?

It wasn’t strange at all. Harriet did the same thing, caught glimpses of her brother in crowds, heard echoes of his laugh in strangers’ voices, and woke sometimes with the certainty that he was just in the next room, waiting for her to join him for breakfast.

Grief was strange that way. It didn’t fade so much as transform, becoming part of the landscape rather than the whole of it. You learned to navigate around it, to build your life in its shadow, but it never truly disappeared.

She wondered if Sebastian had anyone to share his grief with. Richard had been his closest friend, she knew that much. But who else? Sebastian was not known for his warmth or his willingness to form attachments. He moved through society with the same sardonic detachment he had displayed tonight, keeping everyone at arm’s length.

Everyone except Richard. And now Richard was gone.

Stop it, she told herself firmly. You are not going to feel sorry for Sebastian Vane. He laughed at your poetry. He humiliated you in front of your family. Whatever loneliness he feels, he has brought upon himself.

But the words rang hollow, even in her own mind. The truth was, she didn’t know why Sebastian had laughed that day. She had never asked, had never given him the chance to explain. She had simply decided he was cruel and built her hatred upon that foundation, brick by careful brick, until the wall was too high to see over.

The type who builds walls. Very high ones.

Curse him for seeing that. Curse him for naming it so precisely.

From across the room came the sound of movement, sheets rustling, and the creak of the bed frame. Sebastian, apparently, was not sleeping either.

“Are you awake?” His voice came soft through the darkness.

Harriet considered pretending otherwise. But what was the point? “Yes.”

“Ah. I had hoped one of us might find rest.”

“It would seem not.”

A pause. Then: “Would you like to talk? Sometimes I find conversation more restful than silence.”

“What would we talk about?”

“I don’t know. Anything. Nothing.” Another pause. “We could discuss the weather. I understand it’s a traditional topic for English people who have nothing else in common.”

Despite herself, Harriet felt her lips twitch. “The weather is abysmal. There. I believe that exhausts the subject.”

“You undersell yourself. We could discuss the variations in abysmal, the particular quality of the rain, the intensity of the wind, the probability of flooding by morning…”

“Lord Vane.”

“Sebastian. If we’re going to be awake together in the dark, we might as well dispense with formalities.”

Her name would be the reciprocal offering. The expected exchange. But something in her resisted giving him her Christian name as it felt too intimate, and too much like surrender.

“I am not certain we are on first-name terms,” she said instead.

“We are sharing a bedchamber. I should think that qualifies.”

“Under duress. I did specify the badger option first.”

“So you did. Though I maintain the badger should feel insulted by the comparison.”

Harriet found herself almost smiling. This was… not what she had expected. This easy back-and-forth, this gentle teasing. It felt dangerously close to comfortable.

“Why don’t you sleep well?” she asked, surprising herself. “You mentioned demons. Regrets.”

The silence stretched long enough that she thought he might not answer. When he finally spoke, his voice was different, quieter, stripped of its usual sardonic edge.

“I said things I shouldn’t have. Did things I can’t undo. The usual litany of human failure.” A soft, humourless laugh. “I’m not certain I deserve to sleep well, most nights. Perhaps the insomnia is penance.”

“That’s rather melodramatic.”

“Yes, well. It’s easier to be melodramatic in the dark. The light demands more dignity.”

Harriet turned onto her side, facing the direction of his voice even though she couldn’t see him. “What did you say? What did you do?”

“If I told you, you would only add it to your list of reasons to despise me.”

“Perhaps. Or perhaps not. I’ve learned recently that my list may not be as accurate as I believed.”

Another long silence. When Sebastian spoke again, his voice was careful, measured.

“There was a moment,” he said slowly. “Years ago. When I could have chosen kindness, and instead I chose… something else. Fear, perhaps. Pride, certainly. I’ve regretted it ever since.”

Harriet’s heart was beating faster than it should. She had the strangest feeling that they were approaching something important, some truth that had been waiting years to be spoken.

“What moment?” she asked.

But Sebastian only sighed, and when he answered, the wall was back in place. “It doesn’t matter now, as it is a thing of the past. We should try to sleep, the morning will come whether we’re ready for it or not.”

“Sebastian…”

“Goodnight, Lady Harriet.”

The finality in his tone brooked no argument. Harriet lay in the darkness, listening to the storm and the crackle of the dying fire, and wondered what he had been about to tell her.

She was still wondering when sleep finally, mercifully, claimed her.

 

***

 

The storm broke sometime before dawn. Harriet woke to pale grey light filtering through the windows, the rain reduced to a gentle patter, and the unfamiliar sensation of having slept deeply despite everything. She lay still for a moment, disoriented, before the events of the previous night came flooding back.

Sebastian. The room. The conversation in the dark.

She turned her head carefully, half expecting to find him watching her from across the room. But his bed was empty, the covers thrown back, and through the gap in the dressing screen she could see that the door stood slightly ajar.

Her first emotion was relief as she would not have to face him immediately, or have to navigate the awkwardness of a shared morning. Her second emotion, following close on the first, was something she refused to examine too closely.

She rose and dressed quickly, doing what she could with her hair in the absence of her maid. The face that looked back at her from the small mirror above the washstand was pale and tired, with shadows under her blue eyes that no amount of cold water could banish. But there was nothing to be done about it now.

She found Sebastian in the inn’s small dining room, seated at a table near the window with a cup of coffee and a newspaper. He looked… different, somehow. Or perhaps she was simply seeing him differently. In the grey morning light, without the drama of firelight and storm, he seemed more ordinary….more human.

He rose as she approached, a courtesy she had not expected.

“Good morning,” he said. “The roads are still muddy, but the innkeeper believes they’ll be passable within the hour. I’ve taken the liberty of ordering breakfast.”

“You do seem fond of taking liberties.”

“Old habits.” He pulled out a chair for her, another unexpected courtesy. “Did you sleep?”

“Eventually. You?”

“Eventually.”

They regarded each other across the table, and Harriet was struck again by how strange this was ,sharing breakfast with Sebastian Vane as though they were acquaintances, or even friends, rather than two people who had spent seven years pointedly ignoring each other.

“About last night,” she began, not entirely sure what she meant to say.

Sebastian held up a hand. “There’s nothing to discuss. We were both tired, both… melancholy. Things were said that needn’t be repeated in the light of day.”

“I wasn’t going to…”

“I know.” His smile was brief, perfunctory. “I merely wished to spare us both the awkwardness of acknowledging it.”

Harriet felt a flash of irritation. There he was again, behind his wall, the sardonic, distant Lord Vane she had always known. As though the man who had spoken to her in the darkness, who had admitted to regrets and sleepless nights, had never existed at all.

“As you wish,” she said coolly. “I shall endeavour to forget the entire conversation.”

“That would be best.”

They ate in silence after that, the easy rapport of the previous night replaced by something stiff and formal. Harriet told herself this was preferable as this was the relationship she knew how to navigate.

But some small part of her, a part she refused to acknowledge mourned the loss of whatever had begun to grow between them in the dark.

 

***

 

The journey to Fordshire Park took longer than expected.

The roads, despite the innkeeper’s optimism, were in deplorable condition. Sebastian’s carriage, larger and better sprung than Harriet’s hired vehicle, handled the ruts and puddles with reasonable grace, but progress was still agonisingly slow. They had agreed, without discussion that Harriet would travel in Sebastian’s carriage while her hired conveyance followed behind but this arrangement meant spending several hours in close proximity with nothing to do but stare out the window and pretend the other person didn’t exist.

It was, Harriet thought, going to be a very long journey.

For the first hour, they maintained their silence. Harriet watched the countryside roll past green fields turning to brown mud, bare trees stark against the grey sky and tried not to think about how aware she was of Sebastian’s presence across from her. He had a newspaper, produced from somewhere, and was ostensibly reading it, though she noticed that the pages turned with suspicious regularity.

“You’re not actually reading that,” she said finally, breaking the silence more out of boredom than any desire for conversation.

Sebastian looked up. “I beg your pardon?”

“The newspaper. You’ve turned three pages in the last minute. Either you’re the fastest reader in England, or you’re using it as a shield.”

“A shield against what?”

“Against having to speak to me, I imagine.”

Sebastian folded the paper with deliberate care and set it aside. “Would you prefer that I speak to you?”

“I would prefer not to spend the next three hours in suffocating silence. But if that is the alternative you favour, I shall endeavour to accommodate.”

“Always so accommodating, Lady Harriet.”

“I try.”

Something flickered across his face, amusement, perhaps, or exasperation. It was difficult to tell with Sebastian. He had perfected the art of revealing nothing while appearing to reveal everything.

“Very well,” he said. “What shall we discuss?”

“You might tell me about these business matters with my father’s solicitor. You were rather vague on the subject last night.”

“I was vague because I don’t know the details myself. Thornton’s letter mentioned only that my presence was required to resolve some outstanding matters related to your brother’s estate.”

“Richard’s estate?” Harriet frowned. “What could that possibly have to do with you?”

“I don’t know. That’s rather the point of making this journey…to find out.”

“But you must have some idea. You were Richard’s closest friend. If there were matters left unresolved…”

“There are always matters left unresolved when someone dies young.” Sebastian’s voice had gone flat. “That’s rather the tragedy of it. All the things left unsaid, undone, unfinished.”

Harriet fell silent. She had meant to press him further, but something in his tone made her hesitate. He was not, she realised, being deliberately evasive. He genuinely didn’t know what awaited them at Fordshire Park, and the uncertainty was bothering him more than he wanted to admit.

“Richard trusted you,” she said quietly. “Whatever this is, I’m certain he would have wanted you involved.”

Sebastian looked at her, and for just a moment, his mask slipped. She saw surprise there, and something else, something that might have been gratitude, quickly suppressed.

“Thank you,” he said. “That’s… kind of you to say.”

“I’m not kind. I’m merely stating a fact.”

“Of course. Forgive me for suggesting otherwise.”

The carriage hit a particularly deep rut, jolting them both. Harriet reached out instinctively to steady herself and found her hand closing around the edge of the seat, inches from Sebastian’s knee.

She pulled back quickly. Too quickly, perhaps Sebastian’s eyebrow rose slightly, though he said nothing.

“Tell me about your mother,” he said, breaking the awkward moment. “You said she was unwell. What exactly did her letter say?”

Harriet hesitated. It felt strange to share her worry with Sebastian, of all people. But the alternative was returning to silence, and she found she didn’t want that.

“She said she was ‘somewhat unwell,'” Harriet said. “Which, knowing my mother, could mean anything from a mild cold to a serious illness. She has a tendency to understate her difficulties.”

“A family trait, I suspect.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Merely that the Fordshire women are not known for admitting weakness. I remember your mother once hosting a dinner party with a broken wrist, because she refused to cancel and inconvenience her guests.”

“That was years ago. How do you remember that?”

“I remember many things.” Sebastian’s voice was neutral, but something in his eyes made Harriet’s breath catch. “Your family was… important to me. To Richard. By extension, to me as well.”

By extension. Such a careful phrase. Such a deliberate distancing.

“You speak as though you’ve lost us,” Harriet said. “As though Richard’s death severed some connection.”

“Didn’t it?”

“My mother writes to you. You said so yourself.”

“Your mother is gracious. But I am under no illusions about my standing with the rest of the family.” He paused, and when he continued, his voice was quieter. “I know you blame me, Lady Harriet. For various things. Some of them perhaps justified, others…” He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. The point is, I would not presume to consider myself part of your family’s circle. Not anymore.”

“I don’t…” Harriet stopped, unsure what she meant to say. I don’t blame you? But she did, didn’t she? She had for years. The poetry, the laugh, the humiliation, it was all still there, a weight she carried without thinking about it.

Except now she was thinking about it. Now she was looking at Sebastian Vane and seeing not the villain of her imagination but a man who had lost his closest friend and been pushed away by that friend’s family. A man who still carried grief like a stone in his chest, who couldn’t sleep at night, who spoke of regrets in the darkness and then pretended in the morning that nothing had been said.

“Perhaps,” she said slowly, “I have been too quick to judge.”

Sebastian’s expression flickered surprise, quickly masked. “Have you?”

“I’m not certain. But I’m… willing to consider the possibility.”

It was not an apology. It was not forgiveness. But it was something…a crack in the wall she had built, letting in the smallest sliver of light.

Sebastian studied her for a long moment, as though trying to determine whether she was sincere. Whatever he saw in her face seemed to satisfy him.

“That’s more than I expected,” he said quietly. “Thank you.”

They rode on in silence, but it was a different silence now less hostile, more thoughtful. Harriet watched the countryside pass and wondered what she had just set in motion.

They arrived at Fordshire Park shortly before noon.

The house rose up from its surrounding gardens like an old friend, its familiar red brick and white trim a sight that never failed to make Harriet’s heart lift. She had grown up here, played in these gardens, hidden in the library alcove to read when she should have been practicing her needlework. Whatever had changed in her life, and much had changed Fordshire Park remained constant.

But as the carriage rolled up the drive, Harriet noticed something strange. There were no servants visible in the grounds, no signs of the usual bustle that accompanied daily life on a country estate. The house looked… quiet. Too quiet.

“Something’s wrong,” she said, leaning forward to peer through the window.

Sebastian had noticed it too. She could see the tension in his shoulders, the way his hand had moved unconsciously to the carriage door.

“It may be nothing,” he said. “The household may simply be occupied elsewhere.”

“My mother is ill. There should be servants everywhere, attending to her needs.”

“Let’s not assume the worst until we know more.”

The carriage rolled to a stop before the front entrance, and Harriet was out the door before the footman could assist her. She took the steps two at a time, her heart pounding with anxiety that had nothing to do with the exertion.

The front door opened before she reached it, revealing the pale, worried face of Mrs. Briggs, the housekeeper.

“Lady Harriet! Thank heavens you’ve come. Your mother has been asking for you.”

“Is she all right? What’s happened?”

“She’s resting comfortably, my lady. The physician visited yesterday and declared her much improved, it was a chill, nothing more, though it gave us all quite a fright.” Mrs. Briggs’ eyes moved past Harriet to where Sebastian was emerging from the carriage. “And Lord Vane. Mr. Thornton has been expecting you, my lord. He arrived this morning.”

“The solicitor?” Sebastian’s voice was sharp. “He was supposed to meet us tomorrow.”

“He said the matter was urgent, my lord. He’s waiting in the study.”

Harriet felt a chill that had nothing to do with the weather. Urgent matters. Solicitors. The pieces were beginning to fall into place, and the picture they formed was not reassuring.

“I want to see my mother,” she said.

“Of course, my lady. I’ll take you to her directly.” Mrs. Briggs hesitated, glancing at Sebastian again. “Perhaps his lordship might speak with Mr. Thornton while you visit Lady Fordshire? There are… things that need to be discussed.”

“What things?” Harriet demanded. “What is going on?”

Mrs. Briggs’ face was a study in careful blankness. “I think it best if your mother explains, my lady.”

Harriet turned to Sebastian, who was watching the exchange with an expression she couldn’t read.

“Go to your mother,” he said quietly. “I’ll speak with Thornton and find out what this is about.”

“If it concerns my family…”

“Then I’ll tell you everything I learn. I promise.”

It was strange, trusting Sebastian Vane with something so important. But there was something in his eyes, a steadiness she had not noticed before that made her believe him.

“Very well,” she said. “But if you keep anything from me…”

“I won’t.” He held her gaze. “You have my word.”

Harriet nodded once, then turned to follow Mrs. Briggs up the stairs. Behind her, she heard Sebastian’s footsteps moving in the opposite direction, toward the study and whatever revelations awaited him there.

She had the distinct feeling that nothing would ever be quite the same again.

 

***

 

Lady Fordshire was sitting up in bed when Harriet entered, propped against a mountain of pillows with a book open on her lap. She looked thinner than Harriet remembered, and paler, but her eyes were bright and sharp as ever.

“Finally,” she said, setting aside her book. “I was beginning to think you’d lost your way.”

“The roads were terrible.” Harriet crossed to the bed and took her mother’s hand, relieved to find it warm. “How are you feeling?”

“Better now that you’re here. Though I suspect I’ll feel less pleased once I’ve explained why I summoned you.”

Harriet felt her stomach tighten. “Mrs. Briggs mentioned that there were things to discuss.”

“Yes, well. Mrs. Briggs has a gift for understatement.” Lady Fordshire patted the edge of the bed. “Sit, darling. This may take a while.”

Harriet sat, still holding her mother’s hand. Up close, she could see the lines of worry etched into Lady Fordshire’s face lines that had not been there a year ago, when Harriet had last visited.

“You’re frightening me, Mama.”

“I don’t mean to. But there’s no gentle way to say what needs to be said, so I’ll simply say it.” Lady Fordshire took a breath. “We’re in debt, Harriet. Serious debt. Your father’s gambling, your brother’s attempts to rescue the estate, it’s all come to a head.”

“How serious?”

“Serious enough that we may lose Fordshire Park.”

The words hit Harriet like a physical blow. Lose Fordshire Park? This house, this land, the only home she had ever known?

“How?” she managed. “How did it come to this?”

“Your father was… not prudent with money. You knew that. What you didn’t know.what Richard tried so hard to hide, was the extent of the damage. By the time your brother inherited, there was little left but debts and obligations.” Lady Fordshire’s voice was steady, but her hand trembled slightly in Harriet’s grip. “Richard spent the last years of his life trying to set things right. He made progress, but then…”

“The accident.”

“Yes. And with him gone, the creditors lost patience. They’ve been circling like vultures for months, and now they’re finally closing in.”

“What about the London house? The investments?”

“The London house is mortgaged. The investments were liquidated years ago, to pay off the most pressing debts.” Lady Fordshire sighed. “There’s nothing left, Harriet. Nothing except the estate itself, and even that may not be enough.”

Harriet’s mind was reeling. She had known things were difficult, Richard had hinted as much, in his oblique way, but she had never imagined it was this bad.

“What does any of this have to do with Lord Vane?” she asked. “Mrs. Briggs said Mr. Thornton was waiting for him specifically.”

Lady Fordshire was quiet for a moment. When she spoke, her voice was careful.

“Your brother had borrowed money from Lord Vane a substantial sum, to pay off the most dangerous creditors. Sebastian…” She paused, as though catching herself. “Lord Vane never asked for repayment. He told Richard the money was a gift, between friends. But when Richard died, the debt became part of the estate, which means…”

“It has to be repaid.”

“Or accounted for, at least. Mr. Thornton says that Lord Vane’s claim must be acknowledged before we can settle with the other creditors.”

“But if Lord Vane never wanted the money back…”

“What he wants and what the law requires are different things.” Lady Fordshire squeezed Harriet’s hand. “I don’t blame him, darling. He’s been nothing but gracious about the whole matter. It’s simply… complicated.”

Complicated. That seemed to be the word of the day. Harriet thought of Sebastian, sitting in the study with Mr. Thornton, learning the full extent of the disaster that had befallen her family. Learning that he was owed a fortune by people who could not possibly pay it.

“What happens now?” she asked.

“Now, we wait for Mr. Thornton and Lord Vane to finish their discussion. There may be options, arrangements that can be made to satisfy the creditors without selling the estate. But I won’t lie to you, Harriet. The situation is dire.”

Harriet sat with that for a moment, allowing the reality of it to sink in. Everything she had grown up taking for granted, the security, the comfort, the certainty of always having a home to return to was all at risk.

“I should speak with Mr. Thornton myself,” she said finally. “If my family’s future is being decided, I want to be part of the discussion.”

“I thought you might say that.” Lady Fordshire smiled a small, tired smile, but genuine. “You’ve always been the stubborn one. Go, then. But Harriet?”

“Yes?”

“Lord Vane is not our enemy. Whatever your feelings about him, remember that.”

Harriet thought of Sebastian’s face in the carriage, the grief in his voice when he spoke of Richard, the steadiness in his eyes when he promised to tell her everything.

“I’m beginning to understand that,” she said quietly.

She left her mother to rest and went to join the men in the study.