“No,” he said quickly. “You look lovely. But I read in that Braithwaite book that large events can be difficult for people like you. I worried a bit that the wedding might be a struggle.”
He said it so factually and without judgment that Augusta did not at first realize that he was speaking of her melancholia. Reginald and the servants had always whispered about it in such dire voices that she’d grown accustomed to it being treated as a secret.
“Oh,” she said dumbly. “Well, you need not worry, I assure you. This has all been fine. Merely tiring, that is all.”
“Good,” he said, and she could see the relief in his expression. After her conversation with Reginald, she wondered just how much her well-being had taxed the men in her life today. Perhaps she needed to reassure the both of them more frequently.
“Are we going to your home?”
He smiled. “Ourhome, you mean?”
She smiled, hoping that she did not look too blushed. “Yes, pardon me. Our home.”
“Yes. Your trousseau has been delivered already, so you will be able to settle in quickly. I hope it will feel comfortable to you in short order.”
“I am sure it will,” she rushed to say, hoping to quell any fears he had of her inability to settle into her role. “You have been so…accommodating.”
She held back a sigh. The easy conversation that they had enjoyed these past weeks suddenly felt halted with the gravity of their new titles to one another. Husband. Wife. The stuff of stodgy old people and duty. If they were to continue without going batty, they would have to find their way back to that ease.
A dangerous question, which had been playing in the back of her mind all day, seemed a good place to start.
“Are you nervous?” she asked.
He looked at her with one eyebrow raised in surprise. “Nervous?”
“About the wedding night?”
A long, long pause tensed between them, before finally Sebastian snorted ungracefully with a hearty laugh. “Nervous? I believe I am supposed to be the one asking you such a question.”
Augusta tried not to frown; she felt that her husband, kind though he may be, was not understanding her meaning.
“I only mean that it must be difficult to be held so responsible for someone else’s first time. I shall carry the memory forever, good or bad, and you are solely liable for it. Does that not make you nervous?”
As she spoke, some of the humor dampened in her husband’s face. He looked her up and down with that assessing air of his. The seconds passed, and a fresh heat burned in his eyes.
“You will see very soon that I am not nervous in the least.”
Despite the cocky tilt of his head and the warmth of his gaze, Augusta could see the tiniest falter in his expression. She could not pinpoint what it was, but she knew; Sebastian wanted, very much, for tonight to be good for her, and at least some small part of him worried that it might not be.
This knowledge eased whatever tension had built in her shoulders, and she sat back quite comfortably against the carriage seat. If Sebastian, the darling of theton, was nervous, then she would do well to make friends with her own anxieties.
It did not take long to pull up to Sebastian’s home. It was a townhome, which looked very much as the typical bachelor’s home in London might, albeit a bit bigger than most.
“I shall be getting us a family home, of course,” he said just as Augusta laid eyes on the abode. He almost sounded apologetic. “I could not obtain one during such a short engagement.”
“It is lovely,” Augusta assured him. “I quite like townhomes. They are so much more connected to the city than the larger estates. It feels as though everything is just outside your front door.”
His smile was warm. “I believe I could not have asked for a more charitable wife.”
Augusta rolled her eyes playfully at him. “Hardly charitable. Imerely have terrible taste.”
The last thing she heard before pulling up to the front doors was his booming laugh.
From there, things moved even faster than they had at the wedding. She was shown the home, which was not so grand as a family home, but respectable in its space.
Upstairs she was shown each of the guest rooms, before finally being led to Sebastian’s room. Well,theirroom now, though of course, once they moved to an estate, they would each take up their own bedrooms. For now, sharing would provide the intimacy that she was hoping to build with him. Soon, her hairbrush would sit upon the vanity. Her clothing would hang in the wardrobe.
The very idea of leaving her print upon Sebastian’s personal spaces made her stand up a bit straighter, breathe a little deeper.
