“You are incorrigible.”
“I am deeply in love. The distinction is a subtle one.”
They continued on, sunlight warm upon their faces, the future unfolding before them like a volume yet unread.
***
That evening, after dinner, Cecilia returned once more to the library.
It had become a habit—this quiet retreat while Sebastian attended to accounts or consulted with his steward. Here, among books and stillness, she allowed herself to simply be.
She stood at the window, watching the last light drain from the sky, her hand resting upon her stomach. In five months’ time, everything would change again. There would be a child—son or daughter—who would inherit all they had built.
She hoped, whatever the child’s sex, that they would inherit their father’s kindness. His integrity. His ability to see people as they truly were, rather than as society decreed they should be.
She hoped the child would possess Sebastian’s kindness, his integrity, his gift for seeing people as they truly were.
And she hoped—perhaps selfishly—that they would inherit her stubbornness and her hard-won refusal to accept limits.
“You are thinking rather loudly.”
Sebastian stood in the doorway, watching her with a softened expression.
“I am thinking of the future,” she said. “Of who our child may become.”
“A daunting prospect.”
“And a wonderful one.” She crossed to him, and he drew her into his arms. “Do you recall the first time you found me in a library?”
“I do. You were lovely.”
“I was embarrassed. I thought you were going to report me to Lady Marchmont for borrowing books without permission.”
“I was far too occupied being intrigued by you.” He kissed her hair. “You were the most interesting person I had encountered in years.”
“And now?”
“Now you are the most interesting person I shall ever encounter.” He met her gaze. “I love you, Cecilia—when you were unseen, and now that the world cannot look away. I will love you tomorrow, and next year, and in twenty years.”
She kissed him then—slowly, deeply, without restraint.
When at last they parted, she smiled.
“Come,” she said softly. “Tomorrow will bring letters and duties and all the expectations that accompany our station. But tonight—tonight is ours.”
“Only ours,” he agreed. “As it has always been.”
They left the library together, hand in hand, as the last light faded from the sky.
***
Outside, the stars emerged one by one, scattered across the dark like promises waiting to be kept.
In the village below Ashworth Hall, warm lights glowed in cottage windows—tenants whose lives Sebastian and Cecilia had laboured to improve, through reforms that would soon be set down in a book written by a duchess who refused, any longer, to be overlooked.
In a modest house somewhere, Helena sat beside a cradle, watching her son sleep, marvelling at the strange, winding road that had carried her from the margins to this moment of quiet contentment.
At Thornfield, reduced and humbled, Lady Ashwood stared at a blank wall and contemplated the consequences of her cruelty—consequences that would attend her to the end of her days.
