He should turn his attention to duty—to his mother’s plans, to the succession, to the life expected of him. He should forget Miss Cecilia Ashwood and her careful notes and her unguarded intelligence.
He stared at the unopened volume in his hands and admitted, at last, that he would do no such thing.
Tomorrow morning, he would come to the library.
And he would hope—against reason—that she would be here.
***
Sleep did not come easily that night.
Cecilia lay in her narrow bed, staring at the ceiling she could barely see in the darkness, and replayed the morning’s encounter for the hundredth time.
I find you interesting.
The words should not have affected her so strongly. They were ordinary words, the sort of polite nothing a gentleman might say to any woman. But he had not said them as a politenothing. He had said them with weight, with attention, with genuine curiosity in his grey eyes.
He had meant them.
She did not know what to do with that. Five years of invisibility had not prepared her for being seen. She had forgotten what it felt like to matter to someone, to be worthy of attention and interest rather than mere utility.
It was dangerous. She knew it was dangerous. A duke’s interest in a baronet’s poor relation could only end one way, and that way led to ruin.
And yet it had felt—good. To be looked at as though her thoughts mattered. To be invited, however cautiously, into a space where she might exist as herself, not merely as Georgiana’s useful shadow.
Sebastian.
She whispered the name into the darkness, testing its shape. NotYour Grace, nor the distant abstraction ofthe Duke—but a man who was weary of performing, who read serious books and noticed hers.
She was being foolish. She hardly knew him. One conversation did not constitute a connection.
And yet—
I am often here in the mornings.
An invitation wrapped in propriety, but an invitation nonetheless. He would be there. He wished her to come.
She should not go. She should contrive a discreet way to return the book, avoid the library, resume the life she knew—silent, capable, unseen.
She turned onto her side, pressing her face into the pillow, and admitted that she would go anyway.
One more conversation. One more glimpse of what it felt like to be seen. Then she would retreat. She would accept that a spark, once, was all she would ever have.
Just one more conversation.
She told herself it would be enough.
She told herself she could stop.
She told herself the quiet lies that allowed survival—and in time, she slept.
Chapter Six
Morning came grey and damp, clouds heavy with rain.
Cecilia dressed quickly in her familiar grey and went to Georgiana’s room for the daily ritual of gowns and ribbons. Her cousin, thwarted by the weather, was in a temper.
“Today’s walk will be cancelled,” Georgiana sighed. “I had planned to walk with the Duke. Mama says proximity breeds affection.”
