He laughed—unexpectedly, without artifice. “A reasonable assessment. I have not furnished you with much evidence, one way or the other.”
“No,” she agreed. “But you are here. Speaking to me, when you might, with greater propriety, be elsewhere.” She hesitated. “That suggests… a disposition of some sort.”
“And what disposition do you imagine it to be?”
“I have not yet determined that.”
He set the book aside with care, as though the conversation itself had become the object of study.
“I ought to be elsewhere,” he said. “Doing what is expected of me.”
“Why aren’t you?”
“Because I find my thoughts… otherwise engaged.”
The words fell into the stillness like a disturbance in water, faint but widening. Cecilia felt the tremor of it—not dramatic, but unmistakable.
“Your Grace—”
“Sebastian.”
She hesitated. “Sebastian, then.” His name felt dangerous on her tongue—too near, too intimate for the space permitted them. “This is unwise.”
“I know.”
“It can lead nowhere.”
“I know that too.”
She drew a breath. “Then why—”
He shook his head faintly. “Let us not name more than we must.”
That, too, was an answer.
He stepped a fraction nearer—close enough that she felt the warmth of him without the impropriety of touch. The nearness was startling in its restraint.
“In this room,” he said, “we may—briefly—speak as ourselves.”
The words were not romantic. They were far more dangerous than that.
She should have stepped back.
She did not.
“I am no one,” she said quietly. “A dependent. A charity case. I have no fortune, no position, no future worth speaking of.”
“And yet,” he replied, with quiet intensity, “you think clearly. You speak honestly. You refuse to flatter a man who outranks you. That is… uncommon.”
Her throat tightened. “Uncommon does not alter circumstance.”
“No,” he said. “I fear it does not.”
A beat of silence passed—honest, unsentimental, painfully true.
“I should go,” she said at last. “Before my absence is noted.”
“Yes,” he agreed—though he did not move either. “Of course.”
