Cecilia read the letter three times.
He is not the same man he was before you left.
She folded the paper carefully and tucked it into her pocket. Then she returned to her inventory, counting jars of pickled onions while tears slid silently down her cheeks.
***
That night, she could not sleep.
She lay in her narrow bed, staring at a ceiling scarcely discernible in the darkness, and at last allowed herself to think of what she had been striving so hard to avoid.
She loved him.
It was foolish. It was impossible. It was the most ill-advised sentiment she had ever known. Yet there it was—undeniable as the beating of her own heart: she loved Sebastian Harcourt, Duke of Ashworth.
She loved the way his eyes crinkled when he smiled—truly smiled, not the polite mask worn in company. She loved the manner in which he listened when she spoke, as though her thoughts possessed weight and consequence. She loved that he challenged her, respected her, saw her as a person rather than a means to an end.
She loved him—and she had walked away from him—and she did not know whether she would ever cease to regret it.
You did the right thing,she told herself firmly.The only thing. He is a duke, and you are nothing. Society would never sanction such a match. His family would be shamed; his children, stigmatised. You would be whispered about, pointed at, pitied—or scorned—for the rest of your days.
All of it was true. All of it was logical, rational, sensible.
None of it eased the ache in her breast.
She thought of Dorothea’s letter—of Sebastian, withdrawn and distracted, scarcely looking at Georgiana; of the librarywhere they had spoken, the garden where they had walked, the ballroom where he had defended her before them all.
He was suffering. Because of her. Because she had walked away.
You told him you required time. He is giving you time.
But time for what? The obstacles between them had not altered. She was still penniless, still dependent, still wholly unfit to be a duchess. No amount of reflection would change those unyielding facts.
Unless…
Unless she ceased to dwell upon obstacles—and began to consider possibilities.
The thought was so foreign, so unexpected, that Cecilia sat upright in bed, her heart racing.
What if she had been wrong from the beginning? What if, instead of listing every reason they could not be together, she must look instead for the ways they might?
Sebastian had vowed he would surrender everything for her. She had dismissed it as romantic extravagance, the language of passion. But—what if he had meant it? What if he was willing to defy expectation, to face scandal, to build a life with her despite the world’s disapproval?
And if he were willing… was she?
She lay back once more, but sleep would not come. Instead, she stared into the darkness and thought—truly thought—about what she desired.
Not what was sensible. Not what was safe. Not what the world demanded of a woman in her position.
What did she want?
The answer, when it came, was terrifyingly simple.
She wanted him. She wanted a life with him—to wake each morning and see his face, to speak and laugh with him, to build something together that neither could build alone.
She wanted to stop being invisible.
She wanted to be seen.
