“They say the Dowager Duchess brought her personally—”
“What can it mean?”
Cecilia ignored them. Ignored the stares, the speculation, the barely-concealed malice of women who saw her as a competitor and men who saw her as a curiosity. She kept walking, kept searching, kept her expression carefully neutral.
Where was he?
She had completed nearly half a circuit of the ballroom when she saw Georgiana.
Her cousin stood near the dance floor, surrounded by admirers—young men who competed for her attention, young women who cultivated her friendship. She was dressed exquisitely, her golden hair arranged in elaborate curls, her blue gown designed to complement her colouring perfectly.
She looked beautiful. And, when her eyes met Cecilia’s across the crowded room, she looked… unsettled.
Cecilia braced herself for confrontation. But Georgiana did not approach. She simply held Cecilia’s gaze for a long, charged moment—a look that carried wounded pride, confusion, and the faintest flicker of reluctant acknowledgement—before turning away and resuming her conversation with her admirers.
It was, Cecilia realised, a kind of concession. A recognition that the rules had shifted, that the balance between them was no longer what it had been—that Cecilia was no longer the grey shadow who might be dismissed and forgotten.
She moved on.
And then, finally, she saw him.
Sebastian stood near the tall windows at the far end of the ballroom, partially obscured by a potted palm. He was dressed in immaculate evening clothes—black coat, white cravat, the understated elegance of a man who did not need ostentation to command attention. He was speaking to someone—his brother Evan, Cecilia realised—but his expression was distant, distracted, as though his mind were elsewhere entirely.
Her heart stopped. Then restarted at twice its normal speed.
He had not seen her yet. She could still retreat—could slip back into the crowd, lose herself in the press of bodies, avoid the confrontation she had travelled so far to face.
But she had not come this far to hide.
She took a breath. Squared her shoulders. And began to walk toward him.
***
Evan saw her first.
Sebastian was only half-listening to his brother’s chatter—something about a wager and a horse race and the various romantic intrigues developing among the guests. His attention was elsewhere, as it had been for days. He kept scanning theroom, searching for something he knew he would not find, unable to stop himself from hoping.
She was not here. Of course she was not. She was at Thornfield, banished, forbidden from attending. His mother had gone to see her—had reported that Cecilia was well, that she was considering her options, that she might yet find a path forward—but that did not mean she would come to the ball.
That did not mean she would come to him.
“Sebastian.”
Something in Evan’s voice made him look up—a sharpness, an urgency, a barely-contained excitement.
“What?”
“Look. By the pillar. Near the refreshment table. Look.”
Sebastian looked.
And his heart stopped.
She was walking toward him. Cecilia. His Cecilia. Not in grey—not invisible, not hidden—but in silver silk that caught the candlelight like starlight made tangible. Her dark hair was arranged simply, elegantly, framing a face that he had carried in his thoughts for days. And around her throat, gleaming softly, were the pearls she had told him about—her mother’s pearls.
She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
“Goodness gracious,” Evan breathed beside him. “Is that—”
