“When I came here,” she said, “I believed my life was over. That everything good had already been lost. I had stopped hoping for… anything.”
“And now?”
“Now I have hope again. A future I never imagined. I have—” Emotion thickened her voice. “I have you.”
Sebastian took her hands and raised them to his lips.
“You have had me from the moment you looked up from that book in the library,” he said. “I simply lacked the courage to admit it.”
“And now?”
“Now I intend to spend my life proving it—in words, in actions, in a thousand small ways.” He kissed her knuckles, one by one. “I love you, Cecilia Ashwood. I will love you as a wife, a duchess, the mother of our children—when you are brilliant, and when you argue with me about drainage systems.”
“I do not argue about drainage systems.”
“You will. I have read your marginal notes. Your feelings on proper water management are formidable.”
She laughed, feeling lighter than she had in years. “You are ridiculous.”
“I am in love. The distinction is slight.” He drew her into his arms. “My mother wishes to speak with us this evening about the wedding—dates, arrangements, practicalities.”
“That sounds exhausting.”
“It will be,” he said gently. “But she has also contrived that we might have a little time to ourselves afterwards, in the music room. I am told you play.”
“I used to. Before.”
“Then perhaps you will play again. For me.”
She rested her head lightly against his chest, listening to the quiet steadiness of his heartbeat. This was real. This was hers.
“Yes,” she said softly. “I will play.”
“And after that?”
“After that, we shall begin to plan—a wedding, a life… a future neither of us ever thought to claim.”
“That,” Sebastian murmured, pressing a tender kiss to her hair, “sounds very much like the future I have always hoped for.”
She smiled, feeling her mother’s pearls warm against her skin.
“Then let us begin.”
Chapter Sixteen
They did not go to dinner at once.
Sebastian held her for a long moment, neither of them speaking, simply existing together in the quiet library. Cecilia could feel his heartbeat beneath her cheek—steady, anchoring, something solid to cling to when everything else seemed likely to drift away.
“I keep expecting to wake up,” she murmured.
“So do I. And yet we persist in remaining awake.”
“What if it does not last? The feeling, I mean. What if we wake one morning and realise we have made a dreadful mistake?”
He drew back slightly and tilted her chin so she was compelled to meet his gaze.
“Then we will address it,” he said gently. “We will talk, and listen, and work our way through it together. That is what partners do.” His thumb traced the elegant line of her jaw. “Marriage is not a single, grand choice. It is a thousand quiet ones—patience, honesty, kindness—made again and again. If we keep choosing one another, we will be well.”
