PROLOGUE
Seven Years Before
Harriet had made a terrible mistake.
She knew it the moment the words left her mouth, the moment she heard her own voice reading aloud in the Fordshires' drawing room, too loud and too earnest in the genteel hush. But Richard had asked…had begged, really, with that particular expression he deployed when he wanted something, equal parts charm and mischief and she had never been able to refuse her brother anything.
"Just one poem," he had said. "Lady Thornton was asking about your writing, and I may have mentioned that you're brilliant."
"You shouldn't have."
"Too late. I already did. Now you have to prove me right."
And so here she was, eighteen years old and trembling slightly, a sheet of paper clutched in her hands, reading her most personal work to a room full of people who were probably just being polite. The poem was about stars, about looking up at the night sky and feeling both infinitely small and infinitely significant. She had written it last winter, during a particularly dark stretch when she had wondered if anyone would ever see her as more than just another debutante waiting to make a match and be led to the altar.
It was, she knew, the best thing she had ever written but it was also the most vulnerable.
The room was quiet as she read. Lady Thornton nodded along encouragingly. Richard beamed at her from his position near the fireplace, pride evident in every line of his face. And Sebastian Vane, Richard’s closest friend, four years Harriet's senior, impossibly handsome in that careless way that seemed tocome naturally to men of his station, stood near the window, his expression unreadable.
She had been watching him all evening, though she would have died before admitting it. There was something about Lord Vane that made her nervous in a way she couldn't quite articulate. He was overly observant and carried an air of self-possession. When he looked at her, she felt seen in a way that was almost uncomfortable, as though he could read every thought in her head, including the ones she hadn't admitted to herself.
She wanted him to like her poem. She wanted it desperately, with an intensity that embarrassed her.
She finished reading. The final line hung in the air:And so I learned to love the dark, for only in darkness can we see the stars.
Polite applause. Lady Thornton murmured something complimentary. Richard was grinning, already moving toward her, ready to tell her she had been wonderful.
But Harriet wasn't looking at Richard. She was looking at Sebastian Vane.
He had turned away from her. His shoulders were shaking.
He waslaughing.
The realisation hit her like a physical blow. Her face went hot, then cold. Her hands, still holding the poem, began to tremble for an entirely different reason.
He was laughing at her. At her words, her feelings, her heart laid bare on the page for everyone to see. She had exposed herself completely, and he found itamusing.
She heard a sound, a choked, breathless noise that might have been a sob if she had let it escape. She didn't. She was a Fordshire. She had been raised to maintain composure in any situation.
But she couldn't stay here. She couldn't stand in this room for one more second, watching Sebastian Vane laugh at everything she had dared to feel.
"Excuse me," she heard herself say, her voice remarkably steady. "I need some air."
She walked out of the drawing room with her head high and her spine straight. She made it all the way to the garden before the tears came.
***
Richard found her fifteen minutes later, sitting on a stone bench beneath the old oak tree, her face blotchy and her eyes red.
"Harry." He sat down beside her, using the childhood moniker that no one else was allowed to use. "What happened? You were brilliant. Everyone loved it."
"Not everyone."
"What do you mean?"
"Your friend." She spat the word like a curse. "Lord Vane. He was laughing, Richard. I saw him. He turned away andlaughedat me."
Richard's brow furrowed. "Sebastian? That doesn't sound like…"
