As a child, she had known every path, every hidden corner, and every secret spot where a girl could disappear and be alone with her thoughts. The rose garden with its trellised archways, the herb garden with its fragrant borders, the wild garden at the far edge of the property where nature had been allowed to run somewhat riot, she had claimed them all as her own, territories mapped by years of exploration and escape.
Now she walked without seeing, her feet carrying her along familiar routes while her mind churned with impossible calculations. A month. She had a month to find a solution that fifteen years of professional management had failed to produce. The odds were not in her favour.
She found herself in the wild garden without quite knowing how she had gotten there. It was overgrown now, more than it had been in Richard's time, he had always kept it just tamed enough to be navigable, wild enough to feel like an adventure. Without him, the brambles had encroached, the paths had narrowed, and the little stone bench where she used to sit and read had been half-swallowed by climbing roses.
She cleared a space and sat down anyway, letting the thorns catch at her dress, not caring about the damage. What did it matter if her dress was torn? What did any of it matter, when everything she loved was slipping through her fingers like sand?
She did not cry. Harriet had not cried since Richard's funeral, and she was not about to start now. Crying solved nothing. It was self-indulgence, a luxury she could not afford.
Instead, she thought.
The debts were real. The creditors were impatient. The estate was at risk. These were facts, immutable and unyielding.But facts could be worked around, couldn't they? Problems could be solved, if one was clever enough, determined enough, willing to consider unconventional solutions.
Matrimony was one solution. Mr. Thornton had not been wrong about that, however crudely he had expressed it. A wealthy husband would resolve everything, the debts, the creditors, the threat to the estate. It was the traditional solution for women in her position, the expected path.
But Sebastian had refused. He had been offered the opportunity to purchase himself a wife, and he had declined.
Why?
The question nagged at her, refusing to be dismissed. Sebastian Vane was not a romantic. He was not the sort of man who believed in love matches and happily-ever-afters. He was pragmatic, sardonic, and thoroughly modern in his approach to life. A matrimony of convenience should have appealed to his sensibilities.
And yet he had said no. Had said he would not be party to any arrangement that treated her as a commodity. Had said that if he wedded, it would be because both parties entered willingly.
It was almost as though he cared about her feelings.
Which was absurd. Sebastian did not care about her feelings. Sebastian had laughed at her poetry and ignored her for three years and treated her with the same cool indifference he showed everyone else. If he had refused the arrangement, it was surely for his own reasons, pride, perhaps, or some complicated masculine notion of honour.
It had nothing to do with her.
"I thought I might find you here."
Harriet startled at the voice, nearly losing her balance on the narrow bench. Sebastian stood at the entrance to the wild garden, his dark hair ruffled by the wind, his expression carefully neutral.
"Are you following me?" she demanded.
"I was looking for you. Mrs. Briggs said you had gone to the gardens, and I remembered Richard mentioning that you favoured this particular corner."
"Richard talked to you about me?"
"Frequently. You were his favourite topic, after horses and hunting." Sebastian picked his way through the overgrown path, dodging brambles with more grace than Harriet would have expected. "May I join you?"
"It's a free country. I can hardly stop you."
"You could ask me to leave. I would respect your wishes."
It was said simply, without any particular emphasis, but something about the words made Harriet pause. She thought of the study, of his refusal to participate in Mr. Thornton's schemes, of his insistence that she deserved a choice.
"You may stay," she said finally. "But if you've come to offer solutions, I warn you I'm not in a receptive mood."
"I haven't come to offer solutions. I've come to apologise."
"Apologise? For what?"
Sebastian lowered himself onto the other end of the bench, keeping a careful distance between them. "For the conversation in the study. Mr. Thornton should never have raised the subject of matrimony, and I should have stopped him before it went as far as it did. You deserved better than to learn of such schemes in that manner."
Harriet studied him, trying to read his expression. His face was turned slightly away from her, his profile sharp against the grey sky. He looked tired, she realised. Worn. As though the events of the past day had taken something from him.
"You knew," she said slowly. "Before the meeting. You knew what Mr. Thornton was going to suggest."
