"We won't know until we try." Harriet stood, gathering the documents. "I'll write to him tomorrow. Request a meeting. It can't make things any worse than they already are."
Mr. Thornton looked as though he wanted to argue, but something in Harriet's expression must have discouraged him. "As you wish, my lady. Shall I draft the letter for you?"
"No. I'll write it myself. A personal appeal may carry more weight than formal solicitor's correspondence."
She bid Mr. Thornton good night and made her way upstairs, her mind churning with possibilities. It was a slim hope, Lord Davies might refuse to see her, or might prove entirely obstinate, but it was something. A thread to pull, a door to knock on.
Tomorrow, she would begin in earnest. Tomorrow, she would fight for her home.
But tonight, she needed to sleep. If sleep would come.
***
It would not.
Harriet lay in her childhood bed, staring at the ceiling, while her mind refused to quiet. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw numbers, debt figures, asset values, the endless accounting of her family's failure. And beneath the numbers, like a current running under ice, other images.
Sebastian's face in the firelight. Sebastian's hand on hers in the carriage. Sebastian's eyes across the dinner table, warm with shared memory.
This is ridiculous, she told herself.He is not yours to think about. He is not yours at all.
But the thought would not be dismissed. It lodged in her mind like a splinter, small but persistent, demanding attention.
What if she were to wed him?
The question surfaced before she could stop it, and once surfaced, would not sink again. What if she set aside her pride, her principles, her seven years of carefully cultivated animosity, and simply... accepted? He had said he would not have her that way, but what if she came to him willingly? What if she proposed the arrangement herself, as her mother had suggested?
It would solve everything. The debts, the creditors, the threat to the estate. She would be wedded to a man who was wealthy, titled, and…she could admit this now, in the dark, where no one could hear, not entirely unhandsome. Many women entered into matrimony for less. Many women would consider themselves fortunate.
But she would know. She would always know that she had sold herself for money, that Sebastian had bought her with his fortune, that their matrimony was a transaction rather than a choice. And Sebastian would know too. He would look at her across their breakfast table, their ballroom, their bed, and see a woman who had come to him out of desperation rather than desire.
Because I would not have her that way.
His words echoed in her memory, heavy with meaning she hadn't fully understood at the time. He had refused to wed her when she had no other choice. What did that say about what he wanted? About what he felt?
Nothing, she told herself firmly. It said nothing. Sebastian was honourable, that was all. He had principles, and he lived by them. His refusal was about his own conscience, not about any particular feelings for her.
And yet.
I would not have her that way.
As though there were other ways he might want to have her. As though the having itself was something he had considered.
Harriet turned onto her side, then onto her back, then onto her other side. The bedclothes twisted around her legs; the pillow grew hot beneath her head. She was being foolish. She was reading significance into casual words, constructing castles from sand.
Sebastian Vane did not have feelings for her. If he felt anything at all, it was guilt over the poetry incident, obligation to Richard's memory, perhaps a general sense of responsibility toward a family he had once been close to. Such matters did not constitute the basis of affection nor did they constitute affairs of the heart.
In any event, she did not have any feelings for him. The strange flutter in her chest when he looked at her was merely anxiety and the warmth that spread through her when he smiled was simply relief at not being treated as an enemy. The way she kept noticing the shape of his hands, the line of his jaw, the exact shade of grey in his eyes, that was observation, nothing more.
Harriet groaned and pressed her palms against her eyes. This was useless. She was never going to sleep, and lying here cataloguing all the things she definitely did not feel about Sebastian Vane was not helping.
She rose, pulling on her dressing gown, and slipped out of her room. Perhaps a walk would clear her head. Perhaps the library would offer distraction as there was always a book to lose herself in, some other world to escape to.
The house was dark and quiet, the servants long since retired, only the occasional creak of settling timbers to mark her passage. She made her way downstairs by memory andmoonlight, avoiding the steps that squeaked, testing each door handle carefully before turning it.
The library door was already open. A faint light spilled from candlelight, flickering softly against the walls.
Harriet froze. Someone was in the library. One of the servants, perhaps, who had forgotten to extinguish the candles before retiring. Or…
