And through it all, she was aware of Sebastian. His presence in a room, his voice in the hallway, the way his eyes seemed to find hers no matter how many people stood between them.
She did not know what to call this feeling. It was not a feeling of tender regard; or, at the least, she was not yet prepared to bestow such a title upon it. But it was not nothing, either. It was possibility. Potential. The first green shoots of something that might, if carefully tended, grow into something real.
The creditors were still circling. The debts were still crushing. The future was still uncertain.
But for the first time since arriving at Fordshire Park, Harriet felt something other than despair.
She felt hope.
CHAPTER FIVE
"You're holding the ledger upside down."
Harriet looked up from the accounts she had been pretending to study and found Sebastian watching her with an expression of barely concealed amusement. He was seated across from her at the study's large oak desk, surrounded by towers of documents that Mr. Thornton had produced from various filing cabinets and storage rooms throughout the house.
"I am not," she said, then looked down at the page in her hands. The numbers were, indeed, inverted. "I was testing you."
"Of course you were." Sebastian's lips twitched. "And did I pass?"
"Barely." Harriet turned the ledger right-side up and tried to focus on the figures swimming before her eyes. She had been at this for three hours now, and her mind kept wandering to places it had no business going. Specifically, to the library. To midnight. To Sebastian's voice in the candlelight, confessing fears she had never imagined him capable of feeling.
I sat there thinking, this girl is magnificent, and she will never, ever look twice at me.
She had looked twice at him this morning. And a third time. And possibly a fourth, though she was trying very hard not to keep count.
"Here." Sebastian rose and moved around the desk to her side, leaning over her shoulder to point at a column of figures. "This section shows the estate's income from tenant rents over the past decade. You'll notice a significant decline beginning three years ago."
Harriet was having difficulty noticing anything except the proximity of his body to hers. He was close enough that she could smell him, that same sandalwood and cedar scent sheremembered from the inn, imbued with something warm and distinctly masculine. Close enough that if she turned her head, her lips would be mere inches from his jaw.
She did not turn her head. She stared fixedly at the numbers and tried to remember how to breathe.
"The decline coincides with Richard's death," she managed. "The tenants were probably taking advantage of the uncertainty."
"Some of them, yes. But look here," Sebastian's finger traced a line down the page, and Harriet found herself watching his hand rather than the figures. He had elegant hands, she noticed. Long fingers, well-shaped nails, a light dusting of dark hair across the knuckles. "…this particular tenant, a Mr. Briggs, has been consistently late with his payments since well before Richard's passing. It may be worth investigating whether he's experiencing difficulties that could be resolved, or whether he's simply taking liberties."
"Mr. Thornton never mentioned any issues with Mr. Briggs."
"Mr. Thornton is thorough but, as I said, unimaginative. He sees numbers. He doesn't always see the people behind them."
Harriet turned to look at Sebastian which was a mistake, as it brought their faces dangerously close together. His grey eyes met hers, and for a moment, neither of them spoke.
"You're very good at this," she said finally. “Looking beyond the surface.”
"Years of practice. Estate management is as much about understanding people as it is about understanding finances." Sebastian straightened, putting a more appropriate distance between them, and Harriet told herself she was relieved. "Speaking of which, I've found something interesting."
"Interesting good, or interesting bad?"
"Interesting potentially very good." Sebastian moved to another stack of papers and withdrew a yellowed document thatlooked as though it had been languishing in storage for decades. "Do you know anything about mining rights on the Fordshire estate?"
"Mining rights? No, nothing. Why?"
"Because according to this agreement, signed by your great-grandfather in 1762, the Fordshire family retains mineral rights to a significant portion of land in the northern section of the property. Land that, if I'm not mistaken, sits directly above a coal seam that was considered too difficult to access at the time."
Harriet felt her heart quicken. "And now?"
"Now, with modern extraction techniques, it might be considerably more accessible. If the coal is still there…and there's no reason to think it wouldn't be those rights, could be worth a small fortune."
"Why wouldn't my father have known about this? Or Richard?"
