Sebastian took a step toward her. His eyes were blazing now, all his careful control stripped away.
"Because I did not refuse to buy you just to watch you sell yourself to someone else."
The words hit Harriet like a physical blow. She stared at him, her heart pounding, trying to understand what he was saying.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean…" Sebastian broke off, running a hand through his hair in frustration. "I mean that I have spent the last weekwatching you, helping you, trying to find some way to save your family that didn't require you to sacrifice yourself. And now you're standing here telling me you're going to wed Davies, and I…"
"You what?"
"I can't." His voice cracked. "I can't stand by and watch you do this. Not to him. Not to anyone."
"Why not? What does it matter to you who I wed?"
"It matters." Sebastian's voice dropped to something barely above a whisper.
"It matters more than I can possibly explain."
They stood there, inches apart, the air between them charged with something that made Harriet's skin prickle. She could see the rapid rise and fall of Sebastian's chest, could see the pulse hammering in his throat. Could see, for the first time, the full depth of feeling he had been trying so hard to hide.
"Sebastian…"
"Don't." He stepped back, his expression closing like a door slamming shut. "Forget I said anything. It's not my place to tell you how to live your life."
"You don't get to do that. You don't get to say something like that and then pretend it never happened."
"I do, actually. Because you're right…it's none of my business. You have a choice to make, and my feelings are irrelevant to that choice."
"Your feelings?" Harriet's voice rose. "What feelings, Sebastian? You've spent the past week helping me, listening to me, looking at me like…" She stopped, suddenly uncertain. "What exactly are your feelings?"
Sebastian's laugh was harsh, hollow. "Does it matter? You've just received a proposal that solves all your problems. My feelings are nothing but a complication."
"A complication I'd like to understand."
"Why? So you can weigh them against Davies's eight thousand pounds? So you can calculate whether my... whatever this is... outweighs your family's debts?"
"That's not fair."
"None of this is fair. That's rather the point." Sebastian turned away, his voice bitter. "Go to bed, Harriet. Get some sleep. In the morning, you can decide whether to become Lady Davies, and I'll wish you all the happiness you deserve."
"Sebastian, wait…"
But he was already walking away, his footsteps echoing in the empty corridor. Harriet watched him go, her heart aching with something she couldn't quite name.
She had wanted to understand his feelings. Now, standing alone in the darkened hallway, she was beginning to think she understood them all too well.
The question was what she was going to do about it.
***
Sleep, predictably, did not come.
Harriet lay in the unfamiliar bed, staring at the ceiling, replaying the evening's events in her mind. Davies's proposal, with its cold clarity. Sebastian's outburst, with its raw emotion. The impossible choice that lay before her.
I did not refuse to buy you just to watch you sell yourself to someone else.
The words echoed in her memory, heavy with implications she was only beginning to understand. Sebastian had refused to become her husband her when she had no other choice. But his refusal had not been indifference, it had been restraint. He had wanted her, even then. He simply hadn't been willing to take advantage of her desperation.
