"I do." His voice softened. "I always have."
The words hung between them, weighted with meaning Harriet wasn't sure how to interpret. She should say something, she knew. Something gracious, something appropriate, and something that acknowledged the significance of what they had just agreed to.
Instead, she said: "Well. I suppose we're betrothed, then."
"I suppose we are."
"How terribly romantic."
"Isn't it just." Sebastian's lips quirked. "I believe this is the part where I'm supposed to offer you a ring."
"Do you have one?"
"Not on my person, no. I wasn't expecting to propose tonight."
"Then I shall do without. I'm sure the lack of a ring won't make the betrothal any less binding."
"No, I don't suppose it will."
They stood there, newly betrothed, neither quite sure what to do next. The fire crackled in the grate; outside, an owl called into the darkness. It was, Harriet thought, quite possibly the strangest moment of her life.
"We should tell your mother," Sebastian said finally. "In the morning, when she's rested. The news might help her recovery."
"It might." Harriet felt a sudden wave of exhaustion crash over her. The adrenaline of the past few minutes was fading, leaving her wrung out and hollow. "I should sleep. We both should."
"Yes."
Neither of them moved.
"Sebastian," Harriet said. "Thank you. I know I haven't been... grateful. But I am. For everything you've done."
"You don't need to thank me."
"I know. But I want to." She hesitated, then added: "You're a good man. Better than I ever gave you credit for."
Something flickered in Sebastian's expression, hope, maybe, or longing. It was gone before she could be sure.
"Goodnight, Harriet," he said quietly.
"Goodnight."
She turned and left the library, feeling his gaze on her back the entire way. It wasn't until she reached her room and closed the door behind her that she allowed herself to lean against it, her heart pounding.
She was betrothed to Sebastian Vane. The man she had spent seven years despising.
And the strangest part, the part she absolutely refused to examine, was that it didn't feel like a sacrifice at all.
***
Sebastian stood alone in the library for a long time after Harriet left.
She had said yes. She had actually said yes. After everything the years of animosity, the bitter words, the elaborate walls she had built between them, she had agreed to become his wife.
His wife. Harriet Fordshire would be his wife.
He should have been glowing with triumph. He ought to have been shouting his success to the rafters, giving way to the wildest elation that a lover might feel when the object of his seven-year's adoration finally yielded her hand. Instead, he was possessed by a dreadful hollow, a coldness that ill-suited so momentous an occasion.
She had made it abundantly clear that she harboured no feelings for him. She had accepted his proposal not out of affection, but out of desperation, a practical solution to an impossible problem. She had explicitly stated that she would "rather wed someone she didn't hate," as though not hating him was some kind of ringing endorsement.
