But she was real, solid and warm andhere…and every time she caught him looking, her lips curved into a smile that made his chest ache.
"You're doing it again," she said.
"Doing what?"
"Looking at me as if I have hung the moon."
"You did hang the moon. I was there. I watched you do it."
"That's not even clever."
"I never claimed to be clever. I claimed to be devoted."
Harriet tried to look annoyed. She failed spectacularly. The corners of her mouth kept twitching upward, and there was asoftness in her eyes that Sebastian had never seen before, or perhaps had never been allowed to see.
"You're ridiculous," she said.
"Ridiculously in love with you, yes."
"That's worse."
"I know. I can't seem to help it."
She stopped walking and turned to face him, her expression shifting to something more serious. The morning light caught the strands of gold in her dark hair, and Sebastian had to resist the urge to reach out and touch them.
"Sebastian. Last night…"
"You don't have to say anything."
"I want to." She took both his hands in hers, her grip firm and certain. "I meant what I said. Every word. I need you to know that it wasn't…it wasn't just the moment, or the emotion of being here. I love you. I think I've loved you for longer than I knew. And I'm not going to wake up tomorrow and change my mind."
Sebastian's throat tightened. He had spent the hours before dawn lying awake, Harriet sleeping peacefully beside him, torturing himself with exactly that fear. That she would wake and regret. That the words spoken in moonlight would seem foolish in daylight. That he would lose her just when he had finally won her.
"How did you know that's what I was worried about?" he asked.
"Because I know you. Because you've spent seven years expecting nothing, and now you have everything, and you don't quite trust it." She squeezed his hands. "I don't entirely trust it either. But I'm choosing to believe in it anyway. In us."
"That's very brave of you."
"I learned it from someone." Her smile returned, smaller but no less warm. "A very stubborn man who refused to give up on me, even when I gave him every reason to."
Sebastian lifted her hands to his lips and pressed a kiss to her knuckles. "I would do it again. Every moment. Every year. I would wait seven more if that's what it took."
"Let's not test that theory."
"Agreed."
They stood there for a moment, hands intertwined, the morning light warming their faces. A bird sang somewhere in the garden, and the roses swayed gently in the breeze, and Sebastian thought he could stay here forever in this garden, in this moment, with this woman.
"I keep expecting to wake up," he admitted quietly. "To find out this was all some elaborate dream, and I'm still back in London, watching you across a ballroom, knowing you'll never look at me the way you're looking at me now."
"How am I looking at you?"
"Like I matter. Like I'm someone worth seeing."
"You are someone worth seeing." Harriet's voice was fierce. "You've always been worth seeing. I was just too stubborn and too scared to admit it."
"And now?"
