"Thank you." Her voice was softer now, stripped of its usual social armour. "I don't believe I've said that properly. What you've done for this family, settling the debts, providing security, giving my daughter a reason to smile, I am more grateful than I can express."
She was gone before Sebastian could formulate a response, leaving him alone with Harriet in the suddenly quiet morning room.
"Well," Harriet said, after a moment. "That was almost sentimental."
"Your mother is a formidable woman."
"She is. But she's not wrong." Harriet's expression softened as she looked at him. "I haven't thanked you properly either. For any of it."
"You don't need to thank me."
"I do, though." She shifted in her chair, turning to face him more fully. "You've saved my family, Sebastian. You've given my mother peace, secured our home, lifted the weight that was crushing all of us. And you've never once made me feel like I owed you anything in return."
"You don't owe me anything."
"I know. That's precisely my point." Harriet shook her head, a rueful smile on her lips. "I spent so long resenting the very idea of being saved. I thought it would feel like defeat. Like givingup. Like admitting I wasn't strong enough to solve my own problems."
"And now?"
"Now I understand that accepting help isn't weakness. It's just... different." She reached across and took his hand, her fingers intertwining with his. "You didn't save me because you thought I couldn't save myself. You saved me because you loved me. That's different."
Sebastian turned her hand over in his, tracing the lines of her palm with his thumb. "I would have helped regardless. Even if you never loved me back. You know that."
"I know. That's what makes it different." Harriet leaned forward and pressed a kiss to his cheek, her lips warm against his skin. "Come on. We have two hours before we need to be sensible and financial. I want to show you the library."
"You showed me the library yesterday."
"I showed you the main collection. I haven't shown you where I used to hide as a child." Her smile turned mischievous, a glimpse of the girl she must have been before grief had hardened her. "There's a window seat behind the mythology section. I spent half my childhood there, reading things I probably shouldn't have."
"Things you shouldn't have?"
"Richard smuggled me novels. Mama would have been horrified." Harriet tugged him to his feet. "Come. I'll tell you all about my misspent youth."
Sebastian followed, because he would follow her anywhere, and because the prospect of learning more about her, the girl she had been, the woman she had become, was irresistible.
He began to perceive that his affection for Harriet was no solitary vow, but a perpetual discovery of her worth. Every day brought new facets, new depths, and new reasons to marvel at his impossible good fortune.
He intended to spend the rest of his life discovering them all.
***
The library at Fordshire Park was smaller than the one at Thornwood, but it possessed a warmth that Sebastian's grander collection lacked.
The shelves were worn from decades of use, the spines faded from hands that had pulled them down and put them back a thousand times. There were comfortable chairs positioned near windows, their cushions bearing the permanent impressions of readers long gone. The air smelled of old paper and leather and something floral, lavender, perhaps, from sachets tucked between the volumes.
"This was my sanctuary," Harriet said, leading him past the main reading area to a corner near the back. "When everything was too much, the expectations, the social obligations, Mama's endless planning…I would come here and disappear."
She pushed aside a heavy curtain to reveal a window seat built into an alcove, just large enough for one person to curl up with a book. The window looked out over the gardens, and Sebastian could imagine a young Harriet tucked into this space, lost in whatever world her reading had opened up.
"It's perfect," he said quietly.
"It was my favourite place in the whole house." Harriet settled onto the window seat, drawing her knees up in a gesture that made her look very young. "Richard found me here once. I was thirteen, crying over something, I don't even remember what now. Some slight from one of Mama's friends, probably. He climbed in next to me, which was ridiculous because he was already too tall for the space, and he just... sat with me. Didn't say anything. Didn't try to fix it. Just sat."
"He was good at that," Sebastian said quietly. "Being present without demanding anything."
"He was. He was good at a lot of things." Harriet's voice was wistful but not heavy. The grief was still there, Sebastian knew, but it had softened into something more bearable. "He would have been happy about this. Us, I mean. He always said we were too similar not to either love each other or kill each other."
"He said that?"
