"Would you like to show me?"
"I would, actually. But first…" Harriet turned to face him fully. "I need to say something."
"You've been saying quite a lot of things today. I'm beginning to wonder if you've been replaced by a more communicative version of yourself."
"Don't be insufferable." But she was smiling. "I just wanted to tell you... hearing all of that, seeing the numbers, understanding what you've done... I knew, intellectually, that you'd paid off the debts. But I hadn't really grasped the scope of it. The completeness."
"It's just money, Harriet."
"It's not just money. It's my mother's health. It's this house. It's Richard's legacy." Her voice wavered slightly. "It's everything my family has been fighting to preserve for three years, and your intervention was as immediate as it wasmasterful. To see a difficulty of such greatness dissolved with such apparent ease is truly a marvel.”
“I did what my heart desired.”
Harriet shook her head slowly. "You're a peculiar and wonderful man, Sebastian Vane."
"I'm a man who loves you. That makes many things simple that might otherwise be complicated."
She kissed him then quick and fierce, with a passion that caught him unawares.
"Come on," she said, pulling back. "I want to show you the gardens. And then the attic. And then whatever else you want to see."
"Whatever else?"
"Within reason."
"I suppose I can work within reason."
"I'm glad to hear it."
They left the study hand in hand, and Sebastian thought that he had never been happier in his life and that the happiness was still growing, still expanding, still finding new rooms to fill.
It was terrifying. It was wonderful. It was everything.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The east gardens were beautiful.
They were designed in the English style, with winding paths and carefully curated wildness, roses climbing over arbors and spilling from beds in profusions of colour. A small fountain murmured at the centre, and benches were positioned at intervals to allow for rest and contemplation.
"Papa designed this for their tenth wedding anniversary," Harriet said, leading Sebastian along the main path. "Mama says he spent months planning it in secret. He hired gardeners from three counties to install everything in a single week while she was visiting her sister."
"That's remarkably romantic."
"He was a romantic man. Mama pretends to be practical, but I think that's one of the reasons she loved him." Harriet paused beside a climbing rose, its blooms a deep, velvety red. "This was her favourite. He had it imported from France. It's calledBelle de Crécy."
"It's beautiful."
"She used to cut blooms from it every week to put in his study." Harriet's voice was soft with memory. "After he died, she couldn't bear to look at them for months. But eventually, she started cutting them again. She said it was a way of keeping him close."
Sebastian watched her face as she spoke, the play of emotions, the mixture of grief and love and nostalgia. She had never spoken to him like this before. Never let him see so deeply into her family's history.
"Thank you for showing me this," he said.
"It's just a garden."
"It's not, though. It's part of who you are. Part of where you come from." He reached out and touched the rose, its petals soft as silk. "I want to know everything about you, Harriet. The small things and the large things. The happy memories and the sad ones. All of it."
She was quiet for a moment. "Why?"
