"I disagree."
"Then we'll have to argue about it."
"I look forward to it."
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
That night, Harriet came to his room again.
She didn't knock this time, simply opened the door and slipped inside, her dressing gown pale in the candlelight. Sebastian was sitting by the window, unable to sleep, his mind too full of everything that had happened.
"You're brooding," she said.
"I'm contemplating. There's a difference."
"Is there?" She crossed to where he sat and settled onto the arm of his chair, her weight warm against his side. "What are you contemplating?"
"How much has changed. How quickly." He looked up at her, this woman who had transformed his entire existence. "A month ago, you could barely stand to be in the same room with me. Now you're sneaking into my chambers at midnight."
"I'm not sneaking. I'm visiting. There's a difference."
"Apparently everything has a difference tonight."
Harriet smiled and reached out to run her fingers through his hair. The gesture was so casual, so intimate, that Sebastian felt his breath catch. She had never touched him like this before, with such ease and affection, as though she had the right.
Which she did. She was his wife. She had every right.
The knowledge still overwhelmed him sometimes.
"I couldn't sleep either," she admitted. "Too much thinking."
"About what?"
"Tomorrow. Going home." She hesitated. "What it means that Thornwood feels like home now, when a month ago it felt like exile."
"Does it? Feel like home?"
"It feels like wherever you are." She said it simply, as though it were obvious. "I didn't expect that. I thought home was aplace, these walls, these gardens, the rooms where I grew up. But it turns out it's a person."
Sebastian didn't trust himself to speak. He simply pulled her down into his lap and held her, his face buried in her hair, his arms wrapped around her as though he could keep her there forever.
"Stay," he murmured against her neck. "Tonight. Stay with me."
"I was planning to."
"I mean…" He pulled back to look at her.
"Stay. Not just tonight. Every night. I don't want separate rooms, Harriet. I don't want doors between us."
"Scandalous," she teased, but her eyes were soft. "Wedded couples sharing a bed. Whatever will the servants think?"
“The world shall surely conclude that we are hopelessly devoted, and quite beyond the point of caring for the dictates of propriety.”
"How horrifying."
"Isn't it just."
She kissed him then, slow and sweet, and Sebastian felt something settle in his chest. This was real. She was real. They were real.
