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Richard sighed, running a hand through his hair. “She wanted guidance, to make amends, she said. To change her course.”

There was something about the way Richard said it, equal parts disbelief and rueful acknowledgment, that made Sebastian narrow his gaze.

“Go on,” he said.

Richard huffed a short laugh. “At the time, I thought it absurd. Me? Mentoring someone on the path of virtue? You cannot tell me you do not see the irony.” He gestured broadly to himself. “I was hardly the model of good behavior.”

Sebastian did not disagree.

Richard pulled a face, as if still baffled by the notion, and waved a hand. “I told her no, of course. Who was I to lead anyone toward redemption when I was still figuring it out for myself?”

“But then he told me,” Sophia interjected smoothly, her voice gentle but unwavering. She folded her hands in her lap, her blue eyes steady on Sebastian’s. “And I reminded him that if he had chosen a different path for himself, he was in no position to turn someone away when they wished to follow his example.”

Richard huffed, shaking his head. “Yes, well. She was annoyingly correct, as usual.”

Sophia smiled faintly but said nothing.

“So,” Richard continued, leveling Sebastian with a look, “I wrote to Lady Slight. And I agreed to help.”

Sebastian’s jaw clenched. His mind whirled with this new revelation, trying to make sense of it against everything he had believed about Harriet. Had she truly wanted to change? Had the woman who had deceived him so thoroughly also spent months seeking salvation?

It did not erase what she had done.

But it complicated everything.

Richard exhaled, rubbing a hand over his jaw before meeting Sebastian’s gaze. “Her situation was … more troublesome than my own,” he admitted. “The things she wished to atone for were not straightforward. In my case, if I wronged a woman and it resulted in worsened circumstances, I simply made arrangements to improve those circumstances. It just took some ingenuity and some blunt.”

Sebastian’s brow furrowed. “And for Harriet?”

Richard spread his hands. “She is a woman,” he said simply. “She cannot simply send a man some money to repair a situation. She cannot use her title, her position, or her influence in the same way a man might. And, besides that, the men involved in her past did not need anything from her. Each had profitable, successful lives.”

Sebastian flinched at the implication, his mind immediately going to who those seven or eight men had been that Harriet had confessed to him about. The number had not grown easier to hold since she had spoken it. He forced his jaw to unclench, his hands to still. He said nothing.

“So eventually,” Richard went on, “we settled on another approach. If she could not make direct amends, she could at least use what resources she did have to help others and ease her conscience. Not necessarily those she had wronged, but perhaps the more vulnerable who had been wronged by others. The forgotten.” His voice dropped slightly. “Perhaps women, considering she learned her glib ways from her father. And women were the ones he had wronged most.” Sebastian said nothing, but something shifted in his chest, small and reluctant, like the first crack in ice that had held too long against the cold.

* * *

Harriet inhaled sharply, trying to steady her voice. “I just need some time to myself,” she said, forcing the words out past the lump forming in her throat.

To her dismay, the tears began to fall again. She pressed a trembling hand to her lips, ashamed of her own weakness. What a fool she was. Foolish to have thought she could change her fate, foolish to have hoped for a future that had never been hers to claim.

If she had not lied about the painting, perhaps she would be on her way to Italy with Sebastian at her side. Perhaps she would have joined him in his home, walked through the grand halls where he worked, seen the great masters for herself. She had dreamt of Florence once, long ago, imagined the golden light over its ancient streets, the rolling hills of Tuscany, the warmth of a land so different from England.

But it was all gone now. Lost because of her own lack of wisdom.

Harriet pressed her lips together, struggling against the loss that compressed her chest. She could see it so clearly. The sun-drenched streets of Florence, the ochre rooftops glowing beneath a sky so blue it would put the finest sapphires to shame. She had imagined herself walking arm in arm with Sebastian through the bustling piazzas, past merchants hawking their wares, and perhaps observing sculptors chipping away at blocks of marble that would one day become masterpieces.

She had imagined the museums, the frescoed ceilings, the smell of oil paint lingering in the air, the feel of his hand at the small of her back as they moved through galleries filled with the work of Botticelli and Caravaggio. At night, she had pictured candlelit suppers on a terrace overlooking the Arno, the warm Italian air carrying the scent of lemons and jasmine as Sebastian spoke passionately about his latest work, his deep voice full of the same excitement he had once shared with her in their youth.

And then, at last, she had imagined what it would be like to stand beside him in his home, to see where he lived, where he created, where he had built a life without her. She had imagined being a part of it.

And now, it would never happen.

She let out a broken laugh, wiping at her damp cheeks as the other women watched her in concern.

“I thought I might go to Italy with him,” she said softly, her voice raw. “I …” She hesitated, then shook her head. “I thought we could see Florence together. Walk through the Uffizi, explore piazzas of the Oltrarno, stand in the shadow of the Duomo.” She gave a small, bitter smile. “But that can never happen now, after I have made such a mess of things.”

Evaline shifted in her chair, her delicate fingers tightening around her teacup as though she longed to say something, but for once, she seemed at a loss. The painted room held its usual stillness, the fire burning low and steady, indifferent to the weight of what had been forfeited within its walls.