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Here was everything she’d wanted, what she had believed she wanted, and yet she could summon no happiness. There was no pleasure in this moment, no sense of triumph.
Dimly, she thought, I should tell Sebastian. He’d like knowing that they’d achieved their goal, and she wanted to share it with him.
As she struggled to find words, Mason held up a hand. “You needn’t decide at this moment. Take some time. Discuss it with your family.”
“All right.” As her mind whirled, she felt herself nod. “I’ll think about it.”
Thankfully, Mason bid her and her mother farewell once the carriage stopped outside their home. The return journey had been a fraught one, between her own uncertainty and Mason’s anxiety over her answer. If her mother had noticed, she kept up a pretense of cheerful talkativeness, remarking on the abundance of unusual plants that had filled the garden and her intention to speak with her gardener about obtaining a few exotic breeds for their country estate.
Yet, every now and then during her mother’s monologue, Grace felt her parent’s perceptive gaze on her, assessing, investigating.
No doubt, Mother would want a thorough debriefing once she and Grace were in private. But what could Grace tell her—that the man she’d thought she’d wanted had offered her marriage, whilst the man she cared for and made love to didn’t want her.
It was with considerable relief that, as she and her mother stepped into the foyer to hand their bonnets to a waiting maid, a footman handed Grace a folded note.
Meet me at five o’clock in the reading room at the Benezra.
—S.H.
Her heart stuttered as she read the note, and she couldn’t stop her mind from running through scenarios—most of them terrible and resulting in pain.
She could pretend she didn’t get his note. But that was horrendous, to contemplate deliberately ignoring Sebastian’s request.
Yet as she stood in the foyer with his note in her hand, understanding struck her with so much strength she lost her breath.
She’d told herself that Mason was the man who would suit her best, who would check all the boxes of what she wanted in a husband. But she had been so focused on this, she hadn’t seen the truth—the truth about Sebastian.
He was kind. He possessed generosity and boundless intelligence and curiosity about the world around him—everything that had made him such an excellent friend. She kept returning to him over and over again because he was a genuinely good man, and he valued her for herself.
The tall clock that stood in the foyer proclaimed it to be quarter to five in the afternoon. She’d just enough time to reach the library.
“Going to the Benezra.” She pressed a kiss to her mother’s cheek and hurried out before her mother could try to detain her.
After giving the coachman instructions, she climbed into the carriage and attempted to distract herself on the ride to the library by cataloging the species of toads common to Great Britain. Unfortunately, there wasn’t an abundance of different species within the British Isles, which left her with entirely too much time to fret and stew.
The carriage pulled up outside the library, and she tried to draw comfort and strength from its familiar exterior.
She climbed the stairs and greeted Mr. Pagett as he opened the doors for her. Instead of going first to the reference desk, she veered off toward the reading room.
Grace paused outside the small chamber. The glass inset in the door revealed Sebastian within, caroming back and forth, his eyebrows low in thought.
Elation lightened her step, but dread also coalesced in her stomach. How was it possible to feel both happiness and worry when looking at someone? Yet she did.
After taking a breath, she rapped smartly on the door and entered.
Sebastian halted in midpace. The set of his mouth was tight, his jaw clenched. But his hair was mussed, as if he’d been dragging his hands through it. That couldn’t bode well.
He waved to a chair, but she shook her head. They stared at each other, words drying up like a creek bed at the height of summer.
“Thank you for meeting me,” he said after many long moments.
“I’ll always make time for you.” She bit back a groan—perhaps Sebastian didn’t want to hear her speak of any attachment to him. Especially since they’d been intimate with each other.
