Miss Astley gaped surprise, while guilt flashed across Major Godfrey's face. At any other time, Cecelia would have laughed at them both. Now, she drained the last of her champagne without tasting it, trying to counteract the dizziness that had come over her at hearing his name.

"I did not know you were married." Miss Astley's tone contained a hundred unasked questions.

"For some years. My husband works abroad." Cecelia slipped her empty glass onto a passing footman's tray. She was not going to explain more than that. Not now, not to Miss Astley. By the guilt still lingering on Major Godfrey's face, there would be less to explain to him, perhaps nothing at all. He had known her longer. He had certainly known she was married, though they had never had cause to talk of her husband — not until now.

"If you'll excuse me," Cecelia said. "Our dance will have to wait for another night, Major Godfrey. I have a matter to attend to."

As she walked away, she heard Miss Astley beginning to press urgent questions upon Major Godfrey. Even if the major did not answer them, others in the crowded ballroom would no doubt be eager to repeat what they knew and invent what they did not. Cecelia's heart sank. It was old gossip by now, but it would still hurt to have it dredged up again.

Upstairs, the hallways were in darkness, but Cecelia followed the sound of voices until she came to a lit room. Lady Peyton was making a bed, with the brisk competence that exposed that she had not been born into the wealth she now possessed. Her husband's fortune and title had been earned on the naval battlefield, and she had been there with him, or as close as she had been allowed to get. Sebastian was slumped in an armchair, still in his greatcoat, his hand over his eyes as though to shield them from the dim light of the candles on the mantelpiece.

"...I'll have beef tea sent up," Lady Peyton was saying. "Nothing like beef tea on a damp night."

"Excuse me?" Cecelia said.

Lady Peyton turned and Sebastian dropped his hand from his eyes. Lady Peyton was the first to react, setting down the pillow she held and moving to the door.

"I suppose you do need to talk about it," she said. "I'll leave you alone then. You call for whatever you need, Sebastian."

"Thank you," Sebastian said, his voice rasping with tiredness. Then his eyes shifted back to Cecelia, and she felt again frozen.

She stepped into the room and shut the door behind her. Despite her shock and surprise, she didn't feel much emotion at seeing him again. There was no rush of anger. There was certainly no rush of love. She was perhaps a little anxious, because this was very odd and she liked her life well-ordered, and perhaps a little irritated, because Sebastian had made a scene and Cecelia hated scenes.

"What are you doing here?" Her voice, she was relieved to hear, sounded normal, not too nervous.

"I needed a place to stay while I was in London."

It explained nothing, but then Sebastian had always been like that, half-answers and half-questions and a whole world within unspoken. Having a conversation with him was like a swordfight in a stageplay: a lot of noise and movement but no blood drawn.

"What are you doing in London? Where is the ambassador?"

"Paris."

Never ask two questions at once. Not with Sebastian. Cecelia tried again.

"What are you doing in London?"

"Sir William sent me."

Even one question was useless. Cecelia took in the weary lines around Sebastian's eyes and gave up. Maybe in the morning, when he was rested.

"Why didn't you come to me?" she asked.

"I thought you would not like it."

There was honesty in that, at least, almost the hint of apology too.

"It will look bad for me if my husband stays in another woman's house, Seb."

The old nickname slipped out without her intending, and the dull tiredness in Sebastian's eyes sharpened into sudden alertness before fading again.

"I didn't think of that."

"We don't always think, do we?" Cecelia tried to smile. "It's your house too, you know."

"Not really." Sebastian rubbed his face. "Do you want me to stay with you?"

She did not know. It had been six years since she had even laid eyes on him, long enough that she had forgotten his face or that it had changed beyond recognition. More than his face. But she did not hate him, and she was not afraid of him. No, what lay between them was absence, cold and empty, like Pandora's box after every bad thing and hope with it had been let out.

"I don't want people to be saying my husband is having an affair, or that I am, or that we are to be divorced, or any of the sort of nonsense they will say if we live apart in the same city. I can't imagine even the ambassador would prefer you stay with his sister than with your wife."

"Probably not." Sebastian took in a deep breath, held it for a long moment, then slowly let it out. "You're right. I was stupid to come here. I didn't think."

He had thought, of course, Cecelia knew it. He had thought how awkward it would be to have to see her again.

"You can stay here for now and rest, and I'll take you home in an hour or so," she said.

"I'm tired. I'd rather leave now. But I can walk, and you can stay here with your friends."

"You can't. It's raining, and anyway, my servants won't know you, they won't let you in. I'll have to go too." She cast her gaze over his pale face and hollow cheeks and thought without regret of the dance Major Godfrey might have by the end of the night inveigled from her. "We can leave now. Just let me order the carriage and say goodbye to Lady Peyton."

He gave her a lifeless nod then let his head slump against the back of the armchair. He must have been exhausted from travelling.

"I won't be long," she said, and left.

Downstairs, she found Lady Peyton, whose brisk competence made it an easy thing to explain what was going to happen. She cancelled her order for beef tea and promised Cecelia that she would send on Sebastian's luggage when it arrived. Cecelia had not thought about luggage. She often didn't think of things like that. She had never had to. Then, as she did not relish waiting in the bedroom with Sebastian and was wary of returning to the salon where all eyes would be upon her, she went to the bottom of the hall stairs to wait for the carriage. While she waited, she heard a soft step behind her, and she turned without surprise to see Major Godfrey.

"It is hard for me to believe that Mr Price has returned," he said softly. "His was such a long absence."

There was a guarded emotion behind his tone of voice. Again, Cecelia had the feeling that they were eddying around each other, neither drifting closer, nor drifting away. The feeling prompted her to say, "He is my husband."

"The husband who went off and left you, not a week after your wedding night."

Cecelia found she could not meet the major's eyes, nor refute the challenge in his words. She looked away and shrugged.

───

On the carriage seat beside her, Sebastian leaned back with his gaze unfocused through the window. He seemed to be trying not to look at her. All the same, Cecelia had the idea that he was very much aware of the fact that she was watching him out of the corner of her eye. He no longer looked so much a stranger to her. His features were stronger now, but they still followed the lines she remembered, the long, flat planes of his cheeks, the angular shadows under the brow, the deep crook where his throat met his jaw. And she knew also the blank, formulated expression on his face. It was the same one he had always worn when talking to her father, or mother, or brothers. It closed every bit of him inside, and every bit of you out. He had been wearing that expression the day they first met.

She had been eating tea with her brothers and their new tutor in the schoolroom. The old tutor had been an elderly man of rasping voice and weeping eye. The new tutor was straight-backed and almost young, and wore his white-blonde hair far too long. He promised to be an object of interest in Cecelia's rather dull and well-groomed life. At breakfast that morning, he had interrupted Cecelia's father mid-sentence and said, "No, no, my lord, you are quite mistaken. That was not Plato. That was Plutarch." Nobody had ever told Lord Hatherington he was mistaken before. Not in Cecelia's presence, anyway.

At tea, the tutor welcomed her presence and introduced himself as Price. He was the only person who welcomed her presence at the table. Her brothers unanimously considered Cecelia a nuisance, even Paul who was younger than her. Mr Price was just teaching Cecelia how to fold a rose out a napkin, an act which forever cemented her admiration for him, when Lady Hatherington breezed in through the schoolroom door pushing Sebastian in front of her. He wore his very blankest expression. Cecelia thought he looked more doll than boy.

"Really, Mr Price," Lady Hatherington said. "I did not know your son was the same age as my Westhart."

"Fourteen," Mr Price said, with a shadow of Sebastian's closed-offness. "What are you doing here, Seb?"

"I found him at the vicarage," Lady Hatherington said with the air of a botanist discovering an interesting new species of mushroom at the bottom of the dustheap. "In the schoolroom. I brought him here. He's going to be friends with my boys."

Sebastian's face did not flicker at this proposal, but Westhart and Edmund exchanged smirks. Lady Hatherington did not see them.

"You might as well teach them all together," she said blithely, pushing Sebastian down into a chair. "It will do no harm to my boys to have Sebastian in the schoolroom with them, and be better for him besides. The village school cannot offer a proper education."

Mr Price did not tell Lady Hatherington she was quite mistaken, though he looked as though he wanted to. Instead, with a faint air of resignation, he told Seb to help himself to bread.

After tea, the boys always went out into the garden to play and run about for a while before their next lesson. Cecelia always followed them. Westhart would pinch her and call her a cretin and a bunion and other such names. Edmund preferred to call her a maggot, while Paul, with a nine-year-old's vocabulary, would only dance around jeering that they didn't like girls. Cecelia, for her part, called them ugly and fat and stupid and short — she was, at that age, the tallest of the four, though Westhart was catching up at last. Sometimes they would get along well enough to play a game together — cricket, or racing, or seeing if they could throw chestnuts through the gatehouse chimney. If a ball went into the bushes, they would try to make Cecelia run after it, but she would always refuse until Westhart bullied Paul into running after it instead. If Cecelia ever started to win a game, the boys would find some reason to stop playing it.

That day, the five of them stood awkwardly around the leaf-dotted lawn before Westhart said, "We might as well play cricket. Me and Edmund against you and Paul."

"What about me?" Cecelia demanded.

"Cretins can watch," Westhart said loftily. "We can't make two teams out of five players."

"If I play with Edmund and Paul, and you play with Sebastian, it's fair. Paul's little and Sebastian's tall."

He was. He was a foot taller than any of them, though as she spoke, he hunched his shoulders and did his best to hide it.

"I won't play with a girl!" Paul said. "You can watch!"

"I don't even want her to watch," Westhart said. "Her gaze stains me."

"That's jam," Cecelia retorted. "You spilled it on your breeches at tea."

But she ended up watching anyway. There wasn't really anything else to do, not once Westhart had ordered Paul to fetch the bats and ball and Sebastian to find twigs to use for wickets. The first twigs he found weren't long enough, so Westhart ordered him to find new ones. Sebastian went obediently to hunt under the elms that bordered the lawn.

"Testicular boil," Westhart said loudly to Edmund.

"Worm," Edmund agreed.

Cecelia did not think Sebastian was out of earshot, but he returned with three more sticks, and as Paul had now come back with the bats they were accepted.

Despite his height, Sebastian was not a good sportsman. He could run, but he could not bat, which aroused many scornful remarks from Paul. As Westhart could not bowl, it did not much matter though; the balls kept sailing past the wicket and Edmund kept having to run for them. Every time he ran, he shouted abuse to Sebastian, whose stolid face seemed to register none of it.

Then at last he managed to get a really good hit in, and the ball went flying past the elms and into the kitchen garden beyond. Edmund took two steps then stopped and looked at Sebastian.

"Go fetch it," he said.

Sebastian put his bat down obediently.

"You go fetch it," Cecelia shouted from the edges of the field they had marked with their coats. "You're the one fielding!"

Sebastian stopped and looked at her.

"Don't you dare go after that ball," she told him, stamping her foot. "They always try to make me do it, because they're too fat and lazy and stupid to do it themselves! And now they're trying to make you do it, because if they go you'll score a hundred before they come back. Cheats!"

"I'm sick of cricket anyway," Westhart said, kicking the wickets over. "Edmund can't catch and you can't bat. You're really useless. You only hit the ball once. Even Paul's better than that."

Sebastian's expression did not falter. Westhart frowned.

"Don't you have anything to say?" he demanded.

"What do you want me to say?" Sebastian asked.

"I think you ought to apologize."

"I'm sorry," Sebastian said. "I'm not very good at cricket."

"That's not much of an apology. On your knees. Go on."

Sebastian dropped to his knees. "I'm sorry."

"Ask for my forgiveness."

"Will you forgive me?"

"Beg, Testicles."

Cecelia could see that Sebastian was going to do it. Somehow, that enraged her far more than it ever did when Westhart tried to bully her or Edmund called her names.

"Don't," she said. "Westhart can't bowl, so it doesn't matter that you can't bat. All the boys are rubbish at cricket. That's why they never dare play with me."

Westhart pinched her, making her squeal. "Shut up, Pus-Tongue. This is none of your business."

She rubbed her arm where he pinched her. "If you make him beg, I'll tell Mama about the prints you hid in the schoolroom atlas. What's a cunny, Westhart?"

Sebastian's blank expression rippled for a moment about the lips. Then it was smooth as ever.

"Rat!" Westhart spat. Then he turned and ran towards the kitchen garden. Edmund and Paul chased after him. He turned back at the gate.

"Don't follow, Testicles. You're not allowed."

Sebastian made no move to follow. Instead, he got to his feet and began to pick up the cricket things.

"Why don't you stand up for yourself?" Cecelia demanded. "The more you give in, the worse they'll treat you. Westhart's a pig. You have to let him know it."

He met her eyes expressionlessly. "It is not my place to contradict my betters, Lady Cecelia."

"That means if I told you to do something, you'd do it?" she asked curiously. "You're not a servant. And even they don't always do what I say."

"I have an idea your servants outrank me."

"But I don't want you to follow orders. I order you not to."

"Isn't that a logical paradox? I cannot follow that order if I follow that order."

"Confound you!" Cecelia frowned. "What if I ask you nicely not to follow any order I ever give you? Please?"

Sebastian narrowed his eyes at her, as though thinking. Then suddenly his blank expression broke and a smile spread across his face.

"I think that might just work."

It was a surprising smile, coming from that blank face. And it was a nice smile, bringing life and sunlight into those grey eyes. It made Cecelia's stomach flutter just looking at it. It prompted her to say, "Will you be friends with me, Sebastian?"

"Maybe," he said. And then explained, "I'm not sure yet. But I think so."

Cecelia liked him more for taking the time to make up his mind about it. And they had become friends, and very quickly, though Sebastian had never been friends with her brothers, not even when Westhart was being nice to him. Somehow it pleased Cecelia to know that Sebastian had a smile that only she and his father ever got to see. With her family, he always kept his face closed.

And now, with her, his expression was closed again. She was shut out. It occurred to her for the first time that perhaps she always had been. A smile could hide feelings just as well as a frown.

*