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Sebastian sat back, processing this new information.

He had known Harriet was stubborn. He had known she could be reckless. But this, this was different.

“She knew,” he murmured, more to himself than anyone else. “She knew taking Miss Cooper in would create trouble for her. That Hargreaves would confront her, but she did it anyway.”

Richard nodded. “She did, despite doing her best to avoid Hargreaves these past years,” he confirmed. “Because she thought what he had done was very wrong and for Miss Cooper, she was willing to put up with the troubles it would bring.”

Sebastian exhaled through his nose. He should have expected nothing less.

That was Harriet, after all.

A woman who, for all her faults, had a mind of her own. But antagonizing her father? That showed a new level of courage she had not displayed before. The mere thought of upsetting him had been sufficient to make her tremble with anxiety.

A memory surfaced. Harriet as a girl, demanding that they stop to free a bird that had caught its foot in a snare. She had gone pale at the sight of the creature’s frantic struggle, and when they had freed it, she had nearly wept. He had forgotten that. Or rather, he had not permitted himself to remember it and had filed it away with all the other memories too painful to revisit in the years when forgetting had seemed the only sensible course. That was the girl he had loved. And now, it seemed, that girl was still there, buried beneath the mistakes and the lies and the years that had divided them.

Sebastian ran a hand down his face, releasing a slow breath. He had driven her off with his fury in Hyde Park, convinced she was having an affair with Richard. But now, as the truth unfolded before him, that certainty cracked.

Confound it all.

He had to see her.

* * *

Belinda, who had remained mostly silent, now set down her teacup with a deliberate clink and met Harriet’s gaze with steady, knowing eyes.

“You think he is different, but men are all the same, my lady,” she said, her voice calm but edged with something raw, something deeply personal. “Even when you love them, even when you give them everything, they cannot be trusted. They will cast you aside when it suits them, and all your years of devotion will be for naught.”

Harriet flinched at the bitterness in her tone. She knew what had been done to Belinda. How she had spent over a decade loving Bertram Hargreaves only to be discarded like an old glove the moment she no longer suited him.

Belinda had every right to believe as she did.

And yet …

Harriet’s mind turned to Sebastian.

His strength. His honor.

His unwavering, maddening, steadfast regard for her.

Through everything, through her betrayal all those years ago, through her scheming, through the lies and half-truths … he had still looked at her as though she were the girl he had loved. The girl he had once dreamed of making his wife.

It had taken only days for her to see the admiration return to his eyes.

She swallowed hard.

“I have but one complaint about Lord Sebastian,” she murmured, her voice barely above a whisper. “And that is his lack of trust.”

The words settled over the room, a quiet, undeniable truth.

Finch huffed. “A man oughta trust th’ woman ’e means t’ marry, or he ain’t worth the trouble.”

But Harriet shook her head.

“No.” Her voice was stronger now, conviction taking root inside her. “I cannot fault him for it. It is I who lied, who hid the truth or bent it. I am the cause of his distrust.”

A breath shuddered through her as realization struck deep, shaking loose the last fragile justifications that tied her down.

“And it is I who must apologize to him.”