"Not gone," Georgiana said. "Sold. There is a difference."
He looked at her. Really looked at her. Not as a convenient solution to his problems, not as a practical housekeeper, but as a woman. A woman who had stood in the front hall and faced down a man like Thorne without flinching. A woman who had cleaned his house, managed his accounts, befriended his sisters, and never once asked for anything in return.
"Why did you stay?" he asked. "When I told you about Thorne? When you realized I had hidden another debt, another lie? Why did you not walk away?"
Georgiana considered the question. She thought about the school at St. Margaret's, which now had a new roof and a proper schoolmistress. She thought about her father's worn-out coat, replaced at last. She thought about the children who came to school with breakfast in their bellies because the parish had finally found the funds to feed them. She thought about Beatrice, who had smiled at dinner; about Charlotte, who had fallen asleep on her shoulder; about Sebastian, who had sold his father's horse to save his family.
"Because you changed," she said simply. "Not all at once, not perfectly, but every day a little bit. You sold the horses. You told me the truth about Thorne. You let me see you when you were afraid, and I—"
She stopped, took a breath. "I found that I did not want to leave."
Sebastian set down his glass. He reached across the space between them and took her hand. His fingers were warm, steady—no tremor now.
"I am still a gambler," he said. "I will always be a gambler. It is in my blood. But I have learned something this autumn, Georgiana. I have learned that the only bet worth making is the one you place on another person."
"And which person have you bet on?"
"You."
He brought her hand to his lips and kissed her knuckles. "I bet on you the day I walked into your father's vicarage and asked you to marry me. I did not know it then. I thought I was making a practical arrangement, a business transaction. But I was making a choice. The only real choice I have ever made."
Georgiana felt tears prick her eyes—tears she had not shed in years, not since her mother's funeral. She blinked them back.
"We will expand the school," she said. "The money from Apollo, the extra thousand, we will use it to build a new classroom. And you will teach the older boys mathematics. You are good with numbers, despite everything."
Sebastian laughed: a real laugh, warm and surprised. " mercancías—I will teach mathematics?"
"You will need something to do. You cannot spend all your time at the track now that you have no horses."
"I have one horse."
"Apollo is gone."
"I kept one. Not Apollo. A different one. A mare." Sebastian's eyes gleamed. "She is 3 years old, untrained, and worth almost nothing. But she has good bones and a gentle temperament. I thought... I thought Charlotte might like to learn to ride."
Georgiana stared at him. Then, despite herself, she smiled. "You are impossible," she said.
"I am reformed," he corrected. "There is a difference."
He leaned forward and kissed her. It was a gentle kiss, tentative at first, two strangers learning each other's language. But Georgiana had spent her whole life learning new things, and she was a very fast learner.
When they broke apart, the fire had burned low, and the Madeira was finished.
Sebastian rested his forehead against hers, and his voice was rough when he spoke. "I will not disappoint you," he said. "I will not gamble. I will not lie. I will not hide from you again. I will spend the rest of my life making sure you do not regret marrying me."
"I already do not regret it," Georgiana said. "I have not regretted it for weeks, perhaps months. I stopped counting."
"That is the most romantic thing you have ever said to me."
"I am a practical woman. Practical women do not say romantic things."
"You just did."
She kissed him again just to prove him wrong.
Epilogue.
One year later, on a bright September morning, the new wing of St. Margaret's school opened its doors. It was a small building, only two rooms, but it was clean and warm and filled with light. The children who crowded through the doors carried new slates and new primers, and their faces were bright with the particular joy of children who have been given something they never expected to receive.
Sebastian Hale, Viscount Hale, stood at the front of the largest classroom and attempted to teach 12 farm boys the principles of long division. He was, by all accounts, a terrible teacher—impatient, easily distracted, prone to making bets with the students about who could solve a problem fastest. But the boys loved him, and somehow, despite everything, they were learning.
Georgiana watched from the doorway. She was not teaching today. Her condition, now visibly advanced, had confined her to administrative duties, but she had come to see the opening. She had earned that much.
"You are staring at me," Sebastian said without looking up from the chalkboard.
"I am supervising."