Page 70 of Modern Romance September 2025 5-8

CHAPTER SIX

T HE CASTLE WALLS hummed with noises Sebastian had forgotten.

Chatter and whispers of the new staff he’d employed floated into his ears. The drag of unopened boxes slid across floors. The shuffle of feet moving in and out of rooms he hadn’t opened in years got louder and louder, until the single definable noises became too loud to distinguish individually.

And the scent of her lingered in every corridor. In every room that had remained closed and untouched, she’d opened every door, and parted all the curtains, lifted every dust sheet.

For seven days, he’d watched her invade his home and fill it with… life . And it was too bright. Too loud. Too interesting. Because his feet took him closer to the hum.

Closer to her .

He knew why he didn’t command his feet to stop, to turn around and stay away, keep watching her from a distance.

It was because of the compulsion to see her, watch her.

And because for two days she’d stayed inside a room, far away from her own bedroom, and claimed it.

He wanted to know why she’d locked herself in there and what the noises he could not define were coming from.

On silent feet, he approached the oak door. He stopped outside it, listening. But the noise from within was too soft, too gentle for him to hear right now.

As he reached for the handle, another memory hit him. The memory of a younger him with a smaller hand, reaching for a handle, and opening a door to find his mother.

His chest tightened at the recollection of what he’d found.

He had not looked for his mother again.

He’d stayed in the basement with the others.

He swallowed down the memory of the taste, too real now on his tongue, too hot and bitter. He closed his senses to the past infiltrating his present with the lewd sounds his tiny ears should never have heard. Of sights he never should have seen.

The handle he was holding now was tugged free from his grasp.

The door opened.

And she stole the air in his lungs.

Her plum lips parted to reveal perfectly white squared teeth.

‘Sebastian,’ she acknowledged, and her smile was too wide, too innocent, to greet a man who had brought her to his castle and then left her to fend for herself.

And yet she’d chosen to stay.

She’d found her way without him anyway. Claimed her place in a world far away from her own and made herself at home.

Would you have let her go if she’d asked?

No.

His gaze lifted from her smiling mouth to her eyes, bright and staring into his.

He’d been right to take her.

She was too small, too delicate, too innocent with her wide eyes and warm smile.

She wouldn’t survive without him. She was too sentimental. She was too focused on the things that didn’t matter. Feelings . Someone would take advantage of what she offered. Her riches, her softness.

‘Aurora,’ he said, and her smile spread wider. Even brighter than before.

He didn’t smile. He frowned. Did he remember how?

Did you want to remember?

He did not. His face ached at the thought of trying to lift muscles atrophied by inaction.

‘What are you doing in there?’ he asked, too harshly.

She pushed the door wide. The hem of her blue dress skimmed across her ankles, revealing her naked feet sinking into the thick pile of the cream carpet as she stepped backward.

‘Come see,’ she said, and her invitation was too warm, too tempting, Never had a door been opened to him so quickly, or had anyone been so eager to invite him inside.

He hesitated. But wasn’t that why he was here? To see what had kept her occupied?

He stepped forward and she took another step back until she stood in the centre of a room. He didn’t remember ever having set foot inside. And his body urged him to quicken his step.

She spread her arms wide, palms upward. ‘What do you think?’

He knew he should lift his gaze to the room she indicated with her gesture. But his eyes locked on her. Her hands moved to her midriff, cradled her bump, her fingers clasped together.

‘Well?’

He finally looked around the room.

‘It’s yellow,’ he said, because it was. But not just yellow. The walls were the shades of sunbeams. Hues of deeper yellows and oranges tinged with pink.

She nodded, the black silk loose at her shoulders swishing. ‘Gender-neutral.’

His eyes moved over the white units lining the walls, some with shelves, another topped with a spongy mat. A changing mat , he recognised. Just like the one he’d used for Amelia, only the plastic had been split on that one, repaired with duct tape. He ignored the pain that flashed in his chest.

It felt warm, new.

He took in another unit with a small removable bath atop it. And in another corner, there was a rug with colourful shapes, a basket of soft toys.

His chest caved in.

He understood a baby was coming. He understood he was to be a father. But…

He swallowed, trying to loosen the grip of something too tight closing his windpipe. But it didn’t help. The hold didn’t loosen.

She turned her back on him and walked to the windows to retrieve something.

She turned back to him—her hands outstretched. ‘It’s so tiny,’ she said, indicating the small outfit she held in her hands.

And he could not breathe.

He stepped back, but with each step he took, she followed him.

Her smile fell. ‘Are you okay?’

He was not okay, but he nodded, and she nodded once in return.

‘They’ve all been washed now.’ She brought the white romper with its silver clasps up to her nose and inhaled. Her chest inflated. Her eyes closed. ‘It smells so good.’

His heart, it hammered. The scent of a newborn’s head beneath his nose was too visceral in his nostrils.

A smell that was undefinable, yet defined by belonging only to the innocent.

Innocents like Amelia. He remembered pressing his mouth to her wrinkled forehead as he held her close to whisper, ‘Happy birthday.’

‘Do you want to help me fold them?’ Aurora asked.

‘Help you?’ he choked.

He hadn’t been asked to help when his mother had been pregnant with Amelia.

Life had continued as it always had. There had been no new rompers bought.

The hand-me-downs of his siblings were still in drawers.

No small baths were readied for Amelia’s arrival, when the sink would do just as well.

He should know. He’d washed her many times after his mother had placed Amelia in his arms and told him to take her.

She hadn’t cared his arms were too long and gangly to be confident he could hold her safely.

His mother only cared that he held her far away from her. Out of sight.

‘The books say you can never have too many changes of clothes,’ she said, though he was still lost in the memory of long ago.

She smiled again. But it was smaller. More tentative. ‘I have lots to fold away,’ she continued, ‘in these tiny drawers, for a tiny person.’ Her perfectly arched thick dark brows lifted, a request for help.

He looked at the open body suit in her hands. The tiny mittened hands…

It was all too real.

The baby was coming, and his lungs stuttered with the realization that he wasn’t ready to meet it.

His eyes lifted to Aurora’s watchful gaze.

‘Why didn’t you ask someone else to do this for you?’ he asked.

‘There’s lots I have asked others to do,’ she said. ‘I didn’t decorate this room or the one at home. I chose the colours, the furniture, and the clothes, and they all arrived and were put into place, prepared by people I’d paid to do it.’

‘And so why choose to do this task yourself?’ he asked. ‘It’s menial.’

She dipped her slender shoulder. The tilt of her head fell slightly to the right with her shrug. Her neck elongated, stretching the skin, exposing it to his eyes, and they followed the unconscious sensuality she oozed. The natural fluidity of her body.

‘It feels important,’ she said.

It was an explosion in his mind, the realization she wanted to fold these things with her small, elegant fingers. She hadn’t instructed someone to fold them for her. She didn’t abuse her wealth, her privilege, or ignore the need to be prepared.

She didn’t care for his wealth either, did she? Not his name or his stardom. And neither did she need his privileges to ease her life.

She only wanted to fold clothes for the baby, and she wanted him to do it with her.

He needed to leave, to turn around and walk away. But she desired him to stay…

His feet felt like lead, but he made his body move towards her. Towards the woman waiting for him, holding the little romper.

His heart raged. Told him to turn around and run from the reality of her. From the reality of the baby inside her who would soon be here.

But what could be the harm? he asked himself. Why not lend a hand? Why not help her?

You tried to help her six months ago, too.

His body pulsed.

He would not help her that way again, he told himself, but his body called him a liar. He wanted to. He wanted to reach for the strands of hair kissing her left cheek and push them behind the curve of her ear. He wanted to cup her face, cradle it, and draw her towards him.

His mouth dried. His lips parted.

It would be a reprieve from the conflict in his chest to taste her again, wouldn’t it? To lose himself in the heat of her?

He could. How easy it would be to reach for her, and ignore the agony of the past, and possess her mouth. Thrust his tongue between her lips until she moaned into his mouth as she had in the gardens of Eachus House.

He stiffened. Did he not remember? These urges, these impulses would not protect them.

He wouldn’t lose himself again.

He would not let himself… feel .

‘I’ll help you,’ he said, and forced himself to reach for the romper in her hands instead of her.

‘Thank you,’ she said, and released the romper to him.

She was right. It was as soft as brushed velvet. Nothing like the over-washed ones handed down to Amelia that were too thin, too worn.

Agony flooded his chest.

But he would not examine his pain in front of her.

He refused to feel it.

He would feel nothing.