Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
“Were you trying to start a rumor, Theo?”
The folded fan caught him squarely between the shoulder blades before he had even properly sat down. Julia didn't stop at one; she delivered a second, more spirited smack for good measure, her face a mask of exasperated triumph.
“Ow! Aunt, truly,” Theodore protested, though he made no real effort to move.
He slumped further into the velvet armchair, rubbing his shoulder and wincing with a theatricality that suggested he was moments away from total physical collapse.
“Have a care. I am a Duke, not a misbehaving hound. Why are you assaulting me?”
“Because you are a menace,” Julia retorted, snapping her fan shut with a sound like a pistol shot.
“I asked you to be a gentleman and offer the girl a dance. I did not ask you to drag her into a second set, pull her across the floor like a conquered territory, and then kiss her hand with enough intensity to make half the dowagers in the room drop their spectacles. Everyone is talking about it.”
Theodore let out a low, dry chuckle, his eyes gleaming with a lazy sort of mischief.
“I was merely following instructions, Aunt. You said she was charming. You said I should show her some attention. I did exactly what you wanted. If the Ton chooses to invent a wedding march out of a few steps of a quadrille, how is that my failing?”
“You showed her intention,” Julia groaned, leaning over him. “I have a list, remember? I don’t want you playing around or flirting. Not now, and especially not with a lady like Emily Pierce. She’s a fine young woman.”
“I am not playing at anything,” he said, his voice dropping an octave. “I simply realized that Lady Emily is far more interesting than I gave her credit for. She has... layers, Julia. Most of them are made of ice, I'll admit, but the fire underneath is quite something to behold.”
Julia looked at him over the rim of her teacup. “Is that so?”
“It is,” Theodore said.
He said it with sincerity, delivering a carefully constructed performance, which was precisely what it was.
Yet, the inconvenient truth, the one he was choosing not to examine too closely this morning, was that it was not entirely untrue.
Emily Pierce did have layers. He had seen one of them that night on the dance floor, brief and unguarded and quickly sealed back up, and he had found himself thinking about it on the ride home.
He filed that away. It was not relevant to the current operation.
What was relevant was Julia, sitting across from him with her tea, her bright eyes for gossip, barely able to contain her excitement as she watched her plan come to fruition, and the extraordinary opportunity that presented itself to make that excitement reach its absolute peak before pulling it out from under her entirely.
He had been looking forward to it since that night at the ball, when she had dropped the bomb that was the list on him.
“I have been thinking,” Theodore said, settling further back into his chair. “About marriage.”
Julia's cup stilled halfway to her mouth.
“About what it actually means,” he continued thoughtfully. “About what I have been missing by avoiding it all these years.” He paused, like the realization was settling on him in real time. “I think I have been a fool, Aunt Julia.”
Julia set her cup down. Very carefully. “Theodore.”
“I mean it.” He looked at her with an expression he had been practicing internally since the carriage, and which he felt was landing rather well.
Earnest. Slightly bewildered by his own feelings.
The face of someone being changed against his will by something larger than himself.
“One evening. One conversation, and I find myself thinking about things I have never thought about before.” He shook his head slowly, as though marveling at it.
“She does something to me. I cannot explain it.”
Julia was staring at him.
He could see it happening, the careful, experienced skepticism she applied to most things he said beginning to lose ground to the thing she wanted more than almost anything, the hope of it, the relief of it, rising in her expression like light coming through a window.
He almost felt guilty.
Almost.
“You are serious,” Julia said. It was not quite a question.
“I have never been more serious in my life,” Theodore said, with great conviction.
Inside, he was deeply entertained.
“She is remarkable,” he continued, because he was committed now, and commitment had always been one of his better qualities when he chose to apply it.
“She is sharp, she is honest, she is absolutely infuriating, and I find that I cannot stop thinking about her, which has never happened to me before, not like this. I think —” he paused again, for breath, for effect, for the particular pleasure of watching Julia lean almost imperceptibly forward in her chair.
“— I think I am ready, Aunt Julia. I think she has made me ready.”
Julia's hand came up to her mouth. Her eyes had gone very bright.
Theodore looked at his godmother and thought she was genuinely the most dangerous person he had ever met, because she made him want to mean every word he said.
But he did not dwell on that. He had to win this. He had to stand his ground.
Julia looked at him for a long moment. Then she let out a breath, slow and deep. “I am so glad. I was certain. I just knew that there was something between you two. A spark! I was right!”
“When have you ever been wrong?” Theodore remarked.
“Rarely,” Julia said. She was sitting forward now, both hands wrapped around her teacup, her eyes bright. “I saw it the moment she walked into that room. The way you looked at her.”
“I looked at her the way I look at everyone.”
“You looked at her the way you look at no one else,” Julia said firmly.
Theodore sat up. He was happy that Julia was buying his act, but he was starting to make things up himself, and he didn’t want to stand for it.
“Perhaps what you saw in the way I looked at her was rage, because I assure you, Emily enrages me... I mean, before I started to find her charming, of course.”
“I know you, Theodore. I know the difference.” She shook her head, still smiling.
“I cannot tell you what a relief this is. Truly. I have been watching you for years, waiting for something to reach you, waiting for one person to get through all of that...” she gestured at him, vaguely but comprehensively.
“... and I had begun to wonder if it would ever happen.”
“Little faith,” Theodore said pleasantly.
“Oh, and Emily Pierce, of all people. She is wonderful. She is exactly what you need, Your Grace.”
“I am glad you approve,” Theodore said.
“I more than approve.” Julia reached across and patted his hand. “I am proud of you. Do you know that? I am genuinely proud of you for allowing yourself to feel something.”
Theodore looked at his godmother's hand on his and felt, somewhere in his chest, the small and inconvenient flicker of something that was not entirely comfortable.
But he had to remind himself that he was doing this because Julia needed to understand, once and for all, that she could not use his love for her as leverage, could not arrange his life like furniture and expect him to simply be grateful for the new configuration.
He was making a point. It was a very good point.
He cleared his throat.
“There is something else,” he said.
Julia looked at him expectantly.
He took a small, considered breath. Then he looked at her with the expression he had been saving, the one that was earnest and slightly overwhelmed and carried just enough vulnerability to be entirely convincing.
“I find...” he said slowly. “... that when you feel something genuine, the things that might have mattered before simply...” he searched for the word, let the pause breathe. “...stop mattering.”
Julia tilted her head. “What do you mean?”
“Complications,” Theodore said simply.
Julia looked at him. “What kind of complications?”
“The kind that society tends to have opinions about,” he said pleasantly.
“Theodore,” Julia said carefully. “What are you saying?”
“I am saying,” he continued, holding her gaze. “I am certain enough about her that none of it changes anything for me.” He smiled. “That is all.”
Julia stared at him. Her teacup had stopped moving entirely. Behind her eyes, something was working, turning the words over, looking at them from every angle, trying to find the shape of what he was not saying.
But he gave her nothing further.
“Well,” he said, rising from the chair and straightening his coat. “I intend to call on her this afternoon.”
Julia set her teacup down. “Your Grace, you will sit back down and finish that sentence.”
“I finished it perfectly well,” he said.
“You finished nothing. You implied something and dressed it up as a finished sentence, and you know it.” She rose from her chair, which meant things were serious. “What complications? What are you not telling me?”
Theodore looked at her. At the sharpness that had replaced the warmth in her expression, the slight color that had risen in her cheeks, and the way her hands had clasped themselves together in front of her.
He smiled at her. Gently. Lovingly. Entirely without useful information.
“I am going to call on her, Lady Birks,” he said. “This afternoon. I do not want to be late.”
“Theodore.”
“I will keep you informed of how it progresses.”
“You will sit down and tell me what you meant right now —”
“Goodbye, Aunt Julia.” He bent, kissed her cheek, and straightened before she could catch his arm. “Try not to worry. Everything is perfectly fine.”
“I’m a changed man, remember?” he said cheerfully, and walked out of the room before she could fire another word at him.
He was smiling before he reached the bottom step.