Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
Benjamin arrived first, which was typical.
He burst through the front door three steps ahead of Anthony.
He stood in the center of the grand entrance hall, turning in a slow circle to take in the towering ceilings and gilded moldings.
His hat sat askew, tilted precariously over one ear, and his wool coat was buttoned completely incorrectly, one flap hitched higher than the other.
He had grown since the party in Mayfair. Leander noticed it immediately.
"Is there a garden?" Benjamin asked, his voice echoing off the cold marble floor, addressed to no one specifically.
"There is," Leander said.
The boy looked up, catching Leander’s gaze. A wide, gap-toothed grin broke across his face. "Can we go?"
"Benjamin." Anthony stepped into the hall behind him. He reached down and straightened the boy's crooked hat. "We have been in this house for approximately thirty seconds."
"Forty," Benjamin corrected, eyes bright.
Anthony looked up, meeting Leander’s eyes over the boy’s head. Leander looked back, his face a mask of absolute stillness.
"There is a garden," Leander repeated, jerking his chin toward the heavy glass doors at the rear of the house.
Julia was already in it.
She had been out there since mid-morning, seated on the stone bench under the shade of a sprawling elm. A book sat open on her lap. She was actually reading this time, a fact Leander knew with certainty because the heavy volume was visibly further through than it had been at breakfast.
The heavy doors groaned as they pushed out onto the terrace.
She looked up at the sound, her eyes instantly bypassing the two men to find Benjamin first. Her gaze always went to the most immediate, chaotic thing in a room, which was invariably the boy.
A genuine, unguarded smile broke across her face before she had time to recall her dignity and decide against it.
"Good morning," she said.
"Good morning." Benjamin did not hesitate. He walked directly up the gravel path, sank onto the stone bench right beside her without the slightest hint of an invitation, and peered down at the pages. "What is that?"
"Fielding," she said, tilting the spine so he could see.
"Is it good?"
"Considerably."
Benjamin looked at the dense block of text she was on, then looked back up at her face with the frank, unblinking assessment of a child who had absolutely no use for polite conversation. "Do you want to play something?"
"Benjamin," Anthony called out from the bottom of the stone steps, his tone warning.
"I would, actually," Julia said.
Leander watched her close the leather-bound book with a soft, decisive snap. He watched Benjamin's face do that peculiar thing it always did when an adult said yes after he had fully prepared himself for a no - a brief, dazzling brightness that lit up his features.
Then Leander watched Julia stand. She surveyed the green lawn with a sharp, calculating expression, the exact look she wore when she was already working out how to win.
A cold prickle of awareness hit Leander’s chest. This was not going to end well for him.
It started with a simple game of hoops that Benjamin produced from his oversized coat pocket in wooden pieces, assembling them with a suspicious, well-rehearsed efficiency.
It started with a simple game of hoops that Benjamin produced from his oversized coat pocket in wooden pieces, assembling them with a suspicious, well-rehearsed efficiency.
He drove the first stake into the grass with the flat of his palm and looked up at Julia with the expression of a general awaiting confirmation of his orders.
She accepted a hoop without question.
She looked up and found Leander watching from the edge of the path, his coat still on, his expression carrying the particular neutrality of a man who was pretending he had not already decided to join.
"Are you going to stand there," she said, "or are you going to play?"
"I am considering the strategic landscape," he said.
"There are three hoops and a stick in the ground," she said. "There is no strategic landscape."
He took off his coat and handed it to no one in particular. Benjamin caught it without being asked, which suggested this was not the first time Anthony's ward had served in this capacity.
"I am going to win," Leander said.
"You are going to try," Julia said.
Within ten minutes, the quiet garden was loud.
Julia threw her shoulders back, leveled a finger at Leander, and accused him of shifting the target stake two inches to the left.
He had not touched it. Leander countered immediately, pointing out that her last three throws had benefited from a sudden gust of wind that had been entirely absent during his own attempts.
She disputed the claim with a sharp tilt of her chin.
Benjamin referred the entire dispute.
Naturally, he sided with Julia.
"That is not," Leander said, his voice dropping into a low rumble, "a neutral judgment."
"I am neutral," Benjamin said, puffing out his small chest with immense seriousness.
"You are demonstrably not."
"I think His Grace is perhaps a poor loser," Julia said.
She held the wooden hoop loosely at her side, her knuckles brushing the pale blue silk of her skirt.
She looked directly at him, a particular, sharp light dancing in her brown dove eyes.
It was the first time that spark had returned in four long days, and though he had not admitted it to himself until this exact second, he had been agonizingly aware of its absence.
"I am not losing," he said, his jaw tightening.
"You are," Benjamin chimed in.
He was, in fact, losing.
He was losing because Julia possessed a terrifyingly natural instinct for the angle of the turf, a better eye for the crosswind than he had ever given her credit for, and because he had twice positioned his own throw half an inch wide of where he was perfectly capable of putting it.
He knew exactly what he was doing. He was also highly aware that Anthony, who had retired to an iron garden chair with a cup of coffee and a morning newspaper, had completely stopped reading. The newspaper sat forgotten in his lap.
Julia stepped up to the mark. She did not hesitate. She threw with a clean, unhurried arc. The hoop cut through the air and made a straight, perfect landing around the stake.
"Hah," she said. It was a sound of pure, brief satisfaction that Fielding himself could not have improved upon.
"Well done," Leander said.
The words left him before he could stop them.
Something in the tone of his congratulations was far more direct, far too intimate, than the boundaries of the game required.
She heard it. He watched the realization register in the subtle freezing of her shoulders. She glanced away first, her cheeks flushing a faint, pretty pink as she turned back to Benjamin, who was already sprinting to retrieve the hoop and reset the stake for another round.
"Again?" Benjamin asked, breathless.
"I think the Duke may need a moment to recover," Julia said pleasantly, her voice dripping with sweet, deliberate provocation.
"I need no such thing," Leander said.
She did not look back at him, but she smiled at the rosebushes as she handed him the hoop. Her fingertips briefly brushed against his palm. The touch felt like an electric bolt.
Later, the afternoon heat caught up with them.
Benjamin fell completely asleep in the iron chair Anthony had vacated. His oversized hat was pulled entirely over his face, his small body resting with heavy ease.
Anthony had moved inside to escape the sun. Leander watched him walk up the terrace steps before following him down the dark hallway, leaving the quiet lawn behind. He found Anthony standing in the shaded privacy of the study with two heavy crystal glasses of amber liquid already poured.
"She is good with him," Anthony said without turning around.
"She is good with most things." Leander walked in, his boots clicking softly against the floorboards, and took the offered glass.
"She will not admit it."
"You let her win the last three rounds." Anthony turned, a knowing smirk playing at the corner of his mouth.
Leander sat down in the leather armchair, setting his glass on the desk. "The wind changed."
"Leander."
"She has a good eye, Anthony. That is all."
"Leander." Anthony set his own glass down with a firm click.
He looked across the room with that brutal, unblinking directness that was his primary contribution to their friendship.
The exact trait that had made him invaluable and occasionally entirely exhausting for twenty-five years.
"The last round, there was no wind at all.
I was watching the trees. There wasn't a single leaf moving. "
Leander said nothing. He stared at the dark liquid in his glass.
Anthony picked his drink back up.
Leander had never successfully outlasted it. Not once since they were boys.
"I kissed her," Leander said.
The admission fell heavily into the quiet room. Anthony did not look surprised. His features merely softened.
"When?"
"Five days ago. Right here, in the study." Leander reached out, turning the crystal glass in a slow circle, watching the light catch the amber surface. "She said something, and I…it was not considered. I lost my grip."
"No, I imagine you did." Anthony was quiet for a long moment, letting the weight of the confession settle. "And since then?"
"We have been..." He cut himself off, searching for a lie that would not sound like one. "There has been some distance between us."
"Mutually?"
"I don't know." He set the glass down with a sudden, sharp force. "No. Mostly because of me."
Anthony nodded slowly, his eyes calculating. "Can I ask you something without you telling me I'm wrong before I've even finished the sentence?"
"I make no promises."
"What is it like?" Anthony asked, stepping closer. "Being married to her. Not the arrangement. Not the legalities or the plan to ruin Norish. What is it actually like when the doors are shut?"