Chapter 19 #2
Her mind remained entirely fixed on the single word he had used on the dance floor.
It was not just the word itself, but the complete absence of drama in his delivery.
He had spoken it as though it was a mathematical certainty, a fact so plain and true that he saw no earthly reason to frame it otherwise.
Mine.
She looked up, the motion catching the light, and found his heavy gaze already waiting for her through the shadows.
"Thank you," she said softly, her voice carrying over the rumble of the iron-shod wheels. "For tonight."
"You required nothing to thank me for," he said.
She watched him for a long moment, the passing carriage torches catching the sharp profile of his nose and the hard set of his mouth.
"You know that is not true," she said, her voice dropping lower.
"You know exactly what you did out there.
You walked into that room, and you made certain every person in it understood that I was your wife.
Not an arrangement. Not a convenience. You put your hand over mine on that railing, and you said mine loud enough for Lord Ashford and both Pembury sisters to hear, and by tomorrow morning, there will not be a drawing room in London that does not know it.
" She held his gaze steadily. "You gave me back my standing. You did not have to do that."
He said nothing. He simply turned his head back to the glass, his jaw tight as he tracked the dark London storefronts slipping past.
The carriage finally groaned to a halt outside the townhouse, and the silence stretched between them until the footman opened the door, letting in the cool night air.
He walked her upstairs, and she was acutely aware of the shift as their boots clicked in unison along the carpeted corridor.
The house around them was dead silent, the wall lamps already turned low for the night. He came to a halt right at her chamber door, his tall frame blocking the dim light.
She turned, her back pressing lightly against the dark wood of the doorframe.
"Goodnight," he said.
She looked up at him, her chest rising and falling with a breath she did not realize she was holding.
"Sleep well, Julia."
He turned to go.
The movement was sharp, decisive, and entirely familiar.
The lingering warmth of the ball, the heat of the dance floor, the echoing weight of his declaration—all of it was still vibrating in the space between them.
And yet he was walking away down the corridor with the exact same steady composure that had been keeping her at an agonizing distance since their wedding dinner.
Something in her chest shifted, and she realized she was tired.
She was tired of the careful distance, tired of the silence that neither of them broke even when it was costing them both something visible, tired of watching him do considerate things without comment and pretending she had not noticed, tired of lying in a room on the other side of a wall from a man who had called her mine in front of all of London and still came no closer.
She had told herself, on multiple occasions and in very firm language, that this was the arrangement and she had agreed to it. She had been very convincing. She was no longer convinced. She stood in the doorway of her empty room, watching his retreating shoulders, and she realized she was done.
She marched into her bedchamber and stripped out of the heavy ballgown with frantic, impatient movements, changing into her silk dressing gown.
She sat on the edge of the mattress, her hands gripped tight in her lap. She sat there for four minutes, her eyes locked on the rhythmic ticking of the mantel clock, before she stood up, walked back out into the dark corridor, and knocked firmly on his door.
A tense pause followed. "Come in."
She pushed the door open.
He was sitting at his desk in his white shirt sleeves, his dark coat thrown carelessly over the back of the chair. A heavy book sat open in front of him, but his hands were resting on the wood, the pages clearly unread.
He looked up at her, his dark eyes widening slightly as she crossed the threshold. His expression did not falter, but something deep behind his eyes flared to life.
"I cannot do this," she said.
She didn't lower her voice, nor did she attempt to perform her usual proper composure. She was far too tired for it, and she was standing in his private quarters in her dressing gown with her hair loose over her shoulders; the occasion had moved beyond polite decorum by several steps.
"The hot and the cold, Leander. I cannot manage it. The ball tonight, the way you held me, and then a detached goodnight at the door. I cannot live without knowing what to expect from you from one day to the next."
He remained entirely still, his hands flat against the mahogany desk.
"I am not asking you to invent a feeling you do not possess," she said, her voice steady as she stepped closer, grateful that her breath was not failing her. "I am asking you to be honest with me. What do you actually want from this marriage?"
The clock on his mantelpiece marked the heavy silence, each tick loud against the quiet room.
"You have become more important to me," he said, his voice a low, gravelly rumble, "than I anticipated."
"That is a statement, Leander. It is not the same as an answer."
"No." He stood up slowly, towering over the desk, his chest broad beneath the white linen of his shirt. "It is not."
"Then how am I supposed to trust you?" She tucked her arms across her chest, her fingers digging into the silk of her sleeves.
"You told me at the dinner table exactly what this arrangement was.
You made the boundaries clear. And then there was the kiss in the study, and tonight on the dance floor, and now this.
I do not know which version of you is the real one. "
He looked at her across the room with an expression she had never fully seen on his face before. The rigid composure was gone, and beneath it lay the very thing he had been working entirely too hard to keep buried—a raw, dangerous frustration.
"I have not spoken to Cuthbert in four days," he said.
Julia stopped, her breath catching in her throat. She waited.
"About your father. I have not been in contact regarding the legal case against him for four days.
" He turned slightly, his gaze dropping to the floor before snapping back to her face.
"I think about Henry. About what was owed to his memory, and it is still there, Julia.
It has not vanished. But I think about it less.
I am..." He cut himself off, his throat working. "I am thinking about other things."
She stared at him, the distance between them suddenly feeling small. "Do you blame me for that?"
"No." His jaw tightened until a muscle ticked violently beneath his ear. "Yes." He shook his head, a rare look of total vulnerability breaking through his features. "I don't know, Julia."
"That is honest, at least."
"I have been trying to be honest." He crossed the room with long, heavy strides, stopping merely inches from where she stood. "I have been trying to be honest since the dinner table, and honesty is what made a disaster of everything between us."
"You made a disaster of everything," she countered, looking up into his dark eyes, her chin defiant. "The rules made a disaster of everything."
"I know that."
"You were protecting yourself."
"I was protecting you," he said, his voice dropping into that fierce, protective rumble that made her pulse race. "From a version of this marriage that promised more than I knew I was capable of giving."
She looked up at him, her heart hammering against her ribs. He was so close she could feel the heat radiating from his skin, the scent of amber and fine brandy enveloping her. "And now?"
He did not move immediately. She could see him deciding whether to speak, how much of the truth to hand over, and whether handing it over would cost him more than staying silent already had.
"Now," he said, "I am standing in a room at midnight with my wife, who came in here and told me the truth, and I find that I have run entirely out of reasons to do anything other than the same.
" His voice was low and even, but the evenness was costing him something.
"I told you not to fall in love with me.
I said it because I believed I was incapable of the alternative.
I am no longer certain that was an accurate assessment. "
She held very still. "That is still not an answer."
"No." He looked at her steadily. "What I feel for you is not something I have a clean word for yet.
What I can tell you is that it is not convenient, it is not part of any arrangement, and it has been making itself known for considerably longer than I have been willing to admit.
" He paused. "That is as honest as I know how to be tonight. "
Julia looked at him for a long moment. The clock marked the silence.
"That," she said quietly, "is enough."
He kissed her.
It was entirely different from the desperate collision in the study; that had been the action of a man running out of resistance.
His large hands came up to frame her face, his thumbs sweeping across her cheekbones, and he kissed her with the absolute, consuming attention he gave to everything he meant to conquer.
Julia kissed him back with the pent-up frustration of four days of careful removal, her fingers tangling deep into the linen of his shirt.
The candlelight from the desk threw their long shadows across the floorboards as she reached blindly past him, her knuckles catching the edge of the heavy oak door, and pulled it shut until the latch clicked firmly into place.