Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
His space beside her on the bed was cold when she woke.
She lay perfectly still for a moment, her eyes fixed on the plaster moldings of the ceiling, listening intently to the heavy silence of the house.
There were no footsteps muffled by the carpet in the corridor.
No rustle of linen or quiet movement from the adjoining dressing room.
The velvet curtains were fully drawn, locking out the day, and the chamber possessed the distinct, stagnant quality of a room that had been left entirely alone for some time.
She sat up, the silk sheets sliding off her skin. The clock on the mantelpiece ticked loudly, its gold hands pointing to half past nine.
She dressed without ringing for her maid, and fastened the buttons herself with quick, practiced fingers, pinned up her strawberry-blonde waves with whatever bone hairpins she could reach on the vanity, and went downstairs.
She and Leander had been sharing his bedroom since the first night she slept there, and this was the first time she was waking up alone.
The breakfast table in the morning parlor had been laid for one.
Mrs. Hartley appeared from the direction of the kitchens, holding a fresh pot of hot water.
“Is there any message for me?”
"None, Your Grace. His Grace left the house at half past eight and left no message."
Julia looked down at the table. The single porcelain setting. The silver pot of tea was already poured and cooled.
"Thank you, Mrs. Hartley," she said, her voice smooth and entirely unbothered.
She sat down. She poured her tea, the amber liquid steaming in the quiet room. She looked out the window at the gray, flat London morning settling over the brick walls on the other side of the glass, and she picked up her cup.
She did not allow herself to think about warm, curtained rooms. She did not think about the breathless quality of waking up to find a man watching you read his law books, because thinking about that luxury in the stark context of this solitary breakfast table was a mistake she simply refused to make.
She drank her tea. She ate her toast. She kept her posture perfectly straight.
The note arrived at a quarter past ten. It was written on a plain, cheap fold of paper with no wax seal to protect its contents, delivered to the back door by a street urchin who had sprinted away before the footman could ask a single question.
Mrs. Hartley brought it into the parlor on a silver tray. Julia reached for it, and the moment her eyes hit the frantic, sloping ink, her stomach dropped. She knew the handwriting before she even opened it.
The location he had chosen was Hansom’s Coffee House, a dark establishment tucked off Fleet Street.
It was the exact kind of place that had once been fashionable during the last century and had since settled into a comfortable, dingy second act. It was the kind of room where the booths were deep, the candles were dim, and no one looked at anyone else too carefully.
Her father had always possessed a unique talent for identifying such places.
She had noticed it when she was a young girl, long before the debts had swallowed them, and she had filed it away under the general category of things Viscount Norish was exceptionally good at that were never useful to anyone but himself.
She stood up from the breakfast table and walked with a steady, deliberate pace to the writing desk in the corner of the parlor.
She dipped the quill and wrote the note quickly. The lack of hesitation was not because she was rushing, but because she had already made her decision before her fingers even touched the paper. The choice did not require a single second of deliberation.
Leander,
My father has written. I am going to meet him at Hansom's Coffee House, Fleet Street. I will return before dinner.
J.
She folded the square of paper once, leaving it completely open and unsealed in the center of his blotter, where he would find it the absolute moment he returned to the house. She did not hide it. She did not hesitate.
She walked into the hall, put on her heavy woolen coat, and drew her gloves over her knuckles. She looked the footman directly in the eye, told him she was going out on a personal matter and would require the small, unmarked carriage, and she went out into the rain.
He was already there when she arrived, which meant he had been waiting. It meant he had sent the note early enough to be absolutely certain she would arrive before she could think better of the invitation and turn back.
He was tucked away at a corner table far from the rain-streaked windows, his dark coat well-kept in the exact way his clothes had always been well-kept, regardless of who was currently paying the tailor’s bill. He stood the moment he saw her cut through the dimness of the room.
"My dear Julia." He reached out and captured her hands before she could redirect them, his skin dry and papery. "How remarkably well you look. Marriage clearly agrees with you."
She sat down immediately to break the contact. He sank back into his own chair, a smooth, practiced movement.
She looked at him across the scarred wood of the table and found, as she always did when they had been parted for a long time, the exact same face she had known since childhood.
He was handsome still, in the distinct way that strong, aristocratic bones carried into old age.
Her father had the kind of face that had a way of getting him what he wanted.
He was looking at her with the expression he used when he was highly pleased about something. Warm, proprietary, and slightly distracted by whatever cynical calculation sat just behind his eyes.
Specifically, he was looking at her throat. She was wearing the Pridewell garnets.
"You have been exceedingly difficult to reach of late," he said, his tone suggesting this was a mild inconvenience to his schedule rather than a direct reflection of his own criminal choices. "The Duke keeps you rather close, it seems."
"I keep myself rather close," she said, her voice stiff and cold.
He smiled, a flash of white teeth.
"Of course you do, my dear." He lifted the heavy ceramic pot he had already ordered without asking if she desired any and poured her a cup of dark tea.
"He is very watchful, your new husband. I had thought, once you were properly settled, that there would be more opportunity for us to converse, but he has been rather present. "
"He is my husband," Julia said, her fingers curling tightly in her lap. "Presence is not unusual in a marriage."
"No, no, of course not." He waved a careless hand, dismissing the point. "I only mean I had hoped to see you much sooner. I have been waiting some time in this dreadful place, Julia. The city is not…my circumstances here are not at all what I would like."
She looked at him, her gaze unblinking. "What are your circumstances?"
He set down the teapot. It was a minor adjustment, but she caught the brief, telling tightening at the corners of his eyes.
"There are certain unsavory parties in London who have formed some rather unfair, aggressive impressions of me. Old debts, mostly. Minor misunderstandings. You know how these things accumulate when one is managing large estates."
"I do," she said. "I have spent twenty-four years watching them accumulate."
He looked at her for a fraction of a second. Something crossed his handsome features that might, in another man, have been sharp discomfort or shame. In her father, the expression lasted less than two seconds before the easy warmth resumed.
"You were always the capable one," he said, leaning forward.
"Always the practical child. That is why I knew you would find your way out of our little troubles.
And look…" He gestured broadly at the fine wool of her coat, her silk gloves, and the deep red stones at her throat. "You have found it magnificently."
"Poppy nearly did not," Julia said, her voice dropping an octave.
"Poppy is perfectly well."
"Because of decisions I made." Her voice stayed perfectly level. "Not yours."
He reached for his teacup, refusing to answer that. He looked out the grimy window instead, a silent confirmation that he had heard the accusation and intended to let it pass without acknowledgment.
It was the exact behavior that had always made her father simultaneously impossible to confront or to trust. He did not argue with the truth; he simply declined to receive it.
"I need to ask you something," she said, cutting through his silence. "About a man named Henry Alcott."
Viscount Norish went perfectly still.
The freeze was brief, a mere glitch in his facade, and he managed it expertly. Within two seconds, he had reached for his cup, sipped, and composed himself back into an easy posture of paternal warmth. But she had seen the panic.
"I am not entirely sure I recall."
"You do," she said.
He looked at her, trying the old, charming smile again. It did not work on her the way it had when she was fourteen years old, a calculation she suspected he was only now realizing as he studied the hardness in her eyes.
"An acquaintance," he said smoothly. "Some years ago. Why do you ask about him?"
"He had an heirloom," she said, her heart beginning to beat a heavy, painful rhythm against her ribs. "An irreplaceable family piece. You were in possession of it."
A long, heavy pause followed. "Julia, there are always things like these in large business dealings; items frequently pass from one man to another while facilitating transactions."
"Where is it?" she demanded.
His expression moved through several rapid configurations.
She watched all of them. He picked up his cup, set it down, and looked back at the window before finally meeting her gaze.
When he spoke, his voice had taken on the careful, measured quality it always acquired when he had decided that the full truth, properly arranged, would serve his purposes better than a partial lie.