Chapter 21 #2
"I had certain pressing, dangerous obligations," he said. "At the time. The item was…well, it was used to satisfy a debt. Some time ago now."
"You sold it," she said, the world shrinking down to the space between them.
"The terminology is not exactly so."
"You sold it."
Her hands were flat on the table now. She had slammed them there the moment he started speaking about pressing obligations, because she had learned at an incredibly young age that flat, pressed hands did not betray a tremble. Her voice was even. Her face was entirely composed.
But somewhere underneath all of that armor, something had gone noticeably quiet in a way that was not calm. It was a cold, hollow deadness.
Henry Alcott was dead. He had died at thirty-seven, believing the one thing his family had trusted him to protect was gone forever, all because this charming, wretched man across the table had needed to satisfy a gambling debt.
What Lord Norish had done was something worse than theft.
He had taken Leander's money, every penny of the fair price Leander had paid him to return the watch to its dying owner, shaken his hand, and disappeared.
He had kept the payment and the watch both, and Henry had gone to his grave believing it lost, never knowing that Leander had already tried to fix it.
Leander had spent three brutal years carrying a heavy, agonizing promise to a ghost about that watch. And it was gone. It had been gone for years; sold to meet obligations that her father could not bring himself to name plainly even now.
"I see," she whispered.
"Julia." He reached across the table, his fingers sprawling toward her.
She snapped her hands back into her lap.
He retracted his, unbothered. "I understand that this is not what you had hoped to hear.
But the past is the past, my girl, and what matters now is the future.
Your current position is…" He sat forward, his eyes gleaming with a sudden, desperate hunger.
"Your position is extraordinary. A Duchess.
You have more than enough resources now to help your father rebuild his life. "
She stared at him, disgust rising in her throat like bile.
"I need to go north," he said, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper.
"There are people here in the city, the debts I mentioned, certain individuals who have formed quite unreasonable, violent expectations.
I need to be somewhere else entirely. Somewhere, those parties cannot easily reach me.
You could arrange it for me, Julia. A note to the right people, the use of the Pridewell carriages, the invocation of the Duke's name.
No one would dare stop a Duchess or her father. "
"No," she said.
He blinked, utterly taken aback. "Julia."
"No." She pulled her silk gloves up over her wrists, her movements sharp and final.
"I will not do that. I will not arrange a single thing for you.
I will not write to anyone on your behalf, and I will never lend the Pridewell name to facilitate your escape from the consequences of what you have done. "
She kept her voice tightly controlled, vibrating below the hearing of the adjacent tables. "I have a husband who is owed a massive apology, an heirloom that no longer exists, and a sister who nearly had absolutely nothing because of your selfishness. I will not help you."
He stood up.
He moved far faster than she expected. Before she could slide out of the booth, his hand closed tightly around her arm just above the elbow.
His grip was not hard enough to be visible to the room through the thick fabric of her coat, but his hand dug in deep enough that she stopped speaking instantly, the pain firing up her shoulder.
He smiled the bright, easy smile he used for public rooms.
"I think," he said pleasantly, his voice carrying the exact tone of a gentleman navigating a minor social inconvenience, "that you will want to come with me to the carriage. We can discuss the details of my travel arrangements on the way. It is much more comfortable and private there."
She pulled back hard against his grip, her breath hitching. "Let go of me."
"You are making a scene, my dear," he whispered, his grip tightening until her bones ached.
He was already steering her body toward the door, which he had been positioned closer to since before she arrived.
She understood his choice of seating now.
He had planned the exit from the start. "Your new husband's grand name is certainly not helped by a public scandal in a Fleet Street coffee house. "
"Let go of my arm." She said it clearly. Not loudly, but with enough force that several gentlemen at neighboring tables looked up from their papers.
He ignored them, opening the heavy street door and moving her through the threshold. Then they were out on the cobblestones, the gray London rain beating down on them.
The small carriage was waiting right at the curb, the door already swung open, and his hand was still clamped like an iron vice around her arm.
"The jewelry alone," he said, still entirely pleasant, his greedy eyes locking onto the deep red stones of the garnets at her exposed throat, "would see me living very comfortably in Edinburgh for several months."
Julia planted her boots firmly on the wet pavement, refusing to take another step toward the dark interior of the coach.
He pulled hard.