Chapter 6
Chapter Six
“Icannot believe I said yes.”
The words escaped before Poppy could make them pretty. They sounded flat in the dressing room, almost cross, and quite unlike the sort of thing a woman ought to say while wearing her wedding gown on her wedding day.
Julia, seated nearby, looked up with an expression that was far too calm. “I can.”
Poppy turned from the mirror. “That is not comforting.”
“It was not meant to be. It was meant to be accurate and brutally honest.”
Only a week had passed since Hector’s proposal, and she was already wearing her mother’s wedding gown, which she had inherited. To Julia’s delight, it fit her perfectly without any alterations.
“Hush, Thomas,” Julia quietly scolded her two-year-old.
“Leave him be, Julia,” Poppy reprimanded her.
On the floor, the toddler was stomping about with the absolute purpose of a very young and very destructive boy.
Thomas had found some small collection of harmless items and was arranging them into a disorder no adult mind could interpret.
Every few moments he stamped one foot, as though declaring ownership of the room.
“Thomas,” Julia said without looking away from Poppy, “if you are dismantling anything essential, do try to do it quietly.”
Thomas giggled and stomped harder.
Poppy glanced at him and felt the ache of it. Children never failed to make a room brighter.
Julia turned toward her suddenly, pulling her away from her thoughts. “Poppy.”
Poppy looked back in the mirror. “Yes?”
“Do you regret it?”
There it was. The question had been present all day, waiting in the corners, hiding behind jokes and fittings and practicalities. Poppy had known Julia would ask because her sister would never allow love to masquerade as politeness if danger might be involved.
Poppy smoothed her hands over the gown, though there was no wrinkle there. “No, I do not.”
“You did not answer fast enough.” Her sister gave her a knowing look.
“Yes, because it is true.” She thought of Aurora, Princess, and the duke who would soon be her husband.
“Do not try to fool me, Poppy.”
Her mouth curved despite herself. “I would never dare, Julia.”
Julia stood, and Thomas noticed the movement.
He seized a length of ribbon and dragged it behind him as he marched along the wall toward his mother.
Julia allowed him to wander and came to Poppy’s side instead.
They stared at each other in the mirror, Poppy in her bridal white and her sister in a soft pink ballgown.
“If you regret it,” Julia whispered, “if any part of you regrets it, tell me, and I will find a way to free you from whatever promise you have made. I do not care what papers have been signed, what arrangements have been made, and what anyone expects. I will find a way.”
Poppy studied her sister. She loved Julia so intensely in that moment that it seemed almost childish.
Julia made threats sound like comfort and built a life through courage and cost, yet still had enough room in herself to stand guard over her sister.
She had always been the first shelter Poppy ran to.
“Aurora is just like you, Poppy,” Julia’s words came quietly, but they held.
Poppy’s last visit with the girls returned to her with painful clarity.
Aurora is so brave.
She had held herself straight even though she stuttered with the duke; it was as if she had overheard how adults valued composure. When it was time to leave, Aurora kept her emotions under control for her sister’s sake, but Poppy saw the tears gather in her eyes.
“No, Julia, Aurora is exactly like you. That is why I am doing all that I can for her and Princess.”
She had seen how the child watched every door, every expression, and every pause before an answer. She had seen distress in the tightness around Aurora’s mouth and the way she had stayed near Princess without quite touching her, as though afraid that clinging would reveal too much.
“And that is not a bad thing?” her sister jested gently.
Poppy smiled softly and nodded. “No, it is not.”
For Aurora to become the sort of sister Julia had been, to love without fear, that love would be taken as weakness. She needed guidance, steadiness, and someone near enough to protect her from anyone who would take advantage of her pure love. Poppy would do all this and more for her and Princess.
She turned from the mirror. “I have no regrets about this marriage.”
Julia searched her face.
“I mean it,” she said. “There was never really a choice.”
“There is always a choice, Poppy.”
“No, not one I could live with.”
Thomas stomped past them, ribbons trailing behind him like a banner of conquest. He had dust on one knee and triumph in his laugh. Julia’s eyes flicked toward him automatically. It was the quick, assessing glance of a mother.
Her face changed when she looked at her son. Some part of her attention remained with him always, even when she spoke to Poppy. Poppy wondered if that was what love did when it became a responsibility.
Did it divide a person and make them larger? She surely hoped so.
“It is not as though anyone was waiting to marry me,” Poppy added lightly.
Julia’s gaze snapped back. “Do not do that.”
“Do what?” she shrugged.
“Make yourself small so the sacrifice looks smaller too.” Julia frowned at her.
Poppy looked away; it was frightening how much her sister could read her. “I am being practical.”
“No, you are being… Poppy.” She pointed a finger at Thomas, who stopped in his tracks.
“Where is your nanny?” Poppy asked, trying to change the topic.
Julia sighed. “Uncle said the ceremony is private, so we left her behind.”
Poppy busied herself with the edge of her sleeve, though it needed no attention. She felt at fault once again.
“Uncle Bendon’s behavior has been unforgiving recently,” Poppy said drily.
“It has always been that way.” Julia’s voice had dropped, and Poppy knew her sister had gone somewhere in memory.
Three years earlier, Julia had been willing to give up more than anyone had asked. And she had done it so naturally that only afterward had others named it sacrifice.
Poppy remembered everything, and if the Duke of Pridewell had not fallen in love with Julia, she would have never forgiven herself. That was why she refused to look at her sister then. It was easier to face the mirror than her sister’s tenderness.
“This time, I am marrying a duke,” she said more to herself than to anyone else. “There are worse fates than that.”
“Ah, yes, a mysterious, icy duke who struck a deal with you. All will go well.” Julia winked at her, and Poppy felt a knot tie in the pit of her stomach.
“A mysterious and icy duke is still a duke,” she said on a breath.
“With a cane and eyes that look as if they could freeze tea in the cup.”
Poppy’s lips twitched. Hector’s very light gray eyes had been impossible to forget. So had the cane he always carried, and the controlled way he inhabited a room, as if he had long ago made a treaty with distance and expected everyone else to honor it.
He was distractingly tall, strong, dark-haired, and colder in manner than any man had a right to be while asking a woman to marry him.
If asking was what one called it. Poppy did not know how she felt about him.
Her pulse fluttered frantically around him, and her skin seemed to catch alight whenever he was near.
He unsettled her in the most fascinating ways.
“I am not certain if he is a cruel man or not,” Poppy said, deep in thought.
“I did not say he was cruel,” Julia countered, not bothering to hide the smile that crept up on her face.
“I stand by icy.” Poppy folded her hands. “Ice is just…cold.”
“Yes, and it is difficult to embrace,” she pointed out.
“I am not marrying him in order to embrace him.” Poppy shot back and felt her face heat up as she thought of the duke holding her.
Julia made a sound that might have been amusement if it had not contained worry. “That is perhaps the saddest defense of marriage I have heard.”
Poppy exhaled. The wedding gown rose and fell with the breath, reminding her that the dress was real, that in a few minutes the church would be real too and Hector would be waiting with his cane and his unreadable face.
After the vows, she would have a husband and belong to a household where Aurora and Princess lived.
It had to be enough.
Thomas had overturned the empty box and now sat inside it, pleased beyond measure by his own invention.
Julia looked at him again, and this time she did not turn away quickly.
Poppy watched her watching him. The room seemed to quiet around that glance, though Thomas was still babbling to himself and crumpling ribbon in his hands.
Julia’s expression altered slowly, as if some argument in her had met a fact it could not defeat.
“If you feel even a quarter of what I feel for him,” Julia said, eyes still on her son, “toward those two little girls, then perhaps you are right.”
Poppy swallowed.
“Perhaps there was never really a choice,” Julia finished.
The acknowledgment loosened something in Poppy’s chest, though it did not make the future less frightening. It only made the fear less lonely.
Julia turned back to her. “But I will still rescue you if necessary.”
“I know.”
“And I mean it.”
“I know that, too.” She truly knew how far her sister would go for her.
Thomas began trying to stand inside the box. It buckled under him, and Julia crossed the room in two efficient strides, lifting him out before disaster could fully bloom. He protested, delighted rather than offended, and immediately reached for the ribbon again.
“No,” Julia told him. “You have conquered enough territory.”
He laughed in her face.
Poppy smiled despite herself. Julia returned with Thomas balanced against her hip for a moment before setting him down nearer the least dangerous corner of the room. He toddled off at once to find new ruin.
Julia brushed her hands together, then said, almost reluctantly, “In the duke’s defense—”
Poppy lifted her brows. “Your contradictions are alarming.”