Page 78 of A Highly Unlikely Duchess
He had not slept properly since he arrived. That was the plainest way to put it. He had come to London with the intention of clearing his head and had discovered, as he perhaps should have anticipated, that his head had made the journey with him and had no intention of being cleared. He had attended to his business, such as it was, and had sat in meetings, signedcorrespondence, eaten meals he did not taste, gone to bed at reasonable hours, and lain in the dark of his London townhouse thinking about Carrowell.
Thinking about Emily.
It was a haunting. He was being haunted by the scent of her, by the sharp, defiant tilt of her chin, and by the way her absence felt like a physical ache in his marrow. He told himself it was the stress of the arrangement, the lingering tension of the scandal, or perhaps just a bout of melancholy. He told himself everything except the truth, because the truth meant he was no longer the master of his own life.
He looked terrible. He had caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror that morning and had looked away quickly because the man looking back at him had the particular appearance of someone who had been fighting something internal for a fortnight and was losing. He had not shaved. He had sent his staff away twice when they came to check on him. He had spent three evenings sitting in his study doing nothing in particular except thinking about one person.
“Theodore,” Julia started, her voice uncharacteristically soft.
“I told you to go,” he snapped, finally lifting his head. His eyes were bloodshot, his cravat loosened. “I have no time for your antics today. I have no patience for the games you play.”
“I’m not here to play a game,” Julia said, stepping further into the dim room. “I came to apologize.”
Theodore let out a short, harsh bark of a laugh. He poured another finger of amber liquid into his glass, his hand surprisingly steady despite the exhaustion vibrating through his frame. “Apologize? To me? Don't bother. Save your breath for someone who still believes in the sincerity of your regrets.”
“I’m not just apologizing to you,” Julia countered. “I intend to apologize to Emily as well. My behavior... the things I said... it was unacceptable. I know that. I was just too proud to admit it.”
Theodore froze, the glass halfway to his lips. The mention of Emily’s name in Julia’s mouth felt like a violation of the silence he had tried to build around her memory. He looked at Julia, really looked at her, searching for the trick. But there was a look of genuine, uncomfortable shame on her face that made his chest tighten.
"Your mother asked me," Julia said. "Before she left."
“Not this again,” Theodore groaned and leaned on the table.
Julia looked at her hands as she walked further into the room and took her seat. "She came to me the week before she disappeared. I did not know she was leaving. I do not think anyone knew except her. She came to me, she sat in my drawing room, she had tea... she looked at me and made me promise her." She paused.
"Julia, I know. You have said this before," Theodore said.
"Not everything,” she corrected. “She asked me to look after you. Not in the practical sense. She knew you would be practically fine. You were always going to be practically fine." Something moved across her face. "She meant the other kind of looking after. The kind that has nothing to do with money or estates or social standing." She looked at him. "She said, ‘Julia, he is going to grow up in that house with that man, and he is going to learn that love is something that leaves. That is what he is going to learn because that is what I am teaching him by going. I cannot help it, but I know it, and I need you to make sure it does not become the only thing he ever believes."
Theodore looked at the window.
"She said that word for word," Julia said quietly. "I have never forgotten it. I have thought about it every year since." She was quiet for a moment. "She knew what she was doing to you. I do not think she wanted to do it. I think she was simply a person who had been worn down to nothing by your father and had nothing left, and leaving was the only thing she could find the strength to do." She paused. "That does not make it right. But I think she knew it was not right and that knowledge was part of what she carried with her when she went."
Theodore said nothing.
"She loved you," Julia said. "I want you to know that. Whatever else was true about her, whatever failings she had, whatever she chose that you did not choose and could not choose, she loved you. She simply did not have enough left of herself to stay andlove you at the same time." She paused. "Your father saw to that."
"I know," Theodore said. Very quietly.
"Do you?" Julia said.
He looked at her then. A long, direct look, and she looked back at him and did not flinch from it.
"I spent years becoming the opposite of my father. I have always been very proud of that. I always try to never be cold, never be cruel, never make anyone feel the way he made the people around him feel." He paused. "But I also never let anyone close enough to leave. Because the lesson was not just that my father was cruel. The lesson was that love leaves. I learned that. Whether you or my mother wanted me to or not."
Julia looked at him for a long moment. “I was trying to find you a love that stays.”
“That was not what you were doing.” He shook his head.
"I admit that my approach was wrong. With the list, I...”
"I was not going to do it," he said. "I never planned to go along with your list, Julia. I had decided years ago that I was not going to do it. Not because I was incapable of feeling something. I am apparently entirely too capable of that." He shut his eyes and sighed. "But because I had decided that not feeling it was saferthan feeling it and losing it, and I had been very comfortable with that decision for a very long time. I don’t care about the promise you made to my mother. What I want should trump all of that."
"She was terrified for you," Julia continued, rising to her feet. "She saw the way you were already retreating into yourself even then. She knew you would build a fortress out of that name. That you would surround yourself with stone and ledgers until you forgot how to be human. To feel."
"So you decided that a forced marriage and a social execution were the keys to my happiness?" Theodore’s voice was dangerously low.
"I decided that you needed a family!" Julia cried out. "Not a contract. Not a Duchess who exists on a piece of parchment, but a woman who could actually reach you. I knew that when I eventually had to leave you, when I could no longer be the one to prod you and annoy you into staying awake to the world, you would simply vanish into that house. I wanted you to find a love that would be your family. I thought... I thought if I pushed hard enough, the friction would create a spark."
