Page 49 of The Lion Duke's Proposal
Julia sat beside her.
The afternoon light came through the curtains, thin and even. From downstairs came the sound of their aunt giving some instruction to the housekeeper, her voice carrying the particular note of cheerful authority that meant she had found something new to organize and was happy about it.
"Is it real?" Poppy said. She was looking at the necklace, not at Julia.
"I believe so," Julia said.
Poppy was quiet for another moment. Then, carefully, she set the sapphires down on the tissue paper beside her and turned. Her eyes were bright in a way that had nothing to do with the jewelry. "Julia."
"I know," Julia said.
"No." Poppy shook her head. "I mean, are you — is this — are you all right?"
Julia looked at her sister. Poppy had their mother's eyes, or so Lady Bendon had always told them, which was the only way either of them knew it, since neither remembered their mother's face. She had their father's stubbornness, which Julia had spent twenty-four years being grateful for some days and exhausted by on others. And she had something entirely her own, which was this — the ability to ask the question no one else in the room was willing to ask, without cruelty, without pressure, only with the simple intention of knowing the true answer.
"I do not know yet," Julia said honestly. "I think I will know more once I understand what it is."
Poppy absorbed that with the seriousness it deserved. "He is not what I expected," she said.
"No."
"When he made the announcement." She picked up the sapphire necklace again, turning it over in her fingers. "I thought, Isuppose I thought it would feel like a trap closing. But it did not. It felt like — " She searched for it. "Like a door opening. Is that very foolish?"
"No," Julia said. "It is not foolish at all."
What she did not say was that she had felt both things simultaneously, which was the more complicated truth, and one she was not yet ready to hand to her sister in full. She would get there. She always got there eventually.
"Poppy." She straightened and chose the next words with care, the way she had learned to choose words in any conversation that mattered. "I need to ask you something, and I want you to answer honestly, not the way you think I want you to answer."
Poppy put the necklace down and gave her full attention, which was the gift her sister had always given her in moments like this.
"When I am married," Julia said, "I would like you to come and live with us. With me. At Pridewell." She kept her voice level. "I have not asked him yet. I do not know what he will say. But I want you to know that it is what I want, and that I intend to ask."
Poppy looked at her for a long moment. Then her face did something complicated, something that moved through gratitude and sorrow and some private relief that she was not quite ready to give a name to either, and she reached out and took Julia's hand.
"You have been taking care of me since I was seven years old," she said.
"I know," Julia said.
"I do not always know how to say thank you for it."
"You don't have to say anything."
"I know I don't." Poppy squeezed her hand once, firmly. "Ask him."
They sat together for a moment in the particular quiet of two people who knew each other completely and had run out of words, which was a different kind of quiet from all the others.
Then Lady Bendon's voice carried up the stairs, bright and insistent, calling them both down for tea.
The drawing room on Cavendish Street had always been Aunt Violet's domain. She had spent countless hours arranging and rearranging the furniture with a lot of care. There were good chairs and a fire laid even in the milder weather, and always something on the side table that had no business being there in the afternoon but appeared regardless — a small plate of sugared almonds, a dish of preserved ginger, a cake that had simply materialized. She had a way of making a room feel inhabitedrather than merely furnished, which was a talent Julia had never seen her take credit for.
She was pouring tea when they came in, her long dark hair pinned with the efficiency of a woman who did not have the patience for elaborate arrangements but always managed to look elegant regardless. Georgia, their cousin, was folded into the corner chair with a book that she was only nominally reading.
"Sit, sit," Lady Bendon said, with the air of someone who had been waiting longer than was strictly accurate. "I want to look at you both."
They sat. She looked. Then she set down the teapot, pressed her hands together in front of her, and said, "The Duke of Pridewell."
"Yes," Julia said.
