Page 51 of The Lion Duke's Proposal
Julia looked back.
Aunt Violet picked up the teapot.
"More tea, Michael?" she said, with the serenity of a woman for whom this afternoon had gone entirely according to expectation.
Chapter Fifteen
Lord Bendon set down his cup.
It was not a violent gesture. He was not a violent man. But it was the gesture of a man who had decided that pleasantness had run its course and something more direct was now required. The small ceramic sound of it against the saucer was enough to make Georgia lower her book by an inch.
"I beg your pardon?" he said.
"I think you heard me, Uncle."
"I heard you address me as though I were a tradesman being declined at the front door," he said, and the mustache was no longer moving in any direction because his jaw had gone tight underneath it. "After I opened my home to you. After I, out of the goodness of my own consideration, allowed your aunt to bring you both here when no one else in London would have had you."
"You allowed it," Julia agreed. "And you told us, very clearly, what the terms were. I am not revisiting those terms now. I am simply making the terms of the next arrangement equally clear."
"Julia." Lady Bendon's voice was quiet. It was not a warning. It was the voice of a woman who understood that what was being said needed to be said and was only asking, gently, that it be said carefully.
Julia was being careful. She was incredibly careful indeed.
Lord Bendon rose from his chair. He was not a tall man, which meant he had developed, over the years, the particular posture of someone who intended to occupy more space than his height allowed. He stood at the full extent of it now. "Poppy stays here," he said. "She is under my roof and my protection. Whatever arrangements you make with your Duke, they do not extend to my household."
"Poppy is my sister," Julia said.
"Poppy is an unmarried girl of twenty years with no income and no prospects, and she will remain here under proper care until a suitable match is made for her." He picked up his gloves from the arm of the chair. "I will not have her shipped off to the countryside to live on the charity of a man who has no obligation toward her and every right to turn her out the moment it becomes inconvenient."
"He is not that kind of man."
"You have known him for one week."
The words landed with the particular efficiency of accurate things, and Julia sat with them for a moment before answering.
"It is correct," she said, "that I have known him for one week. And that he has no obligation toward her." She kept her hands in her lap and her voice even. "But I am asking him. And I believe he will agree. And when he does, Poppy will have the choice of where she wishes to be. She is twenty years old, Uncle. The choice is hers."
"Not while she is in my house."
"Michael." Lady Bendon set down her own cup, and there was something in her voice now that had not been there before, something that had moved past gentle into the tone of a woman who had been quiet long enough. He turned. She looked at him with the full weight of twenty-two years of knowing precisely who he was, which was the most effective look available to her and always had been. "Sit down."
He looked at her for a moment. Then he sat.
The fire settled in the grate. Outside, the sound of Cavendish Street went on as it always did, carriage wheels and footsteps and the ordinary indifferent noise of London.
Poppy was looking out the window. She had not said a word throughout. She had the stillness of someone listening to aconversation about their own life, not yet invited to enter it. Julia made a private note that the moment Lord Bendon left the room, she would correct that immediately.
"I do not wish to be at odds with you," Julia said to her uncle. She meant it. She was tired of odds. She had been at odds with something since she was fourteen years old, and she would like, whatever was coming next, to be at odds with as few things as possible. "I am grateful for what you have provided for us, and I intend to say so to anyone who asks. But Poppy's future is not a matter of your household management. It is a matter of her own wishes, mine, and eventually my husband's. I would ask you to remember that."
Lord Bendon said nothing. He put on one glove. Then the other. Then he stood, and he left the room, and the door did not quite close behind him, which was the particular passive expression of a man who wished to make a point without the confrontation of slamming it.
The four of them sat in the quiet he had left.
Georgia turned a page.
"Well," said Aunt Violet, and picked up the teapot for the third time, though no one actually needed more tea.
Poppy turned from the window. Her expression was the complicated one again, the one Julia had seen upstairs. Gratitude and sorrow pressed up against each other. She opened her mouth and then closed it, and then simply said, "Thank you."
