Page 27 of The Lion Duke's Proposal
“I know how you feel,” Julia replied, “but please don’t accept just anybody, Poppy. You’re worth more than that, and it’s not your place to have to make sacrifices for us. I’ve always looked after you, and that won’t change, no matter how old and gray we become.”
“But who’s looking afteryou,Julia?” Poppy asked. She stopped, and her face became quite serious. “I worry about you as well, you know, and I don’t like it when you keep secrets from me. You might think you’re protecting me, but really, you’re only making things harder on yourself by bearing burdens all alone. It makes me worry.”
Julia felt ashamed. She hadn’t wanted to keep secrets from Poppy, but it had all been in the interest of keeping her nerves down for the party. “Listen, sometimes there are things that-”
“No,” Poppy interrupted. “Promise me that in the future you’ll share everything and we’ll work it out together. I’m not a child anymore, and I want to help look after you, too. All we have is each other.”
Julia swallowed. Her sister was right. Looking at her in her beautiful silk gown, hair elegantly pinned up, and powder applied to her cheeks, she looked every bit a noble and gracefulyoung woman. Perhaps it was time she let her take on a bit more responsibility.
"Alright," she said quietly. "No more secrets. Not the deadline, not Uncle Michael's ultimatum, not the Duke's arrangement. You know all of it now, and I should have trusted you with it from the beginning."
Poppy held her gaze for a moment with an expression that was too steady for someone her age. She carried the look of a woman who had grown up faster than was strictly necessary. Then she reached over and squeezed Julia's hand once, firmly, and let it go.
"I know," she said simply. "And I know why you didn't. But I am not as breakable as you think I am, Julia."
"I know you're not."
"Do you?" Poppy tilted her head. "Because you have been managing me since I was six years old, and at some point, you are going to have to let me stand beside you rather than behind you."
Julia opened her mouth and closed it again.
"Besides," Poppy added, her tone lightening deliberately in the way she always did when she had made her point and decided that was enough, "I'm still not marrying Lord Cauley just for the sake of his estate in Bedfordshire."
Julia laughed despite herself. "I wasn't going to let you."
"Good," said Poppy. "Because I've seen him eat, and it is not a pretty sight."
“Your husband must be someone at least within two decades of your age, please,” Julia teased, resuming their walk. “Someone you like, of course. And with a tolerable mother. At least a few thousand a year would be nice. And a room for your aging spinster of a sister to spend her twilight years.”
“My, you’ve quite the list of demands there. I shall begin the search immediately.”
“And in the meantime…I’ll deal with the Duke.”
The afternoon light was still warm when Leander walked back across the estate grounds with his coat slung over one arm and his boots still damp from the stream.
He was, by any objective measure, in a good mood.
He understood why that was, on the surface. The game had gone exactly as he had planned — or near enough. He had won, Miss Norish had kept her word, and the arrangement was now in motion. Lord Norish would hear about it within days. Everything was proceeding precisely as he had intended.
What he could not account for was his good mood.
It was not the satisfaction of a well-executed plan. He knew what that felt like — clean and contained, like a key turning smoothly in a lock. This was something else. Untidier. It had something to do with the way she had walked up to him and said, ‘We have a deal,’with the composure of a woman who had decided to walk into a lion's den and was not going to let the lion see that her hands were shaking.
He had taken her hand and felt, for one unguarded moment, that he was shaking hands with his equal.
He was still thinking about it.
Stop, he told himself.
"You're smiling."
Anthony fell into step beside him from somewhere to his left, Benjamin trotting alongside him with a wooden toy horse clutched in one fist and an expression of intense personal purpose on his face.
"I'm not," Leander said.
"You were." Anthony glanced at him sideways. "She agreed, then."
"She did."
