Page 57 of The Lion Duke's Proposal
"Of course," he said.
She kept her voice even and her hands still. "I would like Poppy to come and live with us here. I understand it is a significant thing to ask, and I am not asking it as something you owe me. I am asking because she is my sister and she has no one else, and because I think she would feel comfortable living with me."
"She is welcome to visit," he said, "whenever she wishes and for as long as she likes."
Julia looked at him.
"But she cannot live here." He set down his glass. "I am made to understand your uncle is no longer threatening to put her out, which was the principal danger. She has a home, a safe one, and she will have a dowry and every material thing she needs, all of which I intend to secure. There is nothing further that she lacks that this house would provide."
"There is," Julia said quietly. "Me."
He held her gaze for a moment. "She will see you often," he said. "That is what I am able to offer."
She looked at the candle. She looked at her plate. She applied herself to both for a moment, and she told herself, with the efficiency of long practice, that she had received worse answers to harder questions and had managed them, and that this was not the end of the conversation, only the end of it tonight.
"Very well," she said.
He set down his knife. "I think it is better," he said, "to establish certain things clearly at the beginning. Before we have occasion to misunderstand each other."
She looked at him.
"Separate bedrooms," he said. His voice was even, his face was calm, and he might have been discussing the arrangement of the furniture for all the inflection he gave it. "I will not require you to attend social events that are inconvenient to you, and I ask the same consideration in return. I will keep you safe, and I will provide for you and for your sister in every material way." He paused. "But I think it serves us both to remember what this is. We entered this arrangement with open eyes. A permanent arrangement now, yes. But an arrangement." Another pause, shorter. "And it shall not become something other than what it is."
The candle moved between them in some small current of air from the window.
Julia looked at him for a long moment. "Of course," she finally responded. Her voice was as even as his. "You are quite right."
She picked up her fork.
She was grateful. She was genuinely, specifically grateful for the ring on her finger, the fire in the grate, Poppy's safety, the food on this table, and the house she had just walked through, which was beautiful in a quiet way and would belong to her for the rest of her life. She held all of that carefully, the way she held things that mattered.
She would not require it to be more than it was.
She was particularly good at that.
Chapter Seventeen
"When you find my father," she finally broke the silence, "and this arrangement has served its purpose, what happens to me?"
His spoon stopped halfway to his mouth. He looked at her. "What do you mean?"
"I mean precisely what I asked." She kept her eyes on him. "You will have what you came for. I will have served my function. Do you plan to simply leave me to manage this house alone while you return to whatever your life was before?"
"Do you think me that dishonorable?"
"I think you are a man with a plan," she said. "I am asking where I fit in it once the plan is complete."
He held her gaze with the steadiness that she had stopped finding reassuring. "You are my wife. That does not expire."
She nodded once, then looked at the table.
He set down his glass. "I will ask you the same question."
She looked up.
"If it came to it," he said, "would you choose him? Your father, over this?"
The firelight moved across the table between them. She did not look away from him, and he did not look away from her, and the question sat in the space between them with the particular weight of something that had needed asking for some time.
