Page 62 of The Lion Duke's Proposal
"I know." She looked at the books. "But the circumstances that brought you to this point and brought me to yours — they were all set in motion by the same man."
"They were," he said. He turned back to the shelf and was quiet for a moment. "Those same circumstances led you to my house party. To all of it." Something shifted in his voice, not quite bitterness, but its close relation. "And to your ruin. And forced you to marry me."
The room was incredibly quiet.
"They led me to you," she said.
She said it matter-of-factly, then she turned to the shelf and straightened a spine that needed no straightening and said, "I believe dinner will be soon. I should — "
He kissed her.
He had been watching her mouth while she spoke, when some impulse had taken over him. He had simply closed the remaining distance between them and covered her lips with his. His hand came to the side of her face, and she went still at his touch. Leander kissed her in the way of a man who had run out of the thing that had been holding him back and found, on the other side of it, something he had no more words to express.
She sighed and kissed him back.
The books stood where they were. The fire settled.
When they stopped, he was looking at her in the way she had first seen in the chapel and had not seen since. She gazed back at him with everything she had not yet decided whether to say, and neither of them said anything for a moment.
Then she straightened her dress with the efficiency of long practice, glanced at the shelf, and said, "I really should change for dinner."
"Yes," he said.
She left the study.
She did not look back, but she was smiling as she went up the stairs, and she did not try to hide it.
Chapter Eighteen
Benjamin arrived first, which was typical.
He burst through the front door three steps ahead of Anthony. He stood in the center of the grand entrance hall, turning in a slow circle to take in the towering ceilings and gilded moldings. His hat sat askew, tilted precariously over one ear, and his wool coat was buttoned completely incorrectly, one flap hitched higher than the other.
He had grown since the party in Mayfair. Leander noticed it immediately.
"Is there a garden?" Benjamin asked, his voice echoing off the cold marble floor, addressed to no one specifically.
"There is," Leander said.
The boy looked up, catching Leander’s gaze. A wide, gap-toothed grin broke across his face. "Can we go?"
"Benjamin." Anthony stepped into the hall behind him. He reached down and straightened the boy's crooked hat. "We have been in this house for approximately thirty seconds."
"Forty," Benjamin corrected, eyes bright.
Anthony looked up, meeting Leander’s eyes over the boy’s head. Leander looked back, his face a mask of absolute stillness.
"There is a garden," Leander repeated, jerking his chin toward the heavy glass doors at the rear of the house.
Julia was already in it.
She had been out there since mid-morning, seated on the stone bench under the shade of a sprawling elm. A book sat open on her lap. She was actually reading this time, a fact Leander knew with certainty because the heavy volume was visibly further through than it had been at breakfast.
The heavy doors groaned as they pushed out onto the terrace. She looked up at the sound, her eyes instantly bypassing the two men to find Benjamin first. Her gaze always went to the most immediate, chaotic thing in a room, which was invariably the boy. A genuine, unguarded smile broke across her face before she had time to recall her dignity and decide against it.
"Good morning," she said.
"Good morning." Benjamin did not hesitate. He walked directly up the gravel path, sank onto the stone bench right beside her without the slightest hint of an invitation, and peered down at the pages. "What is that?"
