Page 61 of The Lion Duke's Proposal
She crossed the room and crouched beside him. Slowly, Julia began gathering the nearest books before he could tell her not to, stacking them by size because it was the logical approach and because it gave her something to look at while she adjusted her face.
"I do not need assistance," he said.
"I know," she said. She handed himBlackstonewithout looking at him. He took it without looking at her. She picked up two more volumes, set them on the shelf, and turned back for the next armful. She was doing very well until she glanced at him and found him sitting on the floor of his own study with a slight volume of Milton open in one hand and his hair disordered from the descent. The Duke wore the expression of a man who was maintaining his dignity through sheer concentrated effort.
She laughed.
It came out before she could stop it, which was perhaps why it sounded as genuine as it did. She pressed her hand over her mouth, and it escaped anyway. Julia looked at the ceiling, then at the books, and absolutely not at him.
"I beg your pardon," she managed.
"Quite," he said.
She got herself under control but looked back at him anyway. The Duke was watching her with the expression she had not seen in ten days, the one that was not quite a smile and was always better than one. Something loosened in the room, some quality that had been present for the past several days and that she had grown used to in the particular way that one grew used to a window being stuck.
She picked up the last of the books. He stood, with less difficulty than his dazed position on the floor had suggested he might, and they replaced the volumes on the shelf in a more sensible arrangement than they had evidently been in before.
"You were trying to reach the top shelf," she said.
"I was returning something to the top shelf," he said. "There is a distinction."
"Of course." She straightened the globe. "Do you often conduct your cataloging from the floor?"
"This is a singular occasion."
"I will try to look surprised if it happens again."
He glanced at her sideways. There it was. This look…this teasing exchange had been missing from her life for ten days. She had yearned for it without allowing herself to name it as missing.
She turned to the shelf and ran her eye along the spines, steadying a volume that was leaning at an unstable angle. He moved to the other end and did the same. They stood at either end of the bookcase in the late-afternoon light streaming through the study window. The silence was the comfortable kind rather than the careful kind, which was different enough to be notable.
"We are alike in this," he said. He was looking at the books, not at her.
She waited.
"You organize things," he said. "People, situations. You walk into a room, and within three minutes you have identified what needs managing and begun managing it." He moved the volume half an inch. "Without being asked."
"It is a habit," she said.
"So is mine." He looked along the shelf. "I have been told it is not always welcome."
"By whom?"
"Anthony, primarily." A beat. "Regularly."
She found she was smiling again. "We are both guilty of it."
"Both overprotective," he said. "Both too proud to ask for help when we need it." He glanced at the floor, briefly, with the expression of a man acknowledging an example he would have preferred not to provide. "Both carrying things we did not choose to carry."
She was quiet for a moment. Outside, the London street went on as it always did, and the fire in the grate was low. Suddenly, the study felt smaller than it had when she came in a few moments before.
"My father did that to us both," she said.
"Yes."
"I am sorry for it. For what it cost you, Henry, and all the rest."
He looked at her. "You did not do it."
