Page 72 of The Lion Duke's Proposal
"You have broken every single rule you set," she said pleasantly, her head tilting as she returned her gaze toBlackstone.
"I have revised several."
"Is that what we are calling it?"
"It is a reasonable characterization."
A small smile touched her mouth.
She did not look at him. She smiled down at the page instead, which was somehow far more flirtatious.
"You made those rules at the dinner table. I sat across from you that night, and I thought…" She stopped abruptly, her fingers tightening on the edges of the book.
"What did you think, Julia?"
She glanced up, her brown eyes remarkably clear in the gray morning light. "I thought that was the most efficient way I had ever been told that I didn't matter."
The cart outside had moved on, the driver's voice fading into the distance. The room became suffocatingly quiet.
"Julia," he said, his chest tightening.
"I know it was not your intention," she said, her voice dropping into an even, measured tone. "And I know why you did it." She closed the heavy volume on her thumb, marking her place. "I am not raising the matter to wound you, Leander. I am raising it because it is rather funny, in retrospect, that you are now lying in the very same bed those rules were constructed to protect."
He looked at her.
Her mouth had assumed that particular, sharp shape it took when she was finding something genuinely amusing and choosing not to fully commit to the laughter. Something in his chest moved in that strange, heavy way that had been happening with increasing frequency over the past weeks, a sensation he had completely run out of ways to reclassify as tactical.
"The rules," he said, his voice low, "were badly designed."
"Catastrophically," she agreed.
He reached across the space between them and tookBlackstonesmoothly from her hands. She let him take it without resistance, which meant she had finished using it as a shield anyway. He set the heavy book on the side table with a dull thud.
“I want to plan a ball, to become accustomed to my duties as Duchess.” She looked at him as she spoke.
"Tell me about this ball."
She straightened her posture against the pillows. He had not expected her response to be immediate, but Julia, with a plan, was never caught unprepared.
"A dinner first," she said, her eyes tracking across the ceiling as she worked through the logistics. "A smaller gathering so I can manage the numbers and learn the household's actual capacityproperly. Then a grand ball, once I know the London staff well enough to trust them with the execution."
She glanced at him, her intelligence bright and sharp in the dimness.
"You were already planning this."
"I was thinking about it in the carriage home." She tilted her chin with a flash of her usual spark. "Is that permitted, or has that particular rule been revised away as well?"
"Plan the ball," he said.
She looked at her husband. She clearly did not know what to do with his surrender; he could see it in her face. The confusion lasted for half a second before she rearranged her features into perfect order.
"I will need to meet with Mrs. Hartley about the London house capacities today. And I want to send a formal card to Lady Harcourt; we should not appear ungrateful for the invitation last night."
"Agreed."
"And Poppy should be there." She said her sister's name without making it a request, a subtle assertion of her family's place that he did not fail to notice. "She will want to be involvedin the planning. She is exceptionally good with flowers and arrangements and anything that requires a ball."
"She could move in," Leander said.
