Page 75 of The Lion Duke's Proposal
"Thank you, Mrs. Hartley," she said, her voice smooth and entirely unbothered.
She sat down. She poured her tea, the amber liquid steaming in the quiet room. She looked out the window at the gray, flat London morning settling over the brick walls on the other side of the glass, and she picked up her cup.
She did not allow herself to think about warm, curtained rooms. She did not think about the breathless quality of waking up to find a man watching you read his law books, because thinking about that luxury in the stark context of this solitary breakfast table was a mistake she simply refused to make.
She drank her tea. She ate her toast. She kept her posture perfectly straight.
The note arrived at a quarter past ten. It was written on a plain, cheap fold of paper with no wax seal to protect its contents, delivered to the back door by a street urchin who had sprinted away before the footman could ask a single question.
Mrs. Hartley brought it into the parlor on a silver tray. Julia reached for it, and the moment her eyes hit the frantic, sloping ink, her stomach dropped. She knew the handwriting before she even opened it.
The location he had chosen was Hansom’s Coffee House, a dark establishment tucked off Fleet Street.
It was the exact kind of place that had once been fashionable during the last century and had since settled into a comfortable, dingy second act. It was the kind of room where the booths were deep, the candles were dim, and no one looked at anyone else too carefully.
Her father had always possessed a unique talent for identifying such places. She had noticed it when she was a young girl, long before the debts had swallowed them, and she had filed it away under the general category of things Viscount Norish was exceptionally good at that were never useful to anyone but himself.
She stood up from the breakfast table and walked with a steady, deliberate pace to the writing desk in the corner of the parlor.
She dipped the quill and wrote the note quickly. The lack of hesitation was not because she was rushing, but because she had already made her decision before her fingers even touched the paper. The choice did not require a single second of deliberation.
Leander,
My father has written. I am going to meet him at Hansom's Coffee House, Fleet Street. I will return before dinner.
J.
She folded the square of paper once, leaving it completely open and unsealed in the center of his blotter, where he would find it the absolute moment he returned to the house. She did not hide it. She did not hesitate.
She walked into the hall, put on her heavy woolen coat, and drew her gloves over her knuckles. She looked the footman directly in the eye, told him she was going out on a personal matter and would require the small, unmarked carriage, and she went out into the rain.
He was already there when she arrived, which meant he had been waiting. It meant he had sent the note early enough to be absolutely certain she would arrive before she could think better of the invitation and turn back.
He was tucked away at a corner table far from the rain-streaked windows, his dark coat well-kept in the exact way his clothes had always been well-kept, regardless of who was currently paying the tailor’s bill. He stood the moment he saw her cut through the dimness of the room.
"My dear Julia." He reached out and captured her hands before she could redirect them, his skin dry and papery. "How remarkably well you look. Marriage clearly agrees with you."
She sat down immediately to break the contact. He sank back into his own chair, a smooth, practiced movement.
She looked at him across the scarred wood of the table and found, as she always did when they had been parted for a long time, the exact same face she had known since childhood. He was handsome still, in the distinct way that strong, aristocratic bones carried into old age. Her father had the kind of face that had a way of getting him what he wanted.
He was looking at her with the expression he used when he was highly pleased about something. Warm, proprietary, and slightly distracted by whatever cynical calculation sat just behind his eyes.
Specifically, he was looking at her throat. She was wearing the Pridewell garnets.
"You have been exceedingly difficult to reach of late," he said, his tone suggesting this was a mild inconvenience to his schedulerather than a direct reflection of his own criminal choices. "The Duke keeps you rather close, it seems."
"I keep myself rather close," she said, her voice stiff and cold.
He smiled, a flash of white teeth.
"Of course you do, my dear." He lifted the heavy ceramic pot he had already ordered without asking if she desired any and poured her a cup of dark tea. "He is very watchful, your new husband. I had thought, once you were properly settled, that there would be more opportunity for us to converse, but he has been rather present."
"He is my husband," Julia said, her fingers curling tightly in her lap. "Presence is not unusual in a marriage."
"No, no, of course not." He waved a careless hand, dismissing the point. "I only mean I had hoped to see you much sooner. I have been waiting some time in this dreadful place, Julia. The city is not…my circumstances here are not at all what I would like."
She looked at him, her gaze unblinking. "What are your circumstances?"
