Page 79 of The Lion Duke's Proposal
"You grabbed my arm," Julia said. "And looked at my jewelry."
Norish said nothing.
Julia turned. She looked at her father across the three feet of pavement between them, and what she put into that look was not anger. Anger would have been easier.
"I thought," she said, "that perhaps you had changed. I know that was not a reasonable thing to think. But I thought it."
Norish's expression shifted toward the warmth, the small crease forming near his eyes that usually signaled a sympathetic confidence. "Julia, my dear."
"I am not your dear," she said in a quiet tone that was laced with disappointment. "You have not been a father to me since I was fourteen years old. You have been a responsibility. A debt. A consequence that other people managed while you looked for the next room." She did not look away from him, her gaze matching his until the old man's eyes flickered toward the carriage wheel.
"You sold Henry Alcott's heirloom. You ruined his last years. You almost ruined Poppy's future. You have not expressed one word of regret this morning for any of it." She paused, her intake of breath small and sharp. "If you are free, you will do the same to the next person who trusts you. And the next."
Norish looked at her. The warmth had not left his face, but it had moved. Underneath it was something that might have been the shape of a man who understood he had lost and was running the numbers on what that meant for his immediate comfort.
"You would see your own father imprisoned?" Lord Norish asked.
"I am asking," she said, and she turned her shoulder to him, looking back to Leander, "if you would see it done."
Leander stared at her.
Her chin was at a high angle. Her hands were at her sides. She had stepped between him and her father to stop a fight, and now she was standing in front of both of them and choosing, and the choosing was specific and deliberate and fully her own.
"Are you certain?" he said.
"Yes," she said.
No pause. No revision.
He looked at her for one more moment, letting the silence settle between them until she nodded once. Then he turned to Norish.
Norish read the turn correctly. He took a step toward the carriage. Leander moved faster. He did not deliver a blow thistime. Leander simply revised his stance. His bulk filled the space between Norish and the open door. Two constables he had brought from the Strand were already at the end of the pavement because Cuthbert had taught him long ago that preparation was the difference between a plan and a wish.
"Henry Alcott," Leander said. "You borrowed against his trust and sold what was not yours to sell. You have outstanding debts to eleven parties in this city that Cuthbert has documented across fourteen months. You have been operating under two names since January."
He watched the calculation running behind the handsome face and found no satisfaction in it, only the particular relief of a thing that had been waiting a long time to be finished. "The magistrate will have the full account within the hour."
Norish straightened, his spine flattening against the side of the vehicle. The warmth was gone now, beneath it was what had always been beneath it, the thing the warmth had always been a performance of. His eyes moved past Leander to Julia.
"You will need my signature," he said, his voice dropping into a dry, harder tone. "For the dowries. Yours and your sister's. You have nothing without my consent, and you know it."
Julia opened her mouth.
"You will find," Leander said, "that is no longer a concern."
Norish looked at him.
"The dowries were secured three days ago. Cuthbert filed the petition on Wednesday morning on grounds of abandonment and neglect of duty." He held the man's gaze without difficulty, his hands remaining flat at his sides. "We have not needed your signature for some time. We were simply waiting for you to walk through a door."
A silence fell over the three of them on the pavement. The street moved around it. A cart laden with iron hoops, a pair of women holding their shawls against the mist, a dog crossing from one side to the other with great purpose.
Norish stood very still. His eyes flickered from Leander’s locked jaw to the open carriage door, his fingers twitching against his coat pocket as if reaching for a draft that was not there. For three seconds, the street moved around them, and then his hand dropped back to his side, and his shoulders went rigid.
The small, sympathetic crease near his eyes vanished, leaving his face perfectly blank while he looked Leander up and down. He started to open his mouth, stopped, and drew a slow, sharp breath through his nose.
He chose dignity. It was the only card left.
He straightened his coat, pulling the lapels level. He looked at Julia once more, and what he tried to put into the look was warmth, the proprietary warmth, but it arrived without purchase. Julia did not blink. She met his eyes without a singleflicker of affection. Her gaze passed over his face as though he were merely another stranger on Fleet Street before she turned her shoulder to him completely.
