Page 81 of The Lion Duke's Proposal
She counted each individual loop over and over, using the rhythm to anchor her ribs, forcing her lungs to expand and contract only on the even numbers.
It worked. It was a mechanical, cold sort of trick, but it had worked through the entire iron-rimmed rattle of the journeyback from Fleet Street, through the grey slurry of the midday traffic, and past the blurred brick faces of the townhouses.
It worked when the carriage finally lurched to a halt against the curb, and it worked when they crossed the stone threshold into the dry air of the house. It worked while Mrs. Hartley took their damp, wool-scented coats with an unread glance at Julia’s face, and it worked through the three seconds it took for the footman’s heavy boots to retreat down the rear passage.
It held perfectly until the heavy oak of the front door clicked shut into its brass housing, sealing them into the absolute, dead quiet of the hall.
Then Leander turned toward her. His heavy boots shifted on the parquet, and he said, "Julia."
The name was too quiet. The air left her lungs all at once, as if the word itself had struck her between the shoulder blades. Her chest hitched. She made a sharp, ragged, ungraceful sound that she tried to catch behind her teeth, but the heat had already risen to her throat, and her eyes filled until the line of the wainscoting went soft and blurry.
She pressed the flat of her palm hard against her mouth, the leather of her glove tasting of salt and damp street mist. Her shoulders shook under the sudden, massive weight of the morning.
Leander crossed the hall in two long strides. He did not ask for permission, nor did he offer the formal space that usuallygoverned the house before noon. He simply reached out and pulled her against him. His arms closed around her with the same heavy, unyielding pressure he had used when the hedges had blocked out the rest of the world in the center of the maze.
Julia buried her face into the rough wool of his shoulder. The smell of tobacco, damp linen, and cold rain filled her nose. She let her fingers bunch into the fabric of his lapels until her knuckles ached.
She watched the seconds tick by in the dark of her own mind.
One, two, three.
Julia measured the pulse against his chest, forcing the chaos of the street into small, manageable units of time until she reached ninety. It was an old habit, a schoolroom discipline designed to partition grief before anyone could look through the keyhole. On the final count, she straightened her spine, pulled back from his chest, and pressed the heels of her hands firmly into the corners of her eyes until the grey light returned to normal.
"I am sorry," she said, her voice thin, scraped at the edges, but dry.
"You have nothing to be sorry for."
"I do." She looked up at him, her gaze instantly snagging on the dark, wet circle her cheek had left against the weave of his coat.
She looked down at her skirts, smoothing the heavy wool with both palms, forcing her fingers to remain still against her thighs.
"The heirloom. Henry's heirloom. I knew what my father was, and I knew the transactions he was capable of, and I kept that knowledge from you. I went to that coffeehouse with the absurd notion that I could demand it back through sheer persistence, and he had already sold it. It has been gone for years, Leander. You spent three years tracing forged drafts, interviewing clerks, and hunting down names from the Tavistock to the Strand, all for a promise that cannot be kept. Because of my father. Because of what my family owes."
Leander looked down at her, his jaw dropping slightly as he took in the rigid line of her neck. Then his chest expanded, his shoulders dropped, and a low, resonant sound broke from his throat.
He was laughing.
It wasn't the sharp, dry snort of amusement he used to cut through the chatter at the clubs, nor the brief, polite gesture he gave across a soup course at dinners. It was a wide, genuine laugh that crinkled the skin at the corners of his eyes and showed the uneven edge of his lower teeth.
Julia’s hands dropped away from her skirts, her palms hanging open on her sides. "I don't understand what’s funny."
"Henry," Leander said, shaking his head as the sound tapered off into a loose, easy grin that altered the entire shape of his face."Of course he did. Of course, the old rogue knew exactly where it was."
He looked up at the white plaster molding of the ceiling for a brief second, his smile lingering as though he were sharing a joke with the timberwork, before bringing his dark eyes back down to hers.
"What?" she asked, her mind spinning back through three years of legal correspondence.
He reached down and took both of her hands, his leather-bound grip large, rough-skinned, and completely swallowing hers.
"Henry Alcott was the most interfering, meticulous old man in the three kingdoms," he said, his voice dropping into a rhythmic, low cadence he hoped would quieten her. "He kept three separate ledgers for his tenants, recorded the weight of his own hay to the ounce, and could calculate compound interest to the farthing in his sleep. He knew he had been out of funds for six months before he took to his bed. He knew exactly which boxes were empty in his vault, Julia. He knew the watch was gone before he ever asked for my hand on the blanket."
Julia stared at him, her fingers going slack and cold in his hold as the entire timeline of their acquaintance reordered itself in her mind. Every letter from Cuthbert, every late night over the maps, it all shifted on its axis. "The promise..."
"The promise was never about a piece of gold," Leander said.
He stepped closer, his boots loud on the parquet floor, until his thighs brushed the dark wool of her skirts, looking down at her with that total, unblinking focus that left no room for the rest of the hall or the people who lived in it.
"He sent me to Yorkshire to find your father. Norish wasn't there, of course, but the clerks he left behind led me to a house party in Berkshire. And the house party led me back to London, directly to a broken carriage on Aldgate Street."
