Robert Finley was, indeed, the worst sort of person. One Lucas had unknowingly armed.
“You said you would write to me,” she said. “But you didn’t. You knew I was in Berkshire the few times you came here, but never made the relatively short trip to visit me. You never invited me to visit you.” Another tear fell. “If I were important, your plans would include me, not overlook me. But I sometimes wonder if they ever did or ever will.”
He pressed a kiss to her forehead. “You tell me how you want to spend this first year of our life together, and I will make sure it happens.” He set his arms around her. She didn’t pull away. “Tell me where you’d like to go, what you’d like to do, and we will do all of it. And if at the end of that year you are still unsure where my priorities lie, we will spend the next year doing the same, for however many years you need.”
From within his embrace, she asked a question he could not possibly have predicted. “Could we go to Portugal?”
“You’d like to travel?”
“I do still have a preference for home,” she said, “but that doesn’t mean I am adamantly opposed to literally everything else.”
Hope and excitement filled his heart.
“I will certainly not travel as often as you do, but I would like to be included sometimes.”
“Whenever you’d like,” he said.
“I think I would enjoy traveling with you.” She sounded entirely sincere. “I did, after all, spend an entire night on this bridge with you, and you didn’t let me fall in the river or anything.”
His heart had seldom come so close to jumping right out of his chest. She didn’t mean to insist he abandon his love of travel. Better still, she wanted to undertake it with him.
“Though I’ll need some tutoring in Society’s expectations,” she said, “I think we should go to London for the Season. I know you enjoy being there.”
It was quite possibly the most concise lesson he’d ever learned in trust and forging connections. She was willing to embrace his preferred pastimes, but he’d not shown her the same willingness. He’d made her feel unwanted and unwelcome. He’d made her cry.
He vowed there and then on that magical stone bridge that he would change. He would dry tears instead of cause them. He would be a welcoming and protective presence in the lives of the lonely and vulnerable. He would be better. He would do better.
“We can go anywhere you like,” he said. “And we’ll make certain to look in on your little Lord Falstone, and we will spend ample time at home as well.”
”I would like that,” she said.
Lucas kissed the top of her head. “What else would you like, my Julia?”
“A new book on mathematics,” she said.
“Of course.”
“And”—a little mischief had entered her tone—“I would also like to know what you brought me from Paris.”
Lucas let his hands slide down her arms and stepped back enough to meet her eyes once more.
“I hope that you like it.”
She untied the ribbon and folded back the brown paper. Lucas watched her face, hoping to see delight instead of disappointment.
“Oh, Lucas,” she said breathlessly.
“Do you like it?” He couldn’t be certain. She looked more shocked than anything else.
“It is breathtaking.” She looked up at him once more. “It must have come very dear.”
“It was too perfect to pass up.”
Julia lifted his offering from its wrapping: a dainty silver chain held a silver pendant with delicate whorls forming a frame around an oval-cut blue topaz. “No one has ever given me anything like this before.”
“I saw it in a shop. I kept coming back to it, kept telling Kes how well I thought it would match your eyes. He, being both logical and grumpy, told me that if I didn’t buy it for you, he would, if only to stop me from yammering.”
She smiled at him. “Have I told you how grateful I am that you introduced me to the Gents? I adore them.”
He brushed his finger under her chin. “And they love you. How could they not?”
A blush touched her cheeks, just as it had increasingly often at Brier Hill. Perhaps she was softening toward him once more.
“Will you help me put it on?” she asked.
“Of course, sweetheart.” He took the necklace from her and slipped it in place, stepping behind her. He closed the clasp.
Julia set her open palm against the pendant and turned enough to look back and up at him. “Do you know what I love most about this?”
“What?”
“All the years I thought you’d forgotten about me, you hadn’t. Even far away, you were thinking of me.”
“There will never come a day when you aren’t in my thoughts and in my heart.” He moved to face her once more. “Remember that when you wear this. And think of me.”
“I will,” she said. “Every time.”
“And will you trust that I value you and want you in my life, that you are the most crucial part of that life?”
A soft smile lifted her expression. “I will try.”
He bent close and pressed the lightest, briefest of kisses to her lips. “We’ll begin there, sweetheart. We’ll begin there.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
Julia spent the remainder of the day with Lucas. They laughed together, reminisced, talked about the subjects Julia was studying and the places he thought she might enjoy visiting. They spoke of the poor little boy who’d lost his father, Lucas showing the same kindness he’d offered her when her sister had died. It was a pleasant afternoon, lovely and reassuring and very nearly perfect.
When Lucas left for Lampton Park, Julia found herself, for the first time since her flight from Brier Hill, reluctant to see him go. She had very nearly asked him to stay longer, but the caution she’d learned over the years reared its head. She knew she had ample reason for caution.
His necklace hung around her neck. She ran her fingers over the beautiful blue stone. “I want to believe in him,” she whispered to her empty bedchamber. “I almost—almost—think I do.”
That day alone, she had inched ever closer to letting go of her uncertainties. The many wonderful moments they’d had at Brier Hill added to it. His attentiveness and affection. His kind and compassionate heart. A lifetime of connections.
If only her mind and heart could feel some certainty that she could, indeed, trust the promises he was making. Her thoughts spun in dozens of directions. As she flipped through memories of that day, she paused on the five letters she’d received from the Gents. She’d kept the sealed missives in her coat pocket, not wanting to read them with Lucas in case the contents were embarrassing or uncomfortable. But she was alone now, and the letters were still waiting.
She crossed to the wardrobe and fished in her coat pocket for the letters. Each was addressed the same way but in different handwriting. They truly had all five written to her.
Each letter began identically.
Our Julia,
Lucas loves you.
Then their letters went on to share reminiscences of Lucas over the years, moments all tied to her.
“When we were at Eton, Lucas received a letter from his mother with tales of home,” Niles wrote. “You, he was informed, had chased off a would-be thief from the dry goods shop by throwing plums at him. Lucas was so proud of his fiery little Julia that he told anyone and everyone.”
Aldric shared recollections from Cambridge and the years that had followed. “I suspect the only phrase we heard more often than ‘Who would like to climb to the top of that mountain?’ was ‘I hope Julia will undertake a few larks when I next see her. I miss her.’ You have always been important to him, though he clearly struggled to show you just how much.”
Digby had known Lucas since their first year at Eton. He wrote of those early years and one difficu
lt time in particular. “I was at his side when word arrived of your twin sister, Charlotte’s, death. He was devastated by her passing but could not be consoled because your fate had not been communicated and he feared you too had been lost. He wept inconsolably for his ‘dear, sweet Julia.’ We all knew he was fond of you, but that was the moment we came to understand how much he treasured you.”
“He worked ceaselessly to convince his parents to allow him to halt his studies for a time after your mother’s passing,” Henri’s letter said. “His grief was focused on you. You never left his thoughts or his heart.”
“He spoke of you with greater frequency than even Stanley did,” Kes wrote. “That was not an easy feat.”
Sweet Stanley.
“I sat with Lucas at Lampton Park the day of your brother’s funeral,” Digby wrote. “He said very little, all of it about you: his pain on your behalf and his worry for you. My dear friend, you have seldom left his thoughts, and the place you claim in his heart is permanent. He loved you then. He loves you now. He will always love you.”
Tears trickled from her eyes as she read testament after testament that she had never been forgotten as she had so long feared.
“He is not one to overlook even those who feel invisible,” Niles wrote. “He doesn’t always know how to show it, but he sees, and he cares.”
“There is a reason we call you ‘Our Julia,’” Aldric wrote in the last letter in the pile. “No one who knows Lucas as well as we do could possibly not know you too. You have ever been an inseverable part of who he is. You are not merely held in his heart; you hold his heart. He loves you, Julia. We have known it for years. He, however, was caught unawares.”
She brushed her fingers over the tears on her cheeks.
“He has stumbled his way through the past months, I have no doubt,” Aldric continued. “But all of us will attest that his devotion to you is real and deep and abiding. Trust in that.”
“Trust that he loves you.”
Trust.
She wanted to trust him. She wanted to know her growing faith in him, in his loyalty and promises, was well-founded and safe. There had been indications the past months that he was the same loving and dependable Lucas she’d trusted with her whole soul when she was little, but those moments had been clouded by worry and fear.
The years of silent separation had placed a chasm of pain between them. She’d focused so wholly on the potential danger of that rift that she’d not even realized they’d been building a bridge.
Were the Gents’ reassurances, in tandem with all she’d seen in him lately, enough for her to have faith enough to cross it?
“Lucas loves you.”
She let her gaze wander to the miniature of herself and Charlotte, wishing her sister were here. Her eyes, however, focused on something else on the bedside table, something she’d not noticed lying there before.
A book.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Lucas sat in the Lampton Park library, a book in his hands. He wasn’t paying much heed to the words on the page. His parents were in the room as well, engrossed in their own private conversation. His mind was on the neighboring estate and a certain blue-eyed lady. His heart was there as well.
Had he made progress that day? Had he given her any additional reason to have faith in him?
She meant to try, and that was decided progress from where they’d been a week earlier. Truth be told, it was a leap forward from where they’d started their marriage.
Footsteps in the corridor pulled their attention. They all looked in the direction of the door.
The butler stepped inside. He was the tiniest bit out of breath, as if he’d nearly run to the room. Laughter shone in his usually stern eyes. “Lady Jonquil,” he announced.
Julia stepped inside. She tossed the fatigued butler a broad smile. “I nearly outpaced you the way I always used to.”
“I always let you, my lady.”
Far from offended, she smiled fondly before he slipped out.
Julia turned to Mother and Father. “I’ve come to lodge a complaint with your bacon-brained son.”
“Always a pleasure, Julia.” Father’s voice rang with laughter as he greeted her in precisely the way he had every time the childhood version of her had burst into the house, flying through the corridors on some mission or another.
Her attention shifted entirely to Lucas. Something in her demeanor made him want to hug her and burst out laughing all at the same time. “I have just been informed that you love me,” she said quite matter-of-factly.
Mother assumed a posture of theatrical surprise. “What a shocking revelation!”
Julia’s lips twitched, but she wasn’t deterred. “Is it true?”
He stepped over to her. “It has always been true.”
She was apparently unimpressed by what he’d thought was a fairly romantic declaration. “If you love me the same way you did when I was five years old, then we are going to have significant problems moving forward.”
He raised a flirtatious eyebrow. “I don’t think I kissed you in that coat closet at all the way one would kiss a mere childhood friend.”
She blushed immediately and deeply. “No, you didn’t.”
“We will leave the two of you to sort out . . . whatever it is you’re sorting,” Father said as he and Mother slipped out of the library.
Julia’s mouth twisted to the side. “I think we embarrassed them.”
He shrugged. “It got them out of the room, didn’t it?”
Her smile blossomed fully. Only through staggering willpower did he prevent himself from pulling her into an embrace and kissing her. She had sought him out and seemed pleased to be in his company. The optimist in him was ready to declare victory. The realist, however, urged caution.
“Now, my Julia, who was it that informed you since last I saw you that I love you?” It was the declaration on which she’d entered the room, after all.
“The General. The King. Grumpy Uncle. Archbishop. Puppy.”
Ah. “Their letters?”
“You have very persuasive friends, Lucas.”
He took her hand. “We have very persuasive friends.”
She reached with her other hand into the pocket of her coat and withdrew a very familiar book. “I left this at Brier Hill.”
“I know. But you had been enjoying it. I didn’t want you to be denied something that brought you enjoyment simply because I ruined everything.”
Quietly, almost a little bashfully, she said, “Not everything.”
“Have you begun to forgive me, sweetheart?”
She hugged the book to her, watching him with an earnest uncertainty. “It isn’t a matter of forgiveness,” she said. “I forgive rather easily, really. Likely a bit too easily.”
“Then what is this chasm between us now? I am desperate to span it.”
“I have been left behind and pushed aside by so many people so many times that I’ve grown far more comfortable in isolation. Being alone is safe. It isn’t so vulnerable.” Pain radiated from her, but so did hope, so did fortitude. “When we were first married, I told myself I could guard against the risk of so close a connection by remaining closed off. But that proved impossible.”
“It also proved injurious,” he said quietly. He didn’t know if he would ever fully forgive himself for the pain he’d caused her.
“I don’t entirely know how to let myself trust you again.” She filled her lungs, then emptied them slowly. “But our friends have firmed my resolve to try and have given me reason to believe that trust would be worth regaining.”
“And what reason was that?” He was practically holding his breath.
“That you love me.” She set the book on a nearby table and reached for his hand. He took it willingly and eagerly. “I asked you a few days before our wedding when you came upon
me sitting on our rock if you loved me as a man ought to love his wife. You weren’t able to say that you did. I hadn’t expected you to.”
That felt like a lifetime ago; so much had changed since then.
“But the Gents have begun to convince me that your answer would be different if I asked you again.”
He pressed their entwined hands to his heart. “My answer would be infinitely different.”
She closed the gap between them and leaned against him. He wrapped his free arm around her.
“Will you be hurt if I tell you I’m not yet ready to pose that question again?” she asked quietly.
“I will understand.”
She leaned a little more heavily against him, as if allowing a little more of her burden to be shared. “And will you hold me for a moment? You did promise you would if ever I needed you to.”
“Of course, my darling Julia.” He slipped his other arm free and joined it to his first, embracing her fully and properly. “I ought to have been here all these years, holding and comforting and loving you.”
She rested her head against him, one of the benefits of a lady who lived by her own opinions on fashion rather than Society’s dictates. A tall, powdered pompadour would have made their current, very tender arrangement quite difficult.
“Perhaps it is for the best that you were gone as much as you were,” she said.
He was too shocked to respond.
“If you had always been here these past years, I would have grown up gradually in your eyes rather than suddenly. You might never have stopped seeing me as your little childhood friend.”
His childhood friend. Though she was, of course, that, and he remembered with fondness their years of adventures and mischief, he found himself struggling to feel that way about her now. The love he had for his Julia had deepened and grown almost beyond recognition since then.
“Would you consider staying here, Julia?” he asked. “The family wing, as you know well, is large and mostly empty. You could have your pick of any room. Mother would love to have you here. And I’m desperate to.”
“Have you missed me, then?” Her tone was lighter than it had been. A good omen.
Forget Me Not (The Gents Book #1) Page 26