Harris choked.
“—and be welcomed here.”
“You still intend to do this?” he asked flatly. “Present her as your niece?”
“I will not lie. I will just not make an effort to correct wrongly drawn conclusions.”
He bit his tongue to keep from pointing out that a lie of omission was still a lie.
“Now, I don’t need you here bickering. Rather I intend to explain how it is to be, and if you are displeased with my decision…” She looked to the door, and he followed that pointed stare, more than half expecting to find the interloper there. But instead, he found the panel firmly shut.
Harris furrowed his brow and then froze as her meaning slammed into him. “Are you suggesting you’ll show me the damned d-door?” he sputtered.
“Have a care with your language, Harris.” She made a tsking sound and leaned over to pat his knee the way she’d done when he was a boy. “Of course not.” She paused. “I’m telling you. If you aren’t happy about my decision, and the lady’s presence offends you so much that you can’t treat her with the same decency and respect you treat all your wanton widows, then you are welcome to leave.”
His wanton widows? Really? That was what she’d somehow turn this into? A condemnation of him and how he lived his life?
“Harris?” she pressed.
“I will be all things polite,” he gritted out. Polite when he showed Julia the damned door.
She smiled. “There. That was not so hard, was it? You are dismissed.”
Shoving to his feet, he dropped a stiff bow and let himself out.
The moment the footman stationed beside the parlor door drew that panel shut, Harris cursed. His steps grew furious as he strode the length of the hall.
They’d been lied to.
What was worse, his godmother had taken the liar under her wing, and as someone who knew firsthand that woman’s loyalty, he knew there was no shaking her of her decision. Nay, unless she herself arrived at a conclusion, no one—not Harris, not her best friends the countesses, not even God Himself—could sway her.
Nay, the only way to see that the duchess was no longer being taken advantage of was by going to the woman herself and showing her the damned door himself.
“Where is Julia?” he demanded of a passing maid.
The girl started. “Th-the gardens, my lord.” Bobbing a hasty curtsy, the girl bolted off.
Splendid. Now he was scaring damned maids.
With that, he went in search of Julia.
Chapter 18
Julia had always hated flowers.
And yet, studying the bright pink, fully unfurled peony, she found it hard not to appreciate the wonder of that bloom. Perhaps flowers weren’t so very bad, after all. Mayhap, blinded by her struggles as she’d been, she’d just failed to see and appreciate their beauty.
She’d never before seen those flowers when they’d still been growing from the lush earth, unfurled, fresh, and lush.
A tiny black ant crawled around, making those whispery petals its playground.
At the quiet crunch of gravel, her head came shooting up.
A lightness suffused her breast, as it always did at the mere sight of him. “You!” she exclaimed, flying to her feet.
He reached her side. “Me.” His lips curled at the corners, and Julia faltered.
He wasn’t smiling. Julia worked her gaze quickly over his beloved face, the harsh lines even harder, the muscles tensed, his mouth unyielding. And his eyes were frosty, distant. Removed. He was very much the cold stranger who’d greeted her upon her arrival. Julia’s heart slipped in her breast.
And she knew.
She knew it with the same intuition she’d known Adairia was dead when she’d discovered her gone. Or the day her mum had died.
Awfulness had a way of carrying a lifelike presence and force.
Her stomach knotted viciously and painfully. “What is it?” she asked softly. “Why are you looking at me like this?” What accounted for this sudden coldness?
“Tell me, how should I look at you?” he countered frostily, his voice cold enough that, even with the sun’s warm rays beating down upon the earth, it managed to bring the gooseflesh up on her arms. “How should I look at a woman who is both a liar and impostor?”
She went motionless. A liar and an imposter? “What?” her voice barely registered to her own ears over the sound of her pulse hammering away in her ears.
His nostrils flared. “An investigator confirmed all that a short while ago. And my godmother confirmed as much not long ago.”
Her stomach lurched. He hadn’t known…? No. That wasn’t possible. “I believed the duchess had told you and that is why you had stopped with all the questions,” she whispered. “You knew before we made love. I asked you if you talked to the duchess,” her voice grew slightly panicky.
“We spoke about your Come Out,” he snapped. “She asked for me to watch over you.”
“Oh,” her voice emerged breathy and weak to her own ears.
Harris hadn’t known the truth about Julia. Instead, he’d learned it from an investigator whom he’d hired to look into her. Of course there would have been. She’d been naïve and foolish to expect there hadn’t been. Just as she’d been naïve and foolish to think she could freely take these moments with Harris without there being an absolute loss of his affection once he found out about her. “I thought you knew,” she said into the void of miserable silence.
A harsh laugh ripped from his chest, and she winced at the acerbic quality of that mirthless sound. “When exactly when would I have found out, Miss Smith? When were you going to tell me that your being here is a lie and that you
