I cannot love Edward. I have not truly known him that long.
Yet doubts crept in. At this time, she felt she knew him better than anyone. There was kindness between them, devotion, care, and excitement too. The mere thought of what they had shared on his desk made her tremble with the longing to have it again.
“My Lady? A parcel has been delivered for you.” The butler called from the corridor.
Julia shook herself, trying to push aside both her thoughts and her father’s words.
I know Edward now. He is not the mindless rake my father accuses him of. There is much more to him than that!
As she took the parcel from the butler and laid it on the hall table, unwrapping it quickly, she thought of the story he had told her about his first love, and the pain that had been on his face. She had long suspected if he had the capacity to love, and here was the proof of it, but… he had also said he could no longer love.
The mere thought made her ache. She tried to push past that pain as the tissue paper around the parcel fell away.
Inside was another book. This one was beautifully bound with silk fabric between the front and back cover, and gold leaf along the pages’ edges. Across the top of the book was another slip of paper, ornately scribbled in Edward’s handwriting. She lifted it close to her eyes, the better to read it.
‘For you. Something to make you smile. E.’
Her lips flickered into that smile as she turned to the cover, to find it was a volume of poetry. She flicked through the pages with excitement, thrilled to see some of her favorites were in there. She couldn’t even remember telling him that she loved poetry, though he may have seen her read some to the children at the orphanage the other day. She kept flicking when she found a certain page had been marked with a scrap of paper. A second note had been written on this slip.
‘Your favorite.’
Julia’s smile grew wider as the page revealed William Wordsworth’sDaffodils.Now she knew he must have overheard her with the children, for she had told Lucy it was her favorite.
“I wandered lonely as a cloud…”Julia began to read the poem aloud, loving the way the words fell together, when she noticed the page had been thumbed more than once already. It was as if another reader had turned to the page many times, in order to read of the joy that the daffodils had brought Wordsworth when trapped in his melancholy. It was possible that Edward was the one who had turned to this page many times, before gifting the book to her.
She was so busy admiring the book and how it was the most beautiful volume of poetry she had seen that she was barely aware of the bell pull being tugged over the front door nearby. It took the butler advancing toward it and opening the door wide for her to at last look up from the page to see who was there.
When her eyes found their guest, she nearly dropped the volume back down onto the hall table. His pale blue eyes shot straight past the butler and fixed on her, that pale skin somehow seeming whiter today.
“Good day, Lady Julia,” he said as he strode into the house. He came so close that Julia backed up, colliding with the hall table behind her.
“Lord Gillet,” she muttered, struggling for words. “What are you doing here?”