Chapter 25

Chapter Twenty-Five

It was most confounding.

He'd been determined to put some distance between them but found it impossible.

She was constantly on his mind. Not the Catherine of old, the pale, silent creature who had drifted through Aldingbourne Hall like a sad ghost, but the lively, untidy Lena who constantly talked and laughed and had stains on her washed-out gown and who couldn't stay still for one moment.

When she spoke, he couldn't tear his eyes off the expressiveness of her face, the way her lips moved, how her eyes crinkled at the corners. The way her hips swayed sent a flush of heat through his body. And when she did the most incredible things he'd never imagined the Duchess Catherine was capable of, like cooking, baking, sweeping the floor and hanging out the laundry and darning socks, he found himself unable to tear his gaze away.

Who was this woman ?

From his bedroom window, he'd watched with amusement how she'd wrestled with the heavy, wet sheets in the courtyard earlier. She'd pulled her sleeves up to the elbows, revealing bare arms, arching to stretch her back as she wiped loose strands from her forehead. Suddenly, he'd felt the urge to kiss her again, to press her against him and devour her lips.

That kiss at the ball had been too sudden, too swift, and too short.

It left him confused.

What was even more confounding was that that urge hadn't left him since.

Then, he saw her throw the sheets back into the basket and leave, no doubt having been called by one of the children.

Without thinking, he'd gone downstairs and hung up the sheets.

It hadn't been an easy task, but since he was taller, he had been able to reach the rope more easily than she had.

He'd suppressed a smile seeing the look of bafflement on her face when she'd returned to find the job done.

And now…he was sitting in the carriage returning to the Arenheim home, staring in consternation at the slim package on his lap. What devil had driven him to spend the greater part of the morning in that stocking shop, wading through countless stockings—women's stockings, mind you, not men's—trying to find that one particular pink pair she'd wanted so much?

Of course they no longer had it.

The shopkeeper had nearly despaired. He'd pulled out every single pair of stockings he had in stock, but it wasn't the one. Then the man had hit on the idea of sending a footman to the workshop where they were made to obtain a pair.

While he'd been waiting, he'd picked out four more. One in pale blue, one in light violet, and one in cream with golden embroidery. Then a pair for the girl, Mona, in pastel yellow, so it didn't seem quite so obvious that he'd gone out of his way to buy stockings only for Lena.

With all these stockings on his lap, Julius wondered if he'd lost his mind. It wasn't the first time he'd been prompted to do something completely out of character ever since joining the Arenheim family.

The other day, for example, he'd gone out to fly a kite with Hector and Achilles.

Once again, what devil had made him buy one in the first place? It hadn't been a very good kite, either, just a cheap one made of thin, blue paper.

Seeing the boys' eyes light up had been worth it.

They'd gone to the meadow by the river, and Julius had watched in amusement for a good hour as the boys had tried to get the kite to fly. After he'd helped them and it was up and flying, Julius had felt a sense of…satisfaction and contentment. He hadn't felt that sense of satisfaction that intense in any of the successful diplomatic negotiations that had gone his way.

He, content?

That was a feeling completely foreign to him.

Then a strong gust of wind had come up, and the kite had soared higher, tangling itself in the branches of an oak tree .

He still could not reconstruct the exact events of how he had ended up climbing that tree to retrieve the kite.

He still couldn't believe he'd actually climbed a tree.

He hadn't done so since he was Hector's age.

But he'd done it. It was with great satisfaction that he'd handed the kite to Hector, who'd looked at him with a whole new look in his eyes. "You don't seem to be a bad sort after all," his son had said, with a tone of grudging respect in his voice.

He'd been speechless.

His son now saw him in a completely different kind of light.

His son. He'd looked down at the child, seen his tongue protruding from the corner of his mouth as he rolled up the string, his hair dishevelled, so much like him, and he'd felt, for the first time, a painful squeezing in the region of his heart and an inexplicable desire to see that light in the child's eyes again.

For the first time in his existence, Julius, Duke of Aldingbourne, wanted to be a father. Not just any father, but a good one. He'd wanted to be the father he himself never had.

And this realisation shook him to the core.

He was feeling altogether too much, he decided, as the carriage drew up in front of the Arenheim home.

He wasn't sure how to take that.

As Lena stepped into the hall to greet him, his heartbeat increased.

She wore a pale green muslin gown, and her hair was tied back in a loose chignon, with strands of soft hair escaping from it. He watched her lips, and indeed, she pursed them to blow away the strands of hair, as she always did.

He swallowed.

She gave him a strained smile.

"I was in town." It was an obvious thing to say, but all his diplomatic eloquence had left him, and for the life of him, he couldn't come up with anything better. "I brought you this." He handed over the box.

She cocked her head inquisitively, then her eyes widened. "Never say. Stockings?"

He cleared his throat. "I thought they were needed."

She opened the box and stared at the contents. "And there is a pink pair, too…" she murmured more to herself. When she looked up, her eyes were bright.

He looked away. Was she crying? Dash it.

"It's merely stockings," he said gruffly. "Nothing special."

"They must have cost a fortune. I thought we agreed—" She interrupted herself, gave a quick shake of her head as if she'd changed her mind about what she was going to say, then merely whispered, "Thank you."

"The yellow pair is for Mona."

"She'll love them."

Why was she standing there, staring at him with that odd look in her eyes? He couldn't quite interpret it. It felt as though she was assessing, judging him. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

"Thank you, Julius. This was very thoughtful of you." Every time she said his name, a flush of pleasure ran through him.

He gave a curt, embarrassed nod.

"There's a visitor in the drawing room," she continued. "Waiting for you."

"Not Metternich again?"

She shook her head. "Come and see."