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Julius was kneeling beside her, one knee pressed to the Aubusson rug. His hand enclosed hers with the same determined pressure he had once used to wield a sword.
“We are to wed,” he said, his voice quiet but resolute.
Audrey blinked. The words struck her like lightning, stalling even the air in her lungs.
He was serious. The set of his jaw, the steadiness of his gaze, left no room for jest.
Hope. Tiny golden threads of it spun silently inside her chest, fragile and glimmering.
Was this what she had longed for? Was he professing regard? Declaring, at last, that their connection meant something to him?
“You can return to Stirling to treat patients as a married woman,” he added, the words breaking the spell.
Audrey’s heart thudded once, a slow and painful realization blooming. She frowned in confusion, studying his face.
“It will be a … marriage of convenience,” he clarified, his tone cautious. “You will have the protection of my name so you may pursue your goals without impediment.”
The fragile threads of hope snapped.
Her shoulders sank back against the chair, the weight of disappointment too heavy to resist. Her limbs felt leaden, her chest hollow. It was a resolution, she supposed, but not the one she had longed for. Somewhere inside her, hidden even from herself, had lived the hope that Julius Trafford had come to care for her. That he might want her at his side as more than a woman to be shielded.
Instead, she was to become a symbol. A ward. A project for his honor to redeem.
She reached for a linen napkin, dabbing at her face, determined to compose herself. This was not how she wished to be remembered—tearful, disheveled, unguarded. A physician must master herself, always.
She cleared her throat quietly and spoke with deliberate calm.
“So not a real marriage?”
“That is correct,” he admitted quietly.
Audrey flinched, just the tiniest movement, but it struck him like a blow. Her jaw flexed and her silver eyes narrowed in defense, as though she had taken a punch and meant to remain upright regardless. She did not speak, but something within her shuttered. He felt it, like a door closing somewhere deep in a silent house.
Still, he owed her honesty. He would not lie, not to Audrey. He liked her far too well for that. He admired her. And more … though he dared not think what more might entail.
She inhaled through her nose, her voice like the scrape of silk over a sharp edge.
“What of … Do you intend to … Will we live apart?”
The question made his throat close. It seemed laughable. He had not been able to think of anyone—anything—but her since their first kiss. Her scent haunted his coat.
“I suppose we will,” he said at last and felt like a heel.
Audrey’s lips thinned. Her expression turned stony.
“The terms of our agreement,” she repeated it aloud, softly but with cold deliberation, as though testing the taste of something foreign and unpalatable.
Julius’s nerves prickled. She was going to refuse him. He felt it like a tremor in the air before a storm. A rising certainty that if he did not anchor this moment now, he might lose her entirely.
He could not name the precise reason he needed her to accept. Duty, perhaps. Gratitude. The innate urge to protect what was his, even if she was not and never would be.
“I do not wish to inconvenience you so. It is not your responsibility.”
“I have no plans to marry, so this is not a hardship, I can assure you. You can continue your life the way you planned.”
She did not appear convinced, her face still set in unhappy lines. He tried to think of something to say, but she beat him to it. “My father left me an income. I shall leave England. Perhaps I can move to Paris and make up a dead husband.”
Paris? What was it with the women in his life and their endless fascination with France? It seemed a grand conspiracy designed to keep him at a distance, as though they all somehow knew he could not endure the rigors of sea travel and so ensured he would never trouble them again.
