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“Goodness.” Her steps slowed, and Julian matched his own to hers. “I never heard of it. Your family name was never spoken in our home.”

“Which, given what followed, I understand.” His shoulders dropped a fraction. “When your father lost his investments, it was expected, not only by Lady Warrington but by all the gentry around him, that my father would do as a brother ought.”

She stopped altogether and looked up at him, her eyes huge. “People believed he would give my father money?”

Julian nodded.

“I — I suppose I could understand that,” she said, looking away across the grass. “If he was wealthy.”

“My father was always wealthy. His coin was his greatest love.” Julian grimaced. “He would do anything to make more of it, and was very successful. Any gift to your father would scarcely have been felt by him, and would have been a profound blessing to you all.”

Miss Trent closed her eyes.

“Lady Warrington spoke to him, it seems, and he refused. He would give your father nothing, and withdrew from him, took his friendship and his support away.”

Her eyes opened, the moisture clinging to her lashes, the pain plain in her face.

“He set his love of money above his love for your father and their friendship,” Julian said, his chest tight. “Things might have been very different for you, Viola, had it not been for my father’s selfishness.”

She drew a long, steadying breath, her brown eyes darker than usual. “Your father had no familial duty to be generous to mine,” she said, a catch in her voice. “I can see why it was expected. But it was not owed.”

Julian shook his head. “You are far too good to forgive so easily. I am ashamed of him — of his greed, his coldness toward your father.”

“But I do not hold any of it against you.”

Her eyes softened as she stepped closer, her face pale, her gaze steady. “None of this is your doing, Carrington. I would never set myself against you for what your father did. I cannot, and will not, hold you to account for his choices.”

Relief swept through him, loosening his chest entirely.

“I recall the note we found in Lady Warrington’s hand,” she went on, still soft. “It spoke of your father in less than kind terms, but did it not say, at the last, that she prayed neither you nor your brother would share his selfish nature?”

Julian nodded. “It did.”

“And did she not say she would do whatever she could to keep such a fault from rising in you?”

Again he nodded, and this time stayed silent, looking into her eyes.

“Then Stoneleigh House was given to me for two purposes, I think,” she said, the summer breeze warm between them. “To show generosity where, she believed, none had been given. And, perhaps, to do exactly as she wrote in that note.” She caught her lip between her teeth, and Julian blinked, having half forgotten the note.

“To make certain I did not share my father’s nature,” he murmured. “She took Stoneleigh from me — the house I had long desired, the one that would have added to my standing, and gave it to you. It was righting a wrong. But it also showed me I had no cause to expect such generosity at all.” He ran a hand across his brow, his breath quickening as the full design came clear to him. “I was arrogant, Miss Trent. I expected that house. Nay — I believed myself deserving of it. Because I was close to Lady Warrington, because the house had been spoken of so often, I thought it near enough mine by right.” He closed his eyes, a dark swell of feeling rising in him. “I never thought myself a prideful man. Never once did I count myself selfish, and yet, looking back over these weeks, I see that I was. I expected the house. I was angry not to have it. My first thought was to take it from you, as if I had every right. Had it not been for your willingness to explain, and your acceptance of my help, I should never have seen the truth of it.”

“You are not a selfish man, Carrington.” She closed the last of the distance between them. “I do not believe it for a moment. You may have wrestled with it — but you were not mastered by it. I do not think you would ever turn your back on a brother or a friend for the sake of money.” He opened his mouth, but she lifted a hand to silence him. “I have long valued your integrity. Your candor today only confirms it. You need not fear that I will harbor resentment toward you. I do not.” Her eyes held his. “Indeed,” she added, her voice lowering as if afraid her sister might hear, “I find it quite impossible. My heart would not permit it — not knowing your character.” She paused. “Not when it holds an affection for you I never anticipated.”

The confession lay between them, delicate and sweet. Julian’s heart roared to life, sweeping aside all that had been said of the past, so that only the future seemed to wait, asking to be seized.

For a moment he could not speak at all.

The park went on about them — a dog barking down at the water, a child’s hoop rattling past on the gravel — and none of it reached him. Her hand had returned to her side; he watched it, and wanted to take it, and held himself still instead, for Lady Manion stood twenty paces back and half of fashionable London strolled within sight. Her words settled into him one at a time. An affection I never anticipated. She had said it plainly, the way she said all true things, her color rising and her eyes steady, and he understood what it had cost her to say it first.

She had gone first. She, with nothing in the world to fall back upon but her own courage — while he, a marquess with every advantage, stood dumb as a schoolboy, his heart hammering fit to be heard.

“Viola.” He said her name again as if it were the most natural thing in the world. “Through all of this, a closeness has grown between us that I did not look for. I cannot deny that my regard for you has grown with it.”

A faint line drew between her brows. “Your regard?”

His mouth twisted, something hard kicking in his stomach as he heard how poorly he had spoken. “Regard, yes, but perhaps something more.”

He was on the very cusp of it, on the brink of telling her the whole truth of how he felt. The words rose, urgent and uncontainable, reaching for words fit to carry the depth of his affection — of his love —