Page 26 of A Mother for the Blind Duke’s Orphans

“It has always been that way.” Julia’s voice had dropped, and Poppy knew her sister had gone somewhere in memory.

Three years earlier, Julia had been willing to give up more than anyone had asked. And she had done it so naturally that only afterward had others named it sacrifice.

Poppy remembered everything, and if the Duke of Pridewell had not fallen in love with Julia, she would have never forgiven herself. That was why she refused to look at her sister then. It was easier to face the mirror than her sister’s tenderness.

“This time, I am marrying a duke,” she said more to herself than to anyone else. “There are worse fates than that.”

“Ah, yes, a mysterious, icy duke who struck a deal with you. All will go well.” Julia winked at her, and Poppy felt a knot tie in the pit of her stomach.

“A mysterious and icy duke is still a duke,” she said on a breath.

“With a cane and eyes that look as if they could freeze tea in the cup.”

Poppy’s lips twitched. Hector’s very light gray eyes had been impossible to forget. So had the cane he always carried, and the controlled way he inhabited a room, as if he had long ago made a treaty with distance and expected everyone else to honor it.

He was distractingly tall, strong, dark-haired, and colder in manner than any man had a right to be while asking a woman to marry him. If asking was what one called it. Poppy did not know how she felt about him. Her pulse fluttered frantically around him, and her skin seemed to catch alight whenever he was near. He unsettled her in the most fascinating ways.

“I am not certain if he is a cruel man or not,” Poppy said, deep in thought.

“I did not say he was cruel,” Julia countered, not bothering to hide the smile that crept up on her face.

“I stand by icy.” Poppy folded her hands. “Ice is just…cold.”

“Yes, and it is difficult to embrace,” she pointed out.

“I am not marrying him in order to embrace him.” Poppy shot back and felt her face heat up as she thought of the duke holding her.

Julia made a sound that might have been amusement if it had not contained worry. “That is perhaps the saddest defense of marriage I have heard.”

Poppy exhaled. The wedding gown rose and fell with the breath, reminding her that the dress was real, that in a few minutes the church would be real too and Hector would be waiting with his cane and his unreadable face. After the vows, she would have a husband and belong to a household where Aurora and Princess lived.

It had to be enough.

Thomas had overturned the empty box and now sat inside it, pleased beyond measure by his own invention. Julia looked at him again, and this time she did not turn away quickly. Poppy watched her watching him. The room seemed to quiet around that glance, though Thomas was still babbling to himself and crumpling ribbon in his hands.

Julia’s expression altered slowly, as if some argument in her had met a fact it could not defeat.

“If you feel even a quarter of what I feel for him,” Julia said, eyes still on her son, “toward those two little girls, then perhaps you are right.”

Poppy swallowed.

“Perhaps there was never really a choice,” Julia finished.

The acknowledgment loosened something in Poppy’s chest, though it did not make the future less frightening. It only made the fear less lonely.

Julia turned back to her. “But I will still rescue you if necessary.”

“I know.”

“And I mean it.”

“I know that, too.” She truly knew how far her sister would go for her.

Thomas began trying to stand inside the box. It buckled under him, and Julia crossed the room in two efficient strides, lifting him out before disaster could fully bloom. He protested, delighted rather than offended, and immediately reached for the ribbon again.

“No,” Julia told him. “You have conquered enough territory.”

He laughed in her face.