Page 62 of Forget Me Not

Julia didn’t meet his eye, but she also didn’t resume her flight. He crossed to her, Pooka at his side.

Lucas took her hand. “Please tell me what’s upset you.”

“I’m not upset.”

“Julia,” he said gently.

She looked at him at last. Hers was the look of one drowning in worries. “I’m so overwhelmed. Everything has changed so quickly. I can’t find my footing. I can’t catch my breath. It’s too much, Lucas.”

He slipped his hand out of hers and wrapped his arms around her. “Sweeting.”

She leaned into his embrace, and his heart flipped over in his chest.

“I’m exhausted, Lucas.” She moved a little in his arms, not pulling away but resting her cheek against his blue silk coat. “Everything happened without warning, without time to adjust. I feel like I’m losing every battle.”

“You can claim victory in one extremely crucial battle,” he said.

From within his embrace, she asked, “Which one?”

“It has been weeks since I last powdered my hair.”

He could feel her quiet laughter. Holding her as he was, knowing she was happy, at least for the moment, filled him with a sense of joy unlike any he’d felt before.

“If only we can convince Grumpy Uncle and the King to forgo hair powders,” she said.

He rubbed his hand in circles over her back, hoping the gesture would prove soothing. Could ladies even feel such things through the many layers of clothing they were required to wear? “Do you remember when you were five or six years old and you and Charlotte joined Stanley, Harriet, James, and me at the giant rock by the river, and you were so frightened by a tiny spider scurrying across the rock that you jumped into my lap with your jam-covered hands and face?”

“We met on our rock often,” she said. “I don’t remember that specific time.”

“Stanley was going to kill the spider, but little Harriet started crying and insisting it would be unkind to kill it. So he moved it to a nearby tree while Harriet and Charlotte cheered him on.”

“What did you receive for your heroic efforts?” she asked.

“Jam stains on my greatcoat.” He laughed lightly. “And the sweetest thank you I’ve ever received. You even kissed my cheek. Though I was only fourteen years old, I felt one hundred feet tall.”

He had held her many times over the years, when she’d been afraid or excited or grieving. And now, as he was holding this grown-up version of her, he foundshewas soothinghim. How tempting it was to simply never let her go.

“You held me like this after Charlotte died.”

He kissed the top of her head. “I didn’t know what else to do. Nothing I thought of would have helped.”

“It helped,” she said.

He leaned back a little to look down at her. “Is it helping now?”

She looked up, offering a tentative smile. “It is.”

“Any time you need an embrace, Julia, any time you need me to hold you, I will do so without hesitation.”

A pleading quality entered her gaze. “Do you promise?”

“I give you my word.”

She rose up on her toes and pressed a kiss to his cheek, just as she had that long-ago day on their rock. This time, however, he didn’t strut about feeling proud of himself. Instead, he kept her close, his hands splaying across her back. Her breath tiptoed warm over his jaw. He turned his face the tiniest bit toward her. Mere inches separated them, less perhaps.

But she moved again, laying her head against his chest. She could probably hear the pounding of his heart.

“Julia,” he whispered.

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