Page 1 of A Family Bargain with the Duke

CHAPTER 1

“You cannot keep her, Louisa.”

Robert Everly, the Earl of Henswick, stood near the cold hearth, hands clasped behind his back in the posture he used for estate business and, apparently, for this.

Louisa stood across from him with Eleanor asleep against her shoulder, one small fist curled against the collar of her gown.

“I made a promise, Father,” she said.

“Promises made to a dying woman do not have to be kept.”

“Mine do.”

Her father’s jaw tightened. He was a patient man, ordinarily. He had endured her opinions at every dinner party since she turned sixteen, had weathered her refusals of four separate suitors without once raising his voice. But there was something in his face now that she had not seen before, something closer to fear than anger.

“Louisa.” He said her name the way he used to when she was small and had climbed somewhere she should not have. “Think for once, before you answer me. How do you intend to raise a child alone? Unmarried? What will you tell people when they ask whose baby you carry about on your hip?”

“I will tell them the truth. That her mother died and I gave my word.”

“Society does not care for the truth. Society cares for appearances, and a young unmarried woman raising another woman’s bastard will not be forgiven her sentiment, however noble you believe it to be.” He exhaled, dragging a hand down his face. “I am not without heart, Louisa. I grieve for Nell as you do. But you must think of your own future. What man will offer for you with an infant already in your arms?”

Louisa opened her mouth, but nothing came out.

She had an answer for everything. She always had. It was the thing people complained about most—her sharp tongue, her readiness to argue a point until her opponent surrendered from sheer exhaustion. But she stood there now with her father’s question hanging in the air, and for the first time in her life, she found herself at a loss for words.

She looked down at Eleanor instead. The baby slept on, oblivious, one cheek pressed to the muslin of Louisa’s sleeve, utterly unaware that the whole shape of her small life was being decided above her head by adults who loved her and did not know what to do with her.

Something in Louisa’s chest cracked.

She did not let it reach her face. She had spent twenty-five years learning to keep her face still when everything underneath it was not, and she called on that practice now, holding her chin level, refusing to let her father see what his question had done to her.

But her mother saw.

Lady Henswick rose from her chair by the window, where she had sat through the entire exchange with her hands folded in her lap and her eyes flicking between her husband and her daughter, watching a storm gather over water she could not calm. She crossed the room and laid a hand on Louisa’s arm, over Eleanor’s small back.

“We will find a way,” she promised.

It was such a small thing to say. It solved nothing. It answered none of her father’s questions, offered no name, no husband, no respectable explanation for the child in her arms. But Louisa felt her mother’s hand steady against her arm, and something in her chest, cracked as it was, held.

“Anne.” Her father’s voice had grown tired. “You cannot promise her that when neither of us knows what way there is to find.”

“Then we will find one together, and quickly,” Lady Henswick said, “because our daughter has already decided, and I would rather help her succeed than watch her fail alone.”

Lord Henswick looked at his wife for a long moment. Then at his daughter. Then, briefly, at the sleeping child neither of them had asked for and both of them, Louisa suspected, already loved a little.

“I have business in the study,” he said finally, which was what he always said when he had run out of argument, and pride would not permit him to admit it. He crossed the room, paused at the door, and looked back at her. “I only want you settled, Louisa. Safe. Is that so great a crime?”

“No,” Louisa muttered. “It is not.”

He nodded once, as though that settled something, and left. The door clicked shut behind him with a softness that somehow felt louder than if he had slammed it.

Louisa stood very still in the silence that followed.

“He does not mean to be cruel,” Lady Henswick said.

“I know.” Louisa’s voice came out smaller than she had intended. She looked down at Eleanor again, at the small round face gone slack and peaceful in sleep, lashes dark against her cheeks, utterly untroubled by the argument that had just been fought over her future. “He only asks the question I cannot answer.”

“Which question is that?”