Page 25 of A Family Bargain with the Duke

Simmons withdrew, and Julian returned to his letters, though his attention kept drifting toward the ceiling above him, toward the room where an infant not his own by blood now slept, toward the boy somewhere in the stables who was likely already elbow-deep in Rosalind’s grooming.

Everything feels different this morning, he thought, buttering a piece of toast he had no appetite for. And I cannot determine the exact reason, beyond the obvious fact that there is now a baby sleeping two floors above my breakfast table and a wife sleeping considerably closer than that.

“Did you say something, Your Grace?”

Julian looked up. A footman stood near the door, an inquisitive expression on his face, clearly under the impression he had just been addressed.

“No. Nothing. My apologies, John.”

“Of course, Your Grace.” The footman withdrew, though not without a small, curious glance over his shoulder.

Alone again, Julian realized with faint embarrassment that he had voiced a part of that thought without meaning to. He could not recall exactly which part.

He set down his toast.

I must be more careful. A duke who voices his thoughts in front of the staff will very quickly become a duke the staff finds too interesting.

He finished his coffee, gathered his letters, and made his way to the stables before his study, as he always did, though this morning the errand felt less like a habit and more like something he actually wished to do.

“Good morning, Kit.”

The boy did not look up from where he stood brushing down his mare, his dark head bent over the work with the same absorbed concentration Julian had come to expect, the same wall standing exactly where it had stood the day before and the one before it.

“I trust Rosalind is behaving herself this morning.”

Nothing. The brush moved on, steady, unhurried.

“Your new tutor—” Julian caught himself. “The Duchess. She tells me she means to begin your lessons today. I understand some of them may be conducted here, in the stables, rather than the schoolroom, if that suits you better.”

Kit’s hand paused briefly over the mare’s flank, the same small hesitation Julian had learned to notice and had learned, just as quickly, not to hope too much from. Then the brush resumed its steady motion, and the boy gave no further sign.

After another moment of standing in the doorway waiting for something that would not come, Julian nodded to himself and withdrew.

One day at a time, he reminded himself, walking the short distance back to the house. She told me as much herself. There is no hurry.

His study, when he reached it, offered its usual quiet, the fire already laid. Julian settled behind it with the intention of losing himself in estate business for the better part of the morning, as he had done nearly every morning for the past three years.

Instead, his mind wandered to Daniel.

Elizabeth had never truly recovered. In the year after the accident, she had faded from a woman of warmth and laughter into a quiet shadow wandering her own house until she finally died. Julian had watched it happen and understood that love could leave a wound no passage of time was guaranteed to heal.

He stared at the letter in front of him without reading a single word of it.

Kit lost two parents. His father to an accident no one could have prevented. And his mother, in every way that mattered, to a grief so complete it left nothing of her behind for him to hold onto.

He had made himself a promise in the year following their deaths, standing alone in this room with a boy upstairs who would not speak and his friend’s grave still fresh in the churchyard, that he would never allow himself to love a woman so much that her loss, or his, could destroy either of them the way Daniel’s death had destroyed Elizabeth.

He would be steady. Reliable. A man who gave protection and respect in equal measure, and asked for nothing beyond it, because nothing beyond it could ever be safely lost.

I will be a good husband to Louisa, and I will protect her. I will respect her, as I have promised. I will keep every line of that agreement to the letter, for as long as we both shall live. Nothing more than that. Nothing that could ever cost either of us what Daniel’s death cost Elizabeth.

The resolution settled over him with familiar, steadying weight.

“Your Grace? Might I have a moment?”

Julian looked up.

Louisa stood in the doorway, a small stack of papers in her hands. Her hair was dressed simply this morning, a single loose curl escaping at her temple that she had not troubled to brush back. She seemed absorbed in whatever figures she carried, a faint furrow between her eyebrows.