Page 38 of A Family Bargain with the Duke

By half past ten, the last of the carriages had rolled away from Ashvale, Catherine and Alaric returning home with a sleeping Henry and Oliver, Lord Carwell following not long after. Only Piers remained.

Sleep had abandoned Julian entirely by the time the house clock struck one, and he had given up chasing it an hour before that, lying in the dark counting the familiar sounds of Ashvale settling around him rather than the sheep his old nurse had once advised.

He rose at last, pulled on his shirtsleeves over the linen he’d worn to bed, and took to wandering the darkened corridor instead, some restless energy in him he could not properly name nor settle, the same restlessness that had followed him more persistently these past weeks than he cared to admit.

He had nearly reached the end of the east corridor, intending to circle back toward the stairs and perhaps his study, when he noticed the nursery door standing slightly ajar, a thin line of candlelight spilling warm across the dark floorboards.

He paused, listening. No voice, no soft murmur of the wet nurse settling the child, no creak of the rocking chair. Only silence, the faint uneven creak of the house at night, and somewhere beneath it, so quiet he nearly missed it, the small even breathing of a sleeping infant.

He pushed the door open a little further.

The wet nurse’s chair stood empty beside the banked fire, a shawl left draped over its arm, a cup gone cold on the small table beside it, as though she had stepped out only a few minutes ago, called away by some minor household matter and expecting to return shortly.

The cradle stood alone in the candlelight, and Eleanor slept in it, one small fist curled against her cheek, her dark lashes still against skin gone rosy with sleep.

Julian crossed the room, his bare feet silent against the floorboards, some instinct drawing him toward the cradle rather than back out into the corridor.

He stood over her for a long moment, simply looking, the way he had found himself looking rather often these past weeks, at this small person who had arrived into his household sideways and had somehow become someone he thought of several times over the course of an ordinary day.

Eleanor stirred at his presence, a small frown creasing her face, one fist working loose from beneath her chin. Julian went still, holding his breath without meaning to, waiting to see whether he had woken her properly or merely disturbed her sleep.

A moment passed before her breathing evened out again, her frown smoothed, and she settled back into whatever dream occupied an infant of two months, entirely undisturbed.

He should have left then. There was no reason to remain. The child was soundly asleep, and the wet nurse would doubtless return within moments. And yet he found himself lowering into the chair beside the cradle instead, the fire’s low light catching the small, even rise and fall of Eleanor’s chest, and something in the quiet of the room held him there longer than good sense strictly recommended.

“You have settled in rather well,” he said quietly, more to himself than to her, though his eyes stayed on the sleeping infant. “Better than I had any right to expect, given how suddenly your whole world changed. A new house. A new name. A guardian who has no earthly idea, most days, whether he is managing any of this correctly or not.”

He reached out, adjusted the blanket where it had slipped from one small shoulder, his hand large and careful against the small warm weight of her, and found the gesture settled something in his chest, some quiet comfort in simply tending to her, however small the task.

“Your mother deserves a good husband.” The words came out slowly, testing themselves against the quiet of the room before he trusted them any further. He glanced toward the door, toward the corridor beyond it, as though half expecting to find someone listening, and found only darkness and silence. “I intend to be one. Whatever else this marriage is or is not, I mean to keep every promise I made to her. I will protect you both. I will see that you never want for a home, or a name, or anyone’s protection, for as long as I have breath in me.”

Eleanor slept on, one tiny hand twitching against the blanket.

Julian sat with the weight of his words a while longer, watching the candle gutter low against the draft from the window, his thoughts drifting, unbidden, toward places he generally took some care to avoid at this late an hour, when his defenses against them had grown thin with tiredness.

He thought of Daniel first, as he so often did in these quiet, unguarded moments—the ease of his laughter; the careless way he had loved Elizabeth, without reservation, without the careful management Julian had built his whole character around.

And then, as it always did, the thought drifted to what came after, to the woman Daniel had left behind.

“I cannot give her more than what we agreed on, though.” He said it low, almost reluctantly, his hand still resting against the blanket, as though confessing it to the sleeping child cost him something the words did not fully capture. “I have seen the cost of loving someone so completely, how losing them destroys everything you once were. I watched it happen to a woman I considered almost a sister in the year after her husband died, and I promised myself I would never risk putting anyone through such grief on my account. Not your mother. Not myself.” He drew in a slow breath, and found that the conviction did not sit quite as steadily as it once had, though he pushed the thought away before it could take root. “It is easier this way. Safer, for us both.”

He was quiet for a long moment after that, simply watching her breathe.

His thoughts drifted, as they so often had lately, toward Louisa. In only a few short weeks, she had made Ashvale Park feel considerably less hollow than it had seemed for most of his life.

He thought of her hand closing briefly around his wrist in his study, correcting the angle of a sign he had failed to make, and the ensuing awareness of every point where her fingers had met his skin.

Enough of that.

He returned his attention to the child.

Eleanor’s small mouth had gone slack in sleep, and Julian found himself smiling faintly despite the ache sitting low in his chest, despite the absurdity of unburdening himself so thoroughly to an infant who would remember none of it—not the promise, not the confession, and not the careful reasoning behind.

“One day, you will understand why,” he murmured, tucking the blanket properly around her shoulder, smoothing it with more care than the gesture strictly required, his thumb brushing once against her small curled fist. “I hope, when that day comes, you will not think less of me for it.”

The wet nurse’s footsteps sounded in the corridor beyond, unhurried, and Julian rose at once, straightening his shirt sleeves. He cast one final glance at the sleeping child before slipping out of the room, meeting the startled wet nurse in the doorway with a brief, unbothered nod, as though a duke checking on a sleeping infant at half past one in the morning were the most ordinary thing in the world.

“She stirred a little,” he said. “She has settled again now.”