Page 41 of A Family Bargain with the Duke

“Good morning.”

Louisa’s breath caught, waiting to see what Julian would do with it.

Julian’s hands lifted in answer, careful, the shape not quite fluid but entirely correct, the sign Louisa herself had taught him the previous evenings in his study, patiently walking him through the angle of his wrist for the better part of an hour after supper.

“Good morning.”

Kit’s face broke into something close to a smile, quick and startled, and his hands moved again, a question this time. Louisa watched Julian’s brow furrow briefly in concentration before understanding dawned and he answered correctly, the sign for horse threaded through his response with rather more confidence than she had expected from a man who had, by his own admission, only begun practicing a fortnight ago.

Kit’s smile widened, and he turned back to Rosalind, apparently satisfied, resuming his quiet, one-sided conversation as though nothing remarkable had occurred.

Louisa stared at Julian in astonishment. “You have been practicing considerably more than you let on, Your Grace.”

“I have had a patient teacher.”

“I taught you three signs that evening. That was an entire conversation.”

“I may have continued a little after you retired.” Something almost sheepish crossed his face, quickly smoothed away. “I found I did not wish to let the momentum go to waste, now that the house has gone quiet again.”

Louisa studied him for a long moment, the quiet stables around them, the empty house behind them now that Piers and Catherine and Alaric and both boys had left, leaving Ashvale to its ordinary rhythm once more, and found herself entirely disarmed by the honesty of his answer.

“That is remarkably fast progress, for someone teaching himself from a physician’s hasty sketches.”

“I wanted to be ready when he was.”

Louisa looked at him for a long moment, and the slow smile that curved his mouth undid her.

She thought, unbidden, of the candlelight beneath his door the night before and of every careful reason she had given herself for walking away rather than knocking.

She thought of the quiet satisfaction in his voice just now, entirely without vanity, a man who had spent hours teaching himself a language for no reason beyond wanting to be ready the day his ward finally turned to speak with him directly.

A sensible woman would remember why she married. Louisa, she reminded herself, and found the thought had never felt quite so difficult to hold onto as it did standing there, watching him watch his ward with such quiet hope.

She said nothing further. She turned back toward the stables instead, toward Kit’s hands moving once more against Rosalind’s patient flank, and found herself entirely unable to remember, for the length of several unsteady heartbeats, precisely why she had ever believed practicality alone would be enough to satisfy either of them.

* * *

“You are going to worry that shawl into pieces before we ever reach the door, Louisa.”

“I am not worrying it. I am merely adjusting it.” Louisa smoothed the fringe once more despite herself, watching the lit windows of Rosemere Hall grow larger through the carriage window as the horses slowed toward the drive. “I have not attended a gathering of this size since the wedding, and I confess I have rather lost the habit of making conversation with people who are not either an eight-year-old boy or an infant.”

“You will manage admirably. By all accounts, you have never once failed to hold your own in a room.”

“That is not the same as wishing to.”

The carriage drew to a stop before the wide stone portico of Rosemere Hall, one of Ashvale’s neighboring estates, footmen already moving to open the door. Julian handed her down himself rather than waiting for their assistance, his hand warm and steady beneath hers, lingering perhaps a moment longer than it should before he released it.

Rosemere Hall was ablaze with candlelight, every window glowing gold against the early dark. Its owners had opened their home for one of the informal gatherings that regularly drew together the neighboring families of the district, the sound of a string quartet drifting through the open doors alongside the low murmur of perhaps sixty guests already assembled in the long drawing room.

Louisa took Julian’s arm as they climbed the steps, and felt, despite her earlier misgivings, the ease of moving into a room beside a man whose steadiness she had come to rely on more than she cared to examine these past weeks.

“Your Grace.” Their host, Lord Rosemere, met them just inside the door, a portly affable man who had known Julian’s father slightly and seemed determined to make up for the acquaintance’s brevity by talking at considerable length to the son. “And Her Grace. How well you both look. Married life clearly agrees with you.”

“You are very kind, My Lord.”

“Not kind at all, merely observant.” Rosemere beamed. “Come, come, several people are rather anxious to make your acquaintance, Duchess.”

The introductions blurred pleasantly into one another for the better part of an hour, names and titles Louisa did her best to fix in memory, until Rosemere steered them toward a cluster near the card room, where a tall, silver-haired gentleman stood accustomed to being deferred to in any room he entered.