Page 42 of A Family Bargain with the Duke

“Ashvale, allow me to present Sir Edmund Vane.”

“Your Grace.” Vane’s bow was correct in every way, his smile warm, his voice pleasant, and yet something in the careful precision of the gesture unsettled Louisa before he had said a single further word. “I knew your father some years before his passing. A great man. I am glad to see the title in such capable hands.”

“You are kind, Sir Edmund.”

“And this must be the new Duchess I have heard so much about.” Vane turned his attention to Louisa, his small, shrewd eyes moving over her with a swift, assessing thoroughness that reminded her uncomfortably of a man appraising a horse he had not yet decided whether to purchase. “Charming. I understand you have worked something of a miracle with the young ward. All of London speaks of it.”

“I have done very little beyond listen properly, Sir Edmund. Kit did the rest of the work himself.”

“How admirably modest.” His smile did not waver, though something behind his eyes seemed to file the answer away for later use rather than accept it at face value. “I confess I find modesty a rare quality these days, particularly among young women who have accomplished something worth boasting of.”

Louisa returned his smile with one of her own, equally correct, equally practiced, and found herself disliking him more with every polished sentence he offered, though in that moment she could not have named precisely why.

The evening wore on pleasantly enough after that. Louisa, drawn into conversation with Lady Rosemere and several other guests, danced once with Julian and once with Rosemere’s eldest son, out of politeness.

It was only near the evening’s end, as she gathered her shawl and searched the room for her husband, that she spotted him standing near an alcove window with Vane, the two men’s heads bent close together in a conversation clearly not meant for the general room.

She did not approach. Instead, she watched from a discreet distance as Vane spoke, low and urgent, and Julian’s expression, usually so carefully composed, darkened by degrees into something she had not yet seen him wear.

Neither man smiled. The exchange lasted only a few minutes, brief and clipped, before Vane inclined his head in something that was not quite a bow and withdrew toward the card room.

Julian lingered by the window a moment longer, his jaw set, before crossing the room to find her.

“Are you ready to go home?”

“Whenever you wish, Your Grace.” She studied his face, the careful blankness he had drawn back over whatever had passed between him and Vane. “Though I confess I noticed you speaking with Sir Edmund rather seriously, for a man who claims to have very little use for him.”

“It was nothing of consequence.”

“You do not look like a man who has just discussed nothing of consequence.”

Julian said nothing further until they had made their farewells and settled into the carriage, the door closed against the cold night air, the horses taking them back to Ashvale.

CHAPTER 20

“You have been quiet the entire drive,” Louisa noted, watching him across the carriage, his face half in shadow, half caught in the passing lamplight from the estate gates. “Is something wrong?”

Julian was quiet a moment longer, his hands loosely clasped, and Louisa kept watching him, her brow furrowed. He didn’t know how much he could say, but he was very reluctant to keep it from her nonetheless.

“Vane warned me about Thomas Whitmore,” he said finally.

“I do not know the name.”

“His father was a business partner of mine some years ago. A wealthy investor. My father spread false information that ruined him entirely.” His jaw tightened. “Whitmore lost everything. He died some years later, and his son has apparently spent considerable time since trying to clear his father’s name.”

“And Vane came to warn you of this tonight, of all nights.”

“He told me that Thomas Whitmore had recently come into possession of letters. Correspondence, he claimed, that proved his father’s innocence and implicated my father in the ruin. He means to make it public.” Julian’s eyes met hers in the shifting light. “Vane urged me to use whatever influence I have to discredit the man before the story spreads. To protect the family name, as he put it, before Whitmore ever gets the chance to speak.”

“What did you tell him?”

“That I would not condemn a man I have never met on the word of another man I trust less than I ought to admit in polite company.” Something grim entered his voice. “Vane did not care for that answer. Before he left, he warned me that if I would not protect my family name, I would come to regret it.”

Louisa listened without interrupting, and found herself considerably less troubled by the threat itself than by the manner of the man who had delivered it.

“If Sir Edmund is so determined to silence this Thomas Whitmore before anyone hears a word of what he has to say,” she said slowly, “then I wonder whether he has something more pressing to hide than simple family loyalty.”

Julian was quiet for a moment. It was definitely a recurring thought.