Page 56 of A Family Bargain with the Duke

Neither of them spoke again. There seemed remarkably little need. The orchestra carried them through the final figures, each turn drawing out the silence between them until it felt less like an absence of conversation and more like a conversation all its own.

When the music finally came to a close, Julian bowed. His hand remained around hers a second longer, before he let it go with visible reluctance. Louisa found, to her annoyance, that she missed its warmth almost at once.

The carriage ride home passed mostly in comfortable silence, both of them, Louisa suspected, replaying the evening.

When they arrived at Ashvale Park, Julian handed her down and walked with her to the foot of the great staircase, as he always did.

The house had long since settled for the night. Only a single candle burned on the hall table, its flame throwing soft gold across the marble floor and leaving the upper reaches of the staircase in shadow.

“Goodnight, Your Grace.”

“Goodnight, Louisa.”

She should have climbed the stairs. Instead, she found herself lingering. And so did he.

The silence between them was not uncomfortable. It was simply… full.

She suddenly became aware that his hand had left hers. The warmth of his glove seemed to linger on her fingers, absurdly vivid for so fleeting a touch.

Julian did not move, and neither did she. He was looking at her with the same quiet focus he had worn throughout the dance.

Quite without permission, Louisa’s gaze drifted lower. The knot of his cravat remained as impeccably arranged as it had been when they’d left the house, but a lock of dark hair had escaped near his temple sometime during the evening, softening the severe lines of his face. She felt the strangest, most irrational urge to smooth it back into place.

Good heavens.

Her eyes lifted again to find him still watching her. There was nothing improper in his expression, and yet it made her pulse stumble all the same.

She became painfully aware of the quiet rise and fall of his chest, of how close they still stood in the empty hall, of the way the candlelight caught the green of his eyes and warmed it into something altogether softer than daylight ever allowed.

He drew the shortest breath, almost as though he meant to speak, but he did not.

Neither of them looked away.

Louisa felt as if the house had fallen away around them, leaving only the two of them suspended in that pool of candlelight, neither willing to be the first to break whatever this was. It frightened her. Not because she wished to leave, but because she did not.

At last, she lowered her eyes.

“Goodnight,” she whispered again.

His answer came just as quietly. “Goodnight, Louisa.”

She turned before she could lose the resolve to do so and began climbing the stairs. She had reached the landing before curiosity overcame good sense.

Against every instinct, she looked back. Julian had not moved. He was standing exactly where she had left him, one hand resting lightly on the newel post, his gaze still fixed on her.

The sight of him there made something warm and dangerous unfurl in her chest. She slipped quickly out of sight before her face could betray her.

She sat beside Eleanor’s cradle a long while that night before retiring to her own bed, the baby sleeping soundly, the nursery washed in moonlight. She tried very hard to think about anything other than the evening, but to no avail.

It was not the ballroom she remembered most clearly, nor the music, nor the conversation. It was the feel of Julian’s hand on her waist, impossibly careful and yet impossibly steady, guiding her through each turn as though she were something precious entrusted to his keeping.

It was the way he had looked at her when she was speaking and when she wasn’t, his attention never seeming to wander for long before returning to her again.

And, most persistently of all, it was that final moment in the hall. The unmistakable feeling that had he spoken her name once more in that same quiet voice, she might have forgotten every sensible reason she had ever possessed.

It was only a dance. There was nothing remarkable about it. Nothing at all.

The thought ought to have comforted her. Instead, it only made one fact increasingly impossible to ignore: it had never felt like only a dance.