Page 62 of A Family Bargain with the Duke

The carriage ride back to Ashvale Park gave her rather too much time to decide how to tell him. She rehearsed several versions of the conversation in her head, discarded each one, then began again. Every attempt seemed either too cautious or far too alarming.

By the time the carriage rolled through the gates a little past noon, she had settled on the simplest course.

I will tell him everything.

She found Julian in his study, as she had expected, correspondence spread across his desk and several unopened letters waiting at his elbow. He looked up at the creak of the door.

His expression softened when he saw her, so subtle that another person might have missed it entirely. Louisa did not.

He had missed her.

The realization touched her more deeply than she had expected, and for one brief moment, she nearly forgot the carefully arranged words waiting in her mind.

“You are back sooner than I expected,” he noted.

“I wished to come home.” She crossed the room and settled into the chair opposite his desk, gathering her thoughts. He watched her with an attentiveness that made the coming confession considerably harder than it should be. “Your Grace, I must tell you something, and I would rather you heard it from me directly than piece it together some other way.”

“You sound as though you are bracing for something. Should I be worried?”

“I am bracing for something, indeed.” She drew in a slow breath. “I did not go to Henswick House merely to see my parents. My father wrote to say that he had located Thomas Whitmore and believed him an honest man. He had arranged for him to dine at Henswick House so I might judge his character for myself. I went to meet him last evening. My father and mother were present.”

Julian went very still, his expression shifting from ease into something considerably more guarded. “You met Thomas Whitmore.”

“I did.”

“Without telling me.”

“I did not think you would allow it if I asked beforehand.”

“You did not think I would allow it.” Julian rose from his chair and rounded the desk. “Louisa, you met a man neither of us had ever encountered, to discuss the very matter Vane has threatened to turn against this family, and you gave me no chance to even know it was happening.”

“I gave myself the chance to judge him fairly, without your presence coloring the meeting or his account. And I trust my judgment of his character, Your Grace. He showed me letters that had been in his father’s solicitor’s keeping these past fifteen years, proving your father deliberately ruined an innocent man with Vane’s full knowledge and assistance.”

“That is not the point I am making.”

“Then what is your point, precisely, since you seem determined to make one regardless of what I accomplished by going?”

“My point,” Julian said, his voice rising for the first time since their marriage, “is that you walked into a meeting with a stranger whose grievance against my family runs fifteen years deep, without a single soul present who could have protected you had that grievance turned in a direction neither of us anticipated.”

“My father was present.”

“Your father is sixty years old and has never held a sword in his life, Louisa, whatever fine qualities he otherwise possesses.”

“I was in no danger. Thomas Whitmore wants nothing but his father’s name cleared. I judged that within the first quarter hour of speaking with him, and I was entirely correct.”

“You could not have known that before you arrived.”

“I trusted my own judgment.”

“I have never once doubted your judgment.” His hands had curled slightly at his sides, some restrained energy in them that had nothing to do with anger at her disobedience and everything to do with something else she had not yet properly named. “I doubt the danger you walked into blind, Louisa, not your ability to read a man’s character once you were safely standing in front of him.”

“Then what would you have had me do? Wait for your permission and lose whatever chance we had to learn the truth before Vane found some way to bury it?”

“I would have come with you.”

“You would have tried to stop me from going.”

“I would have stood beside you.” His voice was quieter now, though no less firm. “Not to prevent you, Louisa. But to be there, in case whatever waited in that meeting proved less honest than you hoped. I had no say in any of it because you gave me no chance to have one.”