Page 86 of A Family Bargain with the Duke

Louisa’s eyes stung, tracing the careful, deliberate lines of Kit’s charcoal, four figures standing close together, none of them apart from the others.

“He drew us as a family,” she said softly, “before we had properly agreed to be one.”

“He did.” Julian’s hand found hers, warm and certain. “I do not know that I have ever been more grateful for anyone’s stubbornness in my life.”

She laced her fingers through his, and they stood a long moment in comfortable silence, the drawing held between them, the fire crackling low.

“Do you remember what Kitsaid to me, the day I refused to explain it properly?”

“I do not believe you have ever told me what Kitsaid.”

“He asked exactly what I was trying to protect you from? And when I told him this was the arrangement you had asked for, he pointed at this very drawing and told me that Kit clearly saw something more.” His thumb absently stroked her knuckles. “I told him to leave the matter alone. Now, I wish I had listened to him sooner than I did.”

“You listened eventually. That is what matters most, I think.”

“Eventually is rather a generous word for how long it took me.”

“I was not especially quick about it myself, Julian. We were both determined fools.”

“Determined fools who arrived at the truth in the end.” He tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear, the gesture achingly familiar now. “I hope,” he added, something almost shy entering his voice, entirely unfamiliar on a man she had never once known to hesitate about anything, “that one day he will need a bigger piece of paper.”

Louisa looked up at him. “Do you?”

“If that is what you want.” His eyes held hers steadily, searching, his whole heart plainly offered. “I find I want a great many things now that I once told myself I could not afford to want. A larger family is rather high among them, provided it is what you wish for as well.”

Louisa stepped closer, close enough that the drawing rustled gently between them, and reached up to press her palm against his jaw, feeling the warmth of him beneath her hand.

“It is what I want,” she murmured. “A house full of drawings too large for any single sheet of paper to properly hold. Kit teaching a new brother or sister to sign before they can even walk. Eleanor banging her spoon against a table more crowded than it was tonight.”

“That is a very ambitious vision, Duchess.”

“I have always been ambitious, Your Grace. You knew that the very first afternoon I proposed marriage to you.”

“I did know that. I have never once regretted it since.” He drew her against him, his forehead resting gently against hers. “I love you, Louisa. Entirely, and without a single reservation left standing between us.”

“I love you too.”

She kissed him, soft and certain, sealing the promise between them. The fire burned low and golden around them, and their small, hard-won family slept peacefully upstairs, exactly where they belonged, with room enough for whatever came next.

EPILOGUE

EIGHT MONTHS LATER

“Faster, Rosalind! Faster than that! Surely, you have done better on a lazier morning than this one!”

Louisa looked up from the blanket at the sound of Kit’s voice, clear and delighted, carrying across the lawn from where he sat astride Rosalind at the paddock’s edge. She felt the same small, astonished catch in her chest that had not yet worn thin, eight months on, at the ordinary miracle of hearing him speak aloud.

“He has grown rather bold with her lately,” she noted as Julian settled onto the blanket beside her, Eleanor already toddling determinedly toward a patch of clover a few feet away, one hand wrapped around a fallen leaf she seemed to consider a great prize.

“He has grown bold with everyone lately. Mrs. Whitfield informs me that he corrected her yesterday on the proper method of polishing silver, at considerable length, and with what she described as ‘entirely too much confidence for a boy of nine.’”

“He learned that confidence somewhere, Julian.”

“I could not possibly imagine where.”

Eleanor, having conquered the leaf, abandoned it immediately in favor of crawling determinedly toward her father instead. Julian scooped her up before she could reach the edge of the blanket, settling her against his chest with the same easy, practiced competence he had carried since her infancy. Though she was rather less an infant now, walking in unsteady, delighted bursts whenever she judged the ground sufficiently interesting.

“You look tired,” he said, studying Louisa’s face with close attention that she had come to rely on more than she liked to admit. “Did you sleep poorly again?”