Page 16 of A Family Bargain with the Duke

“There is one condition missing.”

“Name it.”

“You must never try to change me.” She held his gaze steadily, unwilling to let the request soften into something apologetic. “Not in private, and not in company. I have rejected four proposals already, Your Grace, from men who admired my face well enough but wished for a quieter version of the rest of me. I will not enter a fifth arrangement only to discover, six months in, that I am expected to soften my opinions at dinner, or hold my tongue in company, or become a smaller, more convenient version of myself for the sake of your comfort. I would rather remain unmarried than agree to that, whatever it costs me and Eleanor.”

Julian was quiet for a moment, studying her with an attention that oddly felt less like assessment now and more like something closer to respect.

“I would not ask it of you,” he said slowly, “even if you had not required it in writing. I have no particular wish for a quiet wife, Lady Louisa. I have had a great many quiet people around me these three years, and I cannot say any of them have made my house better for it.” He reached for the pen resting beside the document. “But you are right to ask for it plainly, rather than trust my good intentions alone. Intentions are easily forgotten; a written promise considerably less so.”

He added the clause himself, his hand moving in the same precise script as the rest of the document, and then turned it toward her when he had finished so she might read the words in his own writing rather than merely take them on trust.

I will never attempt to change, quiet, or manage Lady Louisa’s character, in private or in company, and will consider any such attempt a breach of this agreement.

Louisa read it twice and felt something in her chest loosen that had been tight since the moment her father had first told her two days ago that promises made to a dying woman did not have to be kept.

“Thank you,” she said again, quieter this time.

“Shall we sign, then?”

“We shall.”

Julian dipped the pen and signed first, his signature bold and economical, and passed the pen to her without a word. Louisa took it and looked once more at the document before her, at Eleanor’s name protected in careful, deliberate ink, at her own name about to be joined to a stranger’s for reasons that had nothing to do with love and everything to do with promises kept.

She signed her name beneath his, her own hand steady, and set the pen down. “Well, I believe that makes us engaged, Your Grace.”

“It does.” Something almost like warmth moved behind his eyes, brief and unguarded, there and then folded carefully away again. “I find I am glad of it, Lady Louisa, whatever either of us might have expected to feel upon signing this document.”

“So am I,” she said, and found, turning the words over even as she spoke them, that she meant them more than she had expected.

CHAPTER 8

“Hush now. Hush, my love. There is nothing in this room that means you any harm, whatever you seem to think at this hour.”

Eleanor did not agree. She squirmed against Louisa’s shoulder, one small fist working free of the blanket to press against her own reddened cheek, and let out a thin, wavering cry that Louisa had learned over these last weeks meant nothing more serious than a stubborn refusal to surrender the day.

Louisa shifted her higher against her shoulder, resuming the slow rock of the chair with her heel against the floorboards, back and forth, back and forth, the rhythm as familiar to her now as her own pulse.

“You are entirely your mother’s daughter, do you know that?”

The crying gentled into fussing whimpers.

“Nell fought sleep the same way when we were girls.” Louisa pressed her lips briefly to the baby’s temple, breathing in the warm, milky scent of her. “Stayed up past every sensible hour reading by a single candle until her eyes ached, simply because she could not bear to let the day end before she was ready for it to.”

Eleanor’s small hand found the collar of Louisa’s gown and gripped it, her whimpers dissolving into something closer to a drowsy complaint.

“Tomorrow, I am to be married.” Louisa kept her tone low, conversational, the way she had taken to talking to the baby as though she understood every word, which she supposed, in some fashion beyond speech, the baby did. “By this time tomorrow evening, you will have a new place in the world. Eleanor, ward of the Duke of Ashvale. You will be under his protection.”

She smoothed one hand over the baby’s back, feeling the small shudder of a breath catching and then easing.

“Does that not sound very grand,” she murmured, “for someone who has only just learned to hold her own head up?”

Eleanor made a small sound that was not quite a laugh, and Louisa’s mouth curved despite the flutter of nerves in her belly, a knot she had been carrying about with her all week and had not yet found a moment quiet enough to properly examine.

“You need not worry over any of it.” She rocked on, slower now, feeling the small body against her shoulder growing heavier by degrees, the loosening of limbs that meant sleep was winning the battle at last. “I have seen to everything. He has signed his name to protecting you, in ink, in his own hand, and I do not believe him the sort of man who signs anything he does not intend to honor.”

She pressed another kiss to the crown of Eleanor’s head.

“I only hope,” she added, quieter still, mostly to herself now, “that I have chosen as wisely as I have told everyone I have.”