Page 18 of A Family Bargain with the Duke

“She has an excellent guardian, is what she has.” Lady Henswick rose, pressing a kiss to Louisa’s temple, then bending lower to press a second, gentler one to the crown of Eleanor’s head, her lips lingering there a moment. “Whatever tomorrow brings, Louisa, and whatever this marriage turns out to be, I want you to know that Eleanor is fortunate beyond measure to have found someone who keeps her word, however much it costs her. Not every child born into difficult circumstances is lucky enough to be claimed so fiercely.”

“I only did what anyone would have done.”

“No.” Lady Henswick straightened, drawing her shawl close again, and looked down at her daughter with an expression that held no room for argument. “You did what very few would have done, and fewer still would have kept doing day after day, without once complaining about the cost. Do not diminish it simply because it frightens you to hear it said out loud.”

She turned toward the door, then paused there, one hand pressed against the frame, and looked back.

“Sleep, if you can manage it tonight,” she urged. “Tomorrow will ask a great deal of you, and you will want your wits about you for it.”

“I will try.”

“That is all any of us can do.” Lady Henswick’s smile was softer now, private, meant only for her. “Goodnight, my darling girl.”

“Goodnight, Mother.”

The door clicked shut behind her, and her footsteps faded down the corridor, leaving Louisa alone with the fire burning low in the grate and Eleanor’s fist still curled, warm and trusting, around her finger.

She sat for a long while without moving, listening to the house settle into its nighttime quiet around her—the distant creak of a floorboard, the low murmur of her father’s voice somewhere below, the wind finding the edges of the windowpane.

“Tomorrow,” she murmured, bending to press a kiss to Eleanor’s warm forehead, “we begin a new life together. You and I, and Kit, and a duke who has promised, in his own hand, to keep us all safe.”

She smoothed a wisp of dark hair back from the baby’s face, watching her sleep, that small unbothered face entirely unaware of everything her guardian had risked and reasoned and argued her way through to bring them both to this night.

“I hope,” she said, quieter still, the words meant for no one but the sleeping child and the empty room, “that I am making the right choice for you.”

Eleanor slept on, entirely untroubled, her small fingers loosening at last around Louisa’s.

Louisa sat with her a long while yet, rocking gently, though there was no longer any need for it, before finally rising and laying her down in the cradle for the night.

CHAPTER 9

“That grimace does not suit you, Julian. You look as though you are about to be sentenced rather than married.”

“Thank you, Dominic. Immensely reassuring, as always.”

“I only observe what I see.” Dominic straightened Julian’s cravat with more familiarity than the moment strictly called for, standing beside him at the altar in the small space reserved for the groom’s closest friend. “Most men manage at least the appearance of pleasure on their wedding day.”

“Maybe because most men are not marrying a woman they met a fortnight ago for the sake of a mute eight-year-old and an infant not her own by blood.”

“No,” Dominic agreed, dropping his hands and stepping back to survey his work. “Though why I expected you to look considerably more terrified than you presently do, I do not know. I find myself almost disappointed by your composure.”

“I am not terrified.”

“You have checked that door four times in the last two minutes. Surely you are not about to flee.” Dominic leaned closer to him, and Julian wanted to shoo him away.

He did not check the door a fifth time, though the urge remained.

The church was small, chosen deliberately for its size, filled with perhaps thirty guests rather than the hundreds his rank might have commanded. Louisa’s family occupied the front pew. Her friend sat beside her mother, twisting her gloves with poorly concealed excitement, while two others sat with teary eyes. Piers sat two rows back, grinning at Julian with the delight of a younger brother who considered his elder’s discomfort the finest entertainment London currently offered.

“Kit is here,” Dominic said more quietly, nodding toward where the boy sat beside Piers, sketchbook closed on his lap for once, his dark head bent low.

“I know.”

“He came willingly. That is no small thing.”

“No,” Julian agreed. He felt something in his chest tighten at the sight of the boy, small and solemn in his good coat, present at a wedding ceremony he could not have understood the full weight of, and yet here regardless. “It is not.”

Is this the right thing?