Page 3 of A Family Bargain with the Duke

Lady Henswick appeared in the hallway with the speed of a mother who had heard the word letter from two rooms away. “Who has written?”

“I have not the faintest idea.” Louisa broke the seal and unfolded the thick paper. Her eyes moved down the page, and her eyebrows climbed with them. “Well…”

“Well, what?” Lord Henswick had emerged from his study, drawn by the same instinct as his wife, and now stood in the doorway with the look of someone bracing for further inconvenience. “Louisa, well, what?”

“It’s from the Duke of Ashvale.”

The hallway went very still.

“The Duke of Ashvale,” Lord Henswick repeated, as though the title might rearrange itself into something more sensible on a second hearing. “Writing to you.”

“That does appear to be what has happened, yes.”

“Why on earth would the Duke of Ashvale write to you?” Lady Henswick’s curiosity had sharpened into an expression closer to bewilderment. “You have never so much as danced with the man. I am not certain you have ever been in the same room as him.”

“I have not.” Louisa’s eyes moved further down the page, and her voice, when it came again, had lost some of its teasing edge. “He says he has heard that I am fluent in sign language.”

“Sign language.” Lord Henswick said the words as though they belonged to some private eccentricity of his daughter’s that he had long since stopped attempting to explain to guests. “What does that have to do with the Duke?”

“He has a ward.” Louisa read on, her thumb pressed to the corner of the page. “A boy. He says the child has not spoken since his father died some years past. Every tutor and physician has failed to reach him.” She looked up briefly, something flickering behind her eyes that was not quite surprise and not quite recognition, but sat somewhere close to both. “He wonders whether I might be persuaded to meet with him, to discuss an arrangement.”

“An arrangement.” Lord Henswick’s voice rose a full octave. “What manner of arrangement does a duke propose to an unmarried woman he has never met?”

“I have not the least idea, Father, as I have not yet finished reading the letter.”

“Then finish it,” Lady Henswick said, “before your father expires from suspense in the hallway.”

Louisa read on. The Duke’s hand was precise, unhurried, the sentences constructed with the same economy she imagined he brought to everything else in his life. A man who wasted nothing, least of all words. He mentioned that the boy’s name was Christopher, that he was called Kit, that he was eight years old and that he had not spoken a single word since witnessing his father’s death three years ago.

He explained, briefly and without excessive sentiment, that governesses had come and gone, that physicians had offered opinions and little else, and that a mutual acquaintance had mentioned a young woman fluent in sign language who might succeed where so many had not.

He does not beg, Louisa noted privately, with something close to admiration. A lesser man would have padded three paragraphs with flattery before asking anything at all. This one simply states the challenge and waits to see if I am up to it.

She rather liked that, whoever he was.

“He wishes to meet at his townhouse in London,” she said aloud, “to discuss the particulars in person.”

“Absolutely not,” Lord Henswick scoffed, with the swift finality of a man who had until three minutes ago believed his day already contained sufficient difficulty. “You will not call on a duke, unmarried and unchaperoned, over some arrangement he declines to explain in writing.”

“He does explain it, Father. He simply has not finished explaining before I have finished reading, which tends to happen when one interrupts a letter every third sentence.”

“Louisa.”

“Father, I am reading as fast as you will permit me.” She dropped her eyes back to the page, and her voice, when she found the final lines, went quieter, more careful, as though she wanted to be certain she had not misread them.

“I understand you may require something in return. I am prepared to listen,” she whispered, but everyone seemed to hear.

The hallway went silent again, differently this time. Even her father, mid-objection, seemed to lose the thread of whatever he had been about to say.

Louisa read the line a second time. Then a third.

He is offering to bargain with me.

The thought arrived with a small, unfamiliar jolt, something between wariness and interest.

Not asking me to help out of the goodness of my heart, not offering charity dressed up as employment. He has a need, and he has guessed correctly that I might have one too, and he is apparently prepared to hear mine before he decides whether it is worth his.

It was, Louisa reflected, the single most interesting sentence any man had ever written to her, and she had received four separate marriage proposals that contained considerably more words and considerably less sense.