Page 43 of A Family Bargain with the Duke

“The idea has crossed my mind,” he admitted.

“Then we shall make certain we learn the truth of it ourselves, before anyone else decides it for us.”

Julian looked at her for a long moment, the carriage rattling on through the dark, and found the word settling in his chest with a weight far beyond what so small a word ought to carry.

We. Not I will look into it, not you needn’t concern yourself, but we, offered so plainly, so immediately, as though there had never been a question of facing it alone.

He had spent the better part of three years, since Daniel’s death, building his full understanding of himself around the certainty that he managed difficulty by himself, that no one else’s shoulder was meant to bear any part of what belonged to the Cavendish name.

He had not expected, hearing that single small word from his wife’s mouth in the dark of a moving carriage, to feel thoroughly undone by it.

Keeping my distance from her, he thought, watching her face in the passing lamplight, steady and certain and already turning over the problem as though it were as much hers to solve as his, was never going to be so simple as I once believed it could be.

* * *

Sleep would not come.

Louisa had tried every remedy she knew. She tried warm milk sent up by a sympathetic Mrs. Whitfield, the same three chapters of a novel she’d already read twice this month, even counting the small familiar creaks of Ashvale settling around her.

Past midnight, she found herself giving up the pretense entirely and pulling on her dressing gown over her night rail instead, some vague notion of fetching a book from the library driving her out into the dark corridor.

She had scarcely gone ten steps when she nearly collided with Julian, similarly dressed for sleep and apparently similarly failing at it, a single candle in his hand throwing long shadows up the walls.

“Your Grace.” She gasped and pressed a hand briefly to her chest, startled. “I did not expect to find anyone wandering the halls at this hour.”

“Nor did I, though I confess I should have guessed, given how thoroughly your mind seemed occupied at supper.” Julian’s eyes moved over her, taking in her dressing gown, the loose fall of her hair over her shoulder, and his expression shifted, brief and quickly masked, though not quickly enough to escape her notice. “Vane’s warning, I imagine, keeping you from sleep as thoroughly as it has kept me.”

“Among other things.” Louisa drew her dressing gown a little closer, suddenly conscious of how underdressed she was. “I was going to fetch something to read. I find idle hands invite idle worry, and a book at least gives the worry somewhere useful to go.”

“A sound philosophy. Though I confess my own remedy tends toward pacing rather than reading, which accomplishes considerably less and tires me out considerably more.”

“Pacing where, exactly? I have never once seen you pace anything, Your Grace. You strike me as a man who sits very still and broods instead.”

“I resent that characterization.”

“Do you deny it?”

“I do not deny it. I merely resent that you have observed it so accurately.” A reluctant smile tugged at his mouth, visible even in the candlelight. “I have been walking the gallery, if you must know. Something about looking at all those disapproving Cavendish ancestors reliably distracts me from whatever is actually troubling me. I often wonder which of them would have most disapproved of me, and it is remarkably effective at driving out lesser worries.”

Louisa laughed, softer than she had intended, the sound carrying oddly in the sleeping house. “And who wins that contest?”

“My great-grandfather, without question. He is rendered in a coat so aggressively unfashionable that I cannot look at it without losing my train of thought, and his expression suggests that he found the whole business of having his portrait painted a personal insult.”

“I should like to see this coat.”

“I will show you, if you truly wish it, though I warn you it may ruin your appetite for tomorrow’s breakfast.” He gestured, half invitation, half question, toward the gallery’s dark entrance.

Louisa found herself, despite every sensible instinct telling her to simply continue toward the library and leave well enough alone, falling into step beside him.

The gallery, lit only by his candle, held rows of dim, gilt-framed faces watching them pass, and Julian stopped before one particularly severe gentleman in an alarming shade of puce.

“There. Great-grandfather Cavendish. I believe he is glaring at me, though I have never managed to find out what I have done to earn it.”

“He does look rather put out.”

“He looks as though someone has just informed him the wine has gone off.” Julian tilted the candle, throwing his great-grandfather’s disapproving features into sharper relief. “When we were boys, Piers used to claim that the old man haunts the east wing on account of that coat, still furious no one ever properly appreciated it.”

“Does he haunt it?”