Page 51 of A Family Bargain with the Duke

Dominic set his hat on his head before turning back. “One last thing.”

Julian raised an eyebrow in question.

Dominic smiled, though there was a trace of seriousness beneath it now. “I only say this because I count you as the closest thing to a brother I have, beyond Piers himself. I’d rather see you happy than correctly arranged, if the two should prove incompatible.”

Julian held his gaze for a moment before giving a quiet nod. “I know.”

Dominic returned the nod, satisfied with that much. “Good.”

He let himself out, pulling the door quietly shut behind him.

Julian remained where he was for several moments, listening to Dominic’s footsteps fade down the corridor. Only then did he return to his desk, the study seeming strangely still after his friend’s departure.

His eyes found the drawing once more. He reached for it at last and studied it properly, the way he had avoided doing all morning.

Kit had drawn them exactly as Dominic described, without hesitation. Four figures, close together, none of them apart from the others, Kit’s small self tucked in at Louisa’s side as naturally as if he had always stood there.

He had not asked permission to draw them this way. He had simply seen what he saw, without a child’s usual careful diplomacy about matters he did not yet understand, and set it down exactly as it appeared to him.

It is consistent now, Julian thought, turning the page slowly in his hands. I find myself wondering whether holding to that promise is protecting her at all. Or whether it has only ever been protecting myself.

He did not have an answer. He set the drawing carefully back against the inkstand, exactly where Kit had left it, and found he had no wish to look away from it again.

Julian found Louisa later that afternoon in the conservatory, Eleanor asleep in her basket at the foot of a wicker chair while she trimmed the fading blooms from a pot of white camellias.

She looked up at the sound of his footsteps against the stone floor, a pair of small shears still in hand, a scattering of spent white petals gathered in her apron. “You’re finished with your correspondence?”

“For the moment.” He crossed to stand near the wicker chair and glanced down at Eleanor, who slept on, entirely undisturbed by the quiet snip of the shears above her.

Louisa smiled. “I imagine the correspondence would dispute that.”

“It generally does.”

Louisa set down the shears and brushed the petals from her apron into a small basket at her feet and looked at him. “You look like you are carrying a question, Your Grace.”

He held up the folded estate report in his hand. “I am. There is a question concerning the tenant cottages at Ashcombe. Eight of them, all told, and three with roofs in rather poor condition heading into winter.”

“Oh?” Louisa’s eyebrow lifted slightly, and she moved to the low stone bench near the camellias, gesturing for him to join her there, out of the day’s remaining sun. “That sounds like a matter for your steward, not for a conservatory conversation over half-dead flowers.”

“My steward has already given his recommendation.” Julian settled onto the bench beside her, close enough that the report rested between them as he unfolded it. “He suggests delaying the repairs until spring. He believes the stone can be patched well enough to see the tenants through the worst of the cold, and the full expense postponed until the ground softens and the work can be done properly.”

“That sounds sensible enough, on its face,” she remarked.

Julian nodded. “It is the economical choice, certainly.” Something in his voice caught, and he frowned down at the page as though the figures might rearrange themselves into a more comfortable shape if he studied them long enough. “And yet I confess I am not entirely certain it is the right one.”

Louisa said nothing for a moment, only watched him.

It was under that same quiet attention that Julian had found himself saying more than he’d intended to when he’d first sought her out. He frowned slightly.

“How many cottages did you say?” she asked finally.

“Eight.”

“And the roofs in poor condition?”

“Three.”

“If you delay the repairs until spring,” she asked, “will they cost less by waiting?”