Page 75 of A Family Bargain with the Duke

She had spent her whole life answering exactly this question in the negative. She did not want a husband who wished her quieter. She did not want to surrender the promise she had made to Nell. She did not want Eleanor to grow up feeling unwanted, nor Kit to remain forever locked behind his silence, nor her own sharp opinions ever softened for anyone’s comfort. Every want she had ever named for herself had been shaped, first and entirely, by what she refused to accept.

“I do not know,” she mumbled, and the admission unsettled her more than she had expected it to. “I have never properly asked myself that question, Catherine. I have always known what I would not tolerate. I have never once stopped to consider what I actually wished for, beyond the safety of the people I love.”

“Then perhaps that is worth considering now,” Catherine reasoned gently. “Not because you have done anything wrong in caring for others so fiercely. Only because a woman who never asks what she wants for herself eventually finds that she has built an entire life around everyone’s needs but her own, and wakes one day wondering where she went in the whole arrangement. I nearly did the same myself during my first year of marriage, before I learned better.”

They walked on in silence a while longer, the question sitting heavy and unresolved in Louisa’s chest.

Catherine stayed through supper, filling the evening with gentler conversation, old memories, and gossip carefully chosen to coax a proper laugh rather than press the matter further, but as Louisa watched her carriage disappear down the drive the following morning, she realized that the comfort of the visit had not touched the one question that mattered.

What do I want for myself?

She turned it over long into the evening, sitting beside Eleanor’s cradle with the candle burned low, and found, however many times she asked it of herself, that she still had no ready answer, only the same unresolved ache that had settled into her chest the moment she’d left Ashvale and showed no sign of easing on its own.

CHAPTER 31

The following morning, Julian arrived in London before dawn.

He had slept very little.

Piers had slept even less, judging by the expression on his face when he entered the private sitting room at their solicitor’s offices and found Julian already standing at the window with a sheaf of papers in his hand.

“You look dreadful.”

Julian did not turn. “Good morning to you too.”

“I thought physicians were supposed to be observant.”

“Physicians are observant. Brothers are merely rude.” Piers closed the door behind him. “I brought coffee.”

“I don’t want coffee.”

“I didn’t bring it for you.”

Julian finally turned.

Piers held up a cup. “I brought it for myself. I have no intention of sacrificing good coffee merely because you have decided to spend the night staring at paperwork.”

Julian looked back down at the papers. “I have not spent the night staring at paperwork.”

“No?”

“No.”

“What have you spent it doing, then?”

Julian folded the top sheet in half. “Thinking.”

“That is considerably worse.” Piers crossed the room and dropped into one of the chairs. “Come and sit down before you make yourself ill.”

“I am perfectly well.”

“You have been saying that for three days, and I have yet to believe you once.”

Julian ignored him.

Piers took a sip of his coffee. “Have you written it?”

“Yes.”