Page 8 of A Family Bargain with the Duke

“Sit down, Fiona.”

“I am sitting. I am the very picture of sitting. Now, talk.”

Louisa dropped into the chair opposite her, pulled the pins from her bonnet with more force than strictly necessary, and set them on the table between them. “I have just come from Ashvale House.”

Fiona went very still. “Ashvale House?”

“Yes.”

“The Duke of Ashvale’s Ashvale House?”

“Is there another one I am unaware of?”

“Louisa.” Fiona leaned forward, her eyes bright with the particular delight she reserved for scandal that had not yet fully ripened into fact. “Why in heaven’s name were you calling on the Duke of Ashvale?”

“He wrote to me. He has a ward, a young boy, who has not spoken since his father died three years ago. Someone told him I know sign language, and he wondered whether I might help.”

“That is not nearly as interesting as I was hoping, though I grant it is very good of you.” Fiona sat back, faintly disappointed, then narrowed her eyes. “Why do you have that look?”

“What look?”

“The look that says you are about to tell me something you already know I will have opinions about.”

Louisa reached for the teapot, poured herself a cup she had no real intention of drinking, and used the small ritual to organize her thoughts before answering. “He offered to employ me. I told him it was impossible.”

“Impossible how?”

“An unmarried woman cannot live under a bachelor’s roof, Fiona, whatever the reason. And I told him I would not be parted from Eleanor for any position, however well compensated.”

“Sensible. Go on.”

“So I told him that employment solved only half his problem.” Louisa met her friend’s eyes, and made herself say the rest of it plainly, before her nerve failed her. “And that marriage would solve both.”

The teacup Fiona had just lifted paused halfway to her mouth.

“I am sorry,” she said slowly. “I believe I misheard you. For one dreadful moment, it sounded as though you told the Duke of Ashvale that he ought to marry you.”

“You did not mishear me.”

Fiona set the cup down with exaggerated care, as though the china itself might shatter from the shock of what it had just witnessed. “Louisa Everly.”

“Fiona Blackwood.”

“You proposed marriage. To a duke. Whom you had met, by my reckoning, one hour ago.”

“Three-quarters of an hour, if we are to be precise about it.”

“I do not care to be precise about it. I care to understand how a woman who once turned down Mr. Beaumont because his conversation bored her within a fortnight of dancing with him has now proposed marriage to a complete stranger before he had even offered her tea.”

“He did not offer me tea. He is not, I think, a man who considers refreshments part of a negotiation.”

“A negotiation.” Fiona pressed a hand to her chest as though warding off a faint. “You negotiated your own marriage as though it were a horse trade.”

“It was exactly that.” Louisa allowed herself the ghost of a smile. “I require a husband who will give Eleanor a name and never ask me to give her up. He requires someone Kit will trust enough to reach him. I pointed out that marriage solved both problems more thoroughly than employment ever could, and I left him to consider it.”

“And what did he say to that? Did he have you removed from his house? Did he ring for the footmen? Was he as aghast as I am?”

“He asked for time to think it over.”