Page 82 of A Family Bargain with the Duke

“Then do nothing, my darling.” Her mother went to sit beside her, taking her other hand. “Until you know what you wish to do, you are not obligated to go down simply because he has come. Whatever he means to say to you, he can wait until you are ready to hear it.”

The butler withdrew, and Louisa remained exactly where she stood, her mother on one side, Fiona on the other, Eleanor’s soft breathing the only sound in the room.

Minutes passed, and Louisa found herself, despite every intention otherwise, drifting slowly toward the door, straining to catch some fragment of whatever was happening two floors below.

“Can you hear anything?” Fiona whispered, joining her at the door.

“Only voices. Nothing distinct.” Louisa pressed closer, catching the low murmur of Julian’s voice, careful and measured, though she could make out no words, only his steady cadence, unmistakable even through two closed doors and a full flight of stairs.

Several more minutes passed this way, Louisa’s whole body strung tight with waiting, before footsteps sounded on the stairs and the butler came once more to the door.

“His Grace says that he understands and that he does not wish to trouble you further. He has asked me to convey that he is leaving now, and that he will call again whenever you feel ready to receive him.”

Louisa stood very still. Something in her chest cracked open at the words, a sharp ache that had nothing to do with relief and everything to do with loss. Before she had properly decided to move at all, she crossed to the window, drawn there by some instinct she could not have named.

Below, in the fading afternoon light, Julian was crossing the gravel drive toward his waiting horse, his shoulders set in the careful composure she had come to recognize as the shape he wore whenever something cost him considerably more than he wished to show.

Her hand pressed flat against the cold glass, her breath fogging faintly against it as she watched him go.

He is leaving. He came all this way, and I let him leave without a single word.

Just before he reached his horse, Julian stopped. He turned and looked up.

Their eyes met across the drive, and Louisa’s heart slammed against her ribs so hard that she thought he might somehow hear it from where he stood.

In that unbearable instant, she wished the ground would open beneath her and swallow her whole. She was mortified at having been caught watching, at having let him leave at all, at every careful, frightened choice that had brought them both to this exact moment.

Slowly, deliberately, Julian raised his hands.

“I. Love. You.”

The signs were clear and unmistakable despite the distance, each one formed with the same slow, careful precision she had taught him months ago in a sunlit morning room, his wrist angled exactly as she had shown him.

Louisa stood perfectly still for one heartbeat, the whole world narrowing to nothing but the shape of his hands and the unwavering certainty in his eyes.

Then she turned and ran.

“Louisa!” Fiona’s startled voice chased her out of the room, but Louisa did not stop, did not slow down, her skirts gathered in both hands as she flew down the staircase two steps at a time, past a startled footman, through the entrance hall, and out the front door just as Julian’s foot had found the stirrup.

“Julian!”

CHAPTER 34

Julian turned at the sound of her voice, his foot still in the stirrup, and whatever composure he had gathered to leave seemed to abandon him the moment he saw her standing breathless in the doorway. Julian’s abrupt movement caused the horse to snort and the groom beside him reached out to steady the horse

He set down his foot. “Louisa⁠—”

“Wait.” She crossed the distance between them, her chest heaving from the run down the stairs, and stopped only when she stood close enough to see the exhaustion beneath his eyes, the particular strain of a man who had clearly slept very little this past week.

For a moment, neither of them said anything. The groom wisely turned to adjust the horse’s bridle and did not look at either of them.

“You saw,” Julian said finally.

“I saw.” Louisa took a deep breath; her heart had not yet caught up with the rest of her. “Did you mean it?”

“I have never meant anything so much in my life.”

“Then why,” she asked, her voice cracking slightly, “did you not simply say it downstairs, in the drawing room?”