Chapter 7
“Your Grace. This is unexpected.”
“Lord Henswick. Thank you for receiving me without prior notice.”
Louisa stood frozen at the top of the stairs, one hand resting on the banister, and watched the Duke of Ashvale being shown into her father’s study with an ease that suggested he had rehearsed the entrance the whole carriage ride over.
He wore dark blue this morning, his cravat pressed to a precision that would have taken his valet the better part of an hour, and he carried beneath one arm a folded document she recognized, with a small lurch of her stomach, as something considerably more than a social call.
She did not go down. She remained at the top of the stairs instead, out of sight of the study door, and waited, her heart pounding in her chest.
“I will get directly to the purpose of my visit,” she heard Julian say, his voice carrying up through the half-open door below. “I wish to ask your permission to marry your daughter.”
There was a long pause. Louisa held her breath along with it.
“Marry,” her father repeated, in the tone of a man who suspected he had misheard or possibly dreamed the entire conversation. “Louisa.”
“Yes.”
“You have met her once, Your Grace, by my understanding. Perhaps twice.”
“Twice,” Julian confirmed. “I am aware of how irregular this must appear. I will not insult you by pretending otherwise. But I have a ward, a young boy who has not spoken since his father’s death three years ago, and your daughter has already succeeded in a single morning where six tutors and physicians and governesses failed across three years.
I require her help with him, and she requires a husband who will give her adopted daughter a name and a secure home.
I believe the arrangement serves us both honestly, and I would rather propose it to you plainly than dress it up as something it is not. ”
Another pause, longer this time.
Louisa gripped the banister and leaned slightly toward the stairwell.
“You are telling me,” her father said slowly, “that you wish to marry my daughter as a matter of practical convenience.”
“I am.”
“Most men, if I may say so, attempt at least the appearance of romance when asking a father for his daughter’s hand.”
“Most men have not met your daughter, My Lord. I suspect she would find the appearance of romance considerably more insulting than an honest proposal.” A note Louisa could not quite place entered his voice, something akin to amusement.
“She was very direct with me about what she required. I find I would rather return the courtesy than feign sentiments neither of us feels.”
Louisa pressed a hand to her mouth to keep from laughing aloud at the sheer accuracy of it.
Her father was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke again, his voice had softened, the wariness giving way to something more thoughtful.
“Louisa has always possessed a remarkably determined disposition, Your Grace. I say this as a father who loves her dearly and has spent twenty-five years failing to talk her out of anything she has set her mind to. She is sharp-tongued, stubborn, and entirely disinclined to be managed.”
“I have gathered as much already in the length of two conversations, My Lord.”
“And it does not trouble you?”
There was a pause, brief but distinct, before Julian answered. “No. Oddly, I find that it does not.”
Louisa’s hand tightened on the banister.
“Then you have my permission,” her father said. “Though I suspect you would have proceeded with or without it, given how thoroughly my daughter has already arranged the matter herself.”
“I would not have proceeded without your blessing, My Lord. Whatever else this arrangement is, I did not wish to begin it by disrespecting your house.”
“Well.” Her father’s chair scraped back. “I appreciate that more than you know. Shall we find her and put her out of whatever agony she has been standing in at the top of my stairs this last quarter hour, pretending she cannot hear every word we’ve said?”
Louisa straightened so fast she nearly toppled over, and was still composing her face into something resembling innocence when the door to the study opened fully and both men stepped into the hall below, looking up at her with identical expressions of barely restrained amusement.
“I was merely passing,” she said, with as much dignity as she could summon.
“Of course you were,” her father drawled. “Come down, Louisa. His Grace has something to discuss with you, and I find I am suddenly very interested in the state of my roses.”
He left them with a speed that suggested relief more than genuine interest in his gardens.
Louisa descended the stairs slowly, aware of Julian’s eyes on her the entire way down, aware too of the folded document still tucked beneath his arm.
“You heard all of that, I take it,” he remarked, once her father’s footsteps had faded.
“Most of it. I confess I was not trying hard not to.”
“I would have been disappointed if you had.” The faintest smile touched his mouth, there and gone. “May I speak with you privately? I have drafted something I would like you to review before we go further.”
She led him to the small morning room rather than the drawing room, some instinct telling her that this conversation wanted fewer windows onto the street, fewer chances of being observed by a passing acquaintance who might wonder why the Duke of Ashvale sat so long alone with an unmarried woman.
He closed the door behind them, which she noted and did not correct, and set the folded document on the table between them.
“I drew this up last night, after I had made my decision.” He unfolded it, smoothing it flat with the same precision she had noticed in every other aspect of him, from his study to his cravat.
“I did not wish to arrive with vague promises, Lady Louisa. I thought it better that we settle the particulars in writing, so there is no confusion later about what each of us has agreed to.”
“That is remarkably thorough of you.”
“I am a remarkably thorough man. I had rather hoped you’d gathered that already.”
She took the paper he offered and read it, her eyes moving down a series of careful numbered points, each one written in the same economical hand as his letter had been.
I will give Eleanor my name and my protection, as though she were my own by blood, and will never require or permit her removal from my household on any grounds whatsoever.
Something in her chest, tight since the moment she’d heard him ask her father’s permission, eased at that line more than she had expected it to.
“You have put it in writing,” she murmured.
“I did not think you would take my word for it, and I would not blame you if you did not. A written promise carries more weight than a spoken one, in my experience. It is harder to forget, and harder still to pretend one never made it.”
“Thank you.” She said it plainly, without excessive sentiment, because she suspected he would prefer it that way, and because she found she meant it too much to dress it up in more words than it required.
He nodded once and gestured for her to continue reading.
In exchange, Lady Louisa agrees to make every reasonable effort to assist my ward, Christopher, and to take up residence as mistress of my household upon our marriage, with all the rights and responsibilities such a position entails.
“Rights and responsibilities,” she repeated. “You have been careful with your language.”
“I did not want you discovering six months into our marriage that you had agreed to something narrower than you believed. If you are to be mistress of my house, I intend for you to actually be mistress of it, not merely occupy the title while I continue to run the household as though you were not present.”
“That is more than I expected you to offer.”
“I do not see the use in offering less. A wife in name only, kept at arm’s length from her own household, benefits no one, least of all Kit, who requires stability rather than the appearance of it.
” He watched her steadily. “This is not, I think I should say plainly, a proposal born of romantic feeling, Lady Louisa. I want that stated as clearly on paper as it was stated in my study two days ago. I do not offer you my heart. I do not currently possess the sort of heart that offers itself easily, and I would rather disappoint you honestly now than let you discover it later.”
“I require no such offering, Your Grace. I told you as much myself. I want a name for Eleanor and a household in which she is safe, and I have no more expectation of romance from you than you apparently have of it from me. Mutual respect will serve us both considerably better than fake affection, I think. It has the advantage of being true.”
“Then we understand one another.”
“We do.”
She read on. The document continued in the same careful vein, each retaining certain private affairs and personal property, , financial provisions for Eleanor entirely independent of any future children, an allowance settled on Louisa herself that owed nothing to his goodwill and could not be withdrawn at his displeasure.
It was, she thought as she turned the pages, the most thorough marriage terms she had ever encountered, considerably more thorough than the four she had already rejected, none of which had troubled themselves with anything beyond her dowry and her father’s connections.
“You have thought of nearly everything,” she said, reaching the final clause.
“Nearly. I find I am open to amendments, if you believe I have missed something.”
Louisa set the page down and looked at him directly, at the careful set of his shoulders, the watchful patience in his eyes.
He had clearly spent the better part of a sleepless night drafting this document with the same precision he brought to his ledgers, determined to leave nothing to chance, nothing unstated, nothing that might later be twisted against her.
He has thought of everything except the one thing I actually require.
The words formed before she had decided to say them.
“There is one condition missing.”
“Name it.”
“You must never try to change me.” She held his gaze steadily, unwilling to let the request soften into something apologetic.
“Not in private, and not in company. I have rejected four proposals already, Your Grace, from men who admired my face well enough but wished for a quieter version of the rest of me. I will not enter a fifth arrangement only to discover, six months in, that I am expected to soften my opinions at dinner, or hold my tongue in company, or become a smaller, more convenient version of myself for the sake of your comfort. I would rather remain unmarried than agree to that, whatever it costs me and Eleanor.”
Julian was quiet for a moment, studying her with an attention that oddly felt less like assessment now and more like something closer to respect.
“I would not ask it of you,” he said slowly, “even if you had not required it in writing. I have no particular wish for a quiet wife, Lady Louisa. I have had a great many quiet people around me these three years, and I cannot say any of them have made my house better for it.” He reached for the pen resting beside the document.
“But you are right to ask for it plainly, rather than trust my good intentions alone. Intentions are easily forgotten; a written promise considerably less so.”
He added the clause himself, his hand moving in the same precise script as the rest of the document, and then turned it toward her when he had finished so she might read the words in his own writing rather than merely take them on trust.
I will never attempt to change, quiet, or manage Lady Louisa’s character, in private or in company, and will consider any such attempt a breach of this agreement.
Louisa read it twice and felt something in her chest loosen that had been tight since the moment her father had first told her two days ago that promises made to a dying woman did not have to be kept.
“Thank you,” she said again, quieter this time.
“Shall we sign, then?”
“We shall.”
Julian dipped the pen and signed first, his signature bold and economical, and passed the pen to her without a word.
Louisa took it and looked once more at the document before her, at Eleanor’s name protected in careful, deliberate ink, at her own name about to be joined to a stranger’s for reasons that had nothing to do with love and everything to do with promises kept.
She signed her name beneath his, her own hand steady, and set the pen down. “Well, I believe that makes us engaged, Your Grace.”
“It does.” Something almost like warmth moved behind his eyes, brief and unguarded, there and then folded carefully away again. “I find I am glad of it, Lady Louisa, whatever either of us might have expected to feel upon signing this document.”
“So am I,” she said, and found, turning the words over even as she spoke them, that she meant them more than she had expected.