Chapter 22
Julian found the drawing propped against his inkstand the following morning, before the household had properly woken, before the first of the day’s correspondence had been brought into the study.
Four figures, rendered in Kit’s careful, patient charcoal. Julian himself, unmistakable in the set of his shoulders. Louisa beside him, with Eleanor cradled in her arms, her head tipped slightly toward the baby the way she so often held it.
And Kit, standing close at Louisa’s other side, close enough that his sleeve brushed her skirts, drawn with the small, deliberate care of a child who had placed himself in the picture without a single moment’s hesitation over whether he belonged there.
“Well,” he murmured to the empty room, the ghost of a smile touching his lips. “I suppose that settles the matter.”
He was not entirely certain which matter Kit imagined himself to have settled. Perhaps none at all. Children, after all, possessed a remarkable habit of drawing the world precisely as they believed it to be.
Julian found himself looking longest at the space between his own figure and Louisa’s. Kit had left scarcely any distance between them, as though it had never occurred to him that there ought to be.
He let out a slow breath and set the drawing back against the inkstand.
It remained there as he worked through the morning’s correspondence, constantly drawing his eye. More than once, he reached for a letter only to find himself looking back at the charcoal figures instead.
Eventually, he gave up pretending it was a distraction. He rather liked having it there.
Dominic arrived a little past three that afternoon, unannounced as he usually was, and let himself into the study with the same easy familiarity of two decades’ habit, dropping into the chair opposite Julian’s desk before he had even properly greeted him.
“You look busy. Good. I shall interrupt you regardless.” He reached for the brandy, poured himself a measure, and had just settled back with it when his eyes landed on the drawing still propped against the inkstand. His eyebrows rose, slow and deliberate.
“Do not say a word.”
“I have not said anything yet.” Dominic’s mouth twitched, fighting a grin he was making very little effort to properly suppress. “Though I confess the restraint is costing me more than you might imagine.”
“Then continue exercising it.”
“I am a man of considerable discipline, Julian, when the occasion calls for it.”
“Your confidence in my worst impulses wounds me.”
“It has been earned over many years.”
“Fair.” Julian returned to the ledger before him.
“I should like the record to show that I have behaved with remarkable restraint.”
“You have been in the room less than a minute.”
“Precisely. An excellent beginning.”
Julian gave a quiet huff that almost sounded like a laugh.
Dominic leaned back in his chair, swirling the brandy in his glass. “For instance, I have not observed that the drawing takes pride of place on your desk.”
Julian continued reading.
“Nor have I remarked on the fact that it appears to have replaced the dispatches from the Home Office.”
“It has done no such thing.”
“No? Then why can I scarcely see the dispatches?”
Julian looked up at last. “Because your eyesight is failing.”
“Cruel.”
“Honest.”
Dominic sighed theatrically. “Do you know, there was a time when you were almost pleasant company.”
“No.”
“Neither do I.”
The corner of Julian’s mouth betrayed him. Dominic caught it at once.
“There it is.”
“There is what?”
“That smile. The one you pretend not to possess.”
“You are imagining things.”
“Am I?” His gaze drifted back to the drawing, and when he spoke again, the teasing had softened. “It suits you.”
Julian’s expression grew thoughtful. “The drawing?”
“No.” Dominic met his eyes. “Looking happier than you used to.” He set down his glass, though his eyes kept drifting back to the drawing, and after a long moment, genuine curiosity in his expression. “What exactly are you still trying to protect her from?”
“I do not know what you mean.”
“I think you know exactly what I mean.” Dominic gestured toward the drawing without picking it up.
“Your ward has drawn the four of you as a family, Julian, without a moment’s hesitation, the way children draw things that are plainly true rather than things they have been instructed to believe.
And yet I understand, from the little you have told me and what I have gathered on my own, that you continue to keep your wife at arm’s length as though your marriage were still the same arrangement it began as. ”
“It is the arrangement she asked for.” Julian set down his pen, some old, familiar defensiveness rising in his chest. “She proposed a practical marriage before we had known each other a full hour, Dominic. She was clear about what she wanted, and I agreed to those terms because she set them. I do not think it is my place to go back on an agreement simply because circumstances have grown more comfortable than either of us expected.”
“More comfortable.” Dominic’s eyebrows rose further.
“Is that the word for it? I have watched you across a dinner table forgetting entirely what you meant to say next because your eyes had wandered to your wife rather than to whatever conversation was happening around you. I would not call that comfortable, precisely. I would call it something considerably more dangerous for a man so determined to keep his distance.”
“That is not what this is.”
“Then what is it?” Dominic watched him for a long moment before speaking again.
“Very well, let us suppose that is true. Explain something to me, then. Why does every decision you make now begin with the words, What would Louisa think? You consult her on estate matters. You seek her opinion before your own on matters that have nothing to do with the original bargain. You look for her the moment you enter a room, and when she speaks, the rest of us might as well not exist.”
Julian frowned. “That is an exaggeration.”
“Is it?”
He swallowed, not answering.
“You have not merely given her your respect, Julian. You have given her your trust. Those are not the same thing.”
“Leave it be, Dominic.”
Dominic studied him for a long moment, and Julian recognized, with some resignation, the look his friend wore when he had decided a matter was not worth pressing further today, though the pressing would certainly resume on a future occasion.
“As you wish.”
For a while, they spoke of easier things—Piers’s latest letter from Oxford, and whether the autumn shoot ought to be brought forward if the weather continued as it had. Julian was grateful for the change of topic.
Eventually, Dominic drained the last of his brandy and rose. “I have delayed you from your work long enough.”
Julian stood as well. “You usually consider that a successful morning.”
“I do.”
He walked with him to the door.
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.”