Chapter 24
The days following the Winterbourne ball were uneventful, though Louisa found her thoughts returning to that evening with rather more persistence than she cared to admit.
She had been perfectly capable of occupying herself since then, yet some memory of the dance seemed always to find its way back when she was least prepared for it.
By the time Saturday afternoon arrived, she had decided that the gardens offered a far better use of her attention.
“There. That ought to hold you for the afternoon, provided you decide not to abandon me for the stables within the hour.”
She smoothed the blanket flat against the grass, weighting each corner with a small stone she had gathered from the garden path.
She settled herself in its center with Eleanor beside her, the baby propped against a folded shawl and blinking up at the drifting clouds with the solemn wonder infants reserved for entirely ordinary skies.
Kit had already claimed his corner, his sketchbook open across his knees, a fresh sheet of paper weighted down with a smooth garden stone against the light breeze, and was frowning down at a stub of charcoal worn nearly to nothing.
This is exactly the sort of afternoon I imagined that first day at Ashvale, Louisa thought, tucking her skirts beneath her and reaching to smooth a strand of Eleanor’s dark hair.
A house that no longer feels quite so hollow, filled instead with the ordinary business of children drawing and babies blinking at clouds.
“That charcoal is worn to nothing, Kit. You’ll want a fresh one before you get much further.”
Kit held it up for her inspection, an expression of mild betrayal on his face, as though the charcoal itself had personally failed him.
“I have more in the house, but I confess I have no idea where Mrs. Whitfield has put the little knife for sharpening them properly.”
“I believe I do.”
Louisa looked up to find Julian crossing the lawn toward them, his coat discarded somewhere behind him, sleeves already rolled to his forearms, a small leather case in one hand that he held aloft with the satisfaction of a man producing exactly the solution required.
“Your Grace. I thought you meant to go through the tenant accounts all afternoon.”
“I did.” He lowered himself onto the blanket’s edge without waiting for an invitation, settling cross-legged beside Kit with far less regard for his own dignity than Louisa would have expected from a duke, and opened the leather case to reveal a small, well-used knife and a handful of spare charcoal sticks.
“The accounts, however, have been sitting on my desk in the same state for the better part of a week, and I find I have grown considerably less interested in them than in whatever you two are doing out here.”
“We are drawing horses, mostly. And clouds, when Kit grows tired of horses, which happens less often than you might expect.”
“A wise use of an afternoon.” Julian took up one of Kit’s worn charcoal stubs and began working the small knife against it, shaving thin curls of wood away until a proper point emerged.
He handed the sharpened charcoal back with a small flourish.
“There. That should satisfy even the most exacting artist.”
Kit examined the point with exaggerated seriousness, then gave a single approving nod.
“High praise,” Louisa observed.
“Indeed.” Julian looked faintly pleased with himself. “I have spent the better part of five minutes earning it.”
Kit’s mouth twitched.
Louisa laughed. “I believe you’ve impressed him.”
“Then my afternoon has not been wasted.”
Louisa watched them for a moment. Julian’s dark head was bent close to Kit’s as he sharpened a second stub, then a third, their conversation easy and unhurried. A warmth settled in her chest at the sight.
It was such a small, ordinary thing. The sort of domestic moment she suspected most families took for granted. Yet their family had fought so hard to earn it.
“You have charcoal on your hand.”
Julian looked down. “Occupational hazard.”
“On your face as well.”
“Surely not.”
“Just there.”
He rubbed the wrong cheek.
Louisa shook her head, unable to suppress a smile. “The other one.”
“You’re enjoying this far more than necessary.”
“Immensely.”
He handed her his handkerchief. “Then you may fix the damage you find so entertaining.”
She paused. “May I?”
“Unless you intend to let me spend the afternoon looking ridiculous.”
Laughing softly, she leaned forward and brushed the charcoal away with the corner of the handkerchief. It took only a second, but her hand lingered.
Eleanor, who had been content to blink at the clouds for the better part of ten minutes, chose that moment to announce her displeasure with the arrangement, her small face crumpling, a thin wail rising from where she was propped against the shawl.
“Oh, none of that now.” Louisa reached for her, but Julian beat her to it, lifting the baby and settling her against his shoulder with the same unhurried patience he brought to everything.
“There,” he murmured, one hand splayed wide against her back, rocking her with a slow, instinctive motion that required no thought. “You have interrupted a very important sharpening operation, you know. Kit will not thank you for it.”
Eleanor’s wail softened into a series of small, hiccupping protests, and Kit, glancing up from his sketchbook, dropped his charcoal and signed something steady with his hands..
Louisa laughed, delighted. “He says that Eleanor has terrible timing and that she interrupted him at precisely the moment he’d gotten the horse’s ears correct.”
“She has never been particularly considerate of anyone’s artistic timing,” Julian said, still rocking Eleanor with the same slow, patient rhythm. “I understand this is a family trait. Her mother interrupts my work regularly as well.”
“I do no such thing.”
“I was writing a letter to my steward yesterday when you came to inform me that the camellias needed repotting.”
“They did need repotting. Even Mrs. Whitfield agreed with me.”
“I do not doubt it. I’m only saying that bad timing seems to be a family trait that has skipped me.”
Louisa laughed again, plucking a blade of grass absentmindedly.
Kit’s shoulders shook with silent amusement, watching the exchange with the particular satisfaction of a boy who considered himself entirely on Louisa’s side of any argument involving his guardian.
Anyone looking at us now would see nothing more than a family enjoying an ordinary afternoon together.
The thought startled her enough that she nearly dropped the blade of grass from her fingers.
She sat with it for a moment, turning it over the way she turned over most things that unsettled her, and found she could not locate a single reason to argue against its truth.
There was no artifice in the scene before her, no careful performance of domesticity for the benefit of watching servants or curious neighbors.
It simply was what it appeared to be. It had been for some weeks now, without her quite noticing the exact moment it had stopped feeling like an arrangement and started feeling like a life.
* * *
“Can we see?” Julian asked.
Kit hesitated only long enough to add one final stroke before turning the sketchbook around with unmistakable pride.
Julian studied it carefully. It was, he decided, undoubtedly a person. Beyond that, the matter became considerably less certain.
“Simmons, definitely Simmons,” he said, with the confidence of someone making a thoroughly reasoned assessment.
Louisa turned to him, amusement tugging at the corners of her mouth. “Simmons?”
“I believe so.”
Kit stared at him for a heartbeat before shaking his head with such emphatic disbelief that Julian began to suspect he had missed something obvious.
“No?” Louisa asked, unable to hide her smile.
Another vigorous shake of the head.
Julian frowned and leaned closer to the page, determined not to be defeated by the artistic interpretation of an eight-year-old. “Very well. John.”
Kit threw one hand up in the air in silent despair before pointing decisively at Julian.
Julian looked from the drawing to Kit, then back again. He examined the sketch with all the gravity he ordinarily reserved for estate maps and tenant agreements.
Good Lord.
That was supposed to be him.
He cleared his throat. “Ah.”
Louisa was watching him now with entirely undisguised amusement. “You see it?”
Julian considered the question with appropriate honesty. “No,” he admitted. “Though I am beginning to understand why I ought to.”
Louisa’s laughter rang across the lawn, bright enough that Eleanor stirred against his shoulder. Even Kit’s exasperation dissolved into a grin that was impossible to mistake.
Julian looked once more at the drawing before shaking his head. “For the record,” he said gravely, “I am considerably more handsome than that.”
After that, he watched Eleanor’s eyes flutter shut against his shoulder, her small weight gone entirely loose and trusting against him. He glanced up to find Louisa watching them both with an expression he could not immediately read, soft and a little startled.
Kit, absorbed in his drawing, sat close at Louisa’s side, close enough that his sleeve brushed her skirts, entirely unselfconscious in his claim to that small space beside her.
This is a family.
The thought arrived with none of Julian’s usual caution attached, none of the careful qualifications he generally applied to any observation that strayed too close to the territory he had spent so much time fortifying himself against.
It simply dawned on him, whole and undeniable, watching Louisa laugh at something in Kit’s sketchbook, watching Eleanor’s small hand curl loosely against his shirt, watching the three of them settled together on a blanket in the afternoon sun as though they had always belonged here.
For one dangerous, unguarded moment, it felt entirely, uncomplicatedly natural.
Then the old promise returned, as it always did, rising out of some well-worn groove in his mind, the vow he had made himself standing alone in his study with an eight-year-old boy who would not speak.
I will never risk loving someone so completely that losing them would destroy either of us.
The happiness sitting in front of him, warm and plain and entirely undeserved by any measure of the practical bargain he had struck, suddenly felt less like comfort and more like danger, a thing he had allowed to grow far larger than the careful boundaries he had drawn around it.
This was only ever meant to be a practical marriage, he reminded himself, watching Louisa’s face soften as she reached over to tuck a stray curl behind Kit’s ear, an entirely unconscious, maternal gesture that undid something in his chest he had no ready name for.
I promised her respect and protection, nothing more than that.
I promised myself considerably more and considerably less both at once.
He looked down at Eleanor, asleep and trusting against his shoulder, and then across the blanket at Kit, bent industriously over his sketchbook, and then, finally, at Louisa, who had turned her attention back to him, her expression still carrying that same soft, startled warmth.
He found himself entirely uncertain whether he still possessed the strength to keep every line of the promise he had made, both to her and to himself.
* * *
A few days had passed when Simmons entered the morning room with the post arranged neatly on a silver tray.
“Your post, Your Grace.”
“Thank you, Simmons. Has His Grace already escaped to the study?”
“He has, Your Grace. Mr. Mason arrived rather earlier than expected.”
Louisa smiled knowingly. “Then I imagine the estate has already claimed him for the day.”
“It would appear so.”
Simmons set the letters beside her teacup. “There is one from Henswick House.”
Louisa’s eyes fell immediately to her father’s familiar seal. “Thank you.”
Once Simmons had withdrawn, she reached for it.
My dear Louisa,
I have made inquiries, as you asked, and I confess what I have learned troubles me more than I expected it to.
I am acquainted, at some remove, with a gentleman who knew the elder Whitmore in his prosperous days, before whatever ruin befell him, and by every account I have gathered, the man was honest to a fault, methodical in his business, and unlikely to have brought his own downfall upon himself through the recklessness that is whispered about.
I have met his son, Thomas, on two occasions this past year and found him a serious, careful young man, not given to exaggeration or grievance for its own sake.
I have taken the liberty of inviting him to dine at Henswick House this coming Friday, thinking you might wish to judge the matter for yourself rather than relying on my impressions alone.
Come if you are able, and come quietly, if the matter is as delicate as your letter suggested.
Your loving father,
Robert
After breakfast, Louisa went to her writing desk and read the letter twice, then folded it carefully and sat for a long moment turning over how best to arrange the coming days.
Friday.
She glanced at the small calendar propped against her inkstand. Three days hence, and she had no ready excuse that would not require explaining more than she wished Julian to know just yet, not until she had something more solid than Sir Edmund Vane’s warning.
She found him in his study that evening, correspondence spread before him as usual, and settled into the chair opposite with what she hoped was an entirely unremarkable expression.
“Your Grace, I find myself missing my parents more than I expected this past week. I wonder whether I might spend a night at Henswick House. Nothing more than an ordinary visit, though I confess I have not seen my mother properly since the wedding, and I find I miss her company.”
“Of course.” Julian looked up from his correspondence, entirely unsuspecting, something warm in his expression that pricked at her conscience.
“You need not ask my leave for that, Louisa. Take the carriage on Friday and stay as long as you like. I shall manage the household and the children well enough in your absence, provided Mrs. Whitfield does not decide the whole enterprise requires her oversight from dawn until dusk.”
“She very well might.”
“Then I shall be thoroughly managed myself, and no worse for it.” He returned to his correspondence.
Louisa left the study with the uncomfortable weight of an omission sitting heavy in her chest, though she told herself, climbing the stairs, that it was not precisely a lie, only a partial truth, and that she would tell him everything the moment she had something worth telling.