Page 28 of A Family Bargain with the Duke

She had turned to go, taking perhaps three steps toward the wide doorway, when a rustle made her glance back.

Kit stood at the stall door, one hand still resting on the latch. As she turned, he lifted his other hand and pointed first toward Rosalind’s patient head hanging over the door and then slowly, deliberately, toward Louisa herself.

She understood him at once, and felt something in her chest go warm and full in a way she had not expected a single small gesture to accomplish.

“Yes,” she said softly, smiling, answering the question he had not spoken aloud but had asked as plainly as words could have managed. “I will come back. Tomorrow, and the day after that, and every day after that for as long as you’ll have me.”

Kit held her gaze a moment longer, something unguarded flickering in his dark eyes. And then, before she could say anything further, he turned back to Rosalind and lifted the curry comb already once more, the conversation obviously concluded.

Louisa stepped out of the stables with her chest still warm, the satchel of unused paper and charcoal forgotten under her arm, only to find Julian waiting.

* * *

He stood a little way from the entrance, near the paddock fence, one hand resting on the top rail. He had clearly been there for a while, though Louisa could not have said how long.

“Your Grace.”

“How did it go?”

“Better than I dared hope for a first morning.” She came to stand beside him at the fence, watching a pair of geldings graze in the far paddock, unable to keep the satisfaction out of her voice. “He learned two signs: horse and friend. Neither perfectly formed, but close enough that I understood him without difficulty, which is really all that matters at this stage.”

“Two signs.” Julian’s voice carried a careful disbelief, as though he were turning the number over and finding it almost too small to account for whatever had shifted in his chest upon hearing it. “In a single morning.”

“In half an hour, if I am being honest. I did not press him for more. I thought it wiser to leave him wanting the next lesson rather than dreading it.”

“And did he? Want the next lesson?”

Louisa’s smile widened, remembering. “As I was leaving, he pointed to Rosalind’s stall and then to me. I believe he was asking whether I meant to come back tomorrow.”

Julian went very still beside her, his hand tightening slightly against the rail. “He asked you a question?”

“In his own way, yes. He did not need words for it. The meaning was entirely clear.”

“He has not asked anyone anything, in any fashion, since his father died.” Julian’s voice had gone quieter now, something moving beneath it that he seemed to be working carefully to keep contained. “Not a governess, not a physician, not Piers, not me. Three years, and I have not once seen him make so much as a gesture toward another person unprompted.”

“He made one this morning.” He turned to her to find her studying him. “It was only a small thing. A pointed finger, nothing more. I do not want you to build too much hope on so little, Your Grace, in case tomorrow proves harder than today.”

“I understand that. This past year, I have learned not to expect too much of a single morning.” He was quiet for a moment, his eyes flicking to the stable doorway. “And yet I find myself hoping regardless. I am not entirely certain what to do with the sensation. It has been a while since I last permitted myself the indulgence.”

“Hope is not generally an indulgence one permits or withholds by choice, Your Grace. It tends to arrive on its own schedule, whether we have made room for it or not.”

“So I am beginning to discover.” A wistful smile crossed his mouth. “Thank you, Duchess. For this morning. For whatever tomorrow brings as well, though I know better than to ask you to promise it will bring anything at all.”

“I promise only to keep showing up, Your Grace. The rest is entirely his to decide, in his own time.” She adjusted the satchel under her arm, offered him a small nod, and turned toward the house, leaving him at the paddock fence with the morning sun warm on his shoulders.

Julian watched her go, her figure growing smaller on the gravel path, and then turned back toward the stables, toward the boy still bent over his horse inside it, the curry comb moving in slow, contented strokes along a coat that scarcely needed further grooming.

He stood there for a long moment in the quiet morning air.

Two signs. Two years of governesses, tutors and physicians, and she has produced in a half hour more progress than the whole of it combined.

He thought of the crumpled sketch he still kept folded in his coat pocket some days. He thought of every silent evening he had sat across from Kit at dinner, searching for some crack in the boy’s composure and finding none. He also thought of the small, pointed gesture Louisa had just described to him—a question asked without words, offered freely to a woman Kit had known for scarcely a fortnight.

Something loosened in his chest, cautious and unfamiliar, a sensation he recognized after a moment’s consideration as the thing Dominic had accused him of abandoning some months into Kit’s silence—hope. Not the reckless, unguarded hope of a man who expected easy answers, but something quieter, more patient, the sort that could survive a difficult tomorrow because it had already survived so many of them before.

Julian closed his eyes for the briefest moment, allowing himself, for the first time in longer than he cared to admit, to simply stand with it for a while, and did not immediately reach for a reason to set the feeling back down.

CHAPTER 14