Page 29 of A Family Bargain with the Duke

Early in the morning, Julian walked to the stables to see to the horses. Louisa’s voice drifted from the third stall, warm and animated, and he slowed his steps, coming to an unthinking halt beside the tack room door.

“You have got the sign for ‘more’ entirely backward,” Louisa was saying, seated on an overturned bucket, the curry comb momentarily abandoned in Kit’s lap while his hands worked through the shape she had shown him. “Like this. Fingertips together, not palms. You are asking for a slap on the wrist, not for seconds at supper.”

Kit’s hands paused. Then, slowly, deliberately, he repeated the sign exactly as he had done it the first time, palms rather than fingertips, and fixed her with a look that Julian recognized instantly as pure, unrepentant defiance.

Louisa laughed, delighted. “You did that on purpose.”

Kit’s hands lifted again, quick and certain this time. He signed a few words in succession, something about opinions and signs, though the thought was still incomplete.

Louisa understood him almost at once. “He means to say,” she supplied, completing the thought for him, “that I am not the only one permitted to have opinions about how a sign ought to be made.”

She glanced briefly towards the doorway, as though she had known all along he was standing there.

Julian withdrew before she could catch him eavesdropping, and made his way to the house with something unfamiliar sitting warm in his chest the whole distance back.

The next morning, he did not pretend he had an errand. He simply stood near the paddock fence within sight of the stable doors, close enough to hear if he wished and far enough to go unnoticed, and told himself this was merely diligence, a guardian’s proper interest in his ward’s progress, nothing more complicated than that.

“That is not the sign for horse,” Kit’s hands informed her, though the movement was a little clumsy.

Louisa’s eyebrows rose. “It most certainly is. I have been using it these past three days.”

Kit shook his head and repeated the sign she had used, then pointed towards Louisa and made a small gesture suggesting before, followed by the sign for horse.

Louisa stared at him for a moment. “You mean that was the sign I taught you when we first met?”

Kit nodded eagerly.

“And this”—she repeated the sign she had been using these past three days—“is not?”

Another firm shake of his head.

Louisa’s eyes narrowed in concentration before widening with sudden understanding. “Oh. I see. I taught you one sign when we first met, and somehow managed to teach you another one afterward.”

Kit gave a satisfied nod.

“And you have been waiting three days to correct me?”

Kit's mouth twitched, and he shrugged.

Louisa let out a laugh, a bright, surprised sound that carried clearly across the paddock to where Julian stood. “He says he was trying to be polite.”

Julian found himself smiling, watching the boy’s satisfaction at winning an argument without a single spoken word against a grown woman who had, by her own admission, been correcting people’s grammar since she was old enough to hold a book. But he was also astonished.

He is arguing with her, not merely answering. Arguing. Defending his opinion against hers, entirely unprompted, as though it had not once occurred to him that he ought to be too frightened, or too silent, or too careful to do so.

The third morning brought rain, a soft steady patter against the stable roof. Julian, finding himself with no legitimate excuse to linger near the paddock, took shelter just inside the stables’ back entrance, close enough to hear and far enough to be hidden by an empty stall.

“I do not believe you,” Louisa was saying, arms folded, an expression of theatrical skepticism on her face. “You could not have possibly ridden a horse before you could properly walk. No child manages both at once.”

Kit’s hands moved, quick and insistent. Then he pointed toward Rosalind and made a cradling gesture with his arms.

“Your father held you on a horse when you were an infant. That is rather different from riding one yourself, and you know it.” Louisa’s mouth twitched, fighting a smile. “You are exaggerating your own accomplishments, Master Kit, and I’m beginning to suspect you have inherited that particular habit from your guardian, who I understand has never once admitted to being wrong about anything in his adult life.”

Kit’s shoulders shook briefly with silent laughter, and his hands lifted again, quicker now, more animated than Julian had ever seen them.

“He says,” Louisa reported, her own laughter barely contained, “that His Grace is, in fact, wrong often but simply refuses to admit it, and that I ought to ask you directly about the incident with the east paddock fence two summers ago.”

Julian, listening from behind the empty stall, felt his ears flush, recalling with unwelcome clarity the incident in question—a fence he had insisted did not require repair until it very much had, in the middle of a thunderstorm, at considerable cost to his dignity and his second-best coat.