Page 33 of A Family Bargain with the Duke

“You are always twelve years old to me, My Lord, whatever your letters now say, and you tracked mud across my good floors as recently as your last visit, so I hardly see the injustice in the comparison.” She turned him properly toward the light with the brisk, proprietary hands of a woman who had known him since he was in leading strings, her lips pursed. “You have lost weight since Christmas.”

“I have not.”

“You have. Your coat hangs off you like a scarecrow’s, and I will wager you have not eaten a proper dinner in a fortnight, too busy tending every cough and fever in Spitalfields to sit down at a table like a Christian.”

“I eat regularly, Mrs. Whitfield, I promise you.”

“You eat irregularly, and I shall be having a word with your cook in London the moment I have five minutes to write her a proper letter about it.” She reached up and smoothed a lock of his hair back into place the way Louisa suspected she had done since he was a boy far younger than the one currently protesting under her hands. “Sit down properly and finish your tea before I bring you something more substantial, and do not think I have not noticed you have already charmed Her Grace into laughing herself half to death, which I am sure has done nothing whatsoever for your appetite.”

“I have charmed no one, Mrs. Whitfield. I have merely been informative.”

“You have been exactly as you always are, My Lord, which is to say entirely too pleased with yourself and thin as a rail besides.” She straightened, satisfied with her inspection, and turned to Louisa with a considerably softer expression, the sort reserved for someone she had decided deserved more warmth than her employer’s younger brother currently merited. “Forgive the interruption, Your Grace. I have known this one since he was in leading strings, and I confess I have never quite broken the habit of treating him accordingly.”

“Please do not apologize on my account, Mrs. Whitfield. I have found it rather instructive, watching someone manage him so thoroughly. I’m beginning to see where he came by his opinions of himself, and where someone occasionally corrects them.”

“Someone must, Your Grace, since he has never troubled to correct them himself.” Mrs. Whitfield’s mouth twitched, very nearly a smile, before she composed herself back into proper severity and swept out of the room, leaving strict instructions over her shoulder that the biscuits were not to be left untouched.

Piers watched the door close behind her, then turned back to Louisa with an expression of theatrical suffering entirely undercut by the fondness beneath it.

“You see now what I have endured my whole life. That woman has terrified better men into eating vegetables, and I do not exaggerate when I tell you that she once made our father apologize to a scullery maid for raising his voice, which I am reliably informed no one else in England has ever managed.”

“I’m beginning to think that Mrs. Whitfield is the true power governing this household, and that both Cavendish brothers are merely tenants of her good opinion.”

“An entirely accurate assessment. And I would advise you to secure her favor as quickly as possible, though I have gathered from her manner just now that you have already done so more thoroughly than Julian himself managed in his first several years under her roof.” Piers reached for a biscuit, grinning. “She scolded him for thinness for the better part of a decade, you know, before he finally grew tall enough that she was forced to find some other fault to worry about. I daresay you shall be next on her list, now that you have joined the household. Enjoy these last weeks of escaping her notice while they last, Your Grace. They will not last long.”

CHAPTER 16

Louisa was halfway down the corridor to her rooms when she heard it—a low, even voice drifting from the cracked nursery door. She stopped to listen, curious despite herself.

“… and the tenant in question maintains that the boundary hedge has stood in its present location since his grandfather’s time, which may well be true, though it does not appear to match the estate survey conducted in my grandfather’s day. A discrepancy I intend to resolve before either family takes up arms over three feet of hedgerow.”

Louisa edged closer to the door and found Julian seated in the low nursery chair, his coat discarded over the back of it, sleeves rolled to the forearm in a state of undress she had not yet seen him allow himself anywhere else in the house.

Eleanor was red-faced and fretful against his shoulder while his hand rubbed slow, steady circles against her back. In his other hand, he held a sheaf of papers, and he was reading from it quite seriously, as though the boundary dispute between two tenant families constituted the most soothing bedtime story ever composed.

“You are not meant to enjoy this reading, I am aware,” he continued, undisturbed by Eleanor’s fussing, “but I confess I find the whole business rather less trying with an audience so entirely unconcerned with whether I resolve it correctly or not. Why always discrepancies, you may ask.”

Eleanor let out a thin wail, and Julian shifted her slightly, one hand splayed wide and warm against her back, and continued reading in the same even voice.

“There is another matter concerning the western drainage, which I confess interests me more than it ought to interest anyone, and which I suspect explains why my brother finds me such tedious company at present.” He turned the page one-handed, the movement unhurried, practiced. “The steward proposes redirecting the channel along the northern boundary rather than through the Bertram land directly, which would spare us another dispute about hedges, though it will cost more in labor than the alternative.”

Eleanor’s cries had softened into a series of small, hiccuping protests, her tiny fist resting against the front of his waistcoat. Julian, entirely unbothered, simply shifted his weight and kept reading, his voice never rising, never hurrying, steady and low as a heartbeat.

Louisa stood in the doorway, unable to look away.

She watched the fall of dark hair across his forehead, longer than fashion strictly dictated, watched him lift his free hand at one point to push it back with an absent gesture that struck her as far more attractive than it had any right to be. She watched the forearm braced beneath Eleanor’s weight, the fine hair dusting it, the corded muscle visible even in so simple and unhurried a motion, and found her breath catching in a manner she chose not to examine.

She tilted her head, watching his thumb trace one slow, absent circle against Eleanor’s back.

He is only reading her his correspondence. Any man might do the same, presented with a fretful infant and no better notion of how to settle her.

Except she did not entirely believe that. She had seen enough nursemaids and fathers to know that most people, when presented with a crying infant, either panicked or performed, raising their voices into some exaggerated singsong meant to distract rather than soothe.

Julian did neither. He simply continued as he had begun, his voice never changing register, treating the baby’s distress with the same calm, unhurried attention he gave his ledgers, as though she deserved nothing less than his full consideration.

“The final matter,” he murmured, and Eleanor’s eyes had grown heavy now, her small fist loosening against his waistcoat, “concerns the autumn planting, which I confess holds even less interest for you than the drainage. And yet you have not once complained about my choice of reading material, which I consider generous of you, given the available alternatives.”

Her eyes closed.