Page 36 of A Family Bargain with the Duke

With that, she slipped out into the corridor, leaving Julian shaking his head with a smile.

CHAPTER 17

“If you spend this entire meal praising my cook instead of speaking to the rest of us, Catherine, I shall begin to suspect your loyalties.”

“I ought to be offended,” Dominic remarked lazily from further down the table, setting aside his wineglass. “I’ve been making every effort to be entertaining for the better part of half an hour.”

“You have,” Catherine agreed. “The cook has simply been more successful.”

Laughter rippled across the table.

Catherine, who had known Louisa since their first London Season and had become as much a sister as any born to her, smiled. “Can you blame me? She has given me very little else to think about.”

Louisa laughed, motioning for the footman to refill Catherine’s wine, and glanced down the length of the table where Alaric, Catherine’s husband and the Duke of Coldmere, sat with his young son cradled in the crook of his arm, distracted by the boy’s determined efforts to seize his fork.

“Henry will have that fork in his mouth within the minute, Alaric, and then where shall you be for the second course?”

“Considerably poorer in cutlery, I imagine, though richer in whatever small triumph he intends to claim from the theft.” Alaric’s voice carried the dry warmth Louisa had come to associate with him across the handful of dinners she’d now shared with the Deverells, a man who wore command as naturally as his coat and yet softened entirely the moment his son’s fingers closed around anything of his.

Dominic watched the exchange with evident interest. “I admire his ambition. Most gentlemen wait until adulthood before attempting to rob a duke at the dinner table.”

Alaric extricated the fork from his son’s grip and replaced it with a spoon, which the boy regarded with immediate suspicion. “There. A fair trade, and one considerably less likely to end in an emergency that requires the services of the only physician present at the table.”

“Speaking of physicians,” Piers piped up from the other end of the table, “I shall have you know that I am considered excellent with children, and I would be delighted to examine any small person who swallows any small object this household might produce this evening.”

“By children, he means anyone under forty who has swallowed something they ought not,” Dominic remarked drily.

“An entirely respectable branch of medicine.”

“One upon which you’ve built an astonishing reputation.”

“Your help is not required, Piers, though I thank you for the offer,” Catherine said, smiling. “Oliver has already sworn to keep watch over his nephew’s cutlery for the remainder of the meal, and I trust him rather more than I trust most grown men in this matter.”

Oliver, eight years old and clearly delighted by the responsibility, nodded with tremendous solemnity from his place beside Kit, the two boys having fallen, within the first quarter hour of the visit, into the easy, wordless companionship of children who required no formal introduction to become fast allies.

Louisa had watched them from across the drawing room earlier, Oliver chattering happily while Kit listened beside him, content to let the boy carry the conversation alone. Though Kit had offered no signs in return, he had not withdrawn, and the easy companionship between them had seemed to require remarkably little of either child.

“Kit tells me,” Louisa said, glancing down the table, “that Oliver has already learned the sign for play, though I suspect his pronunciation, if I may call it that, needs some correction.”

“Oliver has learned the signs for a great many things,” Catherine said. “Most of them, I regret to inform you, are related to biscuits and his considerable opinion of himself.”

The door opened quietly, revealing Henry’s nursemaid.

She looked toward the little boy. “I believe the young master has reached the end of his patience with grown-up conversation, Your Grace.”

Alaric glanced down to find his son valiantly suppressing a yawn. “I believe you may be right.” He kissed his forehead before passing him into the nurse’s waiting arms. “Good night, my boy.”

Henry waved sleepily at the table before being carried out of the room in his nurse’s arms, leaving the adults to their dinner.

Julian, seated to Louisa’s right, had said little throughout most of the meal, though she was aware of his attention returning to her at odd intervals, quick and quiet, gone again before she could properly catch it.

She caught it now, glancing sideways and finding his eyes on her rather than on the boy he was ostensibly listening to. Something in his expression struck her as considerably warmer than the moment strictly required, before he looked down at his wine.

“Ashvale,” Alaric said, drawing his attention, “I understand your ward has made remarkable progress these past weeks. Catherine tells me the whole affair has become quite the talk of the households that know of it.”

“He has, yes.” Something eased in Julian’s voice, the pride Louisa had come to recognize whenever the subject of Kit’s progress arose. “More than I dared hope for when I first wrote to Lady Louisa.”

“The Duchess,” Catherine corrected mildly, though a faint smile accompanied it.