Page 37 of A Family Bargain with the Duke

“The Duchess,” Julian allowed, and glanced at Louisa again, briefly, before returning his attention to Alaric. “Though I confess I have not yet fully accustomed myself to the title. I still think of her as the woman who proposed marriage to me across my desk with less ceremony than most people order a hat.”

“That does sound like her,” Catherine said, delighted. “I have known her for years, Your Grace, and I do not believe I have ever once seen her approach a problem sideways when a direct route was available.”

“It is a policy that has served me well,” Louisa spoke up. “Sideways approaches waste time, and I have very little patience for wasted time.”

“No,” Julian said quietly, almost fondly. “I have gathered that.”

After the final course had been cleared and the men had retreated to the study with the boys trailing along, Kit’s hand tucked into Piers’s sleeve and Oliver chattering happily beside him, Catherine looped her arm through Louisa’s and steered her toward the terrace doors.

“A walk in the garden, I think, before the evening grows too cold for it.”

The garden had gone soft and blue in the last of the light, the roses past their full bloom now but still fragrant. Catherine walked slowly, her arm still linked with Louisa’s, the easy familiarity of a friendship that required no effort to maintain.

“You watched him rather a lot this evening,” she noted, once they had gone some distance from the house.

“Watched whom?”

“Your husband, Louisa, whom else? Though I suppose I ought to say that he watched you rather a lot, and you simply happened to notice each time he did.”

“He is attentive at dinner. I imagine most hosts are.”

“Most hosts do not watch their wives with that particular expression, as though they have momentarily forgotten what they meant to say next because they were considering something else entirely.” Catherine’s smile was warm, entirely without malice, though it held a knowing quality Louisa found herself faintly resisting. “I do not think your husband realizes quite how often his attention returns to you, Louisa. I honestly found it rather charming, watching it happen four times across a single soup course.”

“He is simply a kind man. Thoughtful. He notices things other people overlook, and I imagine that habit extends to dinner as much as to his ledgers.”

“I am sure that is part of it.”

“You do not sound convinced.”

“I am not entirely convinced, no.” Catherine paused beside a late-blooming rose, touching one petal absentmindedly. “I have watched a great many marriages since my own began, some built on affection from the start, others on rather less, and I have learned to recognize the look of a man discovering he wants something he did not expect to want. I saw it in Alaric, eventually, though it took him considerably longer than I would have liked, and I confess I have seen something of the same shape in your husband tonight.”

Louisa said nothing for a moment, watching the last light fade behind the garden wall, and found the words arriving before she had properly decided to share them.

“I was the one who asked for a practical marriage, Catherine. I proposed the whole arrangement myself and told him plainly that I expected nothing beyond respect and a name for Eleanor. He agreed to those terms because I set them, and I have no right to be surprised now if he holds to precisely what I asked of him.”

“And has he held to it?”

“Entirely. He has never once overstepped what we agreed on. He is respectful and kind, and I have no complaint whatsoever to make about him.” Louisa drew in a slow breath and found the rest of it harder to say plainly, though she made herself continue regardless. “It is only that I find myself looking forward to our conversations more than a practical arrangement strictly requires. I miss him, absurdly, when his correspondence keeps him occupied through an entire afternoon. I have caught myself more than once arranging some small question simply to have an excuse to seek him out in his study, when the answer could easily have waited until dinner. I do not know what to make of any of that, and I confess it unsettles me rather more than I like to admit.”

Catherine was quiet for a moment, studying her with a gentleness that held no judgment in it, only a careful, patient understanding that made Louisa suspect, not for the first time, that her friend had arrived at some hard-won wisdom of her own before she ever offered it to anyone else.

“I did not expect anything of my own marriage when it began,” Catherine said finally. “I was given to a man who barely spoke to me before our wedding day, and considerably less after it, and in those early months I built my whole life around the expectation that I would simply endure it, the way my mother endured her marriage before me, and call the endurance itself a kind of success. I did not go looking for anything more than that. I certainly did not expect to want it.”

She glanced toward the house, toward the lit windows of the study, where the boys’ laughter carried faintly across the darkening lawn.

“And then, quite without my permission, I found I did want it after all. Sometimes people discover that life asks something different of them than what they first agreed to want, Louisa. It does not make the wanting foolish or the original arrangement a failure. It simply means circumstances shifted beneath you while you were occupied looking elsewhere.”

“I am not speaking of love, Catherine.”

“I did not say you were.”

“You are implying it.”

“I am implying nothing at all.” Catherine’s smile turned gentle, entirely without pressure. “You do not have to name whatever this is today, Louisa. You do not owe yourself, or me, or your husband, a tidy explanation before you are ready to have one. Give yourself a little time to simply notice what you notice, without deciding immediately what it must mean.”

Louisa looked back toward the house, toward the warm light spilling out of the study windows, and found she had no ready answer for that. Only the same unsettled, unnamed warmth she had been carrying quietly for weeks now, and no particular wish to examine it any further than Catherine had already gently invited her to.

CHAPTER 18