Page 53 of A Family Bargain with the Duke

Louisa was becoming increasingly convinced that they should have ridden in separate carriages. It had seemed an entirely sensible arrangement when she had descended the stairs and found Julian waiting in the entrance hall.

It had ceased to feel sensible the moment he had turned.

He looked, she thought reluctantly, absurdly handsome. Evening clothes suited him rather well, the severe black of his coat throwing the breadth of his shoulders into sharper relief, the crisp white of his cravat making the warmth in his green eyes all the more impossible to ignore. And then he had smiled, only a little, but enough that something traitorous in her chest had forgotten entirely how it was meant to conduct itself.

Worse still, he had looked at her as though she had momentarily robbed him of speech.

She had endured the first several minutes of the carriage ride in determined silence before deciding that silence was infinitely more dangerous than conversation.

“A fine evening for a carriage ride. Of course.”

“Precisely that.”

Louisa smoothed her green silk skirt, watching the lights of Winterbourne House grow larger through the window as the carriage rolled up the long drive, torches lining the approach, the faint strains of an orchestra already audible even at this distance.

She had dressed with more care tonight, had let her maid spend a full half hour arranging her hair in a style she did not usually bother with, and told herself the whole time that it meant nothing beyond ordinary vanity for a large gathering.

The carriage drew to a stop before the great stone portico, and Julian handed her down, his palm warm against hers. He did not release her hand quite as promptly before offering his arm instead.

Winterbourne House blazed with candlelight in every window. The ballroom itself was a glittering crush of silk and jewels and laughter, easily two hundred guests already assembled beneath the great chandeliers.

Louisa took a breath of the warm, perfumed air and felt Julian’s arm steady beneath her hand.

“Ashvale! And the Duchess, how well you both look.”

Lord Winterbourne descended upon them almost immediately, and within moments, they had been pulled in two different directions, Julian claimed by a cluster of gentlemen.

“… and I said to Lord Ashby, if the roads are not properly maintained by spring, the whole county shall suffer for it, and he had the audacity to suggest that the expense ought to fall to the tenants rather than…”

Louisa nodded at what she hoped was an appropriate interval, having lost the thread of Lady Ashby’s monologue some minutes ago. Her feet were beginning to protest inside her dancing slippers, though not nearly so much as her smile.

She cast a glance beyond the small circle of ladies.

The ballroom glittered beneath the chandeliers, dancers weaving between pockets of conversation while servants threaded silently through the crowd with silver trays. Somewhere across the room, she caught sight of Julian deep in conversation with three gentlemen she did not recognize.

Or rather, he appeared to be deep in conversation. At that precise moment, he looked up, and their eyes met across the room. It lasted no more than a heartbeat before they both looked elsewhere.

She found herself smiling.

“Your Grace?” Lady Ashby’s voice called, and Louisa blinked, realizing that her attention had strayed.

“You were saying?”

“The drainage, Your Grace.” Lady Ashby fixed her with a slightly wounded look. “I had just begun explaining the difficulty with the eastern culverts.”

“Of course. The drainage.”

Louisa arranged her expression into something approximating interest, and Lady Ashby, mollified, continued speaking with fresh vigor. She had progressed from roads to bridges with astonishing efficiency, the culverts giving way to some lengthy grievance about a stone arch near the village that had apparently been a source of contention between two families for the better part of thirty years, when Louisa grew aware of someone approaching from across the room.

She did not need to look up to know who it was.

There was something oddly reassuring in it now, some quiet certainty she had begun recognizing before she’d ever consciously seen him, a shift in the air of a crowded room that told her precisely which direction to expect him from.

“Duchess. Ladies.”

She turned.

“Forgive the interruption, but Lord Winterbourne insists I bring you to settle a small dispute regarding the punch.”