Page 63 of A Family Bargain with the Duke

Louisa opened her mouth to argue further, some sharp reply already forming, and stopped herself, studying his face properly for the first time since she’d begun her account. The tightness in his jaw. The particular strain around his eyes that she had, until this moment, mistaken for anger.

“You are not angry that I went,” she said slowly, understanding arriving by careful degrees. “You are not even angry that I kept it from you.”

“I am very much angry about both.”

“No.” She rose from her chair, closing some of the distance between them. “You are frightened, Your Grace. You have been frightened this whole while, and calling it anger has simply been easier than admitting it.”

Julian said nothing for a long moment, and in his silence, Louisa found her answer confirmed.

“I could not eat properly while you were gone,” he sighed, the words coming slower now, stripped of their earlier heat. “Now, I can’t stop imagining everything that could have gone wrong. A meeting arranged under false pretenses. Vane himself intercepting you before you ever reached Whitmore. You walking into a danger I could not see coming and could do nothing to prevent because I did not even know it existed.”

His shoulders dropped, the careful composure he wore constantly finally cracking open before her.

“I have not been so entirely undone by fear in longer than I care to admit, Louisa. It felt considerably safer to be angry with you than to admit how frightened I actually am.”

Louisa’s chest tightened, her earlier defensiveness vanishing at once.

“I am sorry,” she said, and meant it now in a way she had not quite managed before. “I told myself I was protecting the plan by keeping it close. In truth, I think I was simply afraid you would insist on coming yourself, and I wanted to prove that I could manage it entirely by myself.”

“You managed it considerably better than I would have.” Something rueful crossed his face. “I am sorry as well, for letting my fear curdle into anger before I properly understood what I was feeling. You deserved better than to be shouted at for coming home with the truth we both needed.”

They stood for a long moment in the quiet study, close enough now that Louisa could feel the warmth radiating from him, neither of them inclined to reclaim the safer distance they had kept throughout their argument.

Julian closed the remaining distance between them. His eyes moved over her face, searching, and something in his expression shifted, the careful control he had worn for weeks finally giving way.

“Louisa—”

He did not finish whatever he had meant to say. His hand rose instead, cupping her face with a gentleness entirely at odds with the tension still humming between them, his thumb brushing once along her cheekbone. Then he leaned in and kissed her.

Whatever restraint he had exercised throughout their argument broke entirely in that single motion, his mouth finding hers with a fierce passion that stole the breath clean from her lungs, his brow furrowing against hers with urgency. One hand cradled her jaw while the other came to rest on the small of her back, drawing her flush against him.

Louisa’s hands found the front of his coat, gripping it as though she needed something to hold onto. She kissed him back with every bit of the same feeling, weeks of careful restraint unraveling all at once between them, every dinner conversation, every dance, every moment in his study that neither of them had permitted themselves to name finally given voice in the press of his mouth against hers, deep and searching and entirely unguarded.

Then, somewhere above them, Eleanor’s cry pierced through the quiet house, thin and insistent.

They broke apart at once, both of them startled, breathing unsteadily. Julian’s hand lingered for a moment on her jaw before he drew it back, as though only just registering what he had done.

Louisa stared at him, her pulse hammering, her lips tingling from his kiss, and found she had no ready words for what had just happened between them.

“I—” She broke off.

Eleanor’s cry came again, more insistent now.

Louisa turned and fled the room without another word, her heart pounding the whole way up the stairs.

Julian was left alone in the study, one hand still raised slightly.

CHAPTER 26

“Mr. Whitmore has arrived, Your Grace.”

Simmons’s announcement carried a faint note of curiosity, no doubt wondering, as the rest of the household surely did by now, precisely what business brought an unfamiliar gentleman to Ashvale on such short notice.

“Show him to the study.”

Louisa smoothed her skirts and glanced at Julian, who stood near the cold hearth, his hands clasped more tightly behind his back than strict calm required.

“You need not remain if this proves difficult to hear.”