Page 30 of A Family Bargain with the Duke

“I shall be having words with my ward about loyalty,” he murmured to no one, failing to keep the smile from his voice.

“Two new signs today,” Louisa announced when the lesson had concluded, and she came to find him where he had taken shelter from the rain, her satchel considerably lighter than it had been the first morning, since she had stopped bringing paper Kit showed no interest in using. “Stubborn and clever. He insisted he required both, and I confess I could not argue the necessity.”

“Stubborn and clever.” Julian’s mouth curved. “I’m beginning to suspect those signs describe you rather better than they describe him.”

“They describe us both equally, Your Grace, which is precisely why he insisted on learning them. He wished to be able to call me stubborn to my face in a language I could not pretend not to understand.”

“And did he?”

“Twice, this morning alone. I found it rather encouraging on the whole.” She adjusted her satchel and glanced back toward the stables, where Kit was brushing Rosalind with contentment that Julian had come to recognize as the boy’s version of quiet joy. “He is not merely tolerating these lessons anymore, Your Grace. I do not know exactly when it happened, but somewhere in the last few days, he began to actually enjoy them.”

Julian looked past her toward the stables, toward the boy inside who had, for the length of that morning’s lesson, laughed without sound, argued without words, and defended his horse’s dignity with the same fierce spirit Julian remembered from before his father’s death, a spirit he had feared for years would never surface again.

“Yes,” he said quietly. “So do I.”

* * *

“… and then Mrs. Whitfield informed me, with an absolutely straight face, that the second housemaid has been feeding the barn cats from the kitchen scraps for the better part of a year and considers it entirely her business rather than anyone else’s, which I found admirable even as I promised Mrs. Whitfield I would speak to the girl about it.”

Julian watched his wife across the table, her hands moving as she spoke, a piece of bread forgotten between her fingers, and found himself, not for the first time this past week, more absorbed in the telling than the tale itself.

“Did you speak to her?”

“I have not yet decided whether I intend to. The cats do keep the mice from the grain store, after all, and I’m beginning to suspect that Mrs. Whitfield’s objection has more to do with the matter of an unauthorized expenditure than any real concern for the cats’ welfare.”

Louisa finally ate the bread, then reached for her water. Julian’s eyes followed the small motion of her hand without his permission.

“The rest of the morning was dedicated to lessons, as usual. Kit is coming along wonderfully, though I confess he has developed rather strong opinions about my teaching methods.”

“Has he?”

“He informed me today that Rosalind does not care for her name.”

Julian set down his fork. “I beg your pardon?”

“Rosalind. He does not believe the name suits her. He said she had never once answered to it in all the time he had called her by it in his head, and he suspects she rather resents it.”

“I gave her that name myself.” Julian frowned, baffled by the direction the conversation had taken. “Three years ago, when Kit first began spending his afternoons with her. Given how often he used it, I assumed that the name had already been settled between them.”

Something flickered across Louisa’s face, quick and entirely too delighted to be accidental. “Your Grace, he has never called her Rosalind at all. He does not know how you came to believe that was her name.”

Julian stared at her. “Then who named her Rosalind?”

“You did, apparently, though I gather you did it by accident.” Louisa’s mouth was twitching now, fighting back a smile. “Kit told me that some years ago, you simply began calling her Rosalind one day because you thought every respectable horse ought to have a respectable name.”

“That is not possible.”

“It is entirely possible, Your Grace, and I understand that it has become a favorite story below stairs, once Kit finally found a way to tell it properly.” Louisa was laughing openly now, and the sound settled over the table like sunlight through a window. “You have been calling the poor mare by a name she has never once answered to for three years, and no one thought to correct you because no one else in this household understood a single word Kit was saying.”

Julian felt an unfamiliar heat crawl up his neck, something perilously close to embarrassment, an emotion he could not recall experiencing over quite so trivial a matter in a very long while. “I see.”

“Do not look so wounded, Your Grace. It is a very charming mistake, as far as mistakes go. I only wonder what you intend to do about it now that the truth has come out.”

“I suppose I ought to know what her name actually is and use it properly from this point forward.”

“I suspect he would like that very much.”

Louisa reached for her wine, and Julian watched, with an attention he had not permitted himself, the unhurried way she wet her lips before speaking again. An entirely ordinary motion that he found this evening considerably more difficult to look away from than it had any reasonable right to be.