Page 45 of A Family Bargain with the Duke

“Lessons.” He came further into the room, something almost sheepish in the admission.

Louisa noted that he seemed to be keeping a more careful distance than usual, as though he too had spent the night turning over the same moment and had arrived at the same uneasy conclusion that some proper space between them was urgently required.

“I have exhausted every sign in Piers’s notes twice over, and I find myself wanting more than a physician’s hasty sketches can teach me. I thought, if you were willing, you might show me properly. Beyond what Kit and I have managed to stumble through between us.”

“I would like that very much.” Louisa set down her pen, pleased by the request in a way she did not think about too closely. “Though I think we should not do it here. This desk was not built for two people gesturing across it, and I should hate to knock over the ink in the middle of teaching you the sign for careful.”

“Where would you suggest?”

“The morning room upstairs, I think. West-facing, good light this time of day, and considerably more open floor than this room affords.” She rose, gathering her shawl from the back of her chair. “Come. I have a mind to make a proper pupil of you, Your Grace, and proper pupils require proper space to fail in.”

“I slept very little, incidentally,” Julian said, following her toward the stairs. The admission had arrived somewhat abruptly, as though he had been turning it over and could not quite keep it contained a moment longer. “After our conversation in the gallery.”

Louisa’s steps faltered slightly on the landing. “Nor did I, if I am being honest.”

“I found myself thinking more about my great-grandfather’s coat than any sensible man ought to.”

“Only the coat?”

A pause, brief but unmistakable. “Not only the coat.”

Louisa did not trust herself to answer that directly, and busied herself instead with opening the morning room door, grateful for the excuse to turn her face away from him for a moment, her cheeks growing warmer than the cool corridor accounted for.

The upstairs morning room caught the late morning sun in a long, warm wash across the floorboards, and Louisa settled onto the low settee while Julian took the chair opposite, angled toward her, his hands resting loosely on his knees in readiness, determined to apply himself properly to whatever came next.

“Show me what you remember first,” she said. “I want to see where we are actually starting from, rather than where you believe we are starting from.”

Julian’s hands lifted and moved through a short sequence, slower than her own practiced fluency but entirely correct in shape: good morning, then horse, then, with only the faintest hesitation, friend.

“That is considerably more than I expected.”

“I have had a great deal of quiet evening hours since our guests departed.” Something almost proud crossed his face, quickly tempered. “I did not wish to arrive at this lesson entirely empty-handed.”

“Then let us build on it properly.” Louisa’s hands moved, unhurried, and she spoke the word aloud as she always did, out of habit as much as instruction. “This is family.”

Julian watched closely, then repeated it, his fingers finding the shape with only a small correction needed to the angle of his thumb.

“House,” she signed next, and he copied it, quicker this time, gaining confidence with every repetition. “Bend this way for safe and that for trust.”

He worked through each in turn, his brow furrowed in concentration.

Louisa found herself, despite her best intentions toward professional detachment, rather charmed by the sight of a duke applying himself so thoroughly to something that offered him no ledger’s satisfaction of a balanced sum, no visible proof of progress beyond the shapes his hands could manage.

“You are improving remarkably quickly, Your Grace.” She said it plainly, meaning it. “Faster than most adults I know. I’m beginning to suspect you have more natural facility for this than you give yourself credit for.”

“I have had considerable motivation.”

“So it would seem.” She smiled, and moved on to the next sign, patience, watching him copy it with only the smallest hesitation.

They continued in this manner for a while longer, the morning light shifting slowly across the floorboards.

Julian’s hands grew surer with every new shape she taught him, though there remained one particular sign that persistently eluded him. Each time he attempted it, one finger bent where it should not, the angle just slightly awry.

“No,” Louisa said with an amused shake of her head. “You keep insisting that finger belongs somewhere else.”

He looked down at his hand with faint suspicion, as though it had betrayed him of its own accord. “Has it?”

“Repeatedly.”