Page 80 of A Family Bargain with the Duke

“He’s gone,” he announced, before he had even fully crossed the threshold of the study.

Julian looked up from the letter he had been trying and failing to focus on for the better part of an hour. “Gone where?”

“The Continent.” Dominic dropped into his usual chair without waiting to be asked, and reached for the brandy decanter. “Quietly, and in haste, I’m told. His influence in town had evaporated by the time he left. Not a club would have him, not a hostess would receive him. The ultimate ruin, I would say.”

“You sound pleased.”

“I am delighted.” Dominic poured, settled back, and regarded Julian over the rim of his glass with open satisfaction. “He threatened you would regret refusing him. I confess I find it rather gratifying that the regret has landed so thoroughly on his doorstep instead.”

“I take no satisfaction in a man’s ruin, Dominic, whatever he deserved.”

“No,” Dominic said it without surprise, as though he had expected nothing else. “I imagine you would not. Which is precisely why I intend to feel the satisfaction on your behalf, since you seem determined not to enjoy it properly.”

Julian said nothing to that, and returned his attention to the letter on the desk before him, though he was no longer reading it so much as looking at it.

Dominic did not let the silence stand. He studied Julian for a moment, his glass forgotten halfway to his mouth. “You look more troubled than a man who has just secured a victory ought to, Julian. What is it?”

Julian opened his mouth to deflect the question, the way he had deflected every version of it for the better part of a week, and found that he did not have the energy for it. He closed his mouth again and said nothing.

Dominic watched him a moment longer. Then, whatever answer he had been looking for seemed to arrive on its own, without Julian having to speak it, because he nodded once and said, “Well, whenever you’re ready to say it, I shall be sitting here.”

He picked his glass back up and let the silence settle again. Julian, grateful for it in a way he did not trust himself to say aloud, let it hold.

CHAPTER 33

Alone in his study that evening, the fire burning low, Julian found his eyes drawn, as they so often did now, to the drawing still propped against his inkstand.

He picked it up and studied it properly, the way he had done a hundred times since Kit had first left it there.

Four figures. Himself. Louisa. Eleanor cradled in her arms. Kit standing close beside them, his sleeve brushing her skirts, entirely certain of his place in the picture.

For months I told myself that keeping my distance was protecting her, he thought, turning the page slowly in his hands. That loving her would only set us both up for the same grief that hollowed out Elizabeth. I built a whole promise on the strength of that fear, and I have spent three years defending it as though it were wisdom rather than cowardice.

He set the drawing down and rose from his seat. He crossed to the window, watching the last light fade over the stables where Kit had once torn a page from his sketchbook rather than let anyone see what he’d drawn.

I was never protecting her.

The realization settled into him with none of its old resistance, like something finally understood.

I was protecting myself. From wanting something I might one day lose. From loving someone so completely that her absence, however briefly felt this past week, could empty a house of its warmth.

He thought of Louisa keeping her promise to Nell, unwavering despite every difficulty society had placed in her path.

He thought of the fierce, unconditional love she had given Eleanor from the very first night, a child not her own by blood and yet entirely her own by choice. He thought of her patient hands teaching Kit to speak again, of her laughter filling a house that had forgotten, across long years, how to make any sound at all beyond careful, grieving silence.

Elizabeth did not suffer because she loved too deeply.

The distinction arrived with a clarity he had somehow failed to notice before.

She suffered because she lost him. Because love, once given so completely, leaves precisely that large a wound when it is taken away. But the answer was never to withhold love in the first place. The answer was only to be braver than I have been, and trust that whatever time we are given is worth the risk of losing it.

He picked up his pen, considered writing to her, and set it down again almost immediately, the same instinct that had stopped him a week ago rising again now, though for entirely different reasons.

A letter will not undo what I said to her. Only standing in front of her and saying the words properly will do that.

He crossed to the bell pull and rang for Simmons.

“Have the carriage readied for first light tomorrow, and send word discreetly ahead to Henswick House that I mean to call on them.”