Page 103 of My Deal with the Wrong Duke

“Understood, sir.”

“Good.” Fairchild released his hand. Then, quieter: “And tell Louisa I should like to see her. In this study. If she is willing.”

Oliver collected his hat. “I will tell her today.”

He let himself out. The corridor was empty, but as he passed the breakfast room, the door stood ajar, and Elizabeth Fairchild was seated at the table, her hands folded, her expression suggesting she had heard every word through walls that were thinner than anyone in this house pretended.

She did not speak. She inclined her head, just once, and Oliver inclined his in return, and he walked through the front door into the June morning feeling lighter than he had felt in years.

In the hallway, Rosaline hovered near the front door. Oliver stopped beside her.

“Would you ask Miss Fairchild to come downstairs? Her father would like to see her.”

Rosaline’s eyes went round. She glanced toward the study door, then back at Oliver, then curtsied so quickly she nearly tripped over her own feet and disappeared up the stairs.

Oliver walked through the front door and into the June morning. Behind him, he heard footsteps descending, and the low murmur of Rosaline’s voice on the landing, and then he pulled the door shut and left the Fairchilds to themselves.

* * *

Louisa stood outside the study door for eleven seconds before she knocked.

“Come in.”

His voice sounded different than she remembered. Not louder or stronger, but present, as though the man behind the door had moved closer to it.

She opened the door. Her father sat behind his desk, his hands resting flat on the blotter. The stack of unopened letters had been shifted to one side. The inkwell cap lay beside the pot, removed for the first time in what looked like weeks. And her father was looking at her.

Not past her. Not through her. At her.

“Louisa.” He stood. “Sit down. Please.”

She sat in the leather chair across from him. The leather was warm. Oliver had been sitting here minutes ago, she realized, and the thought sent warmth through her chest.

“Your duke came to see me,” her father said.

The warmth rose to her cheeks. “He is not my duke.”

“He asked permission to court you. I believe that makes him at least partially yours.” The thin smile returned, tentative, testing whether it still fit his face. “He is direct. I was not expecting that from a man of his reputation.”

“His reputation is mostly performance. The man beneath it is considerably more serious.”

Her father nodded slowly.

“I owe you an apology,” he said. “Not for the investments. Those were poor decisions, and I have accepted the arithmetic. I owe you an apology for closing this door.”

Louisa’s throat tightened. She pressed her thumbnail into the cracked leather of the armrest.

“You were in pain, Papa.”

“I was in pain, and I chose to bear it alone, and in doing so I left your mother to manage a household that was shrinking around her while I sat in this chair and read the same pages of the same books and pretended that absence was the same as causing no harm.” He looked at her directly. “Your duke said you missed me. Those afternoons at this desk. The ledgers.”

“He told you that?”

“He did. And I have been sitting here since he left, trying to remember the last time I taught you anything at all, and I cannot find the date.”

The study door opened. Elizabeth Fairchild stepped inside, still holding the embroidery she had not been working on. She looked at her husband, then at Louisa, then at the chair her daughter occupied and the desk where her husband sat upright for the first time in months.

“I thought I might join you. If I am not intruding,” she said carefully. Charles smiled.