Page 78 of My Deal with the Wrong Duke

Across the drawing room, Frederick stood beside the refreshment table, speaking to Lord Ashton. He caught her eye and smiled, and she returned it by instinct.

“I should go and join him,” she said, suppressing the sudden awful urge to sigh.

“You should do whatever you wish, Louisa. You are allowed to wish for things.”

Eleanor’s voice was gentle. Louisa turned away before the gentleness could undo her.

She crossed the drawing room toward Frederick, her eyes still searching for Oliver, even though she knew full well he wasn’t there.

Frederick guided her to a pair of gilt chairs near the corridor door. She sat. He sat beside her. His knee brushed hers, and he did not move it away.

“You have been quiet lately,” he observed. “These past two weeks.”

“I have had a great deal on my mind.”

She looked at his face. He was still handsome as ever, but it suddenly felt empty. He had been calling more frequently since Oliver’s withdrawal, doing everything right.

He reached for her hand. His fingers closed around hers, and she let him hold it. The violinist began his second piece.

Louisa stared at the far wall. Frederick was looking at her in the way she had always wished for. It was enough. It had to be enough, and she tried to focus on the satisfaction she knew she ought to feel until the violinist’s second piece was done and the applause allowed her to look away.

The ache stayed with her until Lady Ashton’s annual Garden Party. Louisa arrived beside her mother in the Fairchild carriage quietly. She had long since stopped hoping for Oliver’s presence. He would not be there.

She followed her mother to where crowds were softly talking.

Frederick found her before she had finished her first cup of tea.

“Miss Fairchild.” He bowed, a smile pulling at the corners of his mouth. “You look lovely.”

“Thank you. You are very elegant yourself.”

“Am I? I was aiming for understated, but my valet insisted on the rosemary. He believes no gentleman is complete without a garnish.” He offered his arm. “Walk with me? Lord Ashton’s roses are at their finest this week. I have been told the south border is not to be missed.”

She took his arm. The gravel path curved away from the main gathering, past banks of delphiniums and lavender, toward the walled garden where the roses grew in ordered profusion. The noise of the party faded behind them. Frederick walked slowly, matching his stride to hers.

“I have been thinking,” he said, once the path had carried them beyond earshot of the other guests, “about what I want from life. Not merely the practical matters. The estate, the tenants, the obligations. I have spent years attending to those, and they are important, but they are not sufficient.”

Louisa watched a cabbage white butterfly settle on a spray of pale pink roses, then lift away.

“I want a home,” Frederick continued, evidently not noticing that her attention had drifted. “Not merely a house. A place that feels alive. Warmth in the mornings, conversation in the evenings.” He paused beside a trellis heavy with deep red blooms. “I want a partner, Louisa. Someone who will sit across the breakfast table from me in twenty years and still find the conversation worth having.”

The roses smelled thick and sweet in the trapped heat of the walled garden. A gardener’s barrow stood abandoned near the far wall, beside a watering can and a trowel left blade-up in the soil.

“I want a marriage built on mutual respect,” he said. “On the understanding that two people can build a finer life together than either could manage alone.”

He stopped walking. He turned to face her.

“Louisa.” He paused, waiting for her to meet his eyes. “I have admired you for some time. I confess that my admiration was slower in arriving than it should have been. You were always there, and I did not see you clearly until circumstances forced me to look.”

She couldn’t help but lift her brows. This was the closest Frederick had ever come to acknowledging that his interest had been prompted rather than born. He flushed slightly and pressed on.

“But what I have seen has only deepened my regard. You are kind, capable, intelligent, and steadier than any woman I have met. You would grace any home. You would strengthen any family.” He reached into the pocket of his waistcoat. “I have spoken to your mother. She has given her blessing.”

He drew out a ring and held it between his thumb and forefinger. A gold band set with a small sapphire whose facets caught the afternoon light and threw faint blue sparks against his palm.

“Miss Louisa Fairchild, would you do me the honour of becoming my wife?”

The garden was still. The bees continued their work among the roses. The string quartet played on beyond the wall, faint and tinny.