DUKE OF SAPPHIRE

A HISTORICAL REGENCY ROMANCE NOVEL

DUKES OF DECADENCE

BOOK SIX

EMMA LINFIELD

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ABOUT THE BOOK

"I ran away to escape a marriage... not to end up in another!"

When Charlotte hides inside the carriage of the duty-bound Duke of Sappherton, she begs him for only one thing:

Save her from the man her father has chosen.

Henry’s journey to Scotland has only one purpose: to become guardian to his missing cousin's six-year-old son. Rescuing a runaway bride was never part of the plan. But when the mischievous little boy trusts no one but Charlotte, Henry makes an unexpected proposal.

She will become his wife.

Only until the child's parents are found.

But the longer they share a home, the harder it becomes to remember they were only pretending to be a family. For the first time in her life, Charlotte finally has a place to belong.

Until she realizes that some dreams come true...only to be taken away.

BEFORE YOU START READING…

Here is a Prequel Chapter about Charlotte’s past which will help you understand and visualize the story inside my book better.

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It’s not mandatory to read it, but it will be really helpful if it's your first time with this book.

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CHAPTER 1

“You will marry him!”

Charlotte watched her father’s reflection in the window. It looked larger than his actual person, which was saying something, as Lord Ashford was no stranger to imposing his presence on a room or, for that matter, an entire household.

His face hovered above the morning newsprint like a storm cloud with spectacles.

She tried to find her voice. “You said—only two days ago—that nothing had been decided.”

“Nothing had been decided,” he said, “because I was waiting for Lord Redmont to approach me properly. He has, and now it is settled. The arrangement is everything I could have wished for.” He snapped the paper straight and turned a page, as though she were a footman bringing the wrong tea.

Charlotte stared at the wax gleam on the sideboard, her hand pressed flat to its edge. “Father, I barely know Lord Redmont. I met him once at Lady Hewes’s garden party. And he—he said nothing but how the light made my hair look like a rowan tree.”

“He admires your hair,” the Earl said as though his daughter had just won a livestock prize. “A good sign.”

“That is not a good sign,” she said. “It is the sign of a person who cannot think of what to say about the rest of me.” Charlotte took a breath. “He did not ask about my interests. Or speak of his own. Or look at me except when you were looking.”

Her father closed the paper, folded it into a neat band, and set it aside. The storm cloud now hovered directly over her. “You are an Ashford,” he said. “That is all any man needs to know.”

The certainty in his voice grated down her spine. “Surely you want me to be happy?”

“Happy!” He barked it out, a single note, then caught himself and smiled. “I want you secure. I want you well-married. That is how daughters find contentment. Lord Redmont is a Marquess, and his property adjoins ours at three points. The match doubles our standing and brings considerable benefit.”

“What about me?”

He eyed her over the spectacles. “You will be a Marchioness with wealth and respect, and a husband whose habits are beyond reproach.” He leaned back, making the chair protest. “The arrangement is a privilege, Charlotte. Most young ladies would be grateful for the opportunity.”

Charlotte’s jaw tightened. “What if I cannot stand him?”

Her father’s smile faded. “Then you will learn to. He is not an ogre, nor are you so delicate.” He picked up a letter from his desk. “Your mother learned to like me well enough, after all.” His face flickered as he said it, like he’d stubbed a toe on the memory.

Charlotte stared at the pattern of tea stains on the rug. If she squinted, they resembled isolated islands on an empty map. Her father had spent years dictating the boundaries of her world from the comfort of this very room, never noticing that she was the one trapped on the shore.

He adjusted his spectacles. “This is not a negotiation. I expect you to show proper gratitude when you meet Lord Redmont tomorrow. You will accept his proposal. You will marry him within a fortnight. Do you understand?”

She wanted to shout. She wanted to fling the teapot at the wall, or, better yet, at his head. Instead, she gave the smallest possible nod.

“Good.” He said it as if he’d just won a particularly slow chess match. “You may go.”

Charlotte walked out before she had the chance to scream.

She made for the library. Always the library, always the only room that belonged to her, even when nothing else did. She pressed her hand to the door frame and hesitated. Inside, the light was pale, leaking through the glass at an angle that made every speck of dust look like it was trying to get her attention.

She selected a book at random—a volume on Venetian history—and sat with it in the window seat, legs drawn up, skirt wrinkling without regard for the day’s schedule.

Charlotte read the same sentence five times: The Doge’s daughter was imprisoned for refusing a marriage she found unpalatable. She could not help but think the Doge’s daughter had enjoyed more options than herself.

She set the book aside and looked out at the autumn garden. Even the hedges seemed resentful of their shaping, as if they had tried to escape and only been sheared shorter for their trouble.

“I do not want this,” she whispered, her breath fogging the glass. If only there was a way to send the words to someone who mattered. Looking up toward the sky, her throat tightened. “Mama, what advice would you give your daughter if you were here?”

She tried to imagine another life. One where her mother was alive and Charlotte was still shielded from her father. Or a city, perhaps, where a person could walk down the street without someone noting who her father was and how she might be improved. Or a cottage, somewhere on a hill, with a goat and a kitchen garden and nobody to answer to except the goat.

She looked down at her hands; at the pale crescent marks her nails had left in her palm.

Once, she could always imagine a different future. Lately, the stories she told herself ended up in the same place: alone, or trapped, or boxed in by somebody else’s plans.

She picked up the book again. It did not help. She set it down harder.

“You will marry him!”

It echoed again, this time inside her skull, bouncing off every wall. If she listened too long, it started to sound almost reasonable.

Charlotte closed her eyes and pressed her forehead to the glass. “I will not,” she whispered.

The world outside stayed cold, and very, very still.

“—a dowry like that is hard to refuse, George. If you ever tire of the girl, send her my way.”

Laughter snapped down the hallway, raw and sudden, and Charlotte froze outside the study. She flattened herself to the wall. The next voice was her father’s, lighter than she’d ever heard it. “You would not know what to do with her, Pemberton. Redmont will make a Marchioness of her, and I will finally have a peaceful drawing room.”

“She does have spirit, your Charlotte. I imagine that’s more useful than you admit.”

“Not to a husband. And not to a family line.” Her father’s voice hardened. “The arrangement is final. I have signed the settlements; the ceremony is a formality.”

The word settlements was a punch to the gut. Charlotte’s feelings, her spirit, and her even wishes had never been considered in the discussion at all.

She stepped away before she could hear more, footsteps light on the carpet, up the stairs and away—anywhere but the echo of his voice. Her pulse thudded against her throat.

She did not slow until she reached her own room. She locked the door. The window was gray with pre-evening mist and her own reflection in it looked almost transparent, like a ghost who had never mattered to anyone.

She rang the bell for Edith.

The maid appeared at the door, her cap askew. “Lady Charlotte?”

Charlotte turned, unable to keep the urgency from her face. “It is time.”

Edith’s eyes went wide. “But—surely, my lady⁠—”

“The proposal is happening tomorrow. My father said the ceremony is a formality.” She choked on the last word.

Edith set her jaw, smoothing her apron with trembling hands. “You do not have to do this, you know. You are clever. You could⁠—”

“He’s signed the settlements. There is no cleverness left. My father just sold me to Lord Redmont.” Her voice came out flat, too loud. Charlotte blinked until the burn behind her eyes vanished.

Edith deflated. “I have prepared everything. If you are certain⁠—”

“I am,” Charlotte said, before certainty could desert her.

“Then we must cut your hair.”

Charlotte drew herself up. “Do what you will, Edith,” she said. “It must be good enough to pass scrutiny.”

The scissors were cold and the lady’s maid held them awkwardly. It was evident she rarely had cause to cut the hair of others. Edith worked in silence, save for the steady snip-snap. Each strand felt like a memory—Christmas mornings, falling asleep on storybooks, hiding under the library table. When Edith finished, Charlotte’s hair brushed her shoulder blades instead of her hips. The fresh coiffure seemed scandalous.

Edith held up a mirror, biting her lip.

“Better,” Charlotte said. The reflection seemed sharper now, as if the old Charlotte had been left on the floor with the trimmings. “What next?”

“Put these on.” Edith handed her a pile of coarse, ordinary clothing—brown trousers, a blue coat, a linen shirt, and a cap that had once belonged to Edith’s brother. It covered all of Charlotte’s hair after it was pinned up.

“Walk with your shoulders back and never look down,” Edith said as she smoothed the lapels on the blue coat. “Speak as little as possible. If you must speak, deepen your voice. And do not smile at anyone. Please.”

Charlotte slipped into the borrowed clothing. The shirt was scratchy. The trousers, held up with a belt, cut sharply across her waist. The cap hid her hair, but not the fear.

“Will it work?”

Edith nodded, swallowing hard. “You could pass for a young valet. So long as nobody stares too long.” She fussed at the collar, straightening it, then clutched Charlotte’s hands. “If anyone asks, say nothing. Run if you must.”

“I am not running,” Charlotte said. “I am walking. Briskly.” The bravado surprised her.

Edith tried to smile and failed. “There is a carriage at the rear stable, set to leave for Bedfordshire before dawn. The driver is my cousin; he owes me three favors and will not ask questions. Do not stop anywhere near London, my lady. Go as far north as you can…” Her voice broke.

Charlotte nodded. “Thank you, Edith.”

The rest of the evening stretched thin and taut. Edith returned once, bringing a bundle of bread, cheese, and a battered book of poetry. “In case you need company,” she said, pressing the book into Charlotte’s hand.

“I will,” Charlotte said.

They waited, sitting close in the dark, not speaking. The silence was the only kindness left.

When the clock in the hallway struck two, Edith rose. “You must go.”

Charlotte followed her through the servant hallways, with her heart drumming so loudly that it created a steady roar. They slipped outside. The grass was slick with night dew, the stables a black hulk against the dim sky.

The carriage was there, lanterns doused. The driver had a burly shape. He had thrown a thick scarf over his jaw. The man nodded once at Edith, then at Charlotte. “You’re the new boy, are you?”

Charlotte nodded, voice locked tight in her chest. “I am.”

“Load in, then. We’ve a long way.” He looked her up and down, and for a breath she thought he might see through everything. Then he shrugged. “Just keep quiet and hold on if we hit a rut.”

Edith lingered at the carriage door. “Don’t look back,” she whispered.

Charlotte squeezed Edith’s hand and climbed inside the coach.

The carriage jolted forward, wheels crunching the gravel. Charlotte pressed her forehead to the window and watched the only home she had ever known fade into the fog.

She wondered, for one wild moment, if her father would notice she was gone before breakfast.

She hoped he gave her enough time to get as far as possible.

CHAPTER 2

“Your coach will not last half a day if you load it like a mail wagon.”

Henry Kingswell, Duke of Sappherton, did not pause in his stride. “I am not bringing the entire estate. Only the minimum for six weeks. I will not risk a delay in delivery.”

Tristan Lilacourt, the Duke of Evermere, leaned in the doorway with one boot braced against the jamb and a smirk that belonged at a gaming table. “The minimum? You have more paperwork packed than food.”

“I anticipate most meals will be taken at coaching inns. I do not anticipate time for reading.”

“Yet you bring a trunk of ledgers.”

Henry set his pen down. “If you are here to offer farewells, say them and be done.”

“I am not,” said Tristan. “I am here because your man said you had not eaten, and I am the only person in London with the stomach to share breakfast with you.” He wandered past the desk, eyeing the stacks of correspondence. “Also because Lavinia said you were liable to work yourself to death before noon.”

“Lavinia should worry about her own husband’s health. You look half-starved.”

“I have a metabolism that burns away everything but charm. You, on the other hand, look as though you have not slept in a week.”

“I have not,” Henry said.

“Why? The Drummond boy will not vanish in a day.”

Henry pushed the topmost folder a quarter inch to the right. “If you had read the latest dispatches, you would not say so. My cousin Nathan Drummond’s estate is in utter chaos. There are three sets of stewards giving conflicting orders, and not one of them has authority to act. There is no word from the Drummonds themselves, and the staff are at their wit’s end. The boy⁠—”

“Ian,” said Tristan.

“Ian,” Henry said, “has already bitten a footman and attempted to escape out a third-story window.”

Tristan let out a long, low whistle. “He is Drummond’s child.”

“Obviously.”

“Has anyone told him his parents might not be coming back?”

Henry glanced up. “They are missing, not dead.”

Tristan arched a brow. “Very reassuring, coming from you.”

“I have spent every hour since the news arrived petitioning every friend and functionary north of Yorkshire. There is no evidence they are gone.”

“Yet no evidence they are alive,” Tristan said, dropping into a chair. “That is what troubles you.”

Henry closed the portfolio with a snap. “What troubles me is how quickly everything degenerates when a single link fails. If I do not reach Drummond by Thursday, the estate will openly revolt.”

“And you, of course, are the only person in England equipped to prevent it.”

Henry’s hand curled on the desk. “It is my obligation. Not only is Nathan my cousin, but Ian is my godson.”

Tristan studied him, one leg crossed over the other. “Is that what you tell yourself about all your obligations, or just the ones that keep you from sleeping?”

“I do not see the point of your visit if all you intend is to analyze my emotional state.”

“I have not even begun to analyze your emotional state. That will happen when you return and drink yourself insensible.”

Henry stacked the papers in a tight block. “When I return, I will have a ward. I will not have time for insensibility.”

Tristan’s smirk faded. “Henry.”

He did not want to hear it, whatever it was. He swept the stack into the trunk and closed the lid. “Thank you for stopping by.”

Tristan rose, stretching like a cat. “You will make a dreadful parent, you know. All rules, no warmth.”

“I am not meant to be a parent. I am meant to keep the estate from ruin until Nathan is found or confirmed lost.”

“Children do not respond to estate management. They need other things.”

“I shall pretend you do not have any expertise in the matter.”

Tristan’s smirk faded. "Pretend all you want. But I know what it looks like when a child is left behind to carry grief alone. I have watched you do it to yourself ever since your father died."

Henry felt the jab but did not flinch. “I am not a child.”

“No. But you manage loss exactly as a child would. By refusing to feel it and burying yourself in work.” Tristan ran a finger along the spines of the books on the shelf. “How old were you, when your father died?”

“I was two-and-twenty...”

“Old enough to inherit. Not old enough to know what to do with it.”

Henry shut the trunk with a firm hand. “My father is irrelevant to the current problem.”

“Is he? Or is this all the same thing, repeating forever?”

“I appreciate the concern,” Henry said, “but it is wasted on me. I have a schedule to keep. If you are finished, I should like to prepare in silence.”

Tristan shrugged, making for the door. “Remember to eat something. Or at least drink water. Lavinia will never forgive me if you die of dehydration.”

“I will keep it in mind.”

Tristan paused on the threshold. “When you find Ian Drummond, do not try to explain the world to him all at once. It will only frighten him.”

“I do not frighten children.”

Tristan’s look said otherwise, but he left it at that. “Safe travels, Sappherton.”

“Thank you, Evermere,” Henry said, and meant it.

* * *

The carriage rolled out of the London drive at six precisely. Henry checked his watch, then leaned back against the squabs, letting his mind move ahead of the road. He thumbed through correspondence, jotting notes in the margins, refusing to let his thoughts wander to anything but the day’s itinerary.

Every stop, every hour, were mapped in advance. The driver had orders to alert him if there was any delay longer than five minutes.

The streets changed from city to fields, the fields to gray, empty miles. He preferred not to look out the window. There was nothing of value out there, nothing that could affect him, at least.

He drafted a letter to the Drummond stewards, sketched out a plan for consolidating the household, and began a list of possible tutors for Ian. None of them would last, he suspected, but the boy needed structure immediately.

At noon, the carriage stopped for horses. He stayed inside, nibbling at a cold chicken sandwich his cook had insistently packed, his eyes never leaving the page.

At three, another change occurred. This time the inn yard was noisy, full of travelers and the slap of harness leather. The driver brought a note: a local land agent was waiting with news. Henry steeled himself and went inside.

The land agent was a reed-thin man with an apologetic cough. “Nothing yet, Your Grace, but the search continues. There is rumor the Drummond carriage was spotted north of the river, but it may have been a false report.”

Henry nodded. “Report again if you learn more.”

The man bowed himself out. Henry returned to the carriage, more aware than ever of the time pressing on him.

He made Biggleswade by dusk, as planned. The Swan Inn stood at the town’s edge; its yard already lit with torches for the evening trade.

Henry stepped out into the cold, stamped the stiffness from his legs, and handed the driver a coin. “Up at first light. I want no delays.”

The driver nodded. “Very good, Your Grace.”

Inside, the inn was warm but crowded. He took a private room rather than eat among the locals, preferring the silence and the quick service. The food was tolerable, the ale, thin and sour. He barely tasted either.

After supper he spoke with the ostler, checked the horses himself, and paid in advance for the rooms occupied by himself, his valet, and his coachman. The staff were competent, if nosy. He ignored their questions, retiring early.

In his chamber, he locked the door, undressed, and sank into the hard bed. He listened to the distant noise of the taproom below, the stamping and snort of horses in the yard, and the rattle of the window in the wind.

He closed his eyes and, for one moment, allowed himself to remember Nathan’s laugh, and the way they used to walk the moors at dawn. The last letter Nathan Drummond had sent was full of jokes about the weather and not a single word about disaster.

Then Henry put the remembrances away, as he always did, and fell asleep.

He woke before the inn’s rooster, dressed, and shaved by candlelight. The world outside was flat with morning mist, the yard empty save for the sweep of a broom and a sleepy ostler unbarring the stables.

Henry went out to the carriage and checked the harness because he liked to maintain order in every aspect of his life, the undercarriage, and the wheels. The driver was inside, taking tea with the stable hands. The carriage was as he had left it—except for a slight list to one side, as if a load had shifted.

He frowned. He had not loaded anything himself last night; all trunks were stowed in the box and strapped by the porters. The only thing that might have moved was the sheaf of papers on the rear seat.

Or…there was a stowaway hunkering down inside the coach.

Impossible, he told himself but checked anyway.

He swung open the door and peered inside. In the half-light, there was a shape curled on the bench, slight and limp, hat pulled down over the face. A boy, from the look of it—too small to be more.

Henry’s first instinct was irritation. The second was calculation: a stowaway meant delay, disruption, and perhaps a scandal if the boy belonged to the one of the staff members at the inn.

“Up,” he said sharply.

No movement.

He reached in and seized the boy’s shoulder, shaking it hard. The figure came alive all at once, scrambling upright, arms up in defense. The hat tumbled off. A tangle of brown hair spilled out of the cap, and the face that looked back at him was not a boy’s at all.

This was a young woman, eyes wild and bright, jaw set for a fight.

She stared at him unwaveringly.

Henry felt an odd stillness. Then he was consumed a white-hot anger, cut sharp by confusion.

He held her gaze for a beat, then said, in the voice he reserved for the worst of his staff, “Who are you and what are you doing in my carriage?”

CHAPTER 3

The stowaway did not shrink. “I am—no one. I mean—I am no one important. But I will leave at once if you let me.”

Henry placed one hand on the carriage frame. “I am not in the habit of offering charity to trespassers. You will answer, and you will do so now. Name, origin, and reason for occupying my carriage.”

The girl’s mouth compressed into a thin, stubborn line. She wore boy’s clothing, but it did not become her. Judging by the way she held her chin high, she had been born into privilege. And when she spoke, Henry thought she sounded educated—her vowels clipped and southern.

She blinked rapidly, looking everywhere but his face. “If you turn me in, my father will be furious. He will. I do not wish to go back.”

“You should have considered that before you absconded.”

She opened her hands, showing her empty palms. “I had no choice.”

“There is always a choice.”

“Not for me.” Her tone was tart.

“How did you get in here?”

“The door was unlocked, and it was raining.”

“You could have taken shelter at the Swan.”

“For a man who appears intelligent, that is a rather poor suggestion,” she countered. “A youth in ill-fitting clothes with empty pockets walking into a bustling inn parlor attracts immediate scrutiny. An empty coach in a dark yard does not.”

Henry ignored her jab. “And you did not think to check whose coach it was?”

She lifted her chin. “In the dark and the rain, inspecting coat-of-arms on door panels was rather difficult. My primary concern was my survival.”

Her jaw was set and her eyes were entirely awake. She held herself very still as if she were pretending not to be afraid. “I am not sending you back,” Henry said, “until I know who you are.”

“There is no need to know who I am for am I never going back.”

“That is not how this works.”

“Why not?”

“Because,” Henry said with great patience, “I cannot hide an unknown woman in my carriage. Not without consequences. Not without—” He stopped and heaved an annoyed sigh. “Who are you?”

“Someone who would like very much not to go home.”

“That is not a name.”

“No,” she said, “it isn’t.”

He glanced behind him. The inn yard was noisier now, forcing him to climb into the carriage to prevent a scene. As he moved and tugged the door behind himself, the young lady shifted so that she took up only a small bit of space on the cushioned seat. “You entered uninvited into a stranger’s carriage, spent several hours hiding, and now you will not tell me your name. I want you to hear how that sounds.”

“It sounds desperate,” she said. “Which is accurate.”

“It sounds like a problem I did not cause and do not intend to inherit.”

She folded her arms. “You are cold-hearted.”

“I am rational. There is a distinction.”

“From where I am sitting, the distinction is difficult to locate.”

“From where you are sitting,” Henry said, “you are in my carriage without invitation, refusing to tell me who you are, and demanding I assist you in whatever scheme you have arranged.” He paused. “The cold-heartedness, if present, is entirely warranted.”

She looked as though she wanted to argue and was selecting her best argument before deploying it. “At least tell me,” she said, “who you are. Since we are sharing a carriage.”

Henry blinked. In twenty years of navigating London Society, no one had ever demanded his credentials as though they were exchanged on equal footing. He opened his mouth, then closed it.

“You seem surprised,” she said.

“I am,” he admitted. “Mildly.”

“Is it so unusual a question?”

“For someone in your position? Yes.”

She waved a hand. “My position is temporary. Yours presumably is not. So—who are you?”

He straightened. “Henry Kingswell,” he said. “Duke of Sappherton.”

There was silence.

He had learned, over the years, that the announcement of his title produced a fairly predictable effect. People went still. Some bowed even when already seated. Some apologized for whatever they had been doing in the previous thirty seconds. Once, a young lord had knocked over an entire dinner service.

This young woman looked at him as though he had told her the carriage had lost a wheel.

“A duke,” she said flatly.

“Yes.”

“Of course you are.” She pressed her fingers to her temple. “Of course. Of all the carriages in all the inn yards in all of England⁠—”

“You chose mine.”

“I chose this one because I heard the driver telling the groom it’d be heading north.” She dropped her hand. “I did not stop to check the crest.”

“That was careless of you.”

“Yes,” she said, with feeling. “I see that now.” She stared at the window, at the blurry shapes of the yard outside, and something shifted in her face. She did not look frightened, exactly. She looked like someone recalculating a sum and not enjoying the answer.

Henry gave her a moment. Then, he prodded, “Your name.”

She turned back and looked at him for a beat. “Lady Charlotte Ashford.”

The name landed. Henry turned it over.

Ashford.

Ashford’s family seat was in Bedfordshire, he knew. He had driven through the county last night.

Henry looked at the carriage door, at the latch, at the boards of the floor, and then back at her. “You are Lord Ashford’s daughter?”

“Guilty,” she said without humor.

He said nothing for a moment. The carriage yard was fully alive now; he could hear the driver’s boots on the gravel, the rattle of the water trough. If anyone came over—if anyone glanced inside and recognized either of them⁠—

The consequences assembled themselves in his mind. An unmarried Earl’s daughter. A bachelor Duke’s carriage. A night spent inside it. He did not need to calculate further. The math was ruinous.

He kept his voice level. “How old are you?”

“Three and twenty.”

“And you left your father’s house last night dressed as—” He gestured.

“A valet,” she said. “In training.”

“Without a chaperone.”

“As you can see.”

“Spent the night alone in a gentleman’s⁠—”

“I am well aware of the situation,” she said. “You do not need to remind me by making a list of my misdeeds.”

“I am listing them,” Henry said, “because I want you to understand exactly what I am dealing with here.”

“You are dealing with one person who does not wish to return home. That is all.”

“That is not all. That is the smallest possible version of what this is.” He sat forward. “Lady Charlotte. I will return you to your father at the next reasonable stop. I will arrange⁠—”

“No,” she refused quickly in a flat tone.

“I am not asking for your agreement.”

“Then you should not have explained your reasoning,” she said. “Because now I can argue with it.” She sat up straighter. “You cannot send me back. Not until you understand what I am running from.”

Henry said nothing. He supposed that was tacit encouragement.

“My father has arranged a marriage,” she said. “The settlements are already signed. I was to meet my intended today—and accept him—and be married within a fortnight.” She looked at him directly. “I did not agree to any of it.”

“Daughters of the nobility rarely do,” Henry said. “And yet the institution persists.”

“I see your sympathy has bounds.”

“I have a great deal of sympathy,” Henry said, “and a great deal more common sense. Your situation, Lady Charlotte, is not unique. What is unique is that you are currently in my carriage.”

“Then let me stay in it.”

“No.”

“You have room.”

“That is emphatically not the point.”

“You are traveling north.”

“To Scotland,” he said, “on a matter of considerable urgency. A missing friend, an estate in chaos, and a situation with a child that requires my full attention. I do not have capacity to manage a runaway bride.”

“I am not asking you to manage me,” she said. “I am asking you to let me sit here and be invisible.”

“You are dressed as a boy. You have the natural poise of a lady of quality, which no cap and borrowed coat can disguise. You are about as invisible as a candelabra.”

She opened her mouth.

“At a funeral,” Henry added.

She shut it again.

He watched her think. It was an unusual thing to watch—she did it visibly, her expression moving through frustration and calculation and something remarkably close to genuine despair before settling back into composure. She was trying hard, he noted, not to beg.

He admired her courage and persistence.

Lady Charlotte allowed a small sigh. “I suppose I must find another way to escape marriage to Lord Redmont.”

Henry’s brows drew a fraction at her mention of the name. “Lord Redmont?”

Her eyes met his, and her mouth tightened at the corners, as if in disgust. “Yes, Vincent Carrington, the Marquess of Redmont.”

Henry went still.

He knew the name the way he knew the contents of a bad report—immediately, with a cold recognition that settled in his chest.

Redmont.

Beyond the perfunctory bows exchanged in the House of Lords or across crowded London ballrooms, Henry knew the Marquess of Redmont from three specific commercial negotiations over the past four years. On each occasion, Redmont had arrived impeccably mannered and departed with an unearned advantage gained through underhanded tactics: poached contacts, a falsified ledger submitted to a shipping consortium, and a whisper that had deliberately tipped a rival venture into ruin.

Redmont was the sort of man who smiled at you while counting your silver, and by the time you noticed, he had already left the room.

Henry had not trusted him once in their entire acquaintance.

He looked at Lady Charlotte. She was watching him with that careful, waiting expression, trying to read what she saw in his face.

“You know him,” she said.

“I know of him.”

“Is that good or bad?”

Henry said nothing. He was still turning it over. The man was wealthy, connected, influential in the right rooms. He was also—and Henry had never been able to prove it, only to observe it—entirely devoid of scruple when it suited him. Not a monster by any visible measure. Simply a man who had decided, at some early point, that other people existed to serve his purposes.

The thought of Lady Charlotte, with her folded arms and her stubborn chin and her eyes that pretended not to care, being handed to a man like Redmont at fourteen days’ notice⁠—

He caught himself.

“This changes nothing,” Henry said.

“Are you certain?”

“The situation remains what it was. I have obligations in Scotland that cannot⁠—”

“He is dishonest,” she said. “Isn’t he? You know it. I can see it.”

Henry looked at her for a moment. “What I know is not your concern.”

“It is entirely my concern. I am the one being traded away to him.”

His lips parted, but before any words could form, she rushed to continue her speech.

“And the moment you return me to my father, that arrangement resumes within the week. I would be married off without a say.” She leaned forward slightly. “You know how my father is, I am sure. You know the misery that awaits me. So do not tell me this changes nothing.”

There was silence in the carriage. The noise of the yard pressed in around it—horses, voices, the groan of a wheel being greased somewhere nearby.

Henry looked at her. She stared back at him.

She did not plead. He found, against his will, that he respected her for it.

He thought about Redmont’s smile across a negotiating table. He thought about Nathan’s letter, still in his coat pocket, still cheerful, still full of jokes about the weather. He thought about a six-year-old boy who had already bitten a footman and attempted to climb out a third-story window.

This is the most ill-advised decision I have ever made.

“What I am about to say,” Henry said, “does not mean I approve of what you did. It was reckless. It was foolish. It was the kind of scheme that belongs in a novel, and not a sensible one.”

She stayed very still.

“You will remain in this carriage,” he said, “while we travel north to Scotland. You will not be seen at any coaching stop. You will not speak to the driver or the inn staff or anyone else we encounter.”

She drew a breath. He held up a hand.

“You will be a valet in training. My valet’s assistant if anyone asks. You will remain in those clothes, keep that cap pulled low, and say nothing. If you are questioned, let me speak.” He paused. “I detest fabricating falsehoods, but this entire charade is the only thing standing between you and public ruin.”

“Understood,” she said. Her relief was evident in the way her shoulders fell. “Your Grace, I⁠—”

“Do not thank me,” Henry said hurriedly, preemptively seeking to dissuade her from making the gesture. “I have not decided whether this is generosity or lunacy on my part.”

“Perhaps you have a kind heart and have no wish to see a lady ruined,” she said.

He almost said something in response to that. He did not, because she was right. Henry was only helping her because he did not want the guilt of allowing a lady to fall because he refused her help.

Instead he reached for the window strap, rapped on the roof, and called to the driver to prepare for departure.

The carriage shifted and settled. Lady Charlotte pulled her cap back on and tucked her hair beneath it, and Henry looked away at the inn yard, and at the road running north. He tried not to think about the fact that he had just placed both their reputations on the scale and pushed them to rock up and down.

Why? he thought. Why did she end up here? Why now?

Why have I just agreed to court a scandal?

CHAPTER 4

“Iam going to say this once more, and I want you to hear it properly.” Henry leaned forward, closing the small distance between them until his voice dropped to a low rasp meant strictly for her ears. “If anyone on this road identifies you, the consequences will extend well beyond your own comfort. They will reach me. They will reach my business. They will reach Nathan’s estate and the situation I am already struggling to contain. Do you understand?”

His nearness made her shrink back into her seat, and she seemed to be holding her breath. “Yes,” she said.

“Then we are in agreement.”

“We are entirely in agreement,” she said pleasantly.

He sat back. She was lying, or she was planning something, or she had agreed because she thought he would stop talking sooner if she did. Possibly all three. He filed it away and settled back onto the plump cushions.

The carriage continued moving.

The roads improved for the first hour and then stopped. Ditches grew wide, trails became rocky, and more than once, Henry was jostled so hard that he had to support himself by pressing both hands against the roof of the cab.

By midday, exhaustion had begun to take hold of them. Henry had a folder of correspondence open across his knee and was achieving little with it, mostly because the carriage was swaying badly enough to make his writing look like a sailor’s diary.

He took a moment to observe Lady Charlotte on the opposite bench. Neither spoke. She was keeping her word, which was either reassuring or ominous. She had produced a small, battered book from somewhere in her coat and was reading, seemingly determined to ignore their surroundings.

The roads grew worse as they pressed north. The inns, too, changed character. The Swan at Biggleswade had been a respectable establishment with proper parlors and a landlord who knew what a duke expected.

The next two stops were smaller affairs, stone-fronted and smoky, their yards full of drovers and the smell of wet hay. Henry kept the stops efficient. Fresh horses, no lingering, no private rooms. He did his business at the door and returned.

Lady Charlotte’s book did not move from her hands at any of them.

He was impressed.

* * *

Kirkfield was the largest market town they had passed through since leaving Bedfordshire. It sat at a crossroads, busy with midweek trade, its coaching inn considerably more active than those in the villages before it. The yard was thick with noise and horses, and a chalkboard near the taproom door listed four departures before nightfall.

Henry had the carriage pull to the far side of the yard, away from the main bustle. He climbed out, then turned back to the window.

“A magistrate by the name of Alderton has been coordinating the search for the Drummonds across this part of the country. He sent word last week that he had information. I am going inside to speak with him.” He kept his voice low. “That is the reason for the stop.”

“I understand,” she said.

“You will remain here.”

“Yes.”

“You will not open the door.”

“I said yes.”

“I mean it.”

She looked up from her book. “And I answered you. Twice. Go and speak to your magistrate.”

Henry held her gaze for a moment longer than was necessary, turned, and crossed the yard.

Alderton was a broad-shouldered man with a methodical manner and the particular look of a local official who had been busy producing extraordinarily little results. He met Henry in a private sitting room off the main hallway, a map spread across the table between them.

“I am glad you’ve come in person, Your Grace.” He pressed a finger to the map. “We’ve had reports. A carriage matching the Drummond description was seen on the road north of Keswick, perhaps three weeks ago. The driver was asking directions to a drovers’ track that cuts east before the border.”

“Three weeks,” Henry said. “That puts them well ahead of any search party.”

“It does. But it also means they were moving under their own power, which is a better sign than the alternative.”

“Was there a woman in the carriage?”

“One report says yes. Another says the carriage was empty of passengers when the driver stopped to water the horses. Hard to know which to credit.” Alderton straightened. “I am sorry. I wish I had more.”

“You have enough to indicate a direction.” Henry moved the folder of papers aside and studied the map. “They were heading east before the border. Not directly to the estate.”

“Which may mean they were avoiding the main roads. Deliberately.”

Henry traced the line with one finger. “Or they were being followed and they knew it.”

Alderton said nothing, which was an answer of its own.

“What names can you give me?” Henry asked. “People who may know more as I go further north.”

Alderton reached into his coat and produced a folded paper. “Three men. A drover who works that eastern track regularly. A landowner in Cumberland who keeps in close correspondence with the Scottish border posts. And a woman in Carlisle who runs the largest coaching inn on the northern route. She knows everyone who passes through.” He tapped the paper. “She is the most useful of the three. Nothing moves on that road that she does not know about.”

Henry pocketed the paper. “I am obliged to you.”

“I hope you find them well.” Alderton rolled the map with careful hands. “It is not a forgiving stretch of country, that route. Not in this stormy weather.”

“No,” Henry said. “It is not.”

He shook the man’s hand, made his farewells, and walked back to the waiting carriage.

Twenty minutes.

Charlotte had lasted twenty minutes, which was, she decided, considerably more than she would’ve imagined possible.

The carriage had grown warm in a stuffy way, and the yard outside was alive with noise. Horses stamped. Ostlers called across to each other. A cart owner unloaded barrels with a great deal of enthusiasm and little consideration for the peace of anyone nearby.

She had tried the book. The book was not helping. The same four-line stanza had drifted in and out of her head four times without leaving any impression.

I only wish to stretch my legs, she told herself. I’m wearing plain clothes. This is a busy yard. No one will give a second glance at a valet’s boy.

She slipped out of the carriage and crossed toward the far end of the yard, keeping her cap low and her pace unhurried. It was a good yard, well-trafficked. Exactly the sort of place where an additional person was invisible.

She was wrong about that.

The man near the stable block did not look at her the way other people looked at strangers. He looked at her the way someone looks at a thing they have been asked to find.

Charlotte kept walking. She did not look directly at him again, but she had already seen what she needed to: well-dressed, not a drover, not a merchant. The kind of clothes that said London and said it quietly. He shifted his coat as he moved, and for one second, she caught the edge of a folded paper tucked against his side.

Her pulse thudded.

She turned away from the stable block and walked toward the outbuildings on the far side of the yard.

He followed.

She kept her head down and her shoulders back, the way Edith had taught her and told herself that she was imagining it. She was not imagining it.

“A moment, if you please.” His voice was pleasant. His eyes, when she turned, were not. “I am looking for a young lady. Perhaps you have seen her. Brown hair, about your height⁠—"

“I am a valet,” Charlotte said. She pushed the words out low and flat. “Traveling with my master.”

“Your master.” He smiled. “And who might that be?”

“He is engaged inside.” She took a step back. “I beg your pardon; I have an errand.”

She turned and walked faster, angling through the gap between two outbuildings. The passage was narrow, the cobblestones uneven, and she was moving quickly enough that when her foot caught the edge of a raised stone, she had no time to catch herself.

She went down hard. Both hands and one knee hit the stones, and the ankle folded sideways in a way that sent a bright stab of pain straight up her leg.

Charlotte sat up. She pressed her lips together, breathed through her nose, and got to her feet.

She could not move at anything approaching normal speed.

Oh, that is inconvenient.

The man had stopped at the entrance to the passage. He was watching her, and the pleasant expression had gone entirely.

And then Sappherton was there.

She did not see him come. He was simply not present, and then he was there, stepping into the passage to put himself between Charlotte and the man without any apparent effort at all.

“Is there a problem here?” he said to the man in the voice Charlotte had heard him use with the driver. Perfectly civil.

The man looked at him. Then at the crest on the carriage at the far end of the yard. His expression shifted.

“I was merely⁠—”

“My valet’s boy,” Sappherton said, “has been running a series of errands on my behalf this last quarter-hour. I trust he has caused no commotion.” He let the pause land. “I am Sappherton. If you have any further questions about my household’s arrangements, I would be glad to hear them. Though I confess I cannot imagine what they might be.”

The man stepped back. “No, Your Grace. My apologies.”

He was gone before Charlotte had finished registering that it was over.

Sappherton turned. He looked at her ankle, then at her face, and said nothing at all, which was almost worse than if he had spoken. He put a hand on her elbow, helped her to stand, and walked her across the yard without saying another word.

The carriage door shut behind them.

Once they were alone, the Duke spoke. “At what point,” Sappherton said, “during the instructions I gave you not twenty minutes ago, did you conclude they were suggestions?”

Charlotte’s ankle was throbbing steadily. “I was managing perfectly well.”

“You were on the ground.”

“I had tripped. That is entirely separate from the other situation.”

“The other situation being the hired agent who was two questions away from identifying you.”

“I handled that.”

“You told him you were a valet,” he said. “He did not believe you.”

“He had no proof⁠—”

“He had eyes.” Sappherton sat across from her, arms folded. “If I had been five minutes longer in that room, he would have walked you to the nearest posting house and sent a rider south before nightfall.”

“You cannot know that.”

“I know exactly that.”

Charlotte straightened. “Sitting in a sealed carriage while you conduct business is not a plan. It is a cage. I cannot be expected to⁠—”

“You were given one instruction.”

“A deeply unreasonable one.”

“The alternative,” he said, “was a sprained ankle and a hired man memorizing your face. Which of those outcomes do you prefer?”

Charlotte opened her mouth. Then she closed it.

His jaw was still set, but he was already moving, dropping from the seat to one knee on the carriage floor. He had her boot in his hands before she fully understood what was happening.

“What are you doing?”

“Examining your ankle.” He worked the boot free with careful hands, one thumb pressed light against the joint. She felt him assess it by applying a pressure that told her he knew what he was looking for and had handled similar injuries in the past.

The Duke removed one hand from her ankle and used his knuckles to rap on the roof. A moment later the carriage door opened and his valet, who had been riding outside, handed in a traveling case. Sappherton extracted a strip of clean linen without looking up.

Charlotte watched him wrap the ankle. His hands were steady. He did not rush.

“It is a sprain,” he said. “Not a break.”

“You sound very certain of that.”

“I have seen enough of both to know the difference.”

She had run out of things to say. The argument had gone somewhere she hadn’t intended, and now he was crouched on the floor of his own carriage wrapping her ankle, and she could not quite locate the indignation she’d had five minutes ago.

“You are considerably more worried about me and my well-being,” she said, “than you have been letting on.”

He did not look up. “Your safety is a concern. I would prefer not to arrive in Scotland with a woman who cannot walk.”

“That is a very practical way of describing what you just did out there.”

Henry eased her boot back into place and smoothed the protective linen wrap beneath her cuff. “You are not to put weight on it for the remainder of the day.”

Charlotte looked down at her neatly bound ankle, then up at his stern, unyielding features. "Thank you," she said softly.

With a slight nod, Sappherton rose, moved to his own seat, and picked up the correspondence he had left on the bench.

Charlotte settled back against the squabs and opened her book. She found the same stanza she had read four times in the yard and read it a fifth time without taking in a single word.

Over the edge of the page, she watched him. He had claimed that his helping her was guided solely by cold, unfeeling practicality. Yet he’d dropped to his knees to bind her ankle, which made that claim rather difficult to believe.

She filed that thought away as something worth understanding.

CHAPTER 5

Two days out of Kirkfield, Henry had worked through forty pages of correspondence and Lady Charlotte had appeared to read the same page of her book three separate times. He had noted it. He chose not to mention it.

Her ankle was propped on a folded traveling rug and her cap pushed back slightly. Her restlessness occupied the carriage the way an additional passenger might—taking up space, requiring management, and declining to be ignored.

He annotated another margin.

“What is that?”

He did not look up. “Correspondence.”

“Yes,” she said. “I gathered that. What kind?”

He considered not answering and then decided that answering was more efficient than the silence she would fill with other questions. “A timber supply dispute. Two contracts in conflict, both referencing the same northern estate. My solicitor cannot determine which takes precedence.”

“Which estate?”

He looked up then. She was studying him. And it was not the politely interested expression he received at dinners, the one that meant the other party was waiting for him to stop talking so they could redirect to something more agreeable. This was different.

“Hartley Cross,” he said. “In Northumberland.”

“And the second contract—is it with the same supplier, or a competing one?”

He paused. “Competing. A local mill that underbid the original by twelve percent.”

“Then the original supplier will claim breach,” she said. “Unless the second contract was conditional.”

“It was not conditional. It was poorly drafted.”

“Then your solicitor knows perfectly well which takes precedence,” she said. “He simply does not want to be the one to tell you the cheaper option is going to cost you more.”

Henry set down his pen.

She looked entirely unruffled. “Am I wrong?”

“You are,” he said, “approximately correct. But the situation is more complicated than that.”

“How?”

He explained. She listened, and when he got to the point of friction—the gap between the mill’s delivery schedule and the estate’s seasonal building window—she frowned.

“Could you not stagger the deliveries? Use the mill for the initial phase and bring in the original supplier for the remainder? You would satisfy both contracts in sequence and avoid a breach claim entirely.”

He pondered this solution. “The original contract has an exclusivity clause.”

“Ah.” She considered that. “When does it expire?”

“March.”

“Then stagger to March and call it a scheduling delay. Any competent solicitor could manage that language.”

“Any competent solicitor,” Henry said, “would also note that the mill’s agreement does not permit subcontracting, which is effectively what that arrangement would require. The mill owner would object.”

“Only if he noticed.”

“He would notice.”

“You seem very certain of that.”

“I have met the man,” Henry said. “He notices everything.”

She accepted this without argument, which surprised him. She propped her chin on her hand, thinking. “What is the shipping venture?” she said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“You said something about a shipping venture earlier. In passing. Something to do with the estate’s output.”

He had mentioned it in the context of why the timber contracts mattered. He had not expected her to catch it. He had cited it in one sentence. “You are memorizing everything I say.”

“You are interesting,” she said plainly. “What is the venture?”

He told her. He gave her the version he gave his solicitor—the actual version, with the numbers and the risk, not the polished summary he delivered at dinners where the question was asked out of social courtesy, and the answer was received with glazed patience.

She did not glaze. She asked why he had chosen to expand into the northern counties rather than consolidate further south, where his other estates already had established networks.

“Southern consolidation would reduce overhead,” he said, “but it concentrates risk. If a single season turns or a single route becomes compromised⁠—”

“You lose everything in one direction,” she said. “Northern expansion hedges against it.”

“Yes.”

“That is not the fashionable view among investors.”

“No,” he said. “It is not.”

“But you did it anyway.”

“I ran the numbers.” He paused. “And I found the fashionable view unconvincing.”

She smiled at that, and he looked back at his papers.

“How do you know any of this?” he said and then caught himself. He did not wish to offend her by implying she had no business comprehending such affairs.

She did not seem to mind. “Books,” she said. “Mostly. Political economy, trade journals, agricultural reports. Whatever came through the library.” She shifted her ankle slightly, adjusting the rug. “There was not a great deal else to do.”

“Your father’s library permitted you access to trade journals?”

“My father’s library had a great many things in it that he never perused. He used the room for writing letters.” A pause. “I used it for everything else.”

“Most women of your acquaintance do not read trade journals.”

“Most women of my acquaintance,” she said, “would rather discuss muslin and morning calls. I did not find either subject sufficiently diverting.” The flatness was not complaint. It was simply statement. “I have spent years sitting in drawing rooms listening to men discuss interesting things in the hallway outside. It seemed a waste not to have read what I could, given the opportunity.”

Henry said nothing. He looked at her, understanding what she had shared. Years of quiet hunger for knowledge, while being expected to care only for ribbons and gossip. He absorbed the realization in silence, gaining an entirely new respect for the sharp mind hidden behind her gentle upbringing.

“Your risk assessment,” she said, after a moment, “on the northern shipping venture…you said the exposure over the first three years is acceptable.”

“It is.”

“Only if the second estate’s output stays consistent. You said yourself the contracts are in dispute.” She tilted her head. “That is not an acceptable exposure. That is an optimistic one.”

“The dispute will be resolved.”

“You do not know that.”

“I will resolve it,” he said, “which amounts to the same thing.”

“Confidence is not a financial instrument.”

“In this case it is.” He picked up his pen. “I have resolved more complicated disputes with worse tools. The exposure is acceptable.”

“I maintain that it is optimistic.”

“Noted,” he said. “And incorrect.”

“Noted,” she said, in precisely the same tone, “and not conceded.”

The carriage slowed at the afternoon stop. He recognized the change in the road, as well as the distant sounds of a yard. He did not look up from his annotation immediately. He was aware, in a way he did not particularly welcome, that the last forty minutes had passed without effort. The correspondence was barely advanced. He had not noticed until now.

“We are stopping,” he said.

“So we are.” She straightened and pulled her cap properly back onto her head. “You still have not convinced me about the exposure.”

“I did not endeavor to convince you,” Henry said. “I stated a fact.”

“You stated a position.” She tucked a strand of hair under the cap’s edge. “There is a difference.”

Henry looked at her for one moment. Then he closed the folder and rapped onto the roof.

He was not entirely ready to concede that his exposure was optimistic, but her critique was undeniably astute. It was both exasperating and thoroughly invigorating to encounter someone who possessed the daring to challenge him.

The private sitting room was decent enough. There was a fire, two chairs, and a window with gray light leaning through it. Sappherton evaluated it the way he surveyed everything—quickly, thoroughly, already moving to the next item—and then turned to Charlotte with the expression he reserved for instructions she was unlikely to follow.

“Stay here,” he said. “The door stays shut. You speak to no one. I will return within the half-hour.”

“Yes,” Charlotte said.

He paused at the door, clearly wanting to say it again.

“I heard you,” she said. “Go.”

He went.

The fire was warm. The chair was comfortable. There was tea, cold but present, and the throbbing in her ankle had reduced to a dull ache that was perfectly bearable if she did not move too sharply. Weariness settled into her bones, and her eyes began to droop.

The door creaking jerked her out of a half-slumber, and she looked to see that it was ajar. A gust of wind blew in through the window and made the door creak again.

Sighing, Charlotte rose to close it. As she approached, she heard voices in the passage. For a moment, she thought it might be Sappherton.

“Lord Ashford is offering a substantial reward…”

She went very still.

“He posted it under a family matter notice,” one of the voices went on, “which means the inquiry offices are handling it quietly.”

“And Redmont’s men?”

There was a pause; the kind of pause that meant the answer was being chosen carefully. “That is a separate matter. He has three men working the post roads northward. Not through the inquiry offices. Privately retained.”

“Three.” A low whistle. “He is thorough.”

“He is determined,” the first voice said. “Ashford’s search reads as embarrassment. He wants her back and he does not want anyone to know she left. Redmont’s men are not hampered by the same constraints or issues. They are working methodically, without heed for privacy or secrecy.”

“How far north?”

“The last report placed them at the county boundary two days since. They are asking at every coaching stop. Specific questions. Height, coloring, brown hair.” A pause. “It is only a matter of time.”

Charlotte pressed her hand flat to the wall. She did not move.

“Any chance she went south instead?”

“Not according to Redmont’s information. He seems very certain of the direction.”

Footsteps. The voices moved away down the passage, unhurried, still talking, until she could no longer make out words.

She stood there for a moment after they were gone. She did not move because she needed to be certain she had not missed anything, that she had caught every particular, every specific. The cold of the wall came through her palm.

Three men. Post roads northward. Two days behind.

She heard the outer door of the passage open.

Sappherton walked in before she had fully crossed to the center of the room. He was already speaking, saying something about the road ahead and conditions reported at the border, and Charlotte cut across him before he had finished his second sentence.

“I need to tell you something.”

He stopped.

She told him.

All of it, in the order she had heard it, with no editorializing and no softening.

She was aware, as she finished, that she was standing very straight and that her hands were cold. She had not looked away from his face once while she was speaking.

Sappherton said nothing for a moment, but his face had hardened into sharp lines. Then: “Did they mention a name? Mine, or the carriage.”

“No.”

“And the two days behind, was that their phrasing or yours?”

“Theirs. Exactly.”

He nodded once. He walked to the window and stood there, not looking at the yard but looking somewhere approximately at the glass, and she recognized it for what it was. He was calculating.

She did not speak. She had said what she needed to say. The rest was his to do with as he chose.

He turned back after perhaps thirty seconds. His features were less rigid now. “We are already far enough north that the post road network has started to thin. The coaching stops are less frequent and less organized. The methodical approach that works in the south loses coherence up here. There are too many routes, too little coordination.” He held her gaze. “My name did not come up in anything you heard, which means they do not know which carriage or which direction with any certainty. They know northward. That is all. The distance we have already covered makes a clean intercept unlikely if we keep moving.”

Charlotte waited.

“I am not telling you there is no risk,” he said. “I am telling you the risk is manageable, and it decreases every mile we put behind us.”

Charlotte studied his unyielding expression. She was not searching for empty platitudes or false comfort, but for the stark reality of their danger. And in Henry's gaze, she found honesty.

His face was exactly what it always was: direct, a little severe, and not offering anything beyond what was there. He had told her the facts. He had named the limitation. He had not pretended.

She drew a breath, squaring her shoulders. “If Redmont’s hounds are searching the post roads, your involvement only puts your own standing at risk. No one knows I am in your company. I can slip away at dusk and spare you further entanglements."

Henry’s brow snapped down. "You will do no such thing."

"Your Grace, I have already brought trouble to your doorstep⁠—"

"You are an unchaperoned gentlewoman with an injured foot, being pursued by mercenaries hired by a ruthless scoundrel," Henry interrupted, his voice dropping into absolute certainty. "I know Vincent Carrington. Leaving you to fend for yourself on this road is something no honorable man could permit. You remain under my protection until we reach Scotland."

“I thank you.”

He held her gaze for one beat. Two. Whatever he read there, he kept it to himself.

“Please sit,” he said quietly, gesturing to the armchair by the fire. “You are leaning heavily on your right side and I am inclined to think that means your ankle is not through with healing.”

Charlotte sat, and as she watched him move about the room, she realized she felt safer with this man than she had with her own father.

CHAPTER 6

The plan had been perfectly organized. Accounts first, then a full inspection of the property. Once that was done, Henry would find Ian, then formalize and complete the solicitor’s groundwork for guardianship. It was a reasonable sequence, manageable if the first stop was efficient.

Henry was still refining the order of it in his head when the carriage turned through the estate gate and someone began shouting.

He looked out the window.

The shouting was coming from the stables. There was a cluster of people near the stable block: a red-faced man in a steward’s coat, two housemaids with their aprons twisted in their hands, and a gray-haired woman he recognized as Mrs. Wick, who was craning her neck at the roofline. They were all talking at once. None of them were getting anywhere.

The source of their distress was sitting on the stable roof.

The boy was small, six years old, with legs dangling over the edge. He was not frightened. He was not in any apparent danger. He looked, if anything, slightly bored.

Henry stepped out of the carriage.

He crossed the yard at a steady pace—not rushing, which would signal alarm, and not dawdling, which would signal indifference. He had managed boardrooms, creditors, and at least one member of Parliament who had locked himself in the House library rather than face a vote.

A child on a roof was a logistical problem. Logistical problems had solutions.

He stopped at the base of the stable wall and looked up. “Ian.”

The boy looked down at him. He had Nathan’s dark eyes, and something of Nathan’s particular quality of stillness when he was assessing something. He took his time before answering.

“Yes?”

“I am Henry Kingswell,” Henry said. “The Duke of Sappherton. Your father’s cousin. I have come from London because I was concerned about you, and I would appreciate it very much if you would come down so we can speak properly.”

Ian considered this. “I daenae ken ye,” he said. He had a slight Scottish brogue, which caused his words to flow together in an almost musical way. “I daenae need to come down.”

“I understand. That’s why I introduced myself.”

“Aye.” Ian swung his legs idly. “I still daenae recognize ye.”

Henry tried the next approach. “It will be dark in two hours. The roof is not a comfortable place to spend the evening.”

“I’ve a blanket.”

“You—” Henry stopped. He had not expected the blanket. “That shows forethought.”

“Aye.”

“Nevertheless.” He kept his voice level. “Coming down would be considerably more sensible.”

“I daenae want to be sensible,” Ian said. “I’m fine up here.”

Henry looked at the adults beside him. The steward had gone a shade past red into something approaching purple. The housemaids appeared to be communicating their sympathies entirely through their eyebrows. Mrs. Wick was watching Henry as one would watch a new gambit failure in a game she had been losing for weeks.

He recognized defeat when it looked at him.

The grey-haired woman touched his arm. “Your Grace, if I might have a word.” She drew him a few paces aside, and he went. “I have been managin' the household since the accident.”

“Yes.” He had expected her, or someone like her. “How long has this been happening?”

“A matter of weeks.” She lowered her voice and uttered, “Since the master and mistress disappeared.” Then, the lady jutted her chin at the young lad. “He mounted the roof first, then the hayloft, then the old garden wall. Before that, it was disappearing into the grounds for hours without a word to anyone. He willnae sit at the table. He willnae take his meals properly. The last tutor left after three days.” She glanced back at the roof. “He is nae wicked, Your Grace, I want you to ken that. He is nae cruel. He hasnae broken a single thing. He simply—” She searched for the word. “He willnae be reached.”

“Has anyone told him directly what they know of his parents’ situation?”

“I told him there had been an accident. That his mam and his da had nae been found, but that we were searchin’.” She pressed her lips together. “He listened very carefully. And then he climbed the hayloft and wouldnae come down for a day and a half.” She looked at Henry. “He doesnae believe they are gone. The lad is quite certain they’re comin’ back. And nothin’ I have said has made any impression on that certainty whatsoever.”

“I see.”

“He is a good boy,” she said again. “He just—” She looked tired. “I daenae know what else to try.”

Henry nodded once. He looked back at the roof. Ian had stopped swinging his legs and was watching him instead, with the calm, patient attention of a child who has learned to wait people out.

He turned toward the carriage.

Lady Charlotte was standing near the wheel, arms folded, watching the roof with an expression that indicated she was working something out and had decided not to say her thoughts aloud yet. She had been standing there the entire time, he noted. Still. Observing.

He walked over, Mrs. Wick following.

“There is someone I would like you to meet,” Henry said to Mrs. Wick. “Lady Charlotte is traveling under my protection. She encountered some difficulties and shall temporarily stay here.” He looked at Lady Charlotte. “Mrs. Wick manages this household.”

Lady Charlotte gave Mrs. Wick a nod that managed to be both respectful and entirely natural for someone who had been dressed as a valet’s assistant for the better part of the week. “I am grateful for any assistance,” she said.

Mrs. Wick looked at her for a moment with the sharp, measuring quality of a woman who had kept a Scottish household together by noticing everything. Then she said, quite kindly, “Come with me, then. We’ll get you settled and that ankle seen to.”

“It is much improved,” Lady Charlotte said.

“Aye, I can see that,” said Mrs. Wick. She looked at Henry. “I’ll attend to your guest, Your Grace. The steward will take you to the study when you’re ready.”

She guided Lady Charlotte toward the manor steps. Lady Charlotte went. She was limping slightly.

He noticed.

“You will be fine,” Henry said in a low tone before she had gone three steps.

She glanced over her shoulder. “I know that. I am simply annoyed about the stairs.”

“There are twelve of them.”

“I counted.”

He watched her go. Then he turned back to the stable roof, and to Ian, who was still sitting exactly where he had been, legs still dangling, watching with those dark, assessing eyes.

The plan had been very well organized.

It was already in pieces.

“Is he still on the roof?” Henry asked an hour later, after he had reviewed the household accounts and determined all was as it should be.

“No, Your Grace,” Mrs. Wick replied. “He came down a while ago and is in the kitchen garden.”

Why did anyone bother if he was going to eventually climb down himself?

“Has he always been fond of climbing?” Henry strode toward the back of the manor with Mrs. Wick in tow.

“Nae especially, but after the news of his parents…”

The kitchen garden was walled on three sides, its beds cut back after the summer harvest, the stone paths between them damp with recent rain. Ian was sitting on the far wall with his back to the house, looking out at the moorland beyond. He had found a stick somewhere and was running its tip along the mortar between the stones.

He did not turn when Henry came through the gate.

Henry did not announce himself. He walked to the wall and stopped a few feet away, not crowding. Then he sat on the edge of a low planting border and waited.

After a moment, Ian looked sideways at him.

“I am your father’s cousin,” Henry said. He did not use his title this time. “On his father’s side. We grew up together, mostly. He was better at fishing than I was, which he never let me forget.”

Ian said nothing. He ran the stick along the mortar again.

“I came because I was worried,” Henry said. “That is all. I did not come to give orders or change things. I came because when someone you are fond of is in trouble, you go. That is generally how it works.”

Ian looked at the moorland. “I daenae need anyone to come.”

“I know you don’t think so.”

“Me mam and da are comin' back.” He said it plainly, without aggression, the way someone states a fact that has been questioned too many times. “Everyone keeps actin' like they’re nae, and they are. So ye can go back.”

“I am not going back to London.”

Ian glanced at him again. It was a very particular look for a six-year-old. Not hostile, exactly. Assessing. “Why nae?”

“Because I am not finished being worried yet.”

A pause. The stick stopped moving. Ian stared at the wall in front of him for a long moment, and Henry could see him deciding something—deciding whether Henry was the kind of person who would keep talking regardless, and whether it was worth answering, and whether any of this was going to be different from the last seven adults who had come through the kitchen garden with their careful expressions and their patient voices.

He slid off the wall.

The boy did not look at Henry, nor did he say another word. He simply tucked the stick under his arm, stepped down from the wall onto the path, and walked away toward the far gate. His boots were too muddy for someone who had been sitting still. Henry wondered how long he had been out here, and who had noticed.

The gate opened. It shut.

Henry stayed where he was.

He had no strategy for a child who would not be managed. Henry searched his mind for a proper course of action, but nothing occurred to him immediately. This was confounding, for he had never felt helpless before.

He did not like the feeling at all.

CHAPTER 7

“Ring for whatever you need,” Mrs. Wick said, patting the bell pull by the door with the brisk efficiency of a woman who had been ensuring other people’s comfort for thirty years and expected it to continue. “Supper will be laid at seven. If you’re hungry before then, I’ll have somethin' sent up.”

“Thank you,” Charlotte said. “You are very kind.”

Mrs. Wick gave her one more of those sharp, measuring looks—the sort that seemed to weigh a person and find them lighter than expected, but not uninteresting—and then she was gone, the door closing softly behind her.

Charlotte stood in the middle of the room for a moment.

Then she sat on the edge of the bed.

It was a good bed. A proper bed, wide and solid, with a wool coverlet and real pillows, not the thin inn-bed bolsters she had been sleeping against for the better part of a week. The fire in the grate had already been burning for some time. Someone had thought of putting a small jug of water on the washstand.

She looked at all of it.

You are free, she thought. There is no one on the other side of that door telling you what to do.

The thought was odd. She turned it over, expecting relief to arrive cleanly, the way she had imagined it might during all those long nights at Ashford estate when freedom had been a thing she pictured from a distance. It did not arrive neatly or in a certain and precise manner. It arrived sideways, carrying a question for which she had not adequately prepared.

What do you do now?

She had been so entirely focused on not going home, not meeting Lord Redmont, not becoming a Marchioness at her father’s convenience, that she had not considered the matter of what she did instead.

She was in Scotland. In a stranger’s house.

That is a question for later, she told herself firmly. Later. Not now.

A tap at the door announced the maid, a young girl with a sensible face and a large can of hot water, and Charlotte was enormously grateful for both.

The bath was the finest thing that had happened to her in a week.

She sat in it longer than was strictly necessary and did not feel guilty about it at all. When she finally emerged and submitted to the maid’s assistance with her hair, she felt like a different person from the one who had climbed out of the Duke’s carriage an hour ago. A more coherent person. One who could face the day and the future now that she was clean.

The maid produced a dress from somewhere—navy wool, slightly too long, but warm and clean—and Charlotte put it on with genuine gratitude. Her boy’s clothes were folded on the chair, still present, still practical. She would need them again, she supposed, though she was not entirely certain in what capacity.

Later, she thought again. Still later.

What she wanted now was to find Ian.

She had observed him on the roof and seen how the boy’s grief was being interpreted as recalcitrance. Charlotte had experienced this when her mother passed.

He had looked at the Duke and found him lacking, and he had not been wrong to make such an assessment. After all, the Duke had not addressed the child as he ought to.

He did not need a plan. He did not need authority. The child needed someone who would sit beside him without wanting anything from him.

Charlotte had some experience, she thought, with wanting to be left alone by people who had good intentions.

She found a footman in the upper hallway, a young man carrying a tray of firewood with a slightly harried expression.

“I beg your pardon,” she said. “Do you know where Master Ian might be at this hour?”

The footman shifted the tray. “Playroom, miss, most like. Up the next stair, near the old nursery. Though—"—He hesitated. “He might not want company.”

“I know,” Charlotte said. “Thank you.”

The playroom was at the end of a short hallway, its door half-open. Charlotte stopped outside for a moment and listened.

No sound. Not the occupied silence of a child playing. The other kind.

She pushed the door open.

Ian was sitting on the floor with his back against the wall, a cluster of small wooden soldiers spread on the boards in front of him. He was not playing with them. He was turning one over in his hands with a methodical, purposeful focus that had nothing to do with games, pressing at the joints until something gave.

He did not look up.

Charlotte came into the room and sat down on the floor beside him. Not close enough to crowd. Close enough to reach the soldiers.

He said nothing. She said nothing. The fire in the small grate made a low, steady sound.

She picked up one of the soldiers nearest to her. It was missing a leg—the right one, snapped off somewhere below the knee. She turned it over and set it on her palm. Then she began to look.

The leg was not far. It had rolled toward the skirting board, which was the natural place for small things to go when they were done being held. She crossed the room, retrieved it, came back, and sat down again.

She pressed the leg back into the joint.

It held for a moment. Then it did not.

Ian was watching her now with those dark eyes that were very much Nathan Drummond’s, based on the family portrait she had glimpsed in the front hall.

Charlotte got back to her feet and looked around the room. She spotted a bureau against the far wall. She crossed to it and opened the top drawer.

Candle stubs. A broken top. Three mismatched buttons. And, at the back, a ball of brown yarn that had seen better days but was perfectly serviceable.

She took it and came back.

Ian had not moved. He was still watching her, the silence unchanged, but the quality of it had shifted slightly. She sat down, settled the soldier in her lap, and wound the yarn around the leg joint with careful, unhurried turns. She tied it off. She held it up.

The leg stayed.

She set it down in front of her and began to hum. The tune she conjured was nothing in particular, just a low, wandering sound, the kind that happened when her hands were occupied and her mind was working pleasantly. She did not look at Ian.

She picked up the next soldier. This one had lost its head entirely, which she thought showed considerable commitment. She found the head after a brief search—it was under Ian’s knee, which he had apparently been sitting on without noticing—and he moved without comment to let her retrieve it. She pressed the head back into the socket and held it there.

“There was a pirate,” she said, “who lost his leg to a kraken.”

She was not looking at Ian. She was looking at the soldier in her hands. She kept her voice pleasant, the way she used to read aloud in the library at Ashford estate when the only person listening was herself.

“He could have called it the end of his sailing days. Some men would have. Instead he thought—well, I have survived a kraken. Which means I know more about krakens than almost anyone alive.” She set the headless soldier down and began wrapping yarn around the neck. “So he became the person ships went to when they were heading into kraken-infested waters. Not because he was the bravest. Because he had already been in the water with one and come out the other side.”

She tied off the yarn and held the soldier up. The head listed to the left, but it held.

Ian said nothing.

Charlotte set the soldier beside the first one and looked at the remaining cluster on the floor.

Then Ian picked up a soldier with a snapped sword arm and held it out to her.

She took it without pausing. She turned it over, examined the break, and began to look for the arm.

“Did he get a new leg?” Ian said.

Charlotte found the arm near her knee. “He did. Carved it himself, out of driftwood. He said it was better than the old one because he could stick things in it.”

“What kind of things?”

“Fishhooks, mostly. Also a small knife.” She unraveled a bit of the brown yarn and began working. “It was considered a useful tool.”

Ian picked up another broken soldier and turned it over in his hands. “What was the kraken like?”

“Large. Incredibly old. Considerably more interested in ships than in conversation.” She took the soldier Ian was holding and examined it. The arm was present, but the musket had snapped clean off. “The pirate said its eyes were the size of carriage wheels, which may have been an exaggeration, but sailors are known for exaggeration.”

“Me da says sailors exaggerate everythin',” Ian said. “He says they’re worse than fishermen.”

“Your father sounds like a sensible man.”

“Aye.” A pause. “He is.”

Charlotte kept her hands moving. She did not look at Ian directly. Instead, she picked up a soldier who was likely supposed to be a member of the calvary for he was mounted astride a small wooden horse. This gave her an idea.

“Do you have a horse?” she asked, after a moment. “I noticed the stables are quite large here.”

That landed differently. Ian straightened, marginally. “A pony. His name is Tam. He’s grey with a white nose.” A beat. “He’s better than a horse. Horses are too tall. Tam lets me brush him without the need for standin' on a stool.”

“Tam sounds entirely sensible.”

“He is. He’s the most sensible animal on the whole estate.” Ian was quiet for a moment, rolling a headless soldier between his palms. “Better than the tutors, anyway.”

“Are the tutors very bad?”

“The last one had cold hands,” Ian said, with feeling. “He would put them on the back of me neck when I was copyin' out me letters. It was awful.”

Charlotte pressed her lips together. “That does sound deeply unpleasant.”

“And the one before smelled of cabbage. Nae a little. A great deal.” He considered this. “I didnae mind the one before that so much. He let me draw maps.” He glanced at the soldiers. “But he left.”

“Why?”

Ian shrugged one shoulder. “They all leave.”

He said it plainly, without complaint, which was worse than if he had said it with feeling.

Charlotte finished binding the soldier in her hands and set it with the others. She looked at the row of them, the repaired and the still broken, and said nothing for a moment.

“Da reads to me at night,” Ian said. “Mam does voices.” He turned a soldier over. “She’s particularly good at the villain’s voices. She makes it low, like this—” He dropped his voice into a growling rumble that was entirely unconvincing and entirely endearing. “Da says she should have been on the stage.”

Charlotte felt something tighten in her chest. She kept her face still.

“They’re coming back,” Ian said. He did not look at her. He said it the way he had said it to everyone else—flat, certain, not inviting argument. “I know everyone thinks they’re nae. But they are.”

“I know you believe that,” Charlotte said carefully.

“I’m nae makin’ it up,” Ian said, with a sudden sharpness that was the first crack in the composure. “I ken the difference. I’m nae a baby.”

“I did not say you were.”

“You were thinkin' it.”

“I was thinking,” Charlotte said, “that you know your parents better than anyone else in this house. And that it is not a foolish thing to wait for someone you love.”

Ian looked at her. It was an exceedingly long look for a six-year-old. Something in it was assessing again, the same quality she had seen in him on the roof, but it was not quite the same as when he had looked at the Duke. There was something in it that was more uncertain. More careful.

His chin wobbled, once. He got it back under control very quickly.

Charlotte set down the soldiers. She put her arm around him and pulled him in, and he came without resisting. He leaned into her side with the sudden weight of a child who had been holding himself very upright for an exceptionally long time.

“All shall be well,” she said. “I promise you.”

She felt him breathe.

Outside the playroom window, the light had turned thin and grey, and the moorland beyond the wall was quiet. Ian was warm against her side, his head heavy on her shoulder, still gripping one of the repaired soldiers in his small hand.

All shall be well, she had said.

She held him tighter, and she hoped, with everything she had, that it was true.

CHAPTER 8

“Ipromise you,” Charlotte said.

Henry had been standing in the doorway long enough to feel the cold of the stone floor through his boots. He had not intended to watch. He simply had not found a reason to stop looking at the scene unfolding in the playroom.

Ian was pressed against Lady Charlotte’s side, his head heavy on her shoulder. She had one arm around him and the other occupied with a row of repaired soldiers she had propped against the skirting board. She was not speaking anymore. She did not need to.

Henry looked at his cousin’s son and tried to remember the last time he had seen the boy still. He could not. Every account from the staff described Ian in motion—on rooftops, over walls, through gates, always somewhere he was not meant to be and never anywhere he could be reached. And now he was here. Sitting with a near-stranger on a drafty playroom floor as though he had always done it.

Nathan, he thought. Eleanor. Please be all right.

It was not a prayer exactly. He was not certain he prayed. But the words formed themselves, low and insistent, and he let them.

“Can ye fix the rest of them?”

Ian had lifted his head. He was looking at the row of soldiers, and then at Charlotte, and there was something in his face that Henry had not seen since he arrived.

He was smiling.

It was a small, cautious thing, as though he had not entirely decided to commit to it. But it was there. Unmistakable.

“The rest of them?” Charlotte said.

“Aye.” Ian sat up a little. “I’ve broken rather a lot.”

“How many is rather a lot?”

Ian considered this with enormous seriousness. “Most of them.”

“Most—” Charlotte looked at the floor around them. Then she looked at Ian. “Did you break them all at once, or was it a systematic effort?”

“Both,” Ian said. “Mostly systematic.”

Charlotte pressed her lips together. Henry could see she was fighting to conceal a smile of her own. “I see,” she said. “Well. I can help you repair them. But first you must promise me something.”

“What?”

“That once they are mended, you will not break them again.”

Ian was quiet for a moment. “Even if I’m very cross?”

“Especially then.”

He thought about it. Henry waited. He was aware he was holding his breath, which was a thing he almost never did.

“All right,” Ian said. “I promise.”

“Solemnly?”

“Aye. Solemnly.”

Charlotte nodded, as though this settled a matter of considerable legal weight. “Then we have an agreement.”

Ian picked up a headless soldier and held it out to her. “This one first.”

And that was when Henry noticed the dress.

It was deep navy wool, something the one of the household staff had evidently found for her, well-fitted across the shoulders and neatly belted, and it was the first time since the carriage left London that he had seen her dressed as herself. She had discarded the boy’s coat and the borrowed cap. Lady Charlotte no longer carried the dust and discomfort of a week on the road. She looked—he checked himself. She looked like herself, which was the only safe way to finish that observation.

He glanced at the door frame instead of continuing to peer at her.

It did not help. He was still aware of the navy dress in the way one is aware of a fire on the far side of a room.

He cleared his throat.

Charlotte’s head came up. Ian straightened. They both looked at him and for one moment the room went very still.

Lady Charlotte’s cheeks colored. It was a faint thing, quickly controlled, and he chose not to comment on it.

Ian looked at him with the particular blankness of a child deciding whether to remain where he was or remove himself. He did not move. He did not speak. But he did not leave, and that was more than Henry had managed in the kitchen garden, so he counted it as progress and he did not push for more.

“Forgive the interruption,” Henry said.

Charlotte rose, smoothing her skirts. “Not at all.” She looked down at Ian. “I shall be back shortly. Will you keep those soldiers safe for me?”

Ian glanced at the row of repaired figures. “Aye.”

“Thank you.” She touched his shoulder briefly, and he let her. Then she crossed the room, and Henry stepped back from the doorway to let her pass.

In the hallway, she pulled the door behind her. Not shut. Just enough.

“How is your ankle?” Henry said.

“I barely feel it now.”

“You were sitting on the floor.”

“The floor was perfectly adequate.” She folded her hands. “I wanted to speak with you about something.”

He waited.

“Ian,” she said. “He needs consistency. He needs someone who will be here when he wakes up and still be here at supper. Not a series of tutors who leave after a fortnight.” She met his eyes directly. “I would like to stay on as his governess. For as long as you need. I have no immediate plans, and Scotland is considerably far from Bedfordshire.”

Henry said nothing.

“I am aware it is unconventional,” she said. “And I am aware that you already have reason to doubt my capacity for sensible decisions. But I can reach him. You saw it.”

He had. That was precisely the problem with dismissing this new proposal.

“You have no formal training as a governess,” he said.

“No. But I read extensively, I speak French tolerably, I know enough arithmetic to make it useful, and I have just spent an hour convincing a six-year-old to make a solemn vow over wooden soldiers. I am not entirely without qualification.”

Henry considered it. He did not do so for long, because the picture assembled itself quickly and the logic was difficult to argue. Ian had allowed her in. Ian had smiled. If she remained—if there was a consistent presence, someone familiar who did not carry the weight of a guardian’s authority—it would give the household time to stabilize. It would give Henry time to manage the estate properly without Ian’s situation consuming every other obligation.

This new arrangement solved matters that were beyond Henry’s control. Several things at once. He did not like how much it rearranged them, because the reasons it solved them were beginning to exceed the reasonable.

He opened his mouth.

“Your Grace.”

The butler, Mr. Evans, appeared at the far end of the hallway. He stopped a respectful distance away. “I beg your pardon. Mr. Dunmore has arrived. One of the estate solicitors. He says he has documents that require your attention directly.”

Henry looked at Lady Charlotte.

“Go,” she said.

“I will give your suggestion consideration,” he said. “Serious consideration.”

“That is all I am asking.”

He held her gaze a moment longer than was necessary, then turned toward the solicitor.

Nathan’s study was a room that had not been touched since he left. Henry was sure of this because papers were in an ordered stack, a half-finished letter pushed to one side, the pen still resting in the inkwell as though its owner had stepped away for a moment and was expected back.

Henry did not look at the letter. He sat in the chair across from the desk rather than behind it, because sitting in Nathan’s chair felt like a presumption he was not prepared to make.

The solicitor was a spare, methodical man who had been managing the Drummond estate’s legal affairs for twelve years. He set his document case on the desk, opened it, and laid out three folded papers in a careful row.

“I am obliged to you for seeing me promptly, Your Grace.”

“I understand the matter is pressing,” Henry said. “I have been considering a practical arrangement for the household. There is a young woman in residence who has some ability with the boy. I am of a mind to engage her formally as his governess. It would provide continuity and free me to address the estate’s other needs.”

The solicitor set down the paper he had been unfolding and regarded Henry.

“I understand the instinct, Your Grace,” he said. “And I do not doubt it would benefit the boy in the short term.” A pause. “However, I am afraid the question of a governess is, in the current circumstances, a secondary matter.”

Henry looked at the papers. “Explain.”

The solicitor picked up the first folded document and held it across the desk. “Mr. Drummond came to me eleven months ago. He wished to formalize certain arrangements regarding his son, in the event that he and Mrs. Drummond were both—incapacitated.” He chose the word carefully. “The document is a deed of guardianship. Signed, witnessed, and lodged with Chancery in October of last year.”

Henry took it.

He read it once. Then again.

Nathan’s handwriting was there at the bottom, clear and unhesitating, above the solicitor’s seal and a date in October. The document was brief. The language was straightforward. It named Henry Kingswell, Duke of Sappherton, as legal guardian of Ian Nathaniel Drummond in the event of the parents’ confirmed death or incapacitation.

It also contained a clause he had not expected.

“The residence provision,” the solicitor said, as though he had been watching Henry reach the relevant paragraph. “Mr. Drummond was very particular about it. He felt that in such an event, the child’s continuity of care would best be served by the guardian’s primary household.” He folded his hands on the desk. “The document is legally binding, Your Grace. In the event that Mr. and Mrs. Drummond cannot be confirmed alive and well within a reasonable period, the terms are clear.”

Henry set the document down on the desk. He did not set it down hard. He set it down the way he set down a dispatch that required careful reading before any response was given.

“Ian must return to London with me,” he said.

“Yes, Your Grace.”

Henry looked at Nathan’s unfinished letter on the corner of the desk.

Nathan, what have you done? Why make such a plan without consulting me first?

Henry had come north to stabilize the household. To find a solution and perhaps learn what had become of his cousin. To make a practical arrangement and return south with the situation under control.

Nathan, apparently, had made a different arrangement entirely.

“Leave the documents with me,” Henry said.

“Of course.” The solicitor rose, gathered the remaining papers, and set them in a neat stack. “I am sorry to bring this in such circumstances.”

Henry did not answer. He was still looking at Nathan’s letter.

The solicitor showed himself out, and he sat for a long moment. Ian could not stay in Scotland.

And Charlotte, whom he had been on the point of engaging as the boy’s governess, could not remain here either.

This presented a problem he had not anticipated.

CHAPTER 9

Henry ran his hands through his hair for the third time in ten minutes. It had been three days since their arrival, and Ian and Lady Charlotte were inseparable.

He was pacing, which was a thing he did not do regularly. He had not paced since he was twenty-two and standing in his father’s study, learning what it meant to inherit everything at once.

The problem was not Ian. The problem was not even London, the deed of guardianship, or the solicitor’s careful, apologetic face. Those were complications, but they were the kind with solutions. He was competent at coming up with solutions. He had been competent at finding solutions his entire adult life, and he did not intend to stop now.

The problem was Lady Charlotte.

He stopped at the fireplace and looked at the banked coals.

She could not go to London as Ian’s governess. That was simply the fact of it for she was the daughter of Lord Ashford. Her father had a search running through the inquiry offices. Redmont had three privately retained men working the post roads northward.

He could leave her in Scotland. That was the sensible answer. Leave her here with Mrs. Wick, allow the situation to stabilize, let the search grow cold. Scotland was remote. The ton did not and would not reach this far north.

But Ian might not accept a replacement. He was certain of that. He had arrived here and had all the evidence to confirm it.

Separating them now would cost the boy something Henry was not able to quantify and did not want to consider.

He was not sentimental. He was not given to overestimating the weight of a single afternoon. But he had watched his cousin’s son on that floor, and he knew what he had seen, and he was not in the business of pretending he had not seen it.

The last three tutors had lasted a fortnight.

He turned from the fire.

She was not trained. She had no formal qualification. She had read trade journals in a library and fixed soldiers with yarn and told a pirate story with a straight face, and none of that was governess training by any standard he had ever applied.

But Ian had chosen her. And that was something. Though Henry had little experience raising children, he understood how they know things about people that adults spend half their lives convincing themselves they do not.

Ian had chosen her in approximately two hours. Because she mended broken soldiers with the aid of a skein of brown yarn.

Henry stood at the desk.

The options arranged themselves in a neat column, which was how he thought about problems that had no satisfactory solution.

He could leave her in Scotland: safe, remote, and entirely removed from the boy she had promised to comfort.

He could bring her to London as a governess: efficient, immediately effective, and a disaster waiting to happen within a fortnight of their arrival.

He could send her somewhere else entirely to her aunt in Surrey, perhaps, though he had no confirmation that this was a viable arrangement, even though she had mentioned her auntie vaguely during their ride north.

He looked at the options.

Then he sat down and reached for the pen.

He wrote quickly. He did not agonize over the wording, because agonizing served no purpose when the argument was already made inside his own head and the words on the page were simply the delivery mechanism.

He folded the note before he could read it again. He sealed it.

He rang the bell.

The footman appeared in less than a minute. Young. Efficient. Henry had noted, approvingly, that this household’s staff moved well despite the chaos of recent weeks.

“Find Lady Charlotte,” Henry said. “Give her this.” He held out the note. “Do not disturb either Lady Charlotte or young Ian if the boy is asleep.”

The footman took it and went.

Henry turned back to the desk. He looked at the papers that had not been moved since supper. He thought about picking one up. He did not.

He sat in the chair that was not Nathan’s chair and stared at the low coals of the fire. He was aware, in the way one is aware of a tooth that has begun to ache, that the conclusion he had arrived at was perfectly logical.

And that logic, on this particular evening, was doing little to settle anything at all.

The book in Charlotte’s hands felt heavy and she perused the lines in it listlessly. Ian had been asleep for twenty minutes, slumped against Charlotte’s side with his hand still curled around one of the repaired soldiers, and she had been reading the same paragraph about the Spanish coast to the top of his head without taking in a single word.

She turned the page anyway. It seemed respectful.

The fire in the nursery grate was warm and steady, and the room had the particular quiet of a house settling into evening. Charlotte’s ankle had stopped aching. Ian’s breathing was slow and even.

She was not thinking about London.

She was not thinking about it very intently, and with great concentration, and she had been not thinking about it for the better part of two hours.

A soft knock at the door startled her out of her reverie.

She eased out from under Ian’s weight and moved to the door. The footman in the hallway held out a folded note.

She took it and unfolded the parchment:

I request your company in the library at your earliest convenience.

—S

She stood in the hallway for a moment with the note in her hand.

Then she went back in, transferred Ian’s weight to the pillow with care, pulled the blanket up, and looked at the row of repaired soldiers she had set along the windowsill. They stood in a crooked, determined line.

She went to find the library.

The Duke was standing when she arrived. Not seated at the desk, not bent over papers. Standing by the window, hands at his sides, which was, for Sappherton, as close to restless as she had seen him.

He turned when she entered.

“Thank you for coming,” he said.

Charlotte took a seat in the armchair near the hearth, keeping her weight off her healing ankle. “Your note was brief, Your Grace, but the solicitor's sudden arrival looked pressing. Has something happened regarding Ian?”

Henry moved away from the window, his expression drawn and serious. "Ian must return to London with me. The deed of guardianship Nathan lodged with Chancery requires it. The residence terms are legally binding, and there is no room for negotiation."

Charlotte looked at the fire.

She had known this was coming—had known it from the moment the solicitor arrived, from the particular quality of the silence afterward—and knowing it had not made any difference at all to the feeling in her chest when the Duke said it plainly.

“I see,” she said.

“The arrangement you proposed…” Henry paused. “You cannot accompany us as his governess.”

“No,” she said. “I imagine not.”

“London is not Scotland. Your father’s inquiry is running through the offices there. Redmont’s men—you know what they were doing on the post roads. The moment you stepped into Mayfair under an assumed name, someone would identify you. I refuse to see you delivered into the hands of a man as unscrupulous and controlling as Vincent Carrington. Nor will I leave you stranded here when Ian has finally found solace in your care.”

“I understand the reasoning.” She looked up. “You are quite right. And I am not arguing with you, but you cannot manage his grief alone.”

The Duke opened his mouth. Then he closed it.

“I am not criticizing you. He is a child in difficult circumstances. But you must admit that your approach has certain limitations.”

“I was making progress,” the Duke said.

Charlotte nodded. “He told me the last tutor had cold hands. The one before that smelled of cabbage. You will find the next one in a month’s time, and he will last a fortnight, just as the others did, and Ian will eat meals alone and climb things, and it will be very efficient and very correct and nothing at all like what he needs.”

The Duke looked at her steadily. Then he said, “I know.”

She had not expected that. She had expected defense. He said it plainly, without qualification, and it landed like the first note of something she had not been anticipating.

“I understand,” he said again. “That is the reason I have arrived at a decision.”

Charlotte waited.

He looked at her. It was the kind of look he gave to a situation he had already resolved in his head and was now watching for the other party’s response before proceeding. She had seen it applied to correspondence, to a difficult inn landlord, to the timber dispute she had argued with him about on the road.

She had not expected it to apply to her.

The fire crackled.

She waited another three seconds. Then: “Well? What is it?”

“I am proposing,” Sappherton said, “that you marry me.”

He said it the way he might say I am proposing that we stagger the timber deliveries.

Charlotte could not speak.

CHAPTER 10

“What?” Charlotte asked, unsure she’d heard him correctly.

“The arrangement would address your situation with regard to your father and Lord Redmont,” the Duke explained. “You would have the protection of my title and household. Ian would have the consistency he requires without the disruption of a formal governess. The terms would be practical. A marriage in name, at minimum, until circumstances allow for a fuller assessment.”

He stopped, and he was watching her.

Charlotte did not move. She was aware of the Duke standing six feet away, staring at her as though he had just offered her a sensible solution to a contract dispute and was waiting for her to run the numbers.

And Charlotte, who had fled a proposal she did not want in the small hours of a cold morning, who had ridden north in a stolen valet’s coat and repaired broken soldiers with yarn and promised a grieving six-year-old that all shall be well —

Everything came at once: indignation, puzzlement, fear… She bolted to her feet and took a step sideways, knocking a brass figurine off the side table. She did not care.

“This is your solution?”

Sappherton blinked owlishly, clearly confounded by her sudden burst of passion. “You are displeased?”

“I fled a wedding a few days ago. I have been hiding in a carriage, spraining my ankle in coaching yards, and I have somehow arrived at the other end of Scotland only to receive another proposal of marriage.” She looked at him. “Do you see why I am struggling with this?”

“I see why you are surprised.”

“Surprised.” She pressed her fingers to her temple. “That is one word for it.”

“It is the accurate word.”

“The accurate word,” Charlotte said, “is something considerably less polite.” She took one step back and then stopped, because there was a wall behind her and she was not going to be cornered. “What on earth makes you think I would accept?”

Sappherton was quiet for a moment. “I know you,” he said, “will not leave a child lost in the woods.”

She stopped.

He did not say Ian’s name. He did not have to. She could hear it in the shape of the sentence; in the way he held her gaze without flinching.

“Taking care of a child, helping him through this difficult time,” she said, after a moment, “is not a reason to marry someone.”

“No. But it is a reason to stay.”

“You are using a six-year-old boy as a negotiating instrument.”

“I am stating a fact.”

“You are being deeply manipulative.”

“I am being practical,” he said. “Which you have generally found useful.”

Charlotte pointed a finger at him. “Do not cite my own opinions back at me. That is entirely unfair.”

“Nevertheless.”

“Have you completely lost your mind?” She began to pace, feeling a sudden spurt of energy. Her ankle did not smart one bit as she stalked the length of the room and back again. “A proposal. Just like that. In a library. With no—no forewarning whatsoever.”

“I did send a note.”

She turned. “The note said nothing about a marriage proposal.”

He huffed, showing an ounce of impatience. “I could not very well put such matters down on paper.”

“And I cannot very well—” She stopped. “You cannot be serious.”

“I am always serious.”

“That,” Charlotte said, “is precisely the problem.” She stopped walking and pressed her hands together and tried to find some order in the chaos of her own thoughts. “Let me understand this. You are proposing marriage. To me. A woman you have known for less than two weeks, most of which was spent in a carriage.”

“It has been an instructive two weeks.”

“Instructive.” She stared at him. “That is what you might say about a particularly dull lecture.”

“The analogy is imperfect,” he allowed.

“The analogy is catastrophic.” She folded her arms. “And you propose this because—because Ian needs a governess and you cannot bring me to London as a governess and the alternative is leaving me in Scotland, and none of those options solve the problem to your satisfaction.”

He looked at her for a moment. “That is a fairly accurate summary.”

“Of course it is.” She pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead. “You have genuinely lost your mind.”

“My mind is perfectly intact.”

“It is demonstrably not.” She looked up at him. “You are proposing a marriage because it is convenient.”

He tipped his head thoughtfully. “I suppose I ought to answer in the affirmative, although this conversation is hardly one I would consider to be convenient.”

She chose to ignore his last statement and proceeded with unraveling her own musings. “To a woman you barely know.”

“I know you considerably better than most people manage after a month of morning calls,” he said. “You have argued with my shipping venture, repaired a battalion of soldiers with yarn, and held a six-year-old boy through his grief. I would say the acquaintance is reasonably thorough.”

She opened her mouth, then shut it. “That is not—that is not how marriages work.”

“Most marriages,” Sappherton said, “work considerably less efficiently than ours would.”

“There is no ours. " She stopped. “What, exactly, are you offering?”

He moved to the chair across from her and sat down, which was the first time he had sat since she arrived. It made the conversation feel different. Less like a board meeting. Not entirely, but somewhat.

“Complete freedom,” he said. “You would have your own rooms. Your own time. No obligations beyond those you choose to take on with Ian. You would not be asked to—perform any of the other functions of a wife.” He made this statement completely without showing any signs of embarrassment. “I could offer you security. You would have income, a household, legal standing, and your father could not touch you. Redmont could not touch you. No one could.” He paused. “And I will give you a home. A permanent one.”

Charlotte sat very still.

Freedom. Security. A home.

She turned the words over. They were the right words. They were the exact words she had wanted for years, the words she had thought about in the library at Ashford estate with the door shut and nobody listening. She had wanted those three things more than she could say, and the Duke had just lined them up across from her as though they were items in a contract.

Which was, she supposed, exactly what they were.

Something cold moved through her chest.

Her hands, she noticed, were trembling.

“You have thought of everything,” she said.

“I try to.”

“You have considered every angle, every practical benefit, every—” Her voice was thinner than she wanted it to be. She pressed her lips together. “You have reduced a marriage to a business arrangement and presented it to me as though you were offering me something generous.”

“I am offering you something⁠—”

“Do you know what I have wanted?” She was on her feet again without entirely meaning to be. “Not what would solve your problem. What I have wanted, for myself, my whole life.” She could feel it building behind her ribs, the particular pressure that came when something had been held down too long. “My father told me what was best for me. Lord Redmont—" She said the name like a curse. “Lord Redmont never once looked at me and asked what I thought. And now you stand there with your timber contracts and your deed of guardianship and your perfectly arranged list, and you tell me you are offering me freedom.” Her voice cracked just once before she got it back. “I cannot believe this. You are just another man who thinks he knows what’s best for Lady Charlotte Ashford.”

The Duke’s expression shifted. He opened his mouth.

“I need to breathe.”

The dress was too tight. It had not been too tight a moment ago, but it was worse now with the wool pressing against her ribs, the fire too hot, the room too small. She did not wait for a response. She turned and walked to the door and out of it, and behind her she heard it slam.

She did not slow down.

The hallway. The stairs. The entrance hall, where a footman looked up with mild alarm at a young woman moving through it at considerable speed. She went past him, through the front door, and out into the night air, and it hit her like icy water—sharp and clean and entirely necessary.

Charlotte kept walking.

The gravel path to the stables crunched under her feet. She could see the outline of the stable block against the dark, and for one moment she pondered her options.

A horse.

One of the big greys she had admired when they arrived, or even the smaller roan in the far stall. She could ride. She had ridden since she was six. She could be across the moor before anyone knew she was gone.

She stood at the stable yard gate.

Then she thought about where, exactly, she would go.

She turned away from the stable and looked at the tree line in the distance. The woods were dark and the moon was partial behind the clouds, but it was not raining, and the path into the trees was visible enough if she kept moving.

She shook her head, dismissed the idea, but continued striding away from the manor.

The woods were birch and oak, old growth, the kind that did not care about Dukes or proposals or the sound of a slamming door. Charlotte walked until the house lights were dim behind her, until the noise of the evening settled into the ordinary sounds of the dark. Her skirts caught twice on undergrowth. She freed them without stopping.

She found the oak by almost walking into it. It was enormous—wide-trunked and ancient, its lower branches sprawling out at an angle that invited exactly the sort of thing she was about to do. She circled around it once. Then twice.

Then she folded the skirt of her dress up over her arm, gripped the lowest branch, and pulled herself up.

She had not climbed a tree since she was fourteen. Her body, apparently, had not forgotten. She found the next branch and then the next, and then she was properly in it, the bark rough under her palms, the wood solid beneath her feet, and she went higher. Higher than was probably sensible. The branches thinned and the leaves moved and then a breeze came through, cold and entirely indifferent to her distress.

Charlotte stopped. She sat on a branch thick enough to be trustworthy, braced her back against the trunk, and breathed.

In. Out.

The night was wide up here. The moorland opened beyond the trees, and the sky above it was enormous, and none of it knew anything about a library proposal or a deed of guardianship or a duke with impeccable posture and an irritating habit of being right about everything except what mattered most.

She closed her eyes.

Marriage of convenience.

The words sat in her chest like a stone. She had read about such arrangements in novels and histories and the sort of social commentary that her father thought entirely unsuitable. She had understood them in the abstract, the way one understands something that happens to other people in other circumstances.

She had never imagined it could happen to her. Because when she was small and the world was still in the right shape, her mother had told her otherwise.

She closed her eyes and let the memory wash over her.

Charlotte was eight, possibly nine, and she had burrowed herself under her mother’s arm with her knees pulled up, listening.

Her mother’s voice was low and soft as she read from a small, cloth-bound book, the kind with illustrations that blurred at the margins when looked upon too closely.

“The maiden did not know he was a prince,” her mother read. “She knew only that he was tired, and hurt, and that the creatures of the forest had turned him ragged at the edges. She brought him water from her well. She did not ask who he was. She asked only if he needed more.”

Charlotte felt the story settle around her like a quilt.

“And the prince,” her mother continued, “who had spoken to a hundred courtiers and a dozen kings and had never once felt that anyone truly saw him—looked at the maiden and knew. He knew the way you know when you have finally come home after a very long time away.”

Charlotte looked up at her mother’s face. “Mama,” she had said. “Is love real? Like that?”

Her mother set the book down and took Charlotte’s hand. “It is,” she replied. “It is entirely real. But you must believe in it first. Here.” She had pressed one finger to Charlotte’s sternum, gentle and certain. “You must carry the belief in your heart before it can find you. Promise me you will.”

Charlotte promised.

She had kept the promise through every drawing room and every carefully arranged dinner and every Season where she had watched other girls receive flowers and said nothing about her own opinions on the matter, because she had been waiting for the thing her mother described.

As memory faded, Charlotte was still in the tree. The bark was cold through her dress and the breeze had not stopped. She sat for a long moment without moving.

Then, because her mind was not the merciful sort, it began its inventory.

If you do not accept the Duke, where would you go?

She pressed her fingernail into the bark and thought about it honestly.

She had no money. What she had taken from Ashford estate could be measured in a handful of coins. She had no jewelry—she had left it, all of it, because jewelry was the first thing that could be used to identify her—even if she sold it off piece-by-piece.

She had no references. Who would write them? She could not approach any house in England without risking discovery, and she could not use her name without risking worse. She could say she had been a governess in the north, but without documentation, without a previous employer who could be written to, the first housekeeper she approached would turn her away inside of ten minutes.

And her father was not a man who gave up. She had known that when she left. He had signed the settlements, been publicly committed to the match, and his pride would not permit her to simply vanish without consequences. He would search, and he had the resources to do it thoroughly.

Redmont’s men were already on the roads.

There is no simple answer here, she thought. There is only the question of which bad answer you can live with.

She looked out over the moorland. The Duke’s offer lay in front of her the way it had in the library.

A home.

She had called them cold words, and they were—but they were also true.

Charlotte had been wanted for her name and her bloodline and the neat transaction her person represented, and Sappherton had at least never pretended that this would be a love match. He was not promising her the story from the cloth-bound book. He was not claiming to be the prince who looked at her and knew. He was offering her a contract. The terms were honest and she was old enough now to understand that honesty was not a small thing.

She pressed the heel of her hand to her sternum; in the place her mother had once pressed her finger.

You must carry the belief in your heart before it can find you.

She still carried it. She had not put it down. But a belief in her heart and a marriage in name were two different things. Charlotte was twenty-three, not eight, and her mother was not here to tell her how to reconcile this situation while still holding onto hope of finding someone to love.

And then there was Ian.

Charlotte did not know what to do, only that she could not walk away from a child who had already learned that everyone did.

CHAPTER 11

Mrs. Wick did not knock so much as the door opened and she was simply there, which told Henry everything he needed to know before she had said a word.

“Your Grace.” She had her shawl pulled tight, and her cap slightly off-center. “I am sorry to come at this hour. But one of the housemaids saw Lady Charlotte walking toward the stables. Three hours ago.”

Henry set down his pen. “Three hours.”

“Aye. She hasnae come back. It’s gone midnight, Your Grace.”

He had assumed—he had allowed himself to assume—that Charlotte had simply gone to her chambers after she left the library. He told himself that she needed air and quiet and she would reappear at breakfast with her chin set and her composure entirely restored, which would be entirely in character. He had not considered the stables. He had not considered three hours.

He was already on his feet and reaching for his coat. “Get the butler. And the footmen. Tell them to bring lanterns.” He paused at the door. “All of them.”

Mrs. Wick went.

Henry crossed the entrance hall at a pace that was not quite running and told himself there was no cause for alarm. This was a small problem. Lady Charlotte had gone out in the dark and had not returned and that required locating her, which was a logistical problem, and he was particularly good at that.

The stables were dark. He took the lantern from the hook by the stable door and pushed inside, moving past the stalls until he found the small room off the far end where the stable boy slept. He rapped on the door.

No answer.

He rapped again, harder.

A shuffling sound. The door opened. The boy stood in the gap, blinking against the light, hair standing at an angle that suggested serious sleep had been interrupted.

“Lady Charlotte,” Henry said. “Has she been here tonight?”

The boy rubbed his face. “No, Yer Grace. Nobody’s been here. I’d have heard.”

Henry studied him. He looked entirely genuine, which meant Charlotte had never made it to the stables at all. She had been walking in this direction and had gone somewhere else instead.

The woods.

He felt the cold of it settle in his chest.

Redmont’s men. Her father’s inquiry. Three hours.

“Get your coat,” he said.

The boy blinked. “Yer Grace?”

“Your coat. Now.” Henry was already moving toward the tack room. He had spotted the rifle on his first day—it was the sort of thing he noted automatically, an inventory item, a detail filed away. He took it down from the wall, checked it, and came back out to find the butler and four footmen moving into the stable yard with lanterns, Mrs. Wick behind them.

He spoke quickly. “Lady Charlotte is missing in the grounds. She was last seen heading this way three hours ago. She has not arrived here. She is somewhere in the woods to the east.” He looked at the butler. “Take the footmen in pairs. Cover the eastern path first, then the tree line south. If you find her, call out once.” He thought about it for half a second. “Once. No more.”

The butler nodded. If he had opinions about the hour or this hastily conceived plan, he kept them entirely to himself.

Henry took the east path himself, a footman at his heels with a lantern.

The woods were birch and oak, old growth, the kind that made noise in the dark—branches shifting, something small moving in the undergrowth to the left. He kept the lantern low. Kept his pace steady. He did not think about the things he could not control. He thought about the path in front of him and the darkness beyond the light.

He nearly missed the shawl.

It was snagged on a shrub at knee height, a strip of pale wool caught on a thorn and left there. He crouched and took it in his hand.

He recognized it. The household shawl, deep cream wool, the one she had pulled from the chair by the fire before she left the library. She had been wearing it when she walked past him in the hallway. He had not registered it at the time. He registered it now.

She has been through here.

He straightened. His jaw was tight. The footman held the lantern up.

They had stopped beneath an oak. Wide trunk. Ancient. The kind of tree with branches that started low.

“Should I go back to the manor, Your Grace?” the footman said quietly. “Fetch more men?”

Henry considered it. He looked at the darkness between the trees. If there was anyone else in these woods—if her father’s men or Redmont’s had found her first and were still close—a second party crashing back through with lanterns and noise would give them every warning, they needed.

“No,” he said. “Stay here.”

He lifted the lantern in a shown the light it produced in a slow arc.

Something moved above him. In the oak. A small rustle, the kind a squirrel made at night when disturbed. He looked up. The lantern only reached the lower branches. Darkness rested above that. He lowered the light and moved on, stepping away from the trunk, scanning the path ahead.

He had gone perhaps four steps when he heard it. A branch, distinctly, snapping. Then a muffled sound.

Henry turned.

A shape was descending the tree. It came down with more confidence than grace, reaching for one branch and then another, skirts bunched in one hand, and then it dropped the last several feet and landed in the leaves below with a sound that was half thud and half dignified collapse.

Henry stood absolutely still.

Charlotte.

She straightened. Her hair had come entirely loose and was hanging in multiple directions at once. There was a long tear in the skirt of her frock from hip to knee. She had a smear of something dark across her chin. She looked, overall, like someone who had spent three hours in a tree.

Which was, it transpired, exactly what she had done.

He crossed to her in four steps. “Are you all right?”

She smoothed her skirt with enormous composure, given the circumstances. “Perfectly fine. I only climbed the tree to get some air.”

“In a tree.”

“And why not?”

He stared at her. He was aware—dimly, somewhere beneath the relief that was currently conducting itself like a runaway carriage through his chest—that he ought to say something coherent. Nothing came. He stared at her hair, which had achieved a truly remarkable degree of disorder, and at the torn frock, and at the complete absence of any expression on her face that suggested she found this situation unusual in any way.

“What,” Henry said, “do you think you are doing? Coming out here in the dark with no care whatsoever for your safety—” He stopped. Breathed. “You had the entire household frightened half to death.”

“I was perfectly safe.”

“You were in a tree.”

“In an exceptionally sturdy tree.”

“Charlotte—" His voice came out harder than he intended. “Redmont’s men were on the post roads not far behind us. Your father’s inquiry is running through half the offices in England. If anyone had found you out here alone at midnight⁠—”

“But no one did.” She held his gaze. “I am standing here. I am entirely intact. Except for the frock, which was already not in its best form.”

“That is not the⁠—”

“And I would not have had any need to come out here at all,” she said, with considerable feeling, “if it were not for your utterly preposterous⁠—”

She stopped.

Henry followed her line of sight to a footman, who was standing six feet away with the lantern, staring at a point somewhere above everyone’s head resolutely.

Charlotte cleared her throat.

Henry stared at the footman. “Cover your ears.”

The footman covered his ears with both hands. Charlotte looked briefly as though she might laugh.

Henry raised the rifle and fired once into the air. The sound cracked wide across the woods, scattering something from the branches above. Somewhere in the dark, he heard an answering shout—one of the other pairs, changing course toward them.

“Come,” he said, and turned back toward the manor path.

* * *

Mrs. Wick was in the front hall when they arrived, her shawl still clutched in both hands, and the relief on her face was the kind that sits in the body rather than the face alone. She took one look at Charlotte and let out a long breath.

“Oh, my dear. Are you quite all right? Your frock is torn.”

Charlotte produced a sheepish smile. “I got turned about in the woods. I am sorry to have caused such a fuss.”

“No fuss,” Mrs. Wick said firmly, which was not true at all, but was kind. She was already steering Charlotte toward the staircase. “Come. I’ll order a bath.”

“That is truly not necessary⁠—"

“It absolutely is,” said Mrs. Wick.

They went up the stairs. Charlotte, somewhere near the landing, glanced back over her shoulder. Her eyes found Henry for one moment in the hallway below. Then she looked away again. Whatever was in her face, she took it with her before he could read it.

Henry stood in the entrance hall.

She would rather climb a tree in the Scottish dark at midnight than say yes to my proposal.

He set the rifle against the wall with more care than it required.

He was not angry at Charlotte. He understood, better than he would admit, what had driven her out of that library and into the trees. He understood it because he had sat in Nathan’s study afterward and tried hard not to understand it and had failed entirely.

He was angry at the circumstances. At the neat and impossible shape of everything—the deed of guardianship, the post roads, the fact that the only solution available was the one she could not yet accept. At Nathan, slightly, for writing that clause. At himself, considerably, for delivering a proposal with the warmth of a timber contract.

He picked up the lantern from the hall table.

He blew it out.

He went back to the study, and he sat down, but he did not pick up his pen for a long time.

He heard them before he saw them. A sharp crack of wood on wood rang out, and then Ian’s voice, high and indignant, followed.

“You moved!”

And Charlotte’s reply, entirely composed: “That is the point, generally.”

Henry stopped at the garden gate.

Charlotte had a stick. A proper one, not some twig she had picked up idly—a straight length of young ash, about three feet, which she was holding at an angle that suggested she knew exactly what she was doing with it. Ian had a shorter branch in both hands and was circling her with the absolute seriousness of a six-year-old who had decided to win.

She parried his next swing without looking. Her feet shifted on the grass, weight back, then forward. She moved the stick in a short, controlled arc that redirected Ian’s blow sideways and left him stumbling.

Henry did not move.

Her footwork was clean. Her grip was right. She kept her elbow down and her wrist loose and she was absolutely teaching a child correct form, which meant at some point in Lady Charlotte Ashford’s life, someone had taught these techniques to her first.

She climbs trees, he thought. She argues shipping ventures. And apparently, she can sword fight.

Who on earth is this woman?

He cleared his throat.

Charlotte went still. She turned.

Her eyes found him and widened, just slightly. Ian looked over too, and his expression was considerably less ambiguous. It was the look of a person who had been interrupted at something important and had not forgiven the disruption yet.

“Ian,” Henry said. “I require Lady Charlotte’s company for a moment.”

Ian’s eyes narrowed. “She was in the middle of showing me the second guard.”

“She will return shortly.”

Ian looked at Charlotte. The negotiation was silent. She said, “I’ll be back before you’ve counted to a hundred.” He considered this, clearly decided it was adequate, and went back to swinging the branch at nothing in particular.

Charlotte fell into step beside Henry, and they moved together down the cobbled path that ran along the inner wall of the garden.

Henry waited until they were well out of Ian’s hearing.

“I owe you an apology,” he said.

She looked at him. She did not say anything.

“Last night’s proposal was ill-considered and poorly delivered. I ought not to have put it to you in the manner I did. You are not required to accept, and I will not press you.” He kept his gaze on the path. “I will make other arrangements for Ian. It will take time, but it can be done.”

Charlotte turned a broad smile on him.

It was not a polite smile, but the genuine article, wide and warm and occupying her entire face.

“You look,” Henry said, “extraordinarily pleased.”

“I am.” She clasped her hands behind her. “It is a very pleasant morning.”

“I note it did not require the offer of fresh air to bring you outside today.”

“The tree was,” she said, “sufficient air. For a while.”

Henry looked away before he could say something unwise. “In any case. I will need your help with Ian. I fear he will simply not agree to go to London. But he listens to you, and if you can persuade him that the journey is reasonable⁠—”

“That should be easy enough,” Charlotte said.

“Yes.” A beat. “Good.”

They walked another few paces. The cobblestones were uneven and the morning light was thin and grey. Henry was aware that the problem had not, in fact, resolved itself in any material way. Ian still needed to go to London. Nathan and his wife still needed to be found. And as for what to do with Lady Charlotte…The weight of it settled back onto his shoulders like a coat he had briefly shucked before donning once more.

“Where will you go?” he said.

Charlotte glanced up at him.

“When Ian and I return to London,” he said. “What do you plan to do?”

She was quiet for a moment.

“Why,” she said, “I plan to become a duchess, of course.”

Henry stopped walking.

He turned to look at her.

She was facing him with her hands still clasped behind her, and the smile had returned—smaller this time, more contained, but there, very much there.

“Are you mocking me?” he said.

She laughed. It was a clear, genuine sound. “Would you rather I was?”

He opened his mouth. He closed it. He opened it again. “Charlotte⁠—”

“I have accepted your offer,” she said.

He blinked. “That is an odd way to accept.”

“Your proposal was rather odd too.”

He stood on the cobbled path in the grey Scottish morning and looked at her. She looked back at him. And then, because he could not help it—because the relief and the bewilderment and the image of her descending from a tree at midnight with her hair catastrophically disordered all arrived at once—he laughed.

He laughed properly. The kind that came from somewhere he had not opened in quite some time. It surprised even him.

When he finally recovered, he found her watching him. She had gone still. Her expression was different now—something was in it that was quiet and curious and not, for once, performing anything at all.

“You should do that more often,” she said.

Henry looked at her keenly. Her cheeks were pink from the morning air. Her hair was properly pinned today but a strand had already escaped near her ear. He was standing, he realized, rather close.

“Should I?” He took one step toward her. “And why is that? Do you find me more agreeable when I laugh?”

Her cheeks went from pink to something closer to rose. But her chin came up. “Any man can be handsome if he is agreeable.”

“And if he is disagreeable?”

“Then he has only himself to blame.”

“A severe standard.”

“A sensible one,” she said. “I should think a man as rigidly orderly as yourself would appreciate true sensibility.”

“I appreciate it enormously.”

“Then what is your response to my point?”

“My response,” Henry said, “is that agreeable and handsome are not as intricately linked as you suggest. I have met a great many agreeable men who were decidedly ordinary.”

“Then it is fortunate for you that you are not ordinary.”

The sentence sat in the air for a moment. They both seemed to notice it at the same time. Charlotte looked briefly as though she regretted it. Henry filed it away somewhere he did not intend to examine until later.

He cleared his throat. “We need to marry quickly. The sooner the arrangement is in place, the sooner we can address your father and Redmont. It cannot wait.”

“Agreed,” Charlotte said. “But I will need a written contract. Stating clearly that I maintain my freedom within the marriage. My time, my choices. In writing.”

“That is a reasonable condition.”

She looked slightly surprised that he had agreed without argument. “Good.”

“I will have the solicitor draw something up today.” He paused. “It will be straightforward.”

“Then we are in agreement.”

“We are.” He looked at her for a moment, then: “Where did you learn to do that?”

She blinked. “Do what?”

He gestured back toward the garden, toward Ian and the stick and the clean, controlled footwork he had watched from the gate.

Charlotte smiled. It was a different smile from the others. Smaller. Satisfied in a way that did not quite invite further inquiry.

“You will have to earn that answer,” she said.

CHAPTER 12

“If anyone can show just cause why these two persons should not be joined in holy matrimony,” the minister said, “let them speak now or else forever hold their peace.”

No one spoke.

Charlotte had half-expected her own voice to betray her. It did not. The chapel held its breath, and so did she, and then the minister moved on.

The chapel was small. Beautiful, in its way. Mrs. Wick had done remarkable things with late heather and a handful of stubborn autumn roses, threading them into the simple wooden arch above the altar and setting candles in every stone niche along the walls. At the back of the chapel, the estate solicitor stood beside the butler, and behind them a dozen indoor staff had arranged themselves with the quiet careful dignity of people who knew they were witnessing something unusual and intended to be worthy of it.

Charlotte kept her eyes on the minister.

She had told herself, very firmly, three times over breakfast and once in the mirror before she came down, that this was a legal formality. A practical framework. The most sensible available solution to a problem that had no sensible solutions. The contract was drawn. The terms were clear. She was not a girl in a story. She was a woman with a plan.

Then Henry began to speak.

“I, Henry Matthew Kingswell, take you, Charlotte Renee Ashford, to be my wife.”

He said it the way he said everything—directly, without decoration. But there was something underneath it that had not been there in the library, something that sat in each plain word like weight on a scale. Charlotte’s hand tightened at her side. She did not look at him.

“To have and to hold from this day forward. To love and to cherish. Until death us do part.”

The old words. She had heard them at other people’s weddings, in other people’s chapels, and they had always seemed like ceremony. Now they sounded like something else entirely. Like a door opening somewhere she had not thought to look through before.

She breathed.

It was her turn.

“And I—” She stopped. She had not intended to stop. “Charlotte. R-Renee Ashford.” A half-second. She got it back. “Take you, Henry Matthew Kingswell, to be my husband.”

Her voice was steady after that. She made certain of it.

She got through the rest of the vows without looking at him once, which was its own small victory. But she could feel him beside her—the stillness of him, the set of his shoulder just at the edge of her vision.

She told herself she was imagining it.

The minister spoke the final words.

Henry turned toward her. He took her gloved hand in both of his, and she felt the warmth of his fingers even through the satin. He lowered his head and pressed his lips to her knuckles.

It was correct. It was proper. It was the safest possible gesture in the circumstances, and Charlotte was entirely unprepared for the way an emotional response moved through her. Slow and inconvenient and not even slightly willing to be argued away. It traveled from her knuckles straight up her arm. She stood very still and kept her chin level. She did not let any of it reach her face.

Henry released her hand and stepped back.

His expression was composed. But the set of his jaw had shifted, and she had learned enough in the past few days to read it.

The minister closed his book.

Ian launched a handful of roses into the air jubilantly.

He had been standing beside Mrs. Wick with a flat basket of flower heads, and if he had been exercising any restraint at all up to this point, it evaporated entirely the moment the book shut. The first handful of petals caught Charlotte full across the cheek and shoulder. The second went directly over Henry’s head and skittered down his coat. A third volley landed somewhere on the stone floor near the solicitor’s boots with an audible skid.

“Mind where you aim, young man!”

Ian, undaunted, reached into the basket for more.

Charlotte laughed. She could not help it. It came out of her before she had decided anything about it, genuine and helpless, and it startled Ian so much that he laughed too—a bright, surprised sound—and then the chapel was entirely full of noise and petals and Mrs. Wick’s voice from somewhere behind them saying, “Ian Drummond, those were for after the door—” in a tone that was trying very hard to be stern and failing at every syllable.

Henry looked at Charlotte.

She looked back at him. Her cheek still had a petal on it. She was fairly certain her hair had three more.

“Effective,” he said.

“Extremely,” Charlotte agreed.

She reached up and extracted a rose petal from the hair above her ear. Henry watched this with an expression she could not quite place, and then he turned to address Ian on the matter of basket management, and Charlotte tucked the petal into her glove because she had no pocket and did not examine why.

Outside the chapel doors, the rest of the household had assembled.

They had rice. They had more petals. They deployed both with the wholehearted enthusiasm of people who had been holding it in through the ceremony. Charlotte walked into the crowd with her arm tucked correctly into Henry’s and felt all the warmth of it, the ordinary human warmth of strangers wishing her well. She smiled at them and beamed at young Ian.

Mrs. Wick stood on the chapel steps. Her hands were folded, and her eyes were misted with unshed tears.

Charlotte met her gaze, and the housekeeper gave her a single, meaningful nod.

Ian was darting between the adults with the remaining flower heads from his basket, assigning them without particular logic to whoever was closest. The butler received one with great seriousness. The kitchen maid received two and giggled.

Charlotte caught Henry watching the child.

He had gone still, just for a moment, with the thin Scottish light on his face and Ian spinning in and out of the small crowd before him. His expression was not the one he used for contracts, solicitors, or situations that required management. It was quieter than that. More uncertain. Like a man who had written a careful plan and was only now beginning to understand what he had actually signed up for.

She knew that feeling.

She did not say so.

Ian arrived at Henry’s feet and held up the last flower head. Henry looked down at it. Then he took it, which Charlotte had not expected. Ian looked deeply satisfied with this outcome and ran back to Mrs. Wick.

Henry glanced sidelong at Charlotte.

She looked forward. The drive stretched south, the sky was low and pale, and somewhere ahead of it was London.

She kept her chin level and told herself it was only the cold making her chest feel that way.

It was not the cold.

“Will there be trees to climb in London?”

Ian was on the rocking horse with both hands on its carved mane, sitting perfectly still, which was not how one usually used a rocking horse. Charlotte was resting on the footstool beside him. She had come up after the household’s warmth on the drive had subsided into the particular quiet of a house being dismantled, and Ian had been here already, not playing, just sitting.

“There will be a garden,” Charlotte said. “A large one. I have not seen it myself, but I intend to investigate every tree in it within the first week.”

Ian ran his fingers through the horse’s fine mane. “What if they’re not the right kind?”

“What is the right kind?”

“Ones that go high enough.” He considered this. “And with branches you can sit on without sliding.”

“Those are extremely reasonable criteria. I shall apply them rigorously.” She looked at him. “Are you ready?”

He was quiet for a moment. “Mrs. Wick won’t be there.”

“No.”

“Or Tam.”

Charlotte held still. She did not fill the silence with reassurance he had not asked for.

“Tam could come later,” Ian said, as if he was trying the idea out. “When there’s a proper stable.”

“That is a very sound arrangement.”

He dismounted from his horse and scooped one of his toy soldiers out of a toy chest. Ian looked at the soldier in his palm. Then he nodded once, the way he had when she had first asked him to make the solemn vow over the broken toys—small, certain, decided.

“All right,” he said.

They went downstairs.

The afternoon had been consumed by the practical machinery of departure. Two maids were ferrying trunks to the front entrance with the focused efficiency of people on a deadline. The solicitor’s papers had been laid out across the dining room table in careful sequence, and Charlotte had signed her name three times in increasingly legal company while Henry explained each document to her without being asked, which she appreciated more than she intended to admit.

She was crossing the hallway with her traveling cloak when Henry appeared from the study.

“I have met with the stewards. Nathan divided his affairs between too many parties, and I have remedied that situation. Now, there is one man in charge and that steward has his instructions,” he said. “The estate should run adequately in my absence.”

“Adequately,” Charlotte repeated. “What a ringing endorsement.”

“It is a capable estate, and the situation is under management.”

“You say that,” Charlotte said, “as though you have any idea what Ian is going to do in a London townhouse.”

Henry glanced toward the staircase where Ian had just disappeared around the upper landing with something tucked under his arm that had not been there before.

“I have some idea,” Henry said.

“You have very little idea.” She pulled on her glove. “But I expect you will learn quickly.”

He looked at her for a moment with the expression she had decided was his version of amusement—not quite a smile, something more contained, but present if a person knew where to look.

“I generally do,” he said.

On the drive, the household had assembled again.

It was smaller than the morning crowd. The outdoor staff had returned to their posts, and what remained was the core of the indoor household—the butler, the housemaids, the nursery maid who had packed Ian’s things under Mrs. Wick’s close supervision and looked slightly winded by the experience. Ian appeared at the front door with his coat on and the repaired soldier tucked into his breast pocket.

“All aboard,” Henry said.

Ian made for the carriage step without ceremony.

Mrs. Wick was standing near Charlotte’s elbow.

Charlotte turned towards her, and Mrs. Wick took her hands in both of hers. They were warm and very sure. She did not say anything. She held Charlotte’s hands for the space of three breaths, looked at her with those sharp, kind eyes, and then released her.

Charlotte swallowed.

“Thank you,” she managed. “For everything.”

Mrs. Wick gave a single nod. She stepped back.

Charlotte turned to the carriage before she did something unforgivable like cry.

Ian had already installed himself in the forward-facing seat with his coat arranged neatly and his soldier visible above the pocket. He wore an expression that suggested he had been waiting some considerable time. Henry stood at the carriage door and offered Charlotte his hand.

She took it and climbed in.

They settled across from Ian. Charlotte arranged her cloak. Henry straightened his coat. Ian watched them both as if deciding whether the seating arrangement was satisfactory.

“Is there food?” Ian said.

Henry looked at the traveling case. “There is.”

Ian appeared appeased. He looked out the window.

Henry rapped the roof with his knuckles.

The carriage moved.

Charlotte watched Drummond Hall through the window. She admired one last time the stone front of it, the wide drive, the kitchen garden wall she could just make out at the eastern edge. Mrs. Wick had gone back up the steps and was standing at the front door. She did not wave. She just watched.

Charlotte looked back until the bend in the drive swallowed the house and it was gone.

She turned away from the window.

Henry had his traveling case open and a document across his knee. He was already reading. He had a small crease between his brows that appeared when the text required close attention, and his thumb moved along the margin the way it did when he was annotating in his head.

Ian shifted on his seat. His eyes had gone heavy already. He fought it for perhaps two minutes and then he listed sideways and rested against a cushion. The soldier in his breast pocket tilted at an angle.

Charlotte looked down at him. Then she glanced at Henry.

He turned a page without looking up. The crease between his brows deepened. Outside, the road north curved away behind them and the Scottish afternoon pressed gray and cool against the carriage windows, and the miles were already beginning to accumulate between her and the only world she had ever run from.

This is not what you expected, she thought. None of it is.

She had climbed into a stranger’s carriage in the dark with borrowed clothes and no plan and the dim conviction that anything was better than standing still. She had expected to be discovered within the first hour. She had expected to be sent home within the day. She had not expected Ian, or the broken soldiers, or the woods at midnight, or a duke who laughed when she was not prepared for it.

She had not expected to return to town as the Duke of Sappherton’s wife with a child in tow.

Henry turned another page.

Charlotte swallowed as her nerves coiled. She did not know what was waiting for her in London.

CHAPTER 13

“That seat,” Ian announced, pointing at the empty backward bench opposite, “is for luggage.” He said it the way he said most things—with enormous conviction and no expectation of argument—and settled himself between Henry and Charlotte.

Henry opened his document case.

The leather was warm from his hands and the letter inside was half-annotated, the margins already thick with his own shorthand. He had planned to finish it before the first stop. He had planned, in fact, to finish three letters, review the timber summary his solicitor had sent up with the last post rider, and begin the draft response that had been waiting since Tuesday.

He pulled out his traveling graphite pencil and poised it over the document in his hand.

The road north of Carlisle had been punishing enough. This road, one day south of the border, was only marginally better—the springs groaned on the ruts, a low, rhythmic complaint that had been underscoring every mile since dawn. The carriage smelled of leather and frigid air and, faintly, of the heather that had caught in Ian’s coat somewhere in the last few days and refused to leave.

The afternoon light was thin. It came through the window at a low angle and lay across Henry’s document case in a pale stripe that shifted with every jolt of the road.

“Shaggy coos,” Ian said.

Henry made a note in the margin.

“Lots of them. Like the ones at home.”

He did not look up. “Yes.”

Ian seemed to find this satisfying, and he continued peering out the window.

Henry returned to the letter. The timber dispute had escalated as Charlotte had predicted it would—he had not told her that—and the solicitor was now proposing a compromise that was not, technically, the arrangement she had suggested, but was close enough that he had spent several minutes in the study at Drummond Hall not enjoying the parallel.

He drew a line under the third paragraph and began a note.

“There’s a wall fallen down,” Ian said. “A whole one. Just—all the stones everywhere.”

“Mm.”

“Was it a battle?”

“No.”

“How do you know?”

“Because it is a field wall, not a fortification.”

Ian considered this. “It could have been a very small battle.”

Henry set his pen down. He looked out the window and then at Charlotte across from him, and she was currently pressing her lips together with an expression of great composure and no sincerity whatsoever.

He picked up his pencil. The carriage hit a rut.

The document case shifted, the graphite ran slightly into the margin, and Henry held the case level with one hand and wrote with the other. He had done worse in rougher carriages. He had once annotated a shipping contract in a gale off the Northumberland coast, in a vehicle that should not technically have been in motion.

“There’s a farmhouse,” Ian said. “With a blue door.”

Henry made no response. He was mid-sentence, the pen moving, and the sentence was important because it addressed the exclusivity clause, which Charlotte had also been right about, and which he was not going to think about right now.

“Henry.”

“Yes, Ian.”

“The door was blue.”

“I heard you.”

“You didnae say anythin'.”

“I was thinking.”

“About the door?”

“About the letter.”

Ian turned from the window. He studied Henry’s profile with the focused attention of a child who has decided an adult’s silence is a personal affront. “You didnae look at it.”

“No.”

“Then you daenae ken if it was blue.”

Henry looked up. Ian looked back at him, entirely serene.

Charlotte made a small sound beside Ian. It was not a cough. It was the sound a person makes when they are preventing a larger sound and doing so imperfectly.

Henry looked back at the letter. “It was blue,” he said. “I accept this on your authority.”

Ian appeared satisfied and returned to the window.

Charlotte’s shoulder shook, just once, and then she had it under control.

They sat in companionable silence for perhaps three minutes. The springs groaned. The afternoon light moved across the case. Henry had finished his note on the exclusivity clause and was moving to the next paragraph when Ian sat bolt upright.

“A crow!”

The pen stopped.

“On a post. Right there. Just—sittin' on it.”

“Yes,” Henry said.

“It looked at me.”

“Crows do that.”

“It looked at me as though it owned the road.”

Henry set the pen down. He looked at Charlotte. Charlotte was looking at the ceiling of the carriage with an expression of beatific innocence that did not deceive him for a moment.

“Ian,” Henry said, “I am going to say something, and I need you to hear it very seriously.”

Ian turned from the window. “What?”

“I have six letters to finish before we reach the next stop.”

“All right.”

“Six,” Henry said. “That is a specific number. Each one requires sustained thought.”

Ian nodded solemnly.

“So I will need approximately one quarter-hour of quiet.”

“I can do that,” Ian said.

“Thank you.”

Ian looked out the window.

He lasted four minutes. “There’s a man walkin' a very fat dog,” he reported.

Charlotte abandoned all pretense. She turned her face into her hand, her shoulders moving with silent, stifled laughter.

Henry looked at the letter. He looked at Ian. He looked at Charlotte’s hand, which was not doing an adequate job of covering her face.

He closed the document case.

“What kind of dog?” he said.

Ian pressed his nose to the glass again. “Round,” he said. “Very round. Like a barrel with legs.”

“That is a remarkably specific description.”

“It’s very round.”

“So you said.”

Charlotte had lowered her hand. He looked at the case in his lap. The letter was half-annotated and would remain that way until after supper.

The afternoon stop came up faster than he expected. The carriage slowed, the yard sounds filtering in—horses, voices, the crack of a door. The cold came in when the steps were let down, real autumn cold, and Ian descended with enthusiasm.

The innkeeper met them at the door. He was a broad man, cheerful, the sort who assessed a party in approximately four seconds and priced them accordingly.

Charlotte reached him first.

“Three for luncheon,” she said, “myself, my husband, and our ward. We shall require a private room if one is available.”

My husband. She said it with caution and Henry was two feet behind her and had heard every word.

He stepped forward. “We will also require the carriage horses changed. My driver will speak to your ostler.”

He said it to the innkeeper, not to Charlotte, and his voice was entirely even, and the innkeeper heard exactly what he was meant to hear, which was a duke managing a routine stop on a long road south.

The inn yard was mud, several days deep.

Ian took both their hands at the step. He did not ask. He simply reached up and took Charlotte’s on one side and Henry’s on the other and walked between them across the yard with the practical confidence of a child who has decided this is the natural arrangement and sees no reason to discuss it.

Henry looked at his own hand, and then at the distance between himself and Charlotte. Then he glanced at the three sets of boot prints they were leaving across the mud.

Charlotte did not look at him either. They walked.

The market town came an hour later. A busy crossroads, carts and tradespeople. They had stepped out of the carriage to stretch their legs while the driver tended to the horses at the bustling crossroads. Ian found a display of wooden spinning tops outside a shop front and was occupied. Henry had stopped to check the wheel brace on the carriage—the road had been rough, and the left wheel was making a sound he did not trust—when an older gentleman approached. Silver-haired and wearing a good coat.

The gentleman looked at Ian. Then at Henry. Then at Charlotte.

“Fine boy,” he said. “Does he take after you, or his mother?”

Henry opened his mouth.

Charlotte opened her mouth.

“He’s not—” Henry said.

“He is actually—" Charlotte said.

They both stopped.

“He is my ward,” Henry said.

“My husband’s ward,” Charlotte said.

The gentleman blinked pleasantly at both of them, absorbed neither explanation, tipped his hat, and moved on.

Henry looked at Charlotte. Charlotte looked at Henry.

Neither said a word.

“What does London smell like?” Ian appeared at Charlotte’s elbow, top clutched in both hands, entirely unaware that anything had happened.

Charlotte looked at him for one beat. Then she said, “Smoke, mostly. And horses. And the river, which is not always agreeable.”

“Nae agreeable how?”

“Considerably not agreeable. Particularly in summer.”

Ian wrinkled his nose. “Like the drain by the stables?”

“Very much like that. But larger.”

“Much larger?”

“The entire city.”

Ian absorbed this with an expression of profound reconsideration. “Oh,” he said. He turned the top over in his hands. “Are there still trees?”

“There are parks,” Charlotte said. “With excellent trees.”

Ian appeared to decide this balanced the drain. He went back to the top.

Henry turned back to the carriage, and the market town noise closed over the moment and carried it away.

Ian had been asleep for twenty minutes when Charlotte allowed herself to look at Henry properly.

He had not noticed. He had the document case open still; the letter held at an angle. Outside, the road had smoothed. The northern ruts were behind them, and the carriage moved with a steadier rhythm now, the springs quiet for the first time since morning.

Ian’s head was heavy against Charlotte’s arm. His breathing was slow and entirely committed, the way children breathed when they had worn themselves through completely, and one of his boots—she had no idea how—was resting on Henry’s knee.

Charlotte watched him read.

“Have you always done this?” she said.

Henry looked up. “Done what?”

“Traveled like this. Alone. With nothing but letters for company.”

He looked at her the way he looked at questions he considered self-evident. “Yes.”

“Every journey?”

“Every journey of any distance.”

She watched him for a moment. “Do you find it lonely?”

“I find it efficient,” he said.

Charlotte considered that. “I suspect those are not the same answer.”

He held her gaze for one beat. Then he looked back at the letter.

She waited. She had learned, in the past few days, that pressing Henry Kingswell on a thing he was not ready to address was roughly as productive as pressing a stone wall. The wall did not move. It simply absorbed the effort and stood there, entirely indifferent, and you were left with sore hands and the same wall.

So she did not press.

He read for perhaps another minute. Then, without particular fanfare, he closed the letter. He did not put it in the case. He held it loosely in one hand, his elbow against the carriage wall, and looked out the window instead.

The light was nearly gone. The fields beyond the glass were grey shapes, the hedgerows dark lines, the sky the color of cold ash above them. His jaw was set at the angle it got when something had landed that he had not decided what to do with yet.

His thumb moved once across the edge of the paper. Then he set it on the seat beside him.

Charlotte looked at the letter and at his hand. He had not dismissed the question. He had not deflected to logistics or offered her a subject change. He had simply gone somewhere with it that he was not yet willing to share, and the difference, she thought, was not small.

She was still thinking about that when he said, without looking away from the window, “Did you travel much? Before.”

“Not as I would have liked.”

“Where did you want to go?”

Charlotte considered this. Ian shifted against her arm, his face pressing closer to her shoulder, his other boot twitching once in whatever he was dreaming. “Italy,” she said. “And possibly Greece. I read a great deal about both, which I understand is not the same thing.”

“It is not.”

“Have you been?”

“To Italy. Not Greece.”

“Was it what you expected?”

He looked away from the window then, and his eyes found hers. “I was there for a shipping negotiation,” he said. “I saw very little of it.”

Charlotte stared at him. “You went to Italy and saw almost nothing of it?”

“I had considerable business to conduct,” he said. “And I saw the harbor.”

“What else did you see?”

Henry gave a slight shrug and held her gaze. Then he said, “I had a schedule.”

Charlotte pressed her lips together. She felt the laugh trying to form and held it. “Of course you did.”

“It was a well-organized schedule.”

“I am certain it was. And entirely devoid of anything pleasant.”

“The negotiation went well.”

“I am sure it did.” She shook her head slightly. “Henry. You were in Italy.”

Ian’s boot slid off Henry’s knee in slow stages and came to rest on the seat between them. Henry looked down at it, then back at Charlotte.

“The harbor was quite fine,” he offered.

Charlotte laughed this time. She could not help it. It was the same quality of laugh she had not meant to produce in the Scottish garden, the one that had surprised Ian and, she suspected, surprised Henry considerably more. She pressed the back of her hand to her mouth and recovered.

Henry watched her. His expression was not the composed, considering look he deployed at coaching stops and legal documents. It was quieter than that. More open.

She looked away before she could count what was in it.

Outside, the last light failed entirely. The carriage lamps were lit at some point when she was not paying attention, and they threw a low, warm light across the interior, across the document case and Henry’s knee and Ian’s sleeping face. The road unreeled behind them, smooth and dark.

Henry picked up the letter. He did not open it. He set it in the case and closed the clasp.

“The next stop is perhaps two hours,” he said.

“All right.”

“If you need to rest⁠—”

“I am not tired.”

He nodded once then turned his attention toward the world outside the window.

Charlotte looked at him.

She was aware, in the way one became aware of things one would rather not think about, that her chest had fluttered in the last several minutes, that she had not authorized it to do. It made her nervous because she was yet to understand it. She was not sure she wished to.

The carriage was warm, and Ian breathed slowly against her arm. Henry was two feet away and neither of them spoke.

Then Henry turned.

This time, he was not looking at her the way he looked at situations that required management, but with what looked like warmth.

CHAPTER 14

Tristan was already on the steps.

Henry had sent word from the last coaching inn. He had been entirely clear about the hour and the day. And yet there was Tristan, arms folded, wearing an expression that said he had received an interesting letter and had spent the intervening hours composing questions.

The carriage had barely stopped rolling when Tristan came down.

“Four days,” he said. “I expected three.”

“The road north of Grantham,” Henry said.

“Mm.” Tristan extended his hand. Henry took it. The handshake held a beat longer than usual, and then Tristan clapped him once on the shoulder, firm and brief, which was as close to an embrace as either of them generally managed. He stepped back, looked at Henry for a moment with those assessing eyes, and then turned.

Henry turned back to the carriage to help Charlotte alight.

“Duchess of Sappherton.” Tristan’s entire manner shifted—not into formality, but warmer and genuinely meant. “Welcome to Evermere. I am glad you are here.”

Henry opened his mouth to complete the introduction.

He did not get the chance.

“Your Grace,” Charlotte said, with a small, composed smile. “My husband has spoken of you.”

“Has he?” Tristan looked delighted. “Nothing accurate, I hope.”

“Nothing incriminating.”

“Then he has shown considerable restraint.” He turned to Henry. “I like her already.”

Henry did not comment on this. He was already looking toward Ian, who had descended last and was now standing on the gravel drive.

Tristan looked down at Ian. “You must be Master Ian Drummond.”

Ian said nothing. He looked at Tristan the way he had once looked at Henry from the stable roof, measuring every detail.

A footman appeared at the precise moment, tray in hand, and held it toward Ian. On it were biscuits.

Ian looked at the biscuits. Then at Tristan. Then back at the biscuit. He took it.

Tristan said quietly, “I had a feeling about that.”

Then Lavinia, Tristan’s wife, the Duchess of Evermere, appeared in the doorway, dressed in an emerald green velvet dress and a cream shawl. She was a tall, graceful woman with bright blue eyes and dark hair. She took one look at the group standing on the steps in the cold afternoon air and said, “Absolutely not,” and descended with a hand extended toward Charlotte’s elbow and the other reaching for Ian.

“Poor dears. You have been in a carriage for three days. I have tea waiting inside and a fire that has been burning for an hour,” Lavinia said, steering Charlotte and Ian toward the door. “I will not have you standing in the cold while they do whatever it is they are about to do.” She looked down at Ian. “Are you enjoying your biscuit, my dear?”

Ian smiled up at her and nodded.

“I have had the blue room prepared,” she said to Charlotte. “It has a fine view, though you will not care about the view until tomorrow at the earliest⁠—”

The door closed behind them.

“Come,” Tristan said. “The library.”

The fire was already built up. Two glasses of brandy sat on the side table, which meant Tristan had been expecting this conversation and had made arrangements. Henry sat. Tristan sat across from him, crossed one ankle over his knee, and waited.

He was incredibly good at waiting. Henry had always found it irritating.

“Scotland,” Henry said, and began.

He gave Tristan the account in order: Charlotte’s situation, the carriage, the coaching inn, the discovery at Drummond Hall, Ian on the roof. The solicitor’s documents. The deed of guardianship, the London clause, the problem it created. The marriage as the resolution.

He kept it brief. The facts were the facts. They arranged themselves neatly.

“Right,” Tristan said, when he had finished.

Henry picked up the brandy.

“How precisely did she come to be in your carriage?” Tristan said.

“She had stowed away.”

“Stowed away.”

“In a valet’s coat. She was disguised.”

Tristan absorbed this. “And you discovered the disguise⁠—”

“Immediately.”

“I see.” Tristan paused. “Why did you decide to help her?”

“Have you known me to leave a lady stranded?”

“No, but you would not have risked your reputation.”

Henry sighed. “I felt sorry for her when I learned her father planned to give her away to Redmont.”

Tristan nodded. “Ah, so you rescued her from Redmont.”

“Perhaps.”

“And what precisely did the solicitor say about the guardianship?” Tristan asked. “The full extent of it.”

“Ian must reside at my primary household. The terms are clear and Chancery has the document.”

“And at what point,” Tristan said pleasantly, “did you determine that marriage was the most practical solution available?”

Henry set the glass down. “When the alternatives were examined and found insufficient.”

“What were the alternatives?”

“Leaving her in Scotland. Bringing her to London as a governess. Neither was viable.”

“And so you proposed.”

“Yes.”

“In the library at Drummond Hall.”

“Yes.”

“After knowing her for⁠—”

“Ten days.” Henry held Tristan’s gaze. “The duration is not relevant.”

Tristan looked at him. “Henry. You have just described your wife of four days as a solution to a logistical problem.”

“I described the marriage as a solution to a logistical problem. There is a difference.”

“Is there?”

“Yes.”

Tristan picked up his own glass. He took a single sip and set it back down. “I noticed something when you arrived earlier.”

Henry waited.

“Your gaze followed your wife from the carriage to the door.”

“I was ensuring she had managed the steps.”

“Lavinia was with her.”

“It had been a long journey.”

“Henry.”

“You are projecting,” Henry said.

“I am observing,” Tristan said. “There is, as you have noted, a difference.”

Henry looked at the fire.

“In my experience,” Tristan said, “men who are entirely indifferent to a woman do not track her movements across a drive with the attention you gave her between the carriage door and the front step.”

“I was being attentive to a guest.”

“She is your wife.”

“All the more reason.”

Tristan smiled. It was not a triumphant smile. It was something more patient and considerably more annoying.

They had had versions of this argument before. Henry knew exactly how it ended. It ended with him declining to concede a single point and Tristan being, after sufficient time had passed, entirely right.

He picked up the brandy.

“Tell me about Ian,” Tristan said. He uncrossed his ankle and leaned forward, and the expression on his face shifted into something more genuine. “Of course. Is he⁠—”

“He is managing,” Henry said. “Charlotte has been good for him.”

Tristan’s expression did not change. He simply looked at Henry and said nothing for a moment.

Henry gazed at the fire and wished, not for the first time, that his oldest friend was slightly less perceptive.

“Good,” Tristan said. “That is very good.”

He did not say anything else. He did not need to.

Lavinia poured tea the way she apparently did everything—without asking whether you wanted it, on the grounds that you clearly did.

“Sit,” she said, and gestured at the chair nearest the fire, which was large and soft and precisely right after three days in a carriage. Charlotte sat. A cup appeared in her hands.

“Now.” Lavinia settled across from her and tucked her feet up in a way that suggested she had no intention of standing on ceremony. “Tell me about the journey. All of it, not the version you give people you don’t know yet.”

Charlotte looked at her over the rim of her cup. “That is a great deal of faith to extend to someone you met an hour ago.”

“Twenty minutes,” Lavinia said. “And I have been told I am an excellent judge of character. Possibly by myself, but the observation stands.” She tilted her head. “Well?”

Charlotte told her. The journey, the coach stops, Ian on the stable roof. The broken soldiers. The woods at midnight. She included the parts that were strange and she included the parts she had not yet made sense of, because Lavinia was listening.

“Scotland suits you,” Lavinia said, when she had finished.

“Scotland was rather forced upon me.”

“Most things that suit us are.” Lavinia refilled her cup without being asked. “And Ian? Is he—better?”

“Better than he was. Still—” Charlotte stopped. “He knows something is wrong and he is managing it by deciding not to know it. That is the best way I can describe it.”

“Children are remarkable at that.”

“Adults also.”

Lavinia smiled. “Also.” She set down the teapot. “And how are you finding married life? You have had—what, five days of it?”

“Four.”

“Four days of it, then.”

Charlotte considered how to answer. “It is rather like learning the rules of a game while playing it,” she said. “You can see the board and the pieces, but the strategy is entirely unclear.”

“And your husband?”

“Keeps his moves guarded.”

Lavinia nodded once. She turned her cup between her hands, and Charlotte sensed that she was choosing between several things to say and selecting the most useful.

“I have watched Henry Kingswell across a great many dinners and social occasions,” Lavinia said. “For years. And I will tell you something that is not a comfort, so please do not receive it as one.” She met Charlotte’s eyes. “His actions are consistently well ahead of his words. Sometimes by days. Sometimes by considerably longer. He will not tell you what he is thinking. He will not tell you how he feels about a thing. But he will do things. Watch what he does.” She paused. “That is not a reassurance. It is simply how he is put together.”

Charlotte sat with that for a moment.

It was not a reassurance. It was more useful than a reassurance. It was a framework.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Do not thank me yet,” Lavinia said.

* * *

At dinner, Lavinia sat her stepdaughter Sophia beside Charlotte and Ian beside Henry. The meal was warm and abundant and entirely without the formality that might have made the evening stiff.

Sophia was sixteen and watched everything with careful eyes. She would ask Charlotte one question about Scotland and then listen to the answer with genuine attention, which Charlotte found immediately endearing.

Ian was on a cushion to Henry’s left, because the chair was too large and Henry had simply reached for a cushion from the sideboard without comment and placed it there. Ian had accepted this arrangement with dignity and was currently working through a second helping of roasted chicken.

“The wine,” Henry said to no one in particular, “is the clearest evidence I have yet encountered that Tristan’s cellar is managed by someone other than Tristan.”

Tristan laughed. “I will pass your gratitude along to my steward.”

“It was not gratitude. It was an observation about delegation.”

“A distinction I choose to ignore.” Tristan raised his glass.

Charlotte picked up her own. “It does rather suggest,” she said, without looking up from her plate, “that the quality of any enterprise improves when the person nominally in charge of it is kept at a remove.”

There was a beat of silence. Charlotte caught Henry staring at her, his expression momentarily stripped of its usual administrative severity, replaced by a raw, unguarded intensity that made her breath catch.

Tristan laughed again, but he did not look at Henry.

The conversation moved on. Sophia asked Ian about Scotland. Ian answered as though he considered himself an expert on the subject, which he was, and Sophia listened with the same careful attention she had given Charlotte. Lavinia asked Henry something about London timing that Charlotte did not entirely follow, and Henry answered it in three sentences, and the evening moved.

But Charlotte was assembling.

She had done it on the road, without knowing she was doing it. A remark here, a silence there, the way he held a letter he had already decided to close. The laughing in the garden, unexpected and genuine, there and then gone. The cushion, placed without comment.

Henry had inherited the Dukedom at twenty-two, Lavinia had mentioned, in passing, in the drawing room. Then, there was the cousin in Scotland who had written every month, Nathan Drummond. She had gathered that Henry had sent quarterly estate summaries in return, which told her a great deal about both men. A man who sent estate summaries in response to letters was a man who did not know how to write the other kind.

She had been so consumed with her own situation—the escape, the relief, the uncertainty still waiting in London like an unpaid debt—that she had not fully turned and looked at his.

She looked at it now.

She watched Henry say something to Ian that made Ian sit up straighter with the expression of a child given a responsibility. Henry turned back to Tristan.

She looked down at her plate.

A footman appeared at Henry’s elbow. He held a small, folded note on a salver.

Henry took it. He read it in the time it took Charlotte to set down her fork.

His expression did not change. That was the problem. It was entirely still; in the way it went still only when something required controlling.

He folded the note. He set it beside his plate.

He did not look at Charlotte. He looked at Tristan and said something easy and light about the second course, and Tristan responded in kind.

Charlotte watched Henry reach for his wine. His hand was steady.

She picked up her fork. She did not taste whatever she was eating.

What was in that note?

She did not ask.

She sat at the warm table, in the easy light, in the comfortable company of people who had been kind to her, and she watched her husband’s face from the corner of her eye and she waited. She knew, with the particular certainty that had yet to fail her, that whatever the note had said, it was not good.

CHAPTER 15

Sappherton House was very tall. That was Charlotte’s first thought—not elegant, not imposing, not any of the words she had been composing herself to think during the last hour of the journey. Just tall. The black iron railings gleamed, the brass knocker caught the grey afternoon light, and before the carriage had fully stopped, the front door was already open.

“The staff has been notified of our arrival,” Henry said, stepping down first and offering his hand. “There is no need to be nervous.”

“I am not,” Charlotte said.

She was extremely nervous.

She took his hand, descended the step, and stood on the pavement of Grosvenor Square for the first time as its Duchess, which was a sentence she had not previously had cause to think.

The staff had assembled with quiet efficiency—two neat rows just inside the entrance hall. The indoor servants were in order of rank, their faces arranged into expressions of welcome that only wobbled slightly when Henry said, “Allow me to present my wife, Charlotte, the Duchess of Sappherton.”

The housekeeper—a compact woman of perhaps fifty, with iron-grey hair and a face that had clearly not received advance notice—did not move. She stood very still.

“Your Grace,” Mrs. Ellison said at last. “We are most honored.”

The butler beside her, Mr. Gedge, managed the introduction with rather more composure, though his gaze moved once to Henry and back.

Charlotte curtsied, which felt faintly absurd given that it was her house, and then remembered that she was the Duchess and that curtseying was for other people now and straightened.

You have managed a journey from Scotland. You have climbed a tree at midnight. You can manage a household. She was not entirely certain she believed it.

“Mrs. Ellison,” Henry said, already moving, “we will require the blue guest rooms made up for Master Ian. Charlotte’s chambers are in order, I trust.”

“Of course, Your Grace. Everything is prepared.”

“Good. Gedge, there are dispatches waiting, I imagine?”

“On your desk, Your Grace. Considerable accumulation.”

“I’ll see to them within the hour.” Henry turned toward the staircase, paused, and looked back. “The kitchens are to be advised we have a child in residence. He eats adequately when given things he recognizes. Mrs. Ellison will coordinate with Cook.”

“Yes, Your Grace.”

It went on. Each instruction was delivered cleanly, each one met with immediate, unquestioning agreement. No one hesitated. No one asked for clarification. When Henry said a thing, the house simply moved.

Charlotte watched a footman take his coat before Henry had fully finished removing it. She watched a maid appear with towels for Ian before Ian had reached the first landing. She watched every person in that entrance hall orient, slightly, toward Henry the way compass needles orient north—not fearfully, but with the absolute, trained certainty that the north was there and dependable.

She had known he was a duke. She had traveled with him across most of Britain and knew exactly how he managed a coaching yard and a difficult solicitor and a grieving child. But this was different. This was his house. The authority here was not performed. It was structural, and it had been structural for years, and Charlotte, standing in the middle of it, felt the full weight of what she had agreed to become.

Ian had been quiet since reaching London. She had noticed it in the carriage—he’d stopped looking out the window somewhere around Hyde Park and had sat with his soldier in both hands, not turning it. She had not pressed him. Now, standing in the entrance hall, she reached for him and found only air.

She looked.

He was not beside her. He was not on the stairs. The footmen were carrying trunks past, and a housemaid was directing someone toward the kitchens, and Ian was simply not present.

Henry was speaking with Mr. Gedge. Charlotte turned toward a young footman near the door. “Have you seen Master Ian? Just now, in the last few minutes?”

“He went up the stairs, Your Grace. The nursery on the third floor, I think. He didn’t stop.”

Charlotte went up.

She checked the room they had designated for him; it was empty, the bed freshly made and everything arranged with the neat blankness of a room that had never held a child. She tried two more doors. A sitting room. A linen store. At the third door at the end of the hall, she stopped and listened.

Nothing. But the door was not fully closed.

She pushed it open.

It was a small room, clearly used for extra furnishings—chairs stacked against the wall, a rolled carpet, and a covered mirror. Ian was sitting in the corner, on the floor with his knees pulled to his chest. He had his soldier. He was not doing anything with it. He was just holding it.

Charlotte came in and sat down beside him. The rolled carpet was not a comfortable surface, but she had sat on worse.

Neither of them said anything for a moment.

“It smells different,” Ian said.

“London does,” Charlotte said. “We discussed this. The drain.”

“It’s nae the drain.” He turned the soldier over. “It just—doesnae smell like anythin' I know.”

Charlotte looked at the covered mirror across from them.

“Tam will come,” she said. “When the stable is ready for him.”

“That’s nae—I ken that.”

“I know you know.”

Ian pressed his thumbnail into the soldier’s painted coat. “Mrs. Wick put shortbread in my bag,” he said. “There are only two pieces left.”

“That was thoughtful of her.”

“I didnae want to eat them because then they’d be gone.” He looked at the floor. “That’s stupid.”

“It isn’t,” Charlotte said. “It’s perfectly sensible.”

“Henry thinks I just need time,” Ian said. “I heard him say it to the butler on the stairs.”

Charlotte did not answer that directly. “Do you?”

There was a long pause. “Maybe.” His shoulder dropped slightly. “It doesnae look like the pictures I had in my head.”

“Of London?”

“Yes—” He stopped. “I thought it would be like an adventure.”

“And it doesn’t feel like one now?”

“No.”

“It’s a massive change,” Charlotte conceded softly, sitting down beside him. “And it’s completely fine if it feels scary rather than exciting right now.” She looked at the covered mirror, the stacked chairs, all the things that hadn’t been put somewhere useful yet. “This room is dreadful.”

Ian looked at it. “Too dreadful.”

“We are going to have to do something about it.”

“What kind of somethin'?”

“I haven’t decided yet. I’m open to suggestions.”

Ian considered this before looking at the stacked chairs, then the covered mirror. “Could we take the cover off that?”

“Absolutely,” Charlotte said.

She stood. She crossed the room and pulled the dust sheet from the mirror, and the two of them looked at themselves—Charlotte slightly rumpled from the journey, Ian with his soldier and his serious face and one slightly unlaced boot.

“Better,” Ian said.

“Much better.” She held out her hand. “Come. There’s supper.”

He took it. He did not let go until they were on the landing, and even then, it was only to put the soldier back in his pocket, and Charlotte pretended not to notice when he reached for her hand again on the stairs.

Henry was crossing the entrance hall below. He looked up and saw them descending.

“There you are,” he said to Ian. “Gedge was about to mount a search.”

“I was with Charlotte,” Ian said.

Henry looked at Charlotte just for a moment.

“Mrs. Ellison will show you the household accounts tomorrow,” he said. “When you are ready.”

“Of course,” Charlotte said.

He turned back toward the study.

Charlotte watched him go, and Ian tugged her hand, saying, “I saw the dinin’ room earlier. It is grand.” She let herself be pulled toward wherever supper was.

The dining room at Sappherton House seated twenty. There were three of them.

Ian sat on his cushion—Henry had produced one without comment, exactly as he had at Evermere, and Charlotte had decided not to remark on it—and applied himself to a bowl of soup. He had managed through the introductions and the unpacking and the long echoing silence of a house that did not yet know them. He was managing still.

Until he wasn’t.

It happened between the soup and the second course. Charlotte was asking Henry something about the garden—she had seen it from her window before she dressed for dinner, and it was formal and quite well-kept, and she had wanted something neutral to say—when she heard the small sound. Not a sob. Just the particular silence that followed one.

Ian was looking at his plate. His hands were in his lap. His chin was doing the thing she knew by now, the small, controlled shake that preceded the rest of it.

Henry noticed first.

He set down his fork. He did not look at Charlotte. He did not call anyone. He turned toward Ian and said, very quietly, “Tell me about Tam’s stable.”

Ian looked up. His eyes were wet.

“At Drummond Hall,” Henry said. “Describe it. The whole of it.”

A pause. Ian’s chin wobbled again. “Why?”

“Because I want to know what kind of stable I need to build here before Tam arrives.”

The corners of Ian’s turned downward. He swallowed once. “It needs a window on the north side,” he said, a little hoarsely. “He doesnae like too much sun in the mornin'. It makes him grumpy.”

“Noted,” Henry said. “What else?”

“The hay needs to be —Mrs. Wick says he’s been ruined for ordinary hay. Ye have to get the good kind.”

“I will speak to the groom.” Henry picked up his fork again, as though this was a perfectly ordinary dinner conversation. “What kind is considered the good kind?”

“I daenae ken,” Ian said. “I just ken it has to smell right. He buries his nose in it first.”

“I will have the groom investigate,” Henry said, with complete seriousness. “We cannot have Tam objecting to the hay.”

Ian picked up his own fork. He ate three bites. He did not cry again.

Charlotte looked at Henry.

He was already reading the wine label, turning the bottle to look at the back, apparently indifferent to the fact that he had just quietly prevented a small disaster with nothing but patience and a question about a pony’s stable. He did not look up.

She looked away. Her chest gave a tender little squeeze, but she quickly recomposed herself and refused to examine it.

After dinner, Henry said, “As the mistress of the house, you should become familiar with its layout.” He said it the way he said most things—as a statement, not a question. “Allow me to give you a tour of the estate.”

Ian was installed on a sofa in the small sitting room off the hall, a housemaid reading to him from a book of illustrated fables with more willingness than talent. He was already leaning against the armrest, heavy-eyed, the soldier tucked in his palm.

Charlotte followed Henry.

The house was large, and he showed it methodically—the library, two drawing rooms, a morning room she suspected had not been opened in some time, a long gallery hung with portraits that stared down at them with ancestral self-possession. He told her the rooms’ functions, which staff managed which floors, where the household accounts were kept. She asked questions. He answered them.

They came into the gallery, and he stopped near the center, gesturing toward a landscape on the far wall, something about the estate in the country. Charlotte was not entirely listening because they were, she had just realized, entirely alone. No housemaids visible. No footmen in the hallway. Just the portraits and the candlelight and her husband.

“You know,” Charlotte said, “most husbands, I am given to understand, spend at least some part of their first day in their marital home attending to their new bride.”

Henry turned to look at her.

“I am not criticizing,” she said. “I am merely observing. It is, I think, customary.”

“I was attending to the estate.”

“You were attending to the estate,” she agreed. “The dispatch from your solicitor. The letter to the shipping concern. The discussion with Mr. Gedge about the correspondence. All extremely important.” She clasped her hands behind her. “None of it involving your wife.”

Henry looked at her for a long moment. Then he smiled.

It was the real one. The rare one. The one that had appeared briefly in the Scottish garden and then retreated as though it had surprised him as much as anyone.

“There it is,” Charlotte said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“That.” She gestured at his face. “You should do that more often.”

“Neglect my wife?”

“Smile.” She said it simply. “It suits you.”

Henry looked at her steadily. Then the smile deepened, just slightly, and Charlotte’s breath caught while her cheeks grew warmer.

She looked away.

She found a great deal to appreciate about the portrait to her left.

Henry said, to the portrait, “Shall we continue?”

“Yes,” Charlotte said to the portrait. “Let’s.”

They finished the gallery.

He walked her back through the upper hall to the door of her chambers, which sat at the opposite end of the hallway from his. A respectable distance. Their own agreed terms, put plainly in the contract and observed without comment.

He stopped at her door.

“Good night,” Henry said.

“Good night,” Charlotte said, deciding she must go up to the nursery to bid Ian good night before she retired.

He did not move.

The candle he was carrying threw a low light up across his face, and the hallway was noticeably quiet.

“I hope,” Henry said, “that you will find some measure of happiness here.” He said it plainly, without embellishment. “That is—what I hope for you.”

Charlotte looked at him. “I hope the same,” she said. “For both of us.”

And then, because her mouth had always operated at a slight delay from her better judgment, she said, “I hope they find Nathan and Eleanor.”

The change in Henry’s face was immediate.

It was not dramatic. He did not move. His expression did not collapse. It simply went still, in the way it went still when something required controlling, and the warmth that had been there a moment ago receded entirely.

“Henry.” She straightened. “The note. At Evermere. That was about them.”

He was quiet for a moment.

“I received word,” he said. “Before we left Evermere.” A pause. “It is very bleak. No one has seen any sign of them. Not since the accident. No trace.”

The words landed one by one.

Charlotte stood in the hallway with the door to her chambers at her back and thought about Ian on the floor of a Scottish playroom, turning a soldier over and over in his hands. They’re coming back. Said flat and certain, the way a child says a thing they have decided to believe.

She thought about it, and her chest broke open, quite quietly, and she could not say a single word.

Henry looked at her, his own grief carefully held.

CHAPTER 16

“Send a note to Edith Barnes at Ashford House,” Charlotte told Mr. Gedge. “Today, if possible. Tell her I require her here.”

Mr. Gedge did not blink. “Of course, Your Grace.”

He went. Charlotte stood at the window of her sitting room and looked at the square below and tried not to think too hard about whether Edith was still at Ashford House, or whether her father had dismissed her, or whether the note would even arrive in time. She had sent word from Evermere—a short letter, very carefully worded, nothing in it that could be used against either of them if it were opened. She had not known, when she wrote it, whether Edith had stayed.

She would know for certain soon enough.

Edith arrived with her traveling case, one hat box, and an expression of such visible relief that Charlotte had the door open before she had reached the top step.

“Inside,” Charlotte said. “Now.”

The door to the sitting room shut behind them. Edith set down the traveling case. She looked at Charlotte for two full seconds—at the house, the carpet, the entirely evident fact of Sappherton House arranged around her new mistress—and then she said, “You are married.”

“I am.”

“To a duke.”

“Yes.”

“You left in a borrowed coat and no money.”

“I had some money.”

“You had nine shillings.” Edith sat down in the nearest chair. “Tell me everything.”

Charlotte told her.

When Charlotte finished, Edith stared at her.

“You climbed out of a tree at midnight,” Edith said.

“I was getting air.”

“In a tree.”

“The tree was incidental.”

“The tree was forty feet of Scottish oak in the dark.” Edith pressed both hands to her face. Then she took them away. Her eyes were brilliant. “You married him.”

“I did.”

“The Duke of Sappherton.” A pause. “He is extremely—” She stopped. “I saw him once, from a distance, at Hyde Park two Seasons ago.”

Charlotte folded her hands in her lap and said nothing.

“Charlotte.” Edith leaned forward. “He is extremely— he is very— you married him.”

“You have said that three times.”

“Because I cannot quite believe it.” She let out a breath. “Is he kind to you?”

Charlotte thought about it honestly. “He has been most kind.”

Edith. “And Ian?”

“Is wonderful,” Charlotte said. “He is quite desperately wonderful and entirely exhausting and he has a pony named Tam and I have promised him the garden trees.”

Edith looked at her. Then, quietly and helplessly, she started laughing. Not the polite kind. The real kind, shoulders shaking, one hand over her mouth, and Charlotte found herself laughing too, and the sitting room felt like itself for the first time since she had arrived.

It lasted until it did not. Edith stilled first.

“My father,” Charlotte said.

Edith’s expression shifted. “Yes.” She smoothed her skirts. “The morning you were discovered missing it was the housemaid who raised the alarm—she went in to draw the curtains and found the room empty.” She paused. “The Earl was in the study by half past seven. I could hear him from the attic…where I was suddenly quite absorbed in folding and refolding old quilts.”

Charlotte said nothing.

“He summoned me at nine.” Edith looked at her hands. “He had already spoken to three of the other staff. I could tell by the way he asked—he was not asking because he didn’t know. He was asking to see what I would say.” A pause. “I said I knew nothing. That I had seen you to bed the previous evening and had no reason to expect any difficulty.”

“He believed you?”

“He believed nothing I said. But he could not prove otherwise.” Edith turned her hands over in her lap. “I was kept in the house for two weeks. Not under explicit constraint. Simply—not permitted to leave. Questions were asked. Letters were opened.”

“Edith—”

“It was fine,” Edith said, and she said it with the particular flatness that meant it was not fine, but it was done. “I had been considering leaving his service regardless. The situation had become—it was not a comfortable house to be in, afterwards.”

Charlotte was quiet.

“And then your letter came.” Edith looked up. “From Evermere. Very correctly worded. Nothing in it to incriminate either of us.” A small smile. “Very sensible.”

“I was working with limited time.”

“You were always sensible under pressure,” Edith said. “Dreadful under it in every other respect, but sensible in a crisis.”

Charlotte reached across and took her hands. “Stay here,” she said. “As my lady’s maid. Under my employ. Not my father’s. Mine.”

Edith looked at her for a moment. “I had rather hoped you would ask,” she said.

* * *

That following afternoon, Charlotte started small.

She went to the kitchens first, which produced an expression on the cook’s face that suggested Duchesses did not generally do so. Charlotte sat on a stool at the end of the table and asked, with genuine interest, what Ian had eaten that morning and what he had refused.

“He had the toast,” the cook said, cautiously. “And some of the porridge. He wouldn’t touch the kippers.”

“He won’t,” Charlotte said. “He is not fond of fish. He will eat almost anything with eggs, and he has a particular weakness for anything with jam. If you can manage a simple supper—something recognizable rather than elaborate—he does considerably better.”

The cook looked at her as though being asked her opinion was slightly alarming but not entirely unwelcome. “I can manage that, Your Grace.”

“Excellent.” Charlotte stood. “I heard your shortbread is exceptional.”

The cook’s expression changed entirely. “It is, Your Grace.”

“Ian would very much appreciate it, I think.” Charlotte smiled. “As would I.”

She found Mrs. Ellison in the upper hallway. “Is the morning room always shut?” she asked, bracing herself for the housekeeper’s defense.

Mrs. Ellison surprised her with a smile. “The Duchess used it often when she was alive, but that was decades ago. It has not been used since her passing and only opened on occasion to be cleaned.”

Charlotte nodded.

“Would you like to have it opened, Your Grace?”

She considered her authority for a moment, whether or not she had the right. “Yes, please.”

Then she went into the morning room and moved a chair from the center of it to the window, because the light was better there, and it felt like a room that had been too still for too long. On her way back through the entrance hall, she stopped at the garden door, collected an armful of late season stems from the small bed by the path, and arranged them in the largest vase on the hall table.

Then she went upstairs to find Ian.

He was in his room with the soldier, not playing, not reading. Just sitting.

“The back garden,” Charlotte said, from the doorway, “has a wall.”

Ian looked up.

“It looks,” she said, “extremely climbable. I intend to investigate.”

He was on his feet before she had finished the sentence.

The wall was not, on closer inspection, as cooperative as it looked from the garden path. It was old brick, the mortar worn away in places, but the handholds were shallow and the base was too smooth. Ian circled it for five minutes with mounting dissatisfaction.

“There aren’t enough cracks,” he announced.

Charlotte studied the wall. “The left side looks more promising.”

“I tried the left side. It’s worse.” He pressed his palm flat to the surface. “There’s nothing to hold. You’d need to be a very thin cat.”

“We are not thin cats.”

“No.” He stepped back and looked at it with his hands on his hips, which was an expression Charlotte was fairly certain he had borrowed from Henry. “This wall is very bad at being climbable.”

“I’ll grant you that,” Charlotte said. “We may need to bring equipment.”

“What kind of equipment?”

“I’m not entirely sure yet. I’m working through it.”

Ian looked at her. Then he looked back at the wall. “We could try the elm. The one at the far end.”

“We could,” Charlotte said. “Though I suspect your guardian might have⁠—”

She stopped.

Henry was standing at the garden entrance.

“What…” He stepped forward. “…are you doing to my wall?”

Ian turned. “We’re investigating it.”

“Investigating it.”

“For climbing.” Ian gestured at the brickwork with the authority of a surveyor delivering an unfavorable report. “It’s bad. There arenae enough cracks.”

Henry looked at the wall. Then he looked at Charlotte.

She smiled at him. Pleasantly. With a great deal of innocence.

“It is excellent exercise,” she said. “For the boy.”

“For the—” He looked back at Ian. Then at Charlotte. “You were proposing to climb my garden wall.”

“I was proposing to investigate the feasibility of climbing your garden wall. There is a distinction.”

“The distinction is academic. You are standing at the base of it.”

“And finding it wanting,” Charlotte said. “Which is, in fact, the responsible conclusion.”

Henry opened his mouth. Then he closed it. He looked at the wall again, and Charlotte had the very distinct impression that he was deciding between three different responses and that none of them were winning outright.

“We were going to try the elm next,” Ian offered helpfully.

Henry looked at the elm. It was, objectively, an excellent climbing tree. Wide-branched, low to the ground, the first branch at approximately the height of a small, determined child.

“Absolutely not,” Henry said.

“Henry—”

“The bark is wet from this morning’s rain and that first branch is higher than it looks. Ian would be on the ground inside of two minutes.”

Ian considered this. “I wouldnae fall.”

“I was told you fell off the stable gate at Drummond Hall twice in one afternoon last summer.”

“That was different.”

“How was it different?”

Ian thought about it. “I was in a hurry,” he said, with great dignity.

Charlotte pressed her lips together. She really was trying.

Henry’s gaze moved to her face. She could see him noticing that she was trying. He did not appear appeased.

“This is your doing,” he said.

“It brought a smile to Ian’s face.”

“I see,” Henry murmured. “Do you not think that climbing my⁠—"

There was a rustle in the privet hedge to the left. Something moved in it, fast and low, and then went still.

Ian’s entire body oriented toward it like a pointer.

“A rabbit,” Charlotte said quietly.

The hedge rustled again.

“A rabbit!” Ian launched himself at the privet with a shout of pure joy that scattered three sparrows from the nearby yew and caused the rabbit in question—brown, fat, and possessed of excellent instincts—to bolt from the far end of the hedge at considerable speed.

Ian bolted after it.

The rabbit dodged left along the garden wall. Ian dodged left. The rabbit cut back across the lawn. Ian cut back. The rabbit made a desperate break for the rose bed. Ian, apparently unconcerned by thorns, followed.

Charlotte watched.

Henry watched.

Ian tripped over a loose stone at the edge of the path, caught himself with both hands, was back on his feet in two seconds, and was still running, his shout now reduced to something more concentrated, the pure focused silence of a boy who had committed.

The rabbit found the gap under the kitchen garden gate and was gone in a flash of brown. Ian arrived at the gate four seconds later, tried it, found it latched, pressed his face against the bars, and watched the rabbit disappear into the vegetable beds beyond.

Charlotte heard it. She turned.

Henry was smiling.

Not the contained, controlled expression he deployed at dinner, or the polite version he used with solicitors. The real one. Unguarded. His shoulders had dropped and one corner of his mouth was up, and his eyes had gone warm, and he was watching Ian with something in his face that was entirely open.

And then he realized she was looking at him.

The smile was gone in an instant. He looked at the gate. Then at the rose bed. Then at the middle distance. Charlotte turned to face him fully.

“You smiled,” she said.

“I did not.”

“You absolutely did. Just now. At Ian and the rabbit.”

“I was assessing whether he had hurt himself on the path.”

“You were smiling.”

“I was concerned.”

“Henry.” She tilted her head. “Your concern looked remarkably like delight.”

“You are misreading the situation.”

“I am reading it with considerable accuracy.” She folded her arms. “Your mouth went up at the left corner. Your shoulders dropped. You looked—” She searched for the right word. “—quite pleased.”

“I am never quite pleased.”

“You were quite pleased.”

Henry turned to look at her. He was deploying the full force of his composure now—chin level and gaze even.

“I was,” he said, “checking on the boy.”

“While smiling.”

“While maintaining an expression appropriate to the circumstances.”

“The circumstances being Ian chasing a rabbit into the rose bed.”

“Exactly.” A pause. “Which was not amusing.”

Charlotte bit the inside of her cheek. “Not in the slightest.”

Henry looked back at Ian, who had abandoned the gate and was now examining the rose bed on his side of it.

“Ian,” Henry called. “Leave the rabbit.”

Ian looked up. “I almost had it.”

“You were never going to have it.”

“I was very close.”

“The gap under the gate is four inches. You are not four inches.”

Ian studied the gap with one eye closed. He appeared to be calculating. Then he straightened and brushed his hands on his coat, which did nothing to clean them, and came back up the path.

Charlotte watched Henry track the boy across the grass. The wariness was back in his face, the careful containment. But it was thinner than it had been. She could see the edges of it. Not the man, she thought, but the habit. The habit of holding everything at a distance that felt, from the inside, like safety and looked, from the outside, like cold.

It was not cold. She knew that. She had known it since a Scottish coaching inn, since a pair of hands wrapped her ankle without being asked, since a duke who put himself between her and a hired man without making anything of it. She had been filing the evidence away, piece by piece, and the picture it made was clear.

He was going to make it quite difficult to keep her feelings properly arranged.

She was still thinking about that when she heard the footstep on the path behind her.

Mr. Gedge stopped at a respectful distance. “Your Grace.” He looked at Henry, then at Charlotte, then—very correctly—back at Henry. “I beg your pardon for the interruption.”

“What is it, Gedge?” Henry said.

Mr. Gedge drew himself up. “Lord Ashford is here, Your Grace. He is asking to see Her Grace.”

CHAPTER 17

“The Earl is not pleased, Your Grace,” Mr. Gedge said. “He made that quite clear at the door.”

Charlotte went white.

Not pale. Not startled. White, the way a person goes when something cold moves all the way through them. Her hands were still at her sides and she had not moved, but Henry saw it—the way the color left her face in one clean sweep, the way her chin came up a fraction, which was what she did when she was frightened and did not want anyone to know.

He looked at her. She was standing four feet from him in his own garden, with Ian’s abandoned rabbit chase still in the air and the elm throwing afternoon shadow across the path, and she was frightened of a man who no longer had any legal authority over her at all.

Henry turned back to Mr. Gedge. “Where have you put him?”

“The blue sitting room, Your Grace. He declined refreshment.”

“I’ll be in directly.” Henry waited until Mr. Gedge had retreated up the path, then turned to Charlotte. “Stay here.”

She looked at him.

“You and Ian,” he said. “Stay in the garden. I will see your father.”

“That is very kind of you,” Charlotte said. “And no.”

“Charlotte—”

“No.” She smoothed the front of her dress, which did not need smoothing. “I am going to see my father.”

“You do not have to.”

“I am aware of that.” She met his gaze. “I want to.”

“Why?”

“I want to prove that I am stronger than he assumes.” She said it plainly, without apology. “There is a difference.”

Henry looked at her for one moment. Her chin was set. Her color was still not back, but her eyes were steady, and he recognized that expression. It was the one she had worn at the coaching inn when she had straightened off the bench with a sprained ankle and refused assistance. The one she had worn in the Scottish library when she had stood up and told him exactly what she thought of his proposal.

She was going in regardless of what he said.

“Fine,” Henry said. “But you let me know when you have had enough.”

Charlotte blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

“When you want him gone. You look at me. That’s all. One look.”

She opened her mouth. She closed it. Then: “That is very—" She stopped again.

“Efficient,” Henry offered.

“I was going to say organized.”

“Both, in this case.”

Ian appeared at the end of the garden path, slightly muddy from the rose bed, the soldier back in his hand. He looked between them with the evaluating attention of a child who had returned to find the adults doing something he had not been briefed on.

“We’re going inside,” Charlotte told him. “Mrs. Ellison will find you something in the kitchen.”

Ian’s eyes narrowed. “What kind of somethin'?”

“Shortbread, I should think.”

He considered this. “All right,” he said, and walked past them toward the kitchen door.

Henry went to find Lord Ashford.

The man standing at the window of the blue sitting room was built solidly, with the thick shoulders of someone who had once been strong and had gone to heaviness with age. His coat was excellent. His expression, when he turned, was not.

“Sappherton,” the Earl said. Just the one word, like a door closing.

“Ashford.” Henry moved into the room and did not gesture toward a seat. “I understand you wished to call.”

“You can imagine my surprise on discovering your absurd marriage.” The Earl’s eyes went past Henry to Charlotte, who had come in behind him and stopped near the door. “Charlotte.”

Charlotte said, “Father.”

The Earl looked at her for a moment, and whatever he saw, it did not soften him. “Go and wait upstairs. I will speak to the Duke alone.”

“She stays,” Henry said.

The Earl glared at him. “I was not speaking to you.”

“Nevertheless,” Henry said. “Charlotte stays.”

A long beat.

“Then we will use your study,” the Earl said. “I will not conduct a family matter in a sitting room.”

Henry led them down the hall.

He stood near the window. Charlotte was beside the desk. Her father stood at the center of the room as though he owned it, which was, Henry noted, a specific choice.

“You have made an exhibition of yourself,” the Earl said to Charlotte. “Do you have any conception of what the last three weeks have been like for me? The inquiries, the gossip, the questions I have been required to answer?” He did not raise his voice. He did not need to. “I want you packed and home before evening.”

Charlotte said, “I am home.”

“Don’t be absurd.”

“This is my home.” She kept her voice even, but Henry could see her hands were pressed flat to the sides of her dress. “I am married.”

“You are married,” the Earl agreed, and the word landed like an accusation. “Without my consent. Without consultation. You ran off in the middle of the night and made a circus of the entire affair and I am expected to—what, exactly? Congratulate you?”

“I am not asking for congratulations.”

“What are you asking for, then?”

Charlotte opened her mouth.

“Because what you have done,” the Earl continued, “is demonstrate to every drawing room in England that you are ungovernable. That my daughter cannot be trusted to conduct herself with the most basic⁠—”

“I left a match I did not want,” Charlotte said. “I do not see why that reflects on you.”

“Everything you do reflects on me. You are my daughter.”

“I was your daughter. I am now the Duchess of Sappherton.”

“You are a girl who ran away from home,” the Earl said, “and ended up in the house of a man who clearly had very little difficulty taking advantage of⁠—”

“That is enough.” Henry did not move from the window. But the Earl stopped speaking at once.

Henry let the silence stand for a second. “Charlotte made her own choices.”

“Charlotte is three-and-twenty and has no idea⁠—”

“She is three-and-twenty and she is my wife,” Henry said. “And she made a choice. You may disagree with it. You are not required to approve of it. But she made it.”

“She made it without my consent.” The Earl turned to face him fully. “I had settlements in place. A contract. A match that was agreed upon by both responsible parties. She threw it over because she—” He stopped. His jaw worked once. “Because she decided her preferences were more important than her obligations.”

“They were,” Henry said. “They are.”

The Earl stared at him.

“I will tell you plainly, Ashford,” Henry said. “I do not particularly care whether you approve of this marriage. It is done. It is legal. It will not be undone.” He held the man’s gaze. “Charlotte is not going anywhere with you today, or any other day, unless she chooses to.”

“She is my daughter.”

“She is my wife.” Henry stepped away from the window. “And she is the Duchess of Sappherton. I would ask you to remember both facts.”

The Earl turned back to Charlotte. “You see what you have done. You see what it is you have brought on yourself.” His voice had dropped, and it was worse for it. “You have always been willful. Your mother indulged you entirely and you have never once⁠—”

“Do not,” Charlotte said. She said it quietly. But the Earl heard it.

“Do not what?”

“Do not speak of my mother.” Her voice was still quiet. Her hands had gone white against her skirts. “Not to make a point against me.”

The Earl’s mouth flattened. “You will come home. Your place is with⁠—”

“Her place,” Henry interrupted, “is wherever she chooses it to be.”

The Earl looked at him. Henry looked back.

The room was very still.

“She has a husband,” Henry said. “A household. A legal standing in this Society that is considerably greater than what she had under your roof. You have come to this house and spoken to her as though she was a piece of furniture you have misplaced.” He kept his voice entirely level. It was not difficult. The cold had come up very neatly, the same cold he used for contracts, negotiations, and men who sat across tables and thought their money gave them the right to say whatever they liked. “I will ask you not to do so again.”

The Earl’s color had risen. “You are very certain of yourself.”

“Yes,” Henry said. “I am.”

A long silence.

Then the Earl looked at Charlotte. Not with warmth. Not with apology. He looked at her the way he might look at a problem he had decided was not worth further effort today. “This is not finished,” he said.

“Then we bid you good day,” Henry said.

The Earl left without saying another word.

* * *

The door had barely shut before Charlotte sat down. Not gracefully. She simply sat, in the chair nearest the desk, as though her legs had made a unilateral decision. She pressed one hand to her mouth for a moment, then took it away. She was staring at the pattern on the carpet.

Henry said nothing. He gave her a moment.

Then she looked up.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“Yes.” She said it quickly. Then she stopped. “No. Possibly.” She looked at her hands in her lap. “I am quite certain I will be shortly.”

Henry crossed to the desk and sat on the corner of it, which put him near her without looming over her. He was not sure why his position mattered, but it did.

“You will never have to do that alone,” he said.

She looked up at him.

“Whatever he says or wants or demands,” Henry said, “you will not face it without me.”

Charlotte was quiet for a moment. Her eyes were very bright. She was not going to cry—he could see that, the particular quality of the brightness, the slight set of her jaw holding it back—but the brilliance was there.

“Thank you,” she said. “For—stepping in. You held back longer than I expected.”

“You wanted to try.”

“I did.” She let out a breath. “I was not doing very well at it.”

“You were doing better than you think.”

“I was hedging,” she said. “I always hedge with him. He speaks and I find myself becoming smaller. I hate it.” She said it very plainly and without self-pity. Just a fact.

Henry looked at her. “How long has it been like that?”

“Always.” She looked out of the window. “Well. Not always. When I was young—my mother was exceptionally good at doing the opposite. At taking up space. Not loudly. She was never loud. But she knew how to simply be present in a room in a way that mattered.” She paused. “He was different when she was alive. Or perhaps I was too young to see it clearly. She died when I was ten, and after that—” She stopped. “After that, no one ever pushed back.”

Henry was very still.

“Not once,” Charlotte said. “Not a single time, until today.” She looked at him. “No one has ever stood up to him for my sake before. Not since she died.”

He did not have a response for that. Not a quick one, not a tidy one. He looked at her, at the brightness still in her eyes and the steadiness of her chin, and something behind his ribs did something he had not authorized.

“Protecting you,” he said, “is my responsibility.”

Charlotte looked at him for a beat. Then the corner of her mouth moved.

“Your responsibility,” she repeated.

“Yes.”

“That is a very—you.” She tilted her head. “That is the most Henry Kingswell thing you could possibly have said.”

“I fail to see what is wrong with it.”

“Nothing is wrong with it. It is simply—” She seemed to be looking for the word. “Possessive. Notably possessive. For a man in a marriage of convenience.”

“I am not being possessive. I am being accurate.”

“Possessiveness and accuracy are not mutually exclusive.” She was watching him with that particular expression, the one that was curious and direct and slightly wicked at the edges. “You were very fierce in there, you know. A lesser man would have been frightened of you.”

“Your father was not frightened of me.”

“My father,” Charlotte said, “is not a lesser man. He is a difficult one.” She stood from the chair, slowly, gathering herself back together by degrees. “I suspect he will come back.”

“Let him,” Henry said.

She looked at him. “You are doing it again.”

“Doing what?”

“Being possessive.” But she said it lightly, and there was something in it that was not quite a complaint.

Henry looked away. Out the window, the garden was still and grey, the elm holding its branches with the patient dignity of something that had been there considerably longer than any of them. He thought about the Earl’s voice. The particular quality of it when it addressed Charlotte. You are a girl who⁠—

He had wanted to stop it before that sentence had finished.

He had not wanted to stop it because it was impolitic, or because the Earl was incorrect in his facts, or because it reflected badly on the household. He had wanted to stop it because someone had been speaking about Charlotte in a way that she did not deserve and he had found it entirely, genuinely intolerable.

That was not policy. That was not duty.

He turned the feeling over.

When, he thought, when exactly did that happen?

Charlotte was straightening her sleeves at the cuff. The brightness in her eyes had settled. She looked, he thought, like someone who had survived the worst of a situation and emerged victorious.

She looked up and found him watching her.

“What?” she said.

“Nothing,” Henry said.

She narrowed her eyes, just slightly, in the way that meant she did not believe him. Then she turned and moved toward the door.

When? Henry thought again, watching her go.

He did not have an answer. That was the problem. He had been keeping a careful account of things—the guardianship, the contract, the business of two people occupying a household together—and somewhere in the margins of that account, without a date and without warning, Charlotte had become important to him.

CHAPTER 18

Henry took the velvet box from the jewel chest four days later, opened it, and looked at the contents for a long moment. Then he closed it. He carried it downstairs.

The drawing room fire had been built up. He sat in the chair near it and set the box on his knee and did not open it again. He looked at the flames instead.

He heard her on the stairs before she appeared in the doorway, and he stood. It was instinctive.

And then he stopped, because Charlotte was standing at the threshold in a sapphire-blue silk dress embroidered with white flowers and glass beads, and the firelight was catching every bead in turn. He could not—for the space of three full seconds—reconcile the woman in front of him with the person he had found at a coaching inn in a borrowed valet’s coat with mud on her boots.

Arranging for new clothes to be made for his duchess upon their return to Town was a decision he was most grateful for. Henry cleared his throat.

“You look—” He stopped. He tried again. “The carriage is waiting.”

Charlotte tilted her head. “That was an interesting sentence.”

“It was a complete sentence.”

“It was the beginning of one.” She came further into the room, and the glass beads caught the light again, and Henry looked at the fire. “You were going to say something and then you didn’t.”

“I was going to say the carriage is waiting. Which I said.”

“After a notable pause.”

“I was composing my thoughts.”

Charlotte smiled, and it was the kind that suggested she was filing the entire exchange for later use.

Henry crossed to her. He held out the velvet box.

She looked at it, then at him. “What is this?”

“Open it.”

She took it from him. She lifted the lid.

Inside, on a bed of deep blue velvet, sat a necklace—sapphires set in gold, each stone reflecting with a rich blue that matched the silk of her dress so exactly it was almost architectural. Beside it, the matching earrings, and the tiara, which was not so much a tiara as a statement.

Charlotte was very still. “Henry.”

“They belonged to two Duchesses before you,” he said. “My grandmother wore the set to present at court. My mother wore it during her first Season.” He paused. “They have been in the chest for twenty-two years.”

She looked up at him. “Did you speak with Edith?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“My dress.” She glanced down at the silk. “Did you ask Edith what color I would be wearing? In order to—” She gestured between the jewels and the gown. “Match.”

“I did not.” A soft smile illuminated his features. “This is our first ball as Duke and Duchess, and I wish for the ton to see you.”

She narrowed her eyes. “This is a remarkable coincidence.”

“A fortunate one,” Henry said.

“You have a remarkable poker face.”

“I am telling you the truth.”

She looked at the necklace again. The smile returned, smaller this time, and something in it was not quite what he expected—not pleasure exactly. Something closer to wonder, and underneath it, a quiet ache she had not entirely covered.

“My father never gave me any of my mother’s jewelry,” she said. “He put it away after she died. I asked him once when I was seventeen. He said it wasn’t appropriate for the occasion.” She turned the box slightly in her hands. “He never named another occasion.”

Henry said nothing for a moment.

“This is your family now,” he said. “The Sappherton women have worn that set for sixty years. It will hold your legacy just as it held theirs.”

Charlotte looked at him. Not the quick, assessing look she used when she was deciding what to say next. The other one. The one she did not usually let him see for more than a second or two before she put it away.

He held her gaze.

She held his.

“May I?” Henry said.

She turned. He took the necklace from the box. She lifted her hair clear of the chain, the loose strand near her ear brushing the back of his hand as she did, and he brought the clasp together at her nape. His bare fingers rested against the back of her neck for the space of a breath. Her skin was warm. He felt her go perfectly still. And then—just once, just briefly—she shivered.

He let his hands drop.

She turned back around and looked somewhere past his shoulder at the mantelpiece. Henry looked at the velvet box. He closed the clasp on it with considerably more attention than the task required.

“The earrings,” he said.

She put them on without comment. Henry lifted the tiara and held it out. She took it, settled it into her hair, and then turned to the mirror above the fireplace.

She looked at her own reflection for a moment. Then she looked at his, just behind her left shoulder.

“Well,” she said.

“This brings out the gold in your eyes, Charlotte,” Henry murmured.

She turned back. Her chin was up, her eyes were bright, and she looked like someone who had been handed something real and was deciding how much weight to put on it.

He offered his arm, and she took it.

“I am going to need you to warn me,” Charlotte said, as they moved toward the door, “if anyone’s tiara is more impressive than mine. I want time to prepare.”

“No one’s tiara will be more impressive than yours.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I have been to a considerable number of balls,” Henry said. “I know that.”

“Because you are a duke or because you have an exceptional eye for jewelry?”

“Both,” he said. “Historically, both.”

She laughed at that—the short, genuine kind—and they went out together into the evening.

“You are not to worry,” Henry said.

The carriage had stopped. Through the window, the torchlight was bright on the steps and the queue of arriving guests stretched halfway to the street.

Charlotte looked out of the window then at him. “You are telling me not to worry,” she said, “as we are about to be announced to every person of consequence in English Society, most of whom have not expected me to become a duchess.” She smiled, and it was the nervous kind, the one that was working extremely hard. “That is the irony, you see. The advice and the situation are entirely at odds.”

“They are not at odds.”

“They are considerably at odds.”

“Charlotte.” He held her gaze. “You are wearing the Sappherton sapphires. You are the Duchess of Sappherton. And you have faced considerably worse than a ballroom.”

She looked at him. “You are referring to the tree.”

“I am referring to Scotland generally.”

The footman opened the door. Henry descended first and offered his hand. She took it and stepped down. They went up the steps together.

The majordomo had a voice built for exactly this purpose. It carried across the full width of the entrance hall and died away in the room beyond it like a stone dropped in still water.

“His Grace, the Duke of Sappherton. Her Grace, the Duchess of Sappherton.”

The room turned.

Not all at once. It was more gradual than that, a current moving through the assembled guests—heads shifting, fans pausing, conversations trailing off mid-sentence. Henry had been announced at a hundred balls and had never registered the sound of a room turning toward him with quite this quality of attention. It was not toward him. It was toward Charlotte.

He watched it happen. She stood at his side in the blue silk with the sapphires at her throat and held herself very correctly, chin level, and said nothing. A few people near the door smiled. Several were already moving toward them.

Then, for approximately the next forty minutes, Henry stood at Charlotte’s side, shook hands, made introductions, and watched person after person find her warm and charming and entirely worth speaking to, and found himself, to his considerable surprise, irritated by all of them.

Not at Charlotte. That was the thing. He was irritated at the gentlemen who found reasons to bow a fraction too long over her hand, and at the matrons who asked questions that were really just excavations.

Every time a young lord laughed at something Charlotte said, Henry found something adjacent to require his attention. He was aware that this was not rational.

He was also aware that he had no intention of examining it at present.

During a brief respite near the edge of the room, Charlotte leaned slightly toward him. “You are scowling,” she said.

“I am not scowling.”

“Your face is contorted as though you are in pain.”

“I am attending to the room.”

“You have been attending to every gentleman who has spoken to me for the last half hour.” She glanced at him. “It is very attentive of you.”

“I am simply vigilant.”

“You are remarkably vigilant.” But she said it with a smile that was entirely for him, quick and private, and he looked at the floor.

“Is it always like this?” Charlotte asked.

“The first ball is always watched more closely. After tonight it will be less.”

“Less,” she repeated. “Not none.”

“You are a duchess. It is never none.”

She absorbed that. “I suppose I had better get used to it.”

“You are doing perfectly well at it already.”

She looked at him again, and this time the smile was different. He did not want to think of what that meant. He’d developed the tendency, as of late, to give meaning to every one of his interactions with his wife.

He saw it before she did. He saw it because he had been scanning the room by habit all evening, the way one scanned shipping rosters for anomalies, and Vincent Carrington, the Marquess of Redmont, was an anomaly he had been half-expecting and half-hoping to avoid for the entire evening.

Redmont was moving through the crowd toward them. He was as Henry remembered—tall, impeccably dressed, and moved with the kind of ease in a ballroom that looked born rather than learned. He was smiling. He was always smiling.

Charlotte turned.

She went still. Henry felt it through her arm.

“Easy,” he said, very quietly.

She said nothing.

“Your Grace.” Redmont arrived with his hands behind his back and his smile at full deployment. “How extraordinary an occasion. My heartfelt congratulations.” He turned to Henry and extended his hand. “Sappherton. I trust you will forgive my tardiness in calling. The last several weeks have been rather… eventful.”

Henry shook the hand. “Redmont.”

“A most unexpected marriage.” Redmont managed to make the words sound entirely friendly. “Though I suppose the most interesting ones always are.”

“Quite,” Henry said.

“Your Grace.” Redmont turned to Charlotte. His eyes were warm. They had always been warm. That was the particular quality of them, the warmth that sat on the surface and went no deeper. “You are looking exceptionally well. London clearly suits you.” He paused. “Though I confess we were all rather… concerned, during the period of your absence. Your father especially. It caused considerable difficulty.”

Charlotte said, “I am sorry to hear that.”

“Are you?” He said it pleasantly. “Well. All’s well that ends well, as they say. Though I must admit—and forgive me, for I say this only as someone who had a particular investment in the matter—there are one or two details left somewhat unresolved. Between us.” He glanced at Henry with an expression of perfect good humor. “I am certain Sappherton understands. Matters of this kind rarely tie up neatly. Settlements, correspondence, certain… understandings that were formed in good faith and never formally dissolved.”

Henry was aware of two ladies standing three feet to his left who had stopped talking entirely.

“I was not aware,” Henry said, “of any unresolved matters.”

“Of course not.” Redmont’s smile did not move. “You would not be.” He looked at Charlotte. “But I am sure Her Grace knows precisely what I mean.”

The two ladies exchanged a glance.

Henry placed his hand at Charlotte’s back, flat and firm, and drew her gently toward him. She came without resistance. She was very still, her chin was still up, and whatever she was feeling she had locked behind her eyes.

CHAPTER 19

“Iwonder,” Redmont said, pleasantly, “if Her Grace would honor me with the next dance.”

He said it to Henry, but he was looking at Charlotte. The two ladies to their left had stopped pretending to talk. Three more people nearby had turned, just slightly, the way people turn when something interesting is happening and they do not wish to appear to notice.

Charlotte opened her mouth.

“She will not,” Henry said. “My wife will be dancing with me.”

His words were not rough. Not particularly loud. Just entirely, completely final. He offered Charlotte his arm and she took it, and Henry led her toward the floor before Redmont had finished inclining his head.

“Well,” Charlotte said, under her breath.

“Don’t.”

“I was simply going to say thank you.”

“Later,” Henry said.

The cotillion had already begun to form at the far end of the room. Henry placed her hand correctly, and they took their position in the set. Then the music opened up around them like something that had been waiting.

Charlotte glanced at him. His jaw was set. Not the composed, administrative set she had catalogued over three weeks of marriage—this was something tighter. She had seen it once before. In the blue sitting room, when her father had used her mother’s name.

“You are furious,” she said.

The opening figure separated them before he could answer.

They came back together. His hand met hers.

“I am entirely calm,” Henry said.

“Your jaw disagrees.”

“My jaw is fine.”

The figure turned them apart again. Charlotte moved through it correctly, smiled at the gentleman across from her with the automatic competence of someone who had been trained to dance since she was nine, and came back around to Henry.

“He was simply asking for a dance,” she said. “He cannot have any genuine interest in a married woman. He can only…”

“Do not,” Henry said, “finish that sentence.”

“I was going to say it is entirely improper⁠—”

“I know what you were going to say.”

The figure separated them again. He returned.

“You do not know men like Redmont,” Henry said. “You might know his drawing room manner.” His hand at her back was correct, formal, but his fingers pressed once, briefly. “But I know his business dealings.”

“And what do his business dealings tell you about whether he intends to dance with a duchess?”

“They tell me,” Henry said, “that he does not do anything without a purpose.”

The music turned them. Charlotte completed the figure, and when she came back, the set had rearranged and she was briefly beside him rather than across from him.

“He wanted to unsettle me,” she said quietly. “He succeeded, briefly. But I would not have agreed to the dance.”

“I know that.”

“Then why⁠—”

“Because I did not want to watch you decline him in front of thirty people while they all waited to see how you did it.” The words came out flat, almost businesslike, but she caught the faint edge of irritation beneath them. “You should not have to manage Redmont in public. That is not your work.”

Charlotte said nothing.

The figure closed and they separated again, and she moved through the rest of the set with her chin level, and her form correct and her heart behaving with considerably less dignity.

When the cotillion ended, Henry returned her arm to his and steered her toward the side of the room with a certainty that suggested he had already identified the precise location he wished her to occupy.

“You are keeping me very close,” Charlotte observed.

“Yes.”

“Is this a permanent arrangement for the evening?”

“I have not decided.”

She looked at the room. Redmont had withdrawn. She could not immediately find him, which was, she thought, its own kind of information.

“He is not going to approach me again tonight,” Charlotte said. “Not with this many people watching.”

Henry looked at her. “You are very confident of that.”

“I am very confident that he is too careful to make a scene in a room full of the ton.” She tilted her head. “Whatever his purposes are.”

Henry did not look reassured.

Half an hour later, Charlotte leaned toward him. “I need the retiring room.”

“I’ll find you near the east door when you return.”

She nodded and went.

The retiring room was down a side corridor, past two sets of double doors and around a short turn that cut the ballroom noise to almost nothing. A housemaid was stationed there with pins and a small pot of powder. Charlotte sorted herself, thanked her, and started back.

She was three steps from the turn back to the corridor when she heard him.

“Your Grace.”

Charlotte stopped.

Redmont was standing at the end of the short corridor. He had positioned himself—and it was a position; she understood that immediately—between her and the route back. He was smiling.

“A fortunate coincidence,” he said.

“Lord Redmont.” She kept her voice even. “Excuse me.”

She moved forward. He did not move.

“I only want a moment,” he said. “One small conversation. Surely that is not too much to ask.”

Charlotte looked at him.

“You disappeared,” Redmont said. “Overnight. Not a word, not a note. And now, here you are as the Duchess of Sappherton.” The smile was still in place, but the warmth in it had gone somewhere else entirely. “I find myself rather curious.”

“I cannot think why.”

“Can you not?” He tilted his head. “We had an understanding, your father and me. It had been discussed at some length. And then you—” He paused, as though choosing the word. “Elected otherwise.”

“I married someone else,” Charlotte said. “That is what I did. It is entirely legal and entirely final, and it is, I’m afraid, none of your affair.”

“None of my affair.” He repeated it pleasantly. “You were to be my wife.”

“I was never to be anything,” Charlotte said. “I was not consulted. I was not asked. My father arranged on my behalf, and I chose not to honor the deal.” She met his pale grey eyes. “That is all.”

“That is not quite⁠—”

“Lord Redmont.” She kept her voice level. “Mind your own business.”

His smile shifted. He took one step closer.

Charlotte held her ground for exactly one second. Then she stepped to the right, neat and clean, putting the wall on her other side, and walked past him.

He did not touch her. He did not say anything else. But she felt the full weight of his attention follow her every step down the corridor, and she did not look back. She did not slow her pace, and it was only when the double doors opened into the noise and the light and the crowd of the ballroom that she allowed herself a single quiet breath.

Henry was at the east door.

He saw her before she reached him.

“Are you all right?” he said.

“Perfectly,” Charlotte said.

He looked at her.

“Redmont was in the corridor,” she said. “He wanted a conversation. I told him my decision to marry you was none of his affair. And then I came back.”

Henry’s gaze sharpened.

“I am fine,” Charlotte said. “He said nothing I could not manage, and I managed it.”

“What did he say?”

“That he was curious how I had come to be married to a duke.” She paused. “I told him to mind his own business.”

Henry looked across the room, and Charlotte did not need to follow his gaze to know who he was looking for.

“He is not worth the trouble,” she said. “Not tonight. Tonight, I would very much like to dance again and allow everyone in this room to see me having an entirely pleasant evening.”

Henry looked back at her.

“Is that,” he said, “a request?”

“It is an extremely reasonable suggestion.” She tilted her head. “I believe the quadrille is next.”

For a moment he said nothing. Then: “Can you manage it? After what must’ve been a⁠—”

“Henry.” She looked up at him. “I have managed considerably worse. I once spent three hours in a tree at midnight in Scotland.” She held out her hand. “I can manage a quadrille.”

“You are never going to let me forget that tree,” he said.

“Not while I live.”

He looked at her for one more moment, and his expression was not composed in any of its usual ways. It was open, briefly, in the place just behind his eyes. Charlotte looked at it and then looked away. He took her hand and they went to the floor.

She saw Redmont once, from the far corner of the quadrille’s second figure. He had positioned himself near the edge of the room, a glass in one hand, entirely still. Watching.

She did not look at him again.

The figure brought her back to Henry. His hand steadied hers through the turn. She straightened and found him looking not at her but across the room, and she knew, without following his gaze, that he had found Redmont.

She watched him look directly at Redmont with an expression that was not threatening, or theatrical, or anything that could be remarked upon in polite company. It was simply clear. Absolutely, entirely clear. The kind of look that did not require words.

The quadrille carried them through the next figure and Charlotte could not see Redmont from where she stood, but she did not need to. She had seen Henry’s face.

Whatever was between those two men, it was not finished.

Not even close.

CHAPTER 20

“Did you enjoy it?” Henry asked, and when Charlotte looked up from the toast she was buttering. Her expression was puzzled, so he added, “The ball.”

He was seated across from her at the breakfast table with the morning post at his elbow and the expression of a man who was asking casually but meant nothing of the sort.

“Enormously,” she said. “The dancing was lovely. The champagne was excellent. The supper was rather better than I expected.” She set down her cup. “Redmont was not.”

Henry put down his fork.

“You asked,” Charlotte said.

“I did.” He picked the fork back up. Set it down again. “He had no business approaching you in that corridor.”

“He had no business and no welcome, and I told him so. Rather clearly, I thought.”

“He should not have been there at all.”

“He was there, and I managed it, and the evening ended pleasantly.” She reached for the toast rack. “You, however, spent the last half of the quadrille looking as though you wished to challenge someone to a duel.”

“I was keeping a general awareness of the room.”

“You were keeping a very specific awareness of one particular corner of the room.” She buttered her toast with great composure. “For a man who married out of practicality, you looked remarkably jealous.”

Henry looked at her.

“I was not jealous.”

“Your jaw was jealous.”

“My jaw was—" He stopped. “That is not a sentence.”

“It is an accurate one.” She took a bite of her toast. “You went quite rigid every time he moved.”

“I was watching for trouble.”

“You were watching him look at me and you did not enjoy it in the slightest.” She tilted her head at him. “Which is entirely understandable. He is unpleasant. But you were not protecting me from a threat. You were simply— put out.”

“I was not put out.”

“You were considerably put out.”

“Charlotte.” He said her name with the particular weight of a man who has decided to end a line of inquiry by sheer authority. “I was ensuring the evening proceeded without incident.”

“By scowling at the Marquess of Redmont from across the room for forty minutes.”

“I was not—” He picked up his coffee then put it down. “It was twenty minutes.”

Charlotte looked at him. He stared at his coffee.

“Henry.”

“What.”

“You were jealous,” she teased, holding back her smile.

“I was protective of my wife, which is an entirely different thing.” He looked up. His eyes were very direct. “And I would thank you not to conflate the two.”

“They seem rather closely related.”

“They are not.”

He held her gaze for one long moment, and Charlotte had the distinct impression that he was selecting a response with some care. Then: “The jam is at your elbow.”

She laughed. She could not help it. “That is not a counterargument.”

“I have decided the conversation is concluded.”

“By offering me jam.”

“The strawberry, I believe. Unless you prefer the other.”

She was still laughing when she heard the sound.

It was exceedingly small. A slight scuff of a boot sole on the threshold and then silence. Charlotte turned.

Ian was in the doorway. He was still in his night clothes, which meant he had come down before the nursery maid had gotten to him, and he was holding his wooden toy horse by the neck with both hands. He was not looking at either of them. He was looking at a spot approximately six inches to the left of Charlotte’s shoulder.

“Ian.” Charlotte pushed her chair back slightly and turned to face him fully. “Come in.”

He came, but slowly, the way he moved when something was sitting heavy on him. He came to stand beside her chair, and she did not rush him. After a moment, he lifted the toy horse and held it out toward her.

Charlotte took it. She turned it over once in her hands. The painted coat was worn at the nose from many years of being carried just this way.

“Ian,” she said gently. “What is it?”

“We left Tam.”

Charlotte kept her voice even. “Yes. He will come when the stable is ready.”

“But he’s not here.” Ian looked at the toy horse in her hands. “I keep dreaming about him. About feeding him sugar and—" He stopped. “I just wish we’d brought him. That’s all.”

Henry was already on his feet.

Charlotte looked up, startled. He had not said a word. He had simply stood, set his napkin on the table, and was already at the door. Then he was through it. His footsteps went quickly down the hall.

Charlotte sat very still for a moment.

Ian watched the door.

“Did I do somethin' wrong?” His voice was careful, the way it got when he was worried and trying not to show it.

“No.” Charlotte turned back to him. “Absolutely not.” She held out her arm, and he stepped into it without ceremony, leaning against her side. “Henry is not displeased with you. Not even a little.”

“He left very quickly.”

“He did.” She tucked her hand around his shoulder. “But that is not because of anything you said.”

Ian took the toy horse back when she offered it. “He was more pleased yesterday than today,” Ian said.

“That,” Charlotte said, “is a very astute observation, but I assure you that he is not displeased with you.”

“What does astute mean?”

“Clever. Perceptive.” She smoothed his hair. “It means you are paying attention.”

Ian considered this as though it were a satisfactory conclusion. He had stopped pressing his thumbnail into the wooden flank of the horse. Charlotte could feel the slight release of tension in his shoulder under her hand.

She was about to suggest he go up and let the nurserymaid see to his clothes when she heard Henry’s boot on the floor of the hall. Quick. Direct. The particular rhythm of a man who had gone somewhere with a purpose and completed it.

He appeared in the doorway.

“I have a horse for you,” he said.

Ian’s head came up.

Henry looked at the boy with an entirely level expression. “In the mews. She has been here two days, in fact, but I was waiting to see whether—” He stopped, and his brows softened while the corners of his mouth curved. “She is yours for as long as you are in London.”

Ian stared at him.

Then he was off Charlotte’s arm and across the room in four running steps. “Where?” He grabbed the doorframe as he flew through it. “Where in the mews? Which door? Henry⁠—”

“The groom will show you.” Henry turned sideways so Ian could pass. “Ian. Walk in the mews, not run. The horses⁠—”

But Ian was already in the hall, his voice coming back faintly as he went: “Which groom? The tall one?”

“Ian!” Charlotte called. “You should change out of your nightclothes first!”

Her words likely flew past the boy’s ears. Nothing could challenge his excitement at this moment.

Henry stood at the door and looked at the empty hall. Then he looked at Charlotte, and she grinned.

“Sit back,” Henry said. “You are leaning forward over her neck and she can feel it. She will think you want to go faster.”

“What if I do want to go faster?” Ian said.

“You do not want to go faster. You have been on her for four minutes.”

“I rode Tam for an hour on my first day.”

Charlotte stood at the edge of the mews yard with her arms folded and watched her husband walking patient circles around a gray mare. Henry had not removed his coat. He had not rolled up his sleeves or adopted any posture of informality. He was simply beside Ian with one hand hovering near the mare's bridle when needed, and back a step when not, entirely absorbed in the work of teaching a six-year-old boy not to pitch himself headfirst over a horse’s ears.

This was a man who had told her, with complete sincerity, somewhere north of Carlisle, that he had no talent with children.

She watched him steady the horse with one quiet word and adjust Ian’s grip on the reins without taking them, and she decided that Henry Kingswell had a very strange relationship with the truth about himself.

“Keep your heels down,” Henry said.

“They are down.”

“They are not down. They are entirely level, which is not the same thing.”

Ian pushed his heels down with visible effort. “Now?”

“Better.” Henry stepped back. “Now turn her. Left. Use your left leg, not just the rein.”

Ian’s tongue appeared at the corner of his mouth, which Charlotte had come to recognize as his expression of maximum concentration. The horse turned, and Ian grinned triumphantly.

“I did it.”

“You did,” Henry agreed. “Do it again.”

Ian did it again. And again. He was gaining confidence with each pass, sitting a little taller, and Charlotte was just thinking that the lesson was going very well when the mare stepped sideways on a loose stone, Ian lurched, and then he was off.

It was not a bad fall. The drop was short and the ground was soft. But Ian hit sideways and lay still for one terrible second. Then the breath came out of him in a gasp and he started to cry, not the quiet kind but the panicked kind, the kind that came from fright rather than injury.

Henry was already beside him.

He went down on one knee in the mud without any hesitation at all. His hands went to Ian’s shoulders first, checking, and then to his face, tilting it up, his voice low and even.

“Look at me. Ian. Look at me.”

Ian looked at him, gasping.

“You are all right. You had the breath knocked out. It comes back. Just breathe.”

“It hurts⁠—”

“I know. It will stop.” Henry’s hand moved to Ian’s back, steady between his shoulder blades. “There. Feel that? Breathe into my hand.”

Ian breathed. Once, and then again, and the gasping slowed.

“Good.” Henry did not move his hand. “Are you hurt anywhere? Show me.”

Ian lifted one elbow, reddened from the ground. Henry examined it without comment and then looked at Ian’s face, waiting.

“That’s all,” Ian said, in a smaller voice.

“That’s all.” Henry helped him sit up. “Falling is part of it. Every rider falls. You know that.”

“Tam never dropped me like that.”

“Tam has had six years to learn you. She has had twenty minutes.” Henry looked at the horse, who was standing at the end of its lead with a very innocent expression. “She did not do it on purpose.”

Ian looked at the horse. Then back at Henry. His chin had stopped doing the thing. “Will you make me get back on?”

“Yes.”

Ian wiped his nose on his sleeve. “All right,” he said, and stood up.

Charlotte let out a breath she had been holding since the fall.

Henry got to his feet and glanced across the yard at her. Just for a moment. She looked back. His expression was entirely composed, but his hand was still resting at his side in exactly the shape it had held against Ian’s back, and Charlotte thought about the man who was reluctant to show his feelings, and then she thought about that hand.

Her heart stuttered, then tenderness followed, unfurling like a summer bloom. She was, she thought, in a very great deal of trouble feeling the way she did.

Ian remounted with some assistance and considerably more dignity than the preceding two minutes had warranted. Henry resumed his place at the mare’s shoulder. The lesson went on.

A footman appeared at the gate.

He came across the yard with the careful gait of a servant delivering something he had been told was important and offered the folded note to Henry on a small salver. Henry took it and read it.

His face did nothing. That was the problem.

Charlotte crossed the yard toward him.

“Is it about Nathan?” she said.

Henry folded the note. “Yes.”

She waited.

“A second search party.” He looked at Ian, who had slowed the horse to a walk and was listening with his head tilted. Then he looked back at Charlotte. “No positive signs. Same as the first.”

Ian pulled the horse to a stop. “What search party?”

Charlotte looked at Henry. Henry looked at Ian.

“Men I have sent to look for your father and mother,” Henry said. “To find out where they are.”

Ian’s grip tightened on the reins. “How many men?”

“Several.”

“Are they lookin’ in the right place?”

“We believe so.”

“Did they look at the road?” Ian’s brow was furrowed in the particular way it got when he was working through something with great seriousness. “Where the carriage went off? Da told me once about a road in the hills that goes close to the edge.”

“They have looked at the road,” Henry said.

“Did they look below the road?” Ian pressed. “If the carriage went off the edge, they would have to look down, not on the road.”

“They looked below it as well.”

Ian was quiet for a moment. Then: “Did they ask the people who live near there? There are farmers. Crofters.” He said the word with authority, the Highland brogue coming through on it. “Crofters ken everythin' that happens on the roads.”

“They spoke to everyone nearby,” Henry said. “Everyone who might have seen anything.”

Ian looked at the mare's mane. He ran one hand down her neck, slowly. “I think about them every day,” he said. It came out very flat, not dramatic. He simply stated a fact. “I daenae say it. But I think it.”

Charlotte held perfectly still.

“Every mornin' when I wake up,” Ian continued. “And when I see other people’s mas. And when I’m on the horse.” He looked up then, directly at Henry, with the clear, unblinking gaze that cut through everything.

“Are me mam and da dead?”

CHAPTER 21

Ian’s question wound around all three of them like a tentacled ghost. Henry went very still for a moment. Then he said, “We do not know that.”

“But they might be.”

Henry crouched down to the boy’s level, his good coat in the mud without a single thought for it. “What I know is this: Men are looking. Good men, Ian, who know those roads. And until they tell me otherwise, I am not prepared to accept it.”

Ian’s chin wobbled once. “But what if they find⁠—”

“They have not found it.” Henry kept his voice level. “So that is where we stand.”

Ian looked at the horse. Then at the ground. His nose was running, his eyes were full, and he was fighting both with the stoic misery of a child who had been trying hard for an exceptionally long time not to fall apart in front of anyone.

Henry looked at Charlotte.

It was the most unguarded she had ever seen him. Not frightened, not helpless—Henry was neither of those things.

Charlotte crossed the yard just as a groom was assisting Ian from his mount.

She did not say anything clever, nor did she offer reassurance she could not support. She simply sat down on the low mounting block at the yard’s edge, put herself at Ian’s height, and said, “Come here.”

Ian came. He pressed himself into her side and she wrapped her arm around him. He was shaking, just slightly, the fine trembling of a child holding something enormous.

“I know,” she said.

That was all. She said it into his hair and held on, and Ian let himself be held.

They sat like that for a long moment. The mare blew through her nose. A groom appeared at the far gate and Henry looked at him and the man quietly withdrew.

After a while, Ian pulled back. He wiped his face on his sleeve. He did not look ashamed of his tears. He looked tired.

“I want to go inside,” he said.

“Yes,” Charlotte said. “Let’s.”

She brought him to the smaller drawing room, the one off the hall that faced the garden, because it was warmer and the light was softer and it had none of the formal grandeur of the rooms upstairs. She settled him on the settee nearest the fire and sat beside him.

“Tell me something good,” she said.

Ian looked at the fire. “What kind of something good?”

“About your father. Something you love to remember.”

He was quiet for a moment. She did not push.

“He took me fishin' once,” Ian said at last. “Just the two of us. He said it was men’s work.” The corner of his mouth moved. “I was five.”

“Five is a perfectly appropriate age for men’s work.”

“That’s what he said.” Ian pulled his knees to his chest. “We went up the burn behind the east field. He gave me me own rod. He said I had to be quiet or we would frighten the fish.” He paused. “I wasnae quiet. I fell in.”

“What happened?”

“Da laughed so hard he scared all the fish himself.” Ian’s voice had gone soft. “He waded in and fished me out and he was still laughin'. He wrung out my coat and said—" He stopped. He swallowed. “He said that was the most impressive fishing he’d ever seen. That I’d caught meself.”

Charlotte held perfectly still.

“We didnae catch any fish,” Ian said. “We went back empty-handed and Mam was waiting at the door and she looked at us—both soaked—and Da said we’d had magnificent sport.” He rubbed his eye with the back of his hand. “She didnae believe us. But she had Mrs. Wick bring us some cocoa anyway.”

The fire crackled. Ian leaned a little into Charlotte’s side.

She heard the quiet step in the hall. Henry. She knew his tread by now, the particular rhythm of it. He appeared in the doorway, looked at the two of them on the settee, and she watched him decide, quietly, not to retreat.

He came in. He sat in the wing chair nearest the fire, not across from them but beside—close enough to be present without making anything of it.

“He sounds like an excellent fisherman,” Charlotte said to Ian.

“He was terrible,” Ian said, with great affection. “He never caught anythin'. He said it was the burn’s fault.”

“It was probably the burn’s fault.”

“Mam said it was the singin’,” Ian said. “Da always sang when he fished.” He glanced at Henry. “Did you know that? That he sang?”

Henry looked at the fire. “Yes,” he said. “He was entirely tuneless.”

Ian sat up slightly. “Ye fished with me da?”

“Once. When we were young. He sang the entire time, and I asked him to stop, but he told me it was a Highland tradition, and I told him he was from Derbyshire.” Henry’s mouth curved slightly at the corner. “He claimed it didn’t matter.”

Ian stared at him. “Ye never said ye kent him like that. Before.”

“No,” Henry said. “I didn’t.”

A pause.

“What else did he do?” Ian said. “When ye were young.”

Henry was quiet for a moment. Charlotte did not look at him directly. She watched the fire.

“He liked to walk,” Henry said. “The mountains. He would go out at first light with nothing but a coat and be gone half the day. He said the high ground cleared his head.” A pause. “He tried to take me once. We got about halfway up, and I suggested we return and make better use of the time, and he told me I was the most unromantic creature he had ever encountered.”

Ian’s mouth dropped open. “He said that to you?”

“He said that to me.” Something moved in Henry’s voice. “He also said I needed Scotland. He wrote to me every month for six years telling me to come north and visit.” He was quiet for a moment. “I did not.”

The room was very still.

“He hunted too,” Henry said to Ian, and his voice was a shade rougher now. “He was a remarkable shot. Better than anyone I knew. He had a way of going completely still before—he said you had to become part of the landscape.”

“He taught me,” Ian said softly. “He said I’d be as good as him someday.”

“You will be,” Henry said.

Charlotte felt her heart expand.

Ian slid sideways against her arm eventually, his eyelids going heavy. He did not fall asleep for a little while—he asked two more questions about Nathan, and Henry answered them both while the fire burned lower and the afternoon dimmed at the windows. Then Ian’s breathing slowed, his weight settled, and he slept.

Henry sat in the wing chair. Charlotte sat with Ian, and neither of them spoke.

The library was quiet. Henry had not planned to stay.

He had come in after dinner to find a letter he had left on the side table before supper, and Charlotte had been there already, seated near the fire with a book she was not reading. She looked up when he came in. She did not leave. And Henry, who had retrieved the letter and had no further reason to remain, sat down.

That had been twenty minutes ago.

“Tell me about the search,” Charlotte said, lowering her book. “And forgive me for asking, but why didn’t you mount a full-scale search while we were in Scotland?”

Henry let out a heavy breath, acknowledging the logic of her question. “I did, but my focus was entirely consumed by securing the guardianship, stabilizing the panicked household, and managing our hasty wedding,” he admitted, his expression tightening with retrospective guilt. “I needed to ensure you and Ian were safely settled in London before I could turn my full attention outward.”

Charlotte nodded, softening her tone. “And now?”

“Now, I have sent men to cover the northern roads more thoroughly,” Henry continued, picking up his letter. “Passes that weren’t checked the first time. If those produce nothing, I will send a second party to the crofting communities further west.”

Charlotte turned a page. “And if that produces nothing?”

“Then I go myself.”

She looked up.

“To Scotland,” Henry said. “If it comes to it.”

“When?”

“When I determine that no one else can do it as well as I can.” He held her gaze. “Which I have not yet determined. But I will not sit in London indefinitely while men I have hired report back empty-handed.”

She was quiet for a moment. “Do you think they’re alive?”

It was direct. He expected nothing less. He looked at the fire.

“I don’t know,” he said. “No one has recovered their bodies. I know Nathan has survived worse than a Highland winter. He was the sort of man who—” He stopped. “He found his way through things. He always had.”

“Tell me about him,” Charlotte said. “Before Scotland. When you were boys.”

Henry looked at her. She was not asking to fill the silence. She was asking because she wanted to know, and the distinction was the reason he answered.

“He was everything I was not,” he said. “I mean that as a plain fact, not a complaint.” He turned the letter over in his hands. “He walked into rooms and people smiled. He remembered every name. He could talk to a stable hand and a lord in the same hour and make both feel they were the more interesting of the two.” He paused. “I could not do that. I never could.”

“What could you do?”

“Manage things.” Henry said it without self-pity. “Accounts. Estates. Negotiations. All the things Nathan found tedious.” He looked at the letter. “He told me once that I was the most reliable man he had ever met, and it was the greatest shame in England.” A pause. “He meant it affectionately.”

“It sounds like him,” Charlotte said. “From what Ian has said.”

“It was very like him.” Henry set the letter aside. “He was the only person, for a very long time, who told me the truth about myself without also wanting something from me for it.” He heaved a sigh. “Nathan thought I should live differently. He said so frequently. He was not entirely correct, but he also didn’t understand that not everyone finds it simple to choose otherwise.” He stopped. “I did not particularly want to examine that at the time.”

“And now?”

Henry looked at her. “Now I am somewhat less certain of my conclusions.”

The fire shifted. A log dropped, and the light changed in the room, and the silence between them felt natural. Henry noticed the shift with a quiet jolt. Back in Scotland, amid the relentless strain of events, every silence had been charged and defensive. This stillness, by contrast, carried no armor.

“Tell me about your own fond memories, Charlotte.” He felt himself smile when her eyes widened at his question. “You must have some despite being the daughter of a tyrant.”

She chuckled at that. “I do have many fond memories of my mother. She was the kindest person I have ever known.”

He did not say anything and waited for her to continue.

“Not softly kind.” She looked at the fire. “She walked into a room and everyone in it felt more settled for it.” She turned a page without reading it. “She made everything feel possible. The way she moved through the world, through people—it was as though she had found a way to be wholly present that most people never quite manage.” She paused. “I have spent thirteen years wondering how a woman like that married my father.”

Henry said nothing.

“I don’t mean it as an accusation,” she said. “I have tried, genuinely, to understand it. Whether she loved him once and it changed. Whether she chose it knowingly and found a way to make peace with it. Whether she thought she could improve him.” A quiet breath. “I cannot ask her. So I don’t know. I only know that she was extraordinary and that she made me believe the world was larger than it looked. Then she died when I was ten, and after that no one ever quite inspired the same feelings inside of me.”

Henry sat with that for a moment. He thought about Ian in the drawing room this afternoon, asking about Nathan, and the look on Charlotte’s face while she held the boy.

“Your father,” Henry said, his voice dropping, “failed to honor the gift he was given in her.”

Charlotte tilted her head at him, surprised by the emotional depth of his observation. “He may carry the memory of her,” Henry continued quietly, “but he allowed his own coldness to overshadow everything she brought into his life. You.”

Charlotte’s lips curved. “That is either the most perceptive thing you have ever said or the kindest.”

“It is simply true.”

“You say that about most things.”

“Most true things, yes.”

She laughed, small and genuine, and it settled into the room like a thing that belonged there.

He saw a curl, deep brown, which had come loose from the arrangement above her ear and fallen forward against her cheek. She had not noticed it.

Henry was now aware of his own hand, resting on the arm of the chair between them. He could move it toward her and feel the silken strands run between his fingers.

He looked at the fire instead and swallowed.

You are in a great deal of trouble, Sappherton.

CHAPTER 22

“Isimply had to come,” Lady Hartwell said, setting her teacup down. “The moment I heard, I said to myself—Margaret, you must call on the Duchess of Sappherton at once. Congratulations are so much better delivered in person, don’t you think?”

Charlotte thought a great many things. She arranged them neatly behind her smile.

“You are very kind to call,” she said.

Lady Hartwell looked around the drawing room with the bright, interested gaze of someone cataloguing details for later use. She had arrived twelve minutes ago. She had already admired the fireplace, the curtains, and the arrangement of the side table, and she had done it all in the particular way that made admiration feel like inventory.

“It is a lovely room,” Lady Hartwell said. “Sappherton always had such beautiful properties. Not that I know them well, of course—I have only ever seen the house from outside.” She smiled. “Though I expect you know it very well by now.”

“Well enough,” Charlotte said.

“Of course. Though I did hear—" There was a pause. “Well. There is always talk, isn’t there? People do love to remark on things.” She lifted her cup again. “Your marriage was so remarkably swift. Everyone said so.”

“We did not see the point in delay,” Charlotte said.

“No, indeed. And under the circumstances—” Another pause. Longer this time. “Well. I’m sure no one could blame you.”

Under the circumstances. Charlotte turned the phrase over. She smiled. “The circumstances were straightforward enough.”

“Oh, quite.” Lady Hartwell’s eyes were very warm. They had been warm since she arrived. They were the warmest eyes Charlotte had ever sat opposite, and she trusted them completely about as far as she could throw the tea service. “Though people do talk about the time you were—away. Some weeks, wasn’t it? Before the marriage?” She tilted her head. “Alone, in Scotland. One hears things.”

“One hears all sorts of things,” Charlotte agreed.

“They say—” Lady Hartwell set her cup down again, in the same exact spot, with the same delicate precision. “Well. They say a great many things. That the Duke felt compelled to marry. That a situation had arisen which required, shall we say, resolution.” She smiled. “I don’t believe a word of it, naturally.”

Charlotte looked at her. “Naturally.”

“You were traveling. Visiting family, I believe? Or—no. Sappherton’s ward, wasn’t it? The Scottish boy. Something of that sort.” She folded her hands in her lap. “I am sure the explanation is entirely simple. Only people will draw conclusions, you know how it is. And of course there is the other matter.”

Charlotte kept her face entirely still. “What other matter?”

“Only that someone—I couldn’t say who, it is really quite absurd—someone has been suggesting that the marriage was conducted rather too hastily to be entirely above question. Legally speaking.” Lady Hartwell’s brow furrowed with great concern. “Which is nonsense, of course. I said as much when I heard it. I was certain it could not be right, the Duke of Sappherton would not—well.” She let the sentence rest unfinished. “I am certain it is all quite proper.”

“It is entirely proper,” Charlotte said. “The documents are lodged with the appropriate parties. There is no question whatsoever.”

“Of course, of course.” Lady Hartwell smiled. “I was certain of it. As I said.”

She had not said it. Not quite. That was the particular artistry of it.

Charlotte picked up her own cup. She drank. The tea was excellent but she tasted nothing.

The door opened.

Henry entered.

He had a letter in one hand, and his coat was not entirely settled on his shoulders, as though he had shrugged into it on his way down the hall. He stopped when he saw Lady Hartwell. His gaze moved to Charlotte, quick and direct, reading something.

Charlotte looked at him.

Not now, she thought, with considerable force, as though the sheer will of it could cross the room. I am managing it.

She smiled. “Lady Hartwell, may I present my husband.”

Henry crossed the room. He inclined his head. “Lady Hartwell.”

Lady Hartwell stood at once, her face rearranging into an expression of great warmth and social delight. “Your Grace! What a pleasure. I was just telling the Duchess how pleased everyone is. Such a surprise, your marriage—in the best possible way, of course. We are all quite delighted.”

“Are you?” Henry’s tone was perfectly civil. His eyes moved to Charlotte again.

Charlotte smiled at him. It was the smile she used when she wanted someone to believe everything was entirely fine. She was fairly certain he did not believe it.

“I was paying my congratulations,” Lady Hartwell continued. “I had been meaning to call for weeks. One gets so terribly busy.” She gathered her gloves from the chair beside her. “But I must not keep you—I can see you have just come in, and I have quite overstayed. I only wanted to say how glad I am.” She pressed Charlotte’s hand briefly. “Do take tea with me soon. I should love to hear everything properly.”

“That is very kind,” Charlotte said.

Lady Hartwell curtsied to Henry. Henry inclined his head. And then she was gone, in a rustle of pale-yellow silk and a cloud of rosewater. The drawing room door closed behind her with a click that was somehow both quiet and final.

Henry looked at Charlotte.

“What was that?” he said.

“A social call.” Charlotte set her cup down. “She came to congratulate us.”

“She congratulated us on a marriage that happened nearly two months ago?”

“She is very thorough.”

Henry looked at the door. Then at Charlotte. “You are doing the thing.”

She looked up. “What thing?”

“The thing where you say everything is fine when it is not.”

Charlotte opened her mouth. Then she closed it.

Tell him. She turned it over. He will want to know. He should know. That is exactly the kind of thing a duke needs to know about, not because his pride requires managing, but because those are threats to his name and his household and he is not a man who makes decisions blind.

And also: it is my problem. I handled it. I don’t require anyone to fight my battles.

She was aware those two positions were not, strictly, compatible.

Henry was still looking at her with that particular expression; the patient one he deployed when he had decided to wait.

“She had some things to say,” Charlotte said. “About the marriage.”

“What things?”

“That it was very swift.” Charlotte stood. She moved toward the window, not because she needed to look at anything, but because she needed to think better while moving. “That people are talking. That some people are suggesting you married me because a… situation had arisen. During the weeks I was away.” She turned back. “That the marriage may not be legally sound.”

Henry was very still.

“The last one is absurd,” Charlotte said. “I told her as much. The documents are lodged, the solicitor is satisfied, there is nothing to question. But the first two—” She stopped. “The first two are already in circulation. Whatever she heard, she heard it from someone who heard it from someone else, and that is how these things travel.”

“What exactly,” Henry said, “did she suggest about the time you were away?”

Charlotte looked at him. “That I was compromised. And that you married me to contain it.”

The room was incredibly quiet.

Henry turned the letter over in his hand, once, and then set it on the side table with considerable care.

“She is not the first to think it,” Charlotte said. “I imagine she will not be the last. We were alone together for weeks. We married very quickly. It is the obvious conclusion for anyone who does not know the actual sequence of events.”

“The actual sequence of events was entirely proper.”

“I know that.”

“There was nothing⁠—”

“Henry.” Charlotte looked at him steadily. “I know. I was there.”

He looked at her. Something in his expression was working hard.

“I should have told you while she was still in the room,” Charlotte said. “I know you prefer to be informed. I was deciding whether it was worth your time.”

“Threats to your reputation,” Henry said, very evenly, “are always worth my time.”

“Threats to your name are also worth my time. Those are not the same thing.”

He was quiet for a moment. Then he picked up the letter. He held it out toward her.

Charlotte took it. She read it.

A possible sighting. Two crofters on the western road, three weeks prior. A man and a woman, on foot, moving north. The man matching Drummond’s description close enough that the local constable had sent word.

She looked up. “A sighting.”

“Unconfirmed.” Henry said it carefully. “It may be nothing. The timing is wrong by a week, and the road they were said to be on leads nowhere particularly useful.” He stopped. “But it is the first report of any kind in two months.”

“Ian—”

“I have not told Ian.” Henry’s jaw was set. “Not until I know more. I will not raise his hopes and then—” He stopped again.

Charlotte understood exactly. She held the letter a moment longer, then gave it back.

“You are going to Scotland,” she said.

“I am leaving tomorrow morning.” He tucked the letter into his coat. “I need to speak to the constable myself. The men I have sent are good, but this requires⁠—”

“I am coming with you,” Charlotte said.

Henry looked at her.

“You will need me,” she said. “Ian responds to both of us. If Nathan and Eleanor are found—when they are found—Ian will need⁠—”

“Ian will need you here,” Henry said. “He cannot come to Scotland on what may be a false trail. He cannot go through that again.” He looked at her very directly. “I need you to stay with him.”

Charlotte wanted to argue. She could see the shape of the argument perfectly clearly, all its pieces, and she could feel it pressing at the back of her teeth.

She looked out of the window instead.

He was right about Ian.

“How long?” she said.

“Four days. Perhaps five.”

“And if you find them?”

“Then I will send word immediately and you will bring Ian north.” He paused. “I promise you that.”

Charlotte nodded once. She turned away from the window.

“There is something else you should know,” she said.

He waited.

“About Lady Hartwell’s visit. What she said about the marriage’s legality.” Charlotte clasped her hands. “It is not only drawing room conversation. If that story takes hold—if people begin to genuinely question the validity of the marriage—that is a legal problem, not just a social one. It could be used against you.” She met his eyes. “Against us.”

“Used by whom?” Henry said.

“I don’t know. Redmont, possibly. My father. Anyone with a reason to want either of us destabilized.” She kept her voice even. “I am not being dramatic. I am being practical.”

Henry stood very still for a moment.

Then he said, “You are coming with me.”

Charlotte blinked. “You just said⁠—”

“I said Ian needs you here.” He reached for the letter again, then stopped. His hand dropped. “But that was before you told me the marriage is being questioned in drawing rooms across London.” His jaw tightened. “You are right. It is not only social. And the best answer to speculation about whether this marriage is real⁠—”

“Is to be seen,” Charlotte said slowly, “in it.”

“Is to leave London together, only the two of us,” Henry said. “Openly. Loudly, if necessary. A journey north. A visit to the estates. Any number of reasons a newlywed Duke might take his Duchess away from town for a sennight.”

Charlotte stared at him. “You want to take me to Scotland as a romantic trip?”

“I want the ton to believe we are going to Scotland on a romantic trip.” His eyes met hers and held.

Traveling companions, she thought. Again.

CHAPTER 23

The Swan at Biggleswade had four rooms above the common room and a fire that had been burning since morning. Henry knew both facts from his previous stay.

“One room,” Henry said. “Your best. My wife is fatigued from the road.”

The innkeeper did not blink. He did, however, straighten considerably. “Of course, Your Grace. At once.” He was already reaching for the key, already nodding to the boy at his elbow. “We are honored to have the Duke of Sappherton—and Her Grace—under our roof. Quite honored.”

Charlotte, standing just behind Henry’s shoulder, said nothing.

He signed the register, accepted the key, and followed the boy upstairs.

The room was clean. That was the first thing. The bed was wide and the fire in the small grate was doing its work, and a branch of candles on the table gave enough light to see by without making the room feel like a stage.

Which was, at the moment, the problem.

Charlotte set her reticule on the chair and turned to look at him, one eyebrow cocked.

“One room,” she said.

“Yes.”

“There were other rooms.”

“There were.” Henry moved toward the fire and checked it out of habit. “A duke traveling apart from his wife on a romantic journey north would be remarked upon before we reached York. You know that.”

“I know that,” she said. “I was simply noting.”

“By raising an eyebrow.”

She smiled, and he straightened. “The story holds or it doesn’t. Separate rooms would undo it before it started.”

Charlotte looked at the room. At the bed. At the chaise longue against the far wall. Then she looked back at him with the expression she wore when she had arrived at a conclusion she intended to keep to herself for the time being.

“Very well,” she said. “Logical.”

It was. And she had filed the other rooms away somewhere in that sharp, cataloguing mind of hers, he was quite certain of it.

He sent down for supper rather than taking it in the common room, because the common room meant an audience, and an audience meant the performance had to be sustained for the duration of the meal. The room meant no performance at all.

That was, as it turned out, a different kind of difficulty.

The boy brought up soup, then a roast, then bread and a bottle of wine that was considerably better than Henry had anticipated from a coaching inn on the Great North Road. Charlotte poured her own glass before he could reach for the bottle. He noted this and said nothing.

The soup was finished in the comfortable silence of two people who had been in a carriage together for seven hours and had largely exhausted the conversational possibilities of that particular proximity. The fire was generous. The wine was, as established, better than expected.

Then Charlotte set down her cup and said, “She smelled of rosewater and garden soil.”

Henry looked at her.

“My mother.” She turned the glass in her hand. “That is the first thing I think of, when I think of her. Not what she looked like or what she said to me. Just that smell. Rosewater in the morning and garden soil by afternoon, because she was always in the beds by ten o’clock and she never remembered to change her gloves.”

Henry said nothing. He waited.

“She laughed at things,” Charlotte said. “I mean, everyone laughs. But she had two laughs. The one she used at parties, which was perfectly pleasant and entirely decorative. And then the real one, which came out when something genuinely struck her funny. It was—” She stopped. Something crossed her face. “It was too loud for a countess. She knew it. She did it anyway.”

The fire shifted and Charlotte watched it.

“She told me something when I was eight. We were in the kitchen garden, of all places. She was showing me how to take cuttings. And she told me that the world would offer me many people who thought they knew better than I did what my future should look like.” Charlotte was quiet for a moment. “She said some of them would love me genuinely and still be entirely wrong. That I should know the difference.”

“Did you?” Henry asked.

“Not at first.” Her mouth moved, not quite a smile. “I wanted to please her. And after she died, I wanted to honor her. But wanting and managing are different things, and I spent thirteen years making myself exceedingly small for men who could not see me at all.” She turned the glass again. “Running from my father. That was the first time I thought—oh. This is what she meant. This is what it feels like.”

She said it plainly. No performance in it at all.

Henry looked at the table.

He had been carrying something for the last three weeks—longer if he was honest since the solicitor’s letter had arrived in London and he had read it standing in his study at seven in the morning. He had been carrying it the way he carried most things.

“The monthly letters Nathan sent,” Henry murmured, staring into the flickering embers, “always sat on my desk like an unread summons. I answered them with brief, sterile estate summaries. I’d convinced myself that administrative work is urgent and human connection could wait another season.”

“We often fail to see what is dear to us until it is lost,” Charlotte whispered, and he nodded.

“He asked me to come north six times that I can count,” Henry said. “Possibly more. I always had a reason. There was always an excuse. The shipping concern, the Manchester negotiations, the Chancery matter.” He looked at the fire. “I told myself there would be time. I was very certain of that. That Nathan was there, and the estate was there, and the next invitation would come and I would go.” He stopped. “And then the solicitor’s letter arrived.”

The room was quiet.

“Henry,” Charlotte said.

He looked at her.

“Guilt borrows from the present,” she said. “To pay a debt the past cannot actually receive.” She was looking at him directly, with none of the careful hedging she used when she thought she might be overstepping. “The letters are not unwritten by your suffering over them. Nathan, wherever he is—he would rather you spent the next year living than the next year flagellating yourself over a quarterly estate summary.”

Henry regarded her for a long moment. His chest tightened with the urge to draw her close.

She was right. She was entirely, precisely right, and she had said it the way his mother used to say things—plainly, without softening the edges, because the edges were where the truth lived. He had expected absolution, the standard form of it. He had not expected that.

He did not say any of that.

He looked at the fire.

The bottle was considerably lower by the time the conversation wound itself down, and the fire had gone from generous to merely adequate. The room had contracted, as rooms did late at night, when the walls stopped being background and became the whole of the world.

Charlotte stood. She looked at the chaise longue. It was narrow and short and upholstered in something that had seen better decades.

“That,” she said, “is approximately the length of a very large dog.”

“It is serviceable.”

“It is the length of a very large dog,” she repeated. “And the bed is wide enough to accommodate a reasonable distance between two adults who are, after all, married.”

Henry stood. He looked at the chaise.

“I am aware of that,” he said.

“Then why⁠—”

“Because the distance is the point.” He said it quietly. Not roughly. Just plainly, the way he said things when he meant them entirely. “I am choosing it because the alternative is something I do not trust myself to remain indifferent to.” He met her eyes. “I would rather be uncomfortable than dishonest.”

Charlotte was very still.

She looked at him for one long moment, and he did not look away, and whatever she found in his face she kept to herself.

“Good night,” she said.

She took the bed.

Henry lay down on the chaise. It was, as advertised, the length of a large dog. It was not comfortable. The fire had dropped to embers.

The chaise creaked once as he settled onto it.

Then the room went silent.

He was gone. The room was grey with early light, the chaise folded back into something approximating its original arrangement, and the only sound was the low settlement of the fire, which had burned through the night and was now little more than banked ash.

Charlotte lay still.

She had slept well. That was the first thing she noticed, and she noted it with a faint, private bewilderment, because she had not expected to. She had expected to lie awake listening to the silence from the other side of the room and cataloguing the things she probably ought not to have said. She had instead slept straight through without dreaming.

The second thing she noticed was the evergreen.

It was on the pillow beside her. A small sprig of pine that had been carefully gathered, the needles still cold to the touch when her fingers found it before her eyes had fully adjusted to the light.

He had gone out before the inn had stirred, while the sky was still the particular blue-black of pre-dawn, and he had walked the Biggleswade countryside, which offered almost nothing of interest to a man used to the Scottish Highlands, and he had come back with the only thing it had to offer.

And left it. Without a note. Without explanation. Simply placed it there, on the pillow beside her, with the care of someone who had not wanted to wake her and then gone again.

Charlotte lay still and looked at it.

She had been assembling the evidence for some time now. Not deliberately. She had not set out to build a case. The pieces had simply arrived, one by one, and she had found herself holding them.

The first piece had come on the road north. The first journey, not this one. A coaching yard somewhere outside of Leeds, and a hired man who had made an observation about traveling alone that had been, to put it charitably, unwelcome. She had been managing it. She had been perfectly capable of managing it. And then Henry had been there, simply, entirely there, placed between her and the man without raising his voice or making any particular business of it. No announcement. No performance. He had just moved.

She had thought, at the time, that it was instinct. The reflex of a man with a powerful sense of propriety and a general intolerance for the badly behaved. She had filed it under useful travel companion and moved on.

The second piece had come at the coaching inn. Her ankle, and he had tended to it with utmost care. He had not made her thank him. He had not made anything of it at all.

She had filed that under efficient and moved on.

Charlotte turned the evergreen between her fingers.

Watch what he does.

Lavinia had said it in the drawing room at Evermere with the calm certainty of someone passing along a thing she had needed to learn herself before she could offer it to anyone else. Not listen to what he says. Not be patient while he finds the words.

Watch what he does.

CHAPTER 24

“Isaw them,” the shepherd said. “Clear as I’m seeing you now.”

The cottage was low and dark, the fire doing more work than the window, and the shepherd sat across from Henry with his hands wrapped around a cup he had not drunk from in twenty minutes. He was a solid man, gray at the temples, with the kind of face that had been weathered into honesty. He had met Henry’s eyes when he opened the door. He had answered the first four questions without flinching.

Henry sat forward. “What time was it?”

“Past midnight.” The shepherd set the cup down. “I was up the hill with two ewes that had gone off. I came back down the track—the one that runs above the road—and I saw the carriage below.”

“Stopped? Moving?”

“Stopped.” He frowned. “Or—nearly stopped. It was moving slowly. The horses were wrong, I thought. Not behaving right.”

“And the people?”

“Two. On the road beside it.”

“Can you describe them?”

The shepherd looked at the fire. Then he looked at Charlotte, who was sitting slightly back from the hearth, her hands in her lap, saying nothing. Then he looked at Henry again.

“A man,” he said. “And a woman.”

“The woman.” Henry kept his voice even. “Describe her.”

The shepherd picked up his cup then put it down. “Fine clothes,” he said. “Not—not working clothes. Quality.”

Henry went very still.

“She was walking away from the carriage,” the shepherd said. “Before it went over.” He stopped. “Before I thought it went over. I heard something later. Down in the gorge. I didn’t go to look.”

“Before the carriage went over,” Henry repeated. “You are certain of that?”

“I said so, didn’t I?”

“You did.” Henry leaned in another inch. “Which direction was she walking?”

The shepherd opened his mouth. Then he closed it.

“North? South? Toward the road or away from it?”

“I—” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Away, I think. Or it might have been—look, it was dark.”

“But you saw the clothes clearly?”

“I said fine clothes. I said that.”

“And the man? Was he with her?”

“He was—” A pause. “Near the carriage.”

“Near it how? Beside it? On the box?”

“I don’t—” The shepherd pushed back from the table slightly. “I don’t know. It was dark and I was—I was not—” He stopped.

Something in the hesitation told Henry everything. He waited.

“I was not entirely sober,” the shepherd said at last.

Silence.

“My wife died,” the man said, and the words were very flat, the way a man said things when he was past the crying stage and had arrived at something harder. “Six weeks before. I was up the hill with the ewes because I couldn’t sleep, and I had had—” He put both hands flat on the table. “Considerably more than was wise.”

Henry sat back.

“I may have imagined some of it,” the shepherd said. “The details. I may have filled in what I couldn’t see.” He looked at his hands. “But there was a carriage. That much I know. And there was a woman. I did not imagine her.”

“The clothes,” Henry said. He could hear his own voice. Too flat, too controlled, the particular quality it took when he was holding something by the edges. “You said fine clothes. Quality clothes. A traveling gown? A pelisse? What color?”

“I can’t⁠—"

“Dark or light?”

“Dark, I think. Or—” He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“You told the constable she was walking north.”

“Did I? I might have said⁠—"

“You told him north.” Henry’s jaw was set. He pressed on. “You are now saying away from the carriage, which could be any direction. Which is it?”

The shepherd’s eyes went hard.

“I told you what I saw,” he said. “I am not a man to be called a liar under my own roof.”

“I am not calling you a liar. I am asking for accuracy.”

“I have given you accuracy. I have given you everything I have.” He stood. The chair scraped back. “I think you should go.”

Henry stood. He said nothing for a moment.

Then Charlotte said, “Sir.”

She had been so still that the shepherd looked slightly startled when she spoke. She was on her feet, with one hand resting on the back of her chair, and she was looking at the shepherd the way she looked at Ian when the boy was on the edge of shutting down entirely and she had approximately ten seconds to reach him.

“We are very grateful,” she said. “I mean that sincerely.” She moved toward the door, drawing Henry with her without touching him. “You have had a dreadful year, and we have come in here asking you to go back through a difficult night. You have answered us honestly and with more patience than we deserved.” She stopped at the threshold and looked back at the shepherd. “I am sorry about your wife.”

The shepherd looked at her. His jaw worked once.

“Thank you,” he said. “For saying so.”

Charlotte nodded. And then they were outside. The door closed behind them. The afternoon was cold and sharp and entirely without mercy.

They walked down the track toward the road. Henry said nothing. The hillside was grey and the wind came in off the moor at an angle that found every gap in a coat. He was aware of Charlotte half a step behind him, not hurrying, not filling the silence.

The constable’s report had said: possible sighting, a man and woman, on foot, western road. Henry had read it standing in his study. He had read it four times.

A woman in fine clothes walking away from the carriage before it went over. That was something. That was specific. That contradicted the assumption that Nathan and Eleanor had both been in the carriage when it went off the road. If Eleanor had been out of the carriage, walking away⁠—

He turned the thought over in his mind.

The shepherd had been drunk. Had been grieving. Had been in the dark on a hillside with two missing ewes, and he had seen something he might have imagined and might not have.

The details shifted every time they pressed, and there was no way to know.

He had arrived at this cottage with the first genuine hope he had possessed in two months.

Henry was leaving with nothing.

Charlotte came up beside him on the road. The carriage was waiting fifty yards ahead, the horses still, the driver on the box.

She did not say it was all right. She did not offer anything that would have required him to answer.

He was grateful for it, and he was too tired to say so, but she seemed to already know that too.

“You almost had it,” Charlotte said.

Henry looked out of the window. The track gave way to road. The hills beyond were the particular grey green of late afternoon in Scotland, the kind of color that made everything look both beautiful and entirely bland.

“I had nothing,” he said.

“You had a woman in fine clothes walking away from the carriage before it went over.”

“From a drunk shepherd who may have imagined her.”

“He may have imagined the details. He did not imagine her.” Charlotte folded her hands in her lap. “He said so himself.”

“He said a great many things. Several of them contradicted each other.”

“Henry.”

He turned from the window.

“I know what it looks like when a man is telling the truth about the part he is certain of,” she said. “He was certain about the woman. Everything else shifted, but not that.”

Henry held her gaze for a moment. Then he looked back at the hills.

“It contradicts the accident report,” he said. “If Eleanor was out of the carriage before it went over—if she walked away—then she may not have been in the gorge at all.”

“Which means she may still be alive.”

“Which means the search has been looking in entirely the wrong place for two months.” His jaw was set. “Which means I should have found this shepherd six weeks ago.”

“You found him now.”

“With a story I cannot use.”

Charlotte said nothing for a moment. The carriage hit a rut and steadied.

“When I was seventeen,” she said, “I asked my father for my mother’s jewelry. Just one piece. A ring she used to wear on her right hand. He told me it wasn’t appropriate for the occasion, and I said, what occasion, and he said, any occasion, and I—” She stopped. “I said nothing. I accepted it. I went upstairs and sat at my writing desk for an hour and did absolutely nothing about it.” She looked at her hands. “That is not the only time I did that. I did it at sixteen, and eighteen, and twenty-one, and approximately forty times in between. Every time I tried to push back, I found a reason to stop. A reason that felt sensible at the time.”

Henry listened.

“I am telling you this,” Charlotte said, “because failure is not proof that the thing was not worth trying. I failed to stand up to my father for thirteen years and I was not wrong to eventually try. I was only wrong to stop before I had.”

He turned to look at her.

She was not offering comfort. She was offering something more useful than comfort, the plain accounting of a person who had been through a real thing and had come out the other side knowing what it had cost. He recognized it. He had heard it from her before. He thought he would probably keep hearing it for the rest of his life and it would not get less true with repetition.

“The western road,” he said.

“Yes.”

“You want to pursue it.”

“I want to send men down it who know what to look for now.” She shifted to face him more directly. “Not the accident site. The woman. Where she went, after. If she was Eleanor—if she walked away from that carriage—someone saw her. A crofter, an innkeeper, a farmer. Someone.”

“That could take weeks.”

“Yes.”

“Ian needs us back.”

Charlotte was quiet for a beat. “I know that.”

“Not in four days. Now.” He said it plainly. “He is six years old, and his parents are missing and we have been gone three days and every day we do not return is a day he—” He stopped. His hand pressed flat on his knee. “He needs to see us. That comes before the western road.”

Charlotte looked at him. “You are right,” she said.

“I know I’m right.”

“And I am also right about the western road.”

“You are,” he said. “Which is why I intend to instruct someone else to take it.”

He leaned forward and knocked on the carriage ceiling. The driver opened the hatch above.

“The magistrate’s office,” Henry said. “Before we leave town.”

“Yes, Your Grace.”

The hatch closed. Charlotte looked at him.

“The magistrate,” Henry said, “will organize the western road search. He will have local knowledge I do not have, connections I cannot use, and authority that a duke’s money alone cannot buy.” He straightened. “I intend to supply the money regardless.”

Charlotte said nothing. But the set of her shoulders had changed.

* * *

The magistrate was a careful man. He received Henry in his office with the wary attention of a local official who has just been presented with a duke and is deciding how much trouble this represents.

“The western road,” Henry said. “From the accident site to the next three parishes north. Every crofting community, every inn, every farmstead within a day’s walk of the road. I want people who know the terrain and know the locals. Not men from Edinburgh. People who live here.”

The magistrate made notes. “And you are looking for⁠—”

“My cousin Nathan Drummond and his wife Eleanor Drummond. They might have been injured.” He paused.

“Very well, Your Grace.” The magistrate set down his pen. “This is a considerable undertaking.”

“I am aware of that.” Henry took the folded notes from his coat and set them on the desk. “The first sum covers the search. The second covers any reward for information that leads directly to the individuals. You will send word to my London address the moment anything is found.”

The magistrate looked at the notes. He did not reach for them immediately.

“You have my full confidence,” Henry said. “And my full backing. Whatever you need.”

The man reached for the notes.

* * *

They were two hours out of town before either of them spoke.

The hills had gone to shadow, the last of the light sitting on the ridgelines and nowhere else. The carriage was warm. Charlotte had her head slightly bowed, her eyes on the dark window, and Henry sat across from her with the folded remnants of his London correspondence and nothing useful to do with any of it.

He looked at the hills.

A woman in fine clothes, walking away from the carriage before it went over.

He turned it over. He had been turning it over since the cottage.

The weight arrived without announcement.

Soft. Real. On his shoulder.

He turned his head.

Charlotte was asleep. Her head had dropped against his shoulder in the even, uncalculated way of someone who had been exhausted for three days and had finally run out of resistance. Her breathing was slow. One hand had fallen open on her lap.

Henry sat very still.

He thought about moving. He thought about the return journey and the magistrate and the western road and the woman in fine clothes. He thought about Ian, at Sappherton House, holding his wooden horse.

Henry stopped thinking. He lowered his head gently and rested it against hers.

CHAPTER 25

“And the fairy held out her hand,” Charlotte read, “and in her palm sat the most perfect gift the elf had ever seen.”

Ian shifted under the blanket. His eyes were at half-mast, the wooden horse tucked under one arm, and he had the slow, heavy look of a child fighting sleep on principle rather than any genuine wakefulness.

“Me da gives me a new toy,” he murmured. “Every birthday.”

Charlotte kept her finger on the page. “Does he?”

“Aye.” Ian’s eyes drifted further closed. “Every year. Somethin' different. Last year it was a soldier. The year before it was a painted boat.” He yawned. “He hides it somewhere and I have to find it.”

Charlotte set the book down on her knee. “When is your birthday, Ian?”

He was quiet long enough that she thought he had fallen asleep. Then: “In three days.”

She kept her voice even. “Three days.”

“Mm.” He turned his face toward the pillow. “I daenae want to celebrate.”

She looked at him. “Why not?”

“Because.” His brow creased slightly, not with distress exactly, just with the effort of explaining something he had already decided. “Birthdays are for with yer parents. Da makes it special. Mam makes the cake.” He was quiet again. “It willnae be the same.”

Charlotte sat very still.

Ian’s breathing slowed. The wooden horse had slipped a little in his arm. Outside the window the evening had gone properly dark, and the nursery fire was the only light worth having.

“I daenae mind,” Ian added, muffled now, almost already gone. “It’s just a day.”

He was asleep before she could answer.

She sat with him for a minute. Maybe two. She looked at the line of his shoulder under the blanket, the slight curl of his hand around the horse’s neck, and she did not move until she was certain the sound of her getting up would not wake him. Then she closed the book and set it on the bedside table and left the room without making a noise.

Henry was in the library. He had been in the library most evenings since they had returned from Scotland. She had stopped finding it surprising.

He looked up when she came in. He was sitting with a letter he had not been reading—she could tell by the way it sat open across his knee without his eyes on it. He had that look. The one she had learned to read. Where his body was in one place and his mind was somewhere on the western road.

“Ian’s birthday is in three days,” she said.

Henry looked at her.

She sat in the chair across from him, the one she had claimed without discussion over the past week. “He told me just now. I was reading to him.”

“I did not—” Henry stopped. He set the letter on the side table. “Three days.”

“He does not want a celebration.” Charlotte folded her hands. “He said birthdays are for being with his parents. That it won’t feel the same.”

Henry was quiet.

“He said it very matter-of-factly,” she said. “As though he had thought it through and arrived at a position.” She looked at the fire. “That almost made it worse.”

A beat of silence.

“I did not know his birthday,” Henry said. It was not an excuse. It was flat, just a fact, and the fact seemed to cost him.

He looked at his hands. “I knew the year. I knew he would be seven. I did not know—” He stopped again.

Charlotte felt sorry for Henry. He had come into this guardianship the way he came into everything: capable, dutiful, and almost entirely unprepared for the parts that could not be managed with accounts and instructions.

“Well,” she said. “Now you do.”

“He truly said he does not want a celebration?”

“He said that.” Charlotte tilted her head. “He also said his father hides the gift, and he has to find it. He said his mother makes the cake.” She kept her gaze on the fire. “He was telling me what birthdays mean to him. He was not telling me to do something.”

Henry looked at her.

“He is six years old,” Charlotte said. “He has had the worst six weeks of his life, and he is trying to be very sensible about all of it. He should not have to be sensible about his birthday as well.” She pressed her hands flat on her knees. “I am going to plan something. Small. Not a production. Just—enough.”

Henry said nothing for a moment.

“He may not thank you for it,” he said at last.

“He does not need to thank me for it.” She stood. “He needs to have it.”

Henry looked at her with an expression she could not fully catalogue. It was neither disagreement nor approval.

“I will need your help,” she said.

“You are asking me.”

“You are his guardian. Yes.”

He picked up the letter again. He did not look at it. “Tell me what you need.”

She moved toward the door. At the threshold she stopped and looked back.

“To start,” she said, “I need to know what his favorite thing to eat is.”

Henry said, without any hesitation whatsoever: “Anything with jam.”

Charlotte looked at him. He looked at the letter.

He does know some things, she thought. Just not the date.

“Good,” she said. “That’s a start.”

She left him at the library and went to find paper.

“The shortbread is essential,” Charlotte said. “And I want a sponge cake. Something with jam in the middle.”

Mrs. Ellison had her hands folded and her expression of careful attentiveness, which Charlotte had come to recognize as the one she wore when she thought the request was unusual but had decided not to say so. Cook, who had warmed considerably since the first week, was already nodding.

“I can manage that easily enough,” Cook said. “Raspberry jam. And the shortbread. Will there be many for tea, Your Grace?”

“Just the household. And a few trivial things for Ian to find in the garden beforehand—nothing elaborate. I thought perhaps some of those little iced biscuits if you can manage them. The ones with the colored sugar.”

“Those I can do.” Cook was already mentally somewhere in the kitchen. “Shall I⁠—”

“What,” said Henry from the doorway, “is happening to my drawing room?”

Charlotte looked up. He had come in without ceremony, jacket on, letter in hand as usual, and he was looking at the two servants and the notepad and Charlotte’s expression of perfectly composed innocence.

“I am having a conversation with Mrs. Ellison and Cook,” Charlotte said. “Thank you both. I’ll come down shortly.”

Mrs. Ellison and Cook withdrew with commendable speed.

Henry looked at the notepad. “You have a list.”

“I frequently have lists.”

“This one mentions iced biscuits and raspberry jam.” He came further into the room. “In rather large quantities.”

“Ian has a birthday in two days.”

“I am aware of that now.” He set the letter on the mantelpiece. “You told me last night.”

“Then you know why I am planning.”

“Ian said he did not want a fuss.”

“He said he didn’t want to celebrate,” Charlotte said. “That is slightly different.”

Henry gave her a look. “I fail to see the distinction.”

“The distinction is that he is six years old and grieving and has decided, very nobly, to require nothing from anyone. That is not the same as genuinely not wanting something nice on his birthday.”

Henry sat down. Not across from her. In the chair beside her, which put them both facing the list, which she thought was probably intentional even if he did not realize it. “He may find it painful.”

“He may,” Charlotte agreed. “He may also find it wonderful and go to sleep that night feeling that someone made an effort for him.” She turned the parchment, so it faced both of them. “His parents are not here. We are. We cannot replace them. But we can do what they would have done.”

Henry was quiet.

She waited. She had learned to wait. He processed things differently than she did, turned them over until the edges were smooth, and she had found that interrupting that process did nothing useful.

“All right,” he said at last.

“All right?”

“All right, we plan.” He looked at the list. Then he said, “The sponge should have lemon.”

Charlotte blinked. “Cook suggested raspberry jam.”

“For the jam. Both. Lemon sponge, raspberry jam.” He picked up the pencil from beside the list and held it. “It is a better cake.”

She stared at him. “You told me last night you didn’t care about the details.”

“I said Ian should have something nice. I did not say I was indifferent to what the cake tasted like.”

“Those are effectively the same statement.”

“They are not.” He wrote lemon sponge in the margin with the methodical precision of a man annotating a legal document. “If we are doing this, we do it properly.”

Charlotte watched him. “You are being particular.”

“I am being thorough.”

“You are being—” She pressed her lips together. “What else? While we’re being thorough?”

He looked at the list. “The gift hunt. Whose idea was that?”

“Mine.”

“And the gifts are to be hidden in the garden?”

“Yes. Scattered about for him to find.”

“Organized in a route, or random?”

Charlotte turned to look at him fully. “It is a treasure hunt for a six-year-old, not a military campaign.”

“A route would be more satisfying,” Henry said. “Random is frustrating. He finds two things quickly and then spends half an hour looking for the third and the enjoyment is lost.”

She opened her mouth. She closed it. “That is,” she said slowly, “actually quite sensible.”

“I am frequently sensible.”

“You are frequently sensible about things that have nothing to do with feelings, yes.”

He gave her a look. “A gift hunt has nothing to do with feelings. It is logistics.”

“It is a birthday gift hunt for a grieving child.”

“Which requires good logistics.”

Charlotte picked up the pencil and wrote route—Henry’s idea-- in the margin beneath lemon sponge. He noticed and looked at it but said nothing, which she took as a victory.

“What are the gifts?” she asked.

Henry grinned. “I believe I ought to keep that to myself.”

CHAPTER 26

“There’s somethin' in the garden,” Ian said.

He was standing at the breakfast room window with his nose nearly on the glass, his porridge untouched behind him. He had been there for approximately three minutes. Henry had watched him get there. He had watched the exact moment the boy had noticed that the garden did not look quite like itself this morning.

“There is,” Henry said.

Ian turned. “What kind of somethin'?”

“The kind you find by going to look.” Henry set down his cup. “Eat your porridge first.”

Ian sat. He ate his porridge faster than Henry had ever seen him eat anything, with the focused efficiency of a child who had one goal and one obstacle between himself and it. He did not finish it entirely. Henry decided this was acceptable.

Charlotte was already at the garden door when they reached it, her shawl drawn around her shoulders, and she looked at Ian with an expression Henry recognized as the particular brightness she kept only for him.

“Happy birthday,” she said.

Ian looked at her. Then at the garden. Then at Henry.

“It’s in the garden,” Henry said. “Start near the roses.”

Ian was gone.

* * *

He found the soldiers first. They were tucked behind the rose bed in a small wooden box, painted in careful red and blue, an entire regiment of them. Ian sat down on the path without ceremony and opened the lid and counted them with one moving finger, his lips forming the numbers silently.

“Twelve,” he breathed. He looked up. “There are twelve.”

“There are a few more to find,” Charlotte said.

Ian closed the box with great care and tucked it under one arm. “Where?”

Henry nodded toward the far end of the garden. Ian went.

The atlas was under the elm tree, wrapped in brown paper and tied with string that Ian attacked without patience and had off in under ten seconds. He opened it to the middle and stared down at the spread of the British Isles for a long moment.

“Scotland,” he said. He put his finger on it. Then he moved his finger south. “England.” He looked at the distance between them. Something moved across his face, the small private arithmetic of a child calculating miles. Then he looked up. “This is how far away they are. Me mam and da.”

Henry said, very steadily, “Yes.”

Ian closed the atlas. He did not say anything else. He tucked it under his other arm, alongside the soldiers, and he came back up the path with both of them.

* * *

Tea was in the small dining room, because Charlotte had decided the formal dining room was excessive for a birthday and had informed Henry of this with a tone that meant she had already arranged it and was letting him know as a courtesy. He had not objected.

The cake arrived on a platter. Cook had done the lemon sponge justice. The raspberry jam was visible between the layers, and there were candles, seven of them in a circle.

Ian stared at it.

“Seven?” he said.

“You are turning seven,” Charlotte confirmed.

“I ken.” He kept staring. “I didnae think there would be candles.”

“There are always candles,” Charlotte said. “Your mother would have insisted on them. I insist on them in her absence.”

Ian looked at her. His chin did not wobble this time. He only accepted it, the way he accepted most things Charlotte said to him, with a seriousness that sat very old in a seven-year-old’s face.

Then he blew out every candle on the first try and looked extremely pleased with himself.

He ate two slices and three iced biscuits and asked twice if the soldiers were waterproof, which Charlotte said she did not think they were, and Henry said he would look into it, and Ian accepted this as satisfactory.

“There is one more thing,” Henry said.

Ian put down his biscuit. He had the expression of a child who has decided the day was already sufficient, and anything further would be excess, and was prepared to be politely grateful for it regardless. “More?”

“Come with me.”

Henry led him out through the side hall and across the kitchen garden and around to the stable block. Charlotte fell into step beside Henry.

At the stable door Henry stopped and opened it. Ian walked in.

The pony was in the third stall. He was the familiar gray with the white nose, sturdy and even-tempered, looking with recognition at the small boy now standing in front of him with his mouth open.

Ian said nothing and stood completely still. His mouth was open and he said absolutely nothing for a period of time that Henry began to find slightly concerning.

“Ian,” Charlotte said.

Ian closed his mouth. Then he swallowed. He opened it again. “Tam?”

“Yes,” Henry said.

“He’s here?”

“He is here.”

Ian looked at the pony for another long moment. Then he turned around and looked at Henry with an expression that was entirely stripped of its usual guardedness. It was just joy, plain and open and almost too much to look at directly.

Ian ran forward and threw his arms around the gray neck, burying his face in the thick mane. “Tam,” Ian whispered, a fierce, happy disbelief breaking through his voice.

Henry looked at the ceiling and swallowed. He was fairly certain that he was struggling to maintain his composure. Experiencing intense emotion at Ian’s joy surprise him.

Charlotte touched his arm, and that nearly undid him. “I have never seen him this happy,” she murmured. “Thank you, Henry.”

He smiled at her. “You needn’t thank me.”

Charlotte smiled. Not the bright social smile. The other one, the private one. The one she kept, he had noticed, for moments when she thought he was doing something she found worth keeping.

He looked at Ian, who was now talking to Tam in a low, serious voice, telling him something about Drummond Hall that Henry could not quite hear.

Stepping closer and resting a reassuring hand on Ian’s shoulder, Henry asked, “Do you want to help me brush him down, or would you rather see how he feels from the saddle?”

Ian’s eyes grew wide. “Can I ride him now?”

“Certainly,” Henry replied. “Come here.”

Kneeling slightly, Henry cupped his hands to give the boy a step. Then he hoisted Ian securely onto Tam’s back while Charlotte watched with a soft, swelling smile from the doorway.

Ian grabbed the reins, sitting tall with an instantaneous flash of pride, while Henry kept a firm, grounding hand on the lead rope as they took their first slow loop around the stable yard.

After supper, Henry returned to the stables.

He had not intended to. He had been in the library with the post, and he had put the last letter down and found himself standing in the hallway without a clear account of how he had gotten there, and then he was at the stable door.

It was open an inch, and lamplight shone from inside.

Henry pushed it quietly.

Ian was there. He had dragged a small stool from the far wall and placed it beside Tam’s stall, and he was sitting on it with his arms folded on the top of the stall door and his chin on his arms, talking to her in a muffled voice that the stable swallowed entirely. The pony had his head over the door. He was listening or doing a very convincing impression of it.

Henry stood in the doorway.

He had known, in the abstract, that he was responsible for Ian. He had known about it since the solicitor’s letter and had organized his life accordingly. Henry had treated this responsibility as a duty with the same thoroughness he brought to all duties. He had told himself it was temporary.

Guardianship until Nathan and Eleanor were found. A practical arrangement. Something that would resolve itself.

Ian shifted on the stool and said something quiet to Tam, and he blew through his nose. Ian laughed—that short, surprised, completely unguarded laugh that was nothing like his usual composed self. and Henry stood in the doorway and understood, with the clarity of something arriving too late to be stopped, that he had been wrong.

Not about the duty. That was real. But about the rest of it. He had not meant to care this much.

He had, in fact, taken considerable pains not to.

And now he was standing in a stable doorway watching a seven-year-old boy talk to a gray pony in the lamplight, and the feeling behind his ribs was not duty, and it was not practicality, and it had nothing whatsoever to do with temporary arrangements.

He thought about Charlotte at the breakfast table with her list. Lemon sponge and the route through the garden and the atlas under the elm. He thought about the way Ian had looked when he found the soldiers, and the way he had counted them, and the way he had placed his finger on Scotland and then on England without saying what he was measuring.

What if this was not temporary?

The thought arrived whole and without warning, the way the difficult ones always did.

Henry stood in the doorway. Ian had not heard him. Tam had not looked up. The lamp threw warm light across the straw and the boy and the horse, and the night was quiet.

What if this is my future?

He did not have an answer, and he was not certain he was ready for one.

CHAPTER 27

“Lord Redmont is below, Your Grace. He says he is in the area on business and requests a brief word.”

Henry set down his pen and looked at the butler for a moment.

“Show him to the blue sitting room,” he said. “I shall be there in five minutes.”

The butler withdrew. Henry sat for a moment longer. Then he stood and straightened his coat.

Redmont was standing at the window when Henry came in. He turned with a smile that had been assembled in advance.

“Sappherton.” He bowed. “Good of you to receive me. I was passing through—some business nearby—and I thought, while I’m in the neighborhood.”

Henry inclined his head. “Redmont. Sit down.”

Redmont sat, then looked around the room. “A fine room. I had not been to Sappherton House in some years.” He crossed one leg over the other. “You have your ward with you, I understand? The Scottish boy.”

“My cousin’s son. Yes.”

“How is he settling?”

“Well,” Henry said.

Redmont nodded, as though this was deeply interesting. “And the Duchess?” He said it with feigned warmth. “Such a swift marriage. It was a surprise to everyone, naturally. But she seems to be managing?”

Henry looked at him. “My wife is entirely well. Thank you.”

“Of course, of course.” Redmont leaned back, his expression turning calculating. “I only bring it up because…well, you see my position, Sappherton. By your hasty intervention, I missed out on a most lucrative alliance and the substantial commercial advantages that would have come with Lady Charlotte’s dowry. I consider myself due some manner of compensation.”

Henry’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Get to the point, Redmont.”

“My private agents tracking the northern post roads have turned up something rather significant regarding your family,” Redmont said smoothly. “A credible trace of your missing cousin, Nathan Drummond, and his wife. My men know the exact crofting community where they took shelter three weeks north.”

Henry went completely still. “And why bring this to me?” He already knew the answer, but he wanted to hear the marquess say it.

“Because business is business,” Redmont replied, leaning forward. “I want to take advantage of the extensive shipping connections and mercantile consortiums you command. Give me a vested partnership in your northern shipping lines and priority access to your trade networks, and my men will hand over the exact notes of where Nathan Drummond can be found.”

Henry sat in silence, carefully weighing the proposal. The temptation to find Nathan and put Ian's heart at ease was immense, but as he studied Redmont’s placid, opportunistic expression, cold pragmatism took over.

He knew the man’s reputation too well; Redmont was thoroughly untrustworthy, driven solely by profit and underhanded leverage. If there truly was a valid lead to be found in the north, Henry was entirely capable of uncovering it through his own trusted channels without binding his trade house to a man like Redmont.

“No,” Henry said flatly.

Redmont blinked, his smile faltering a fraction. “You refuse actionable intelligence concerning your own flesh and blood over business pride?”

“I refuse to barter with a man whose word carries no weight,” Henry replied, rising from his chair. “If my cousin is to be found, I will find him myself. Our business is concluded.”

Redmont was not pleased. His eyes turned sharp as if he was stung by the rejection. Standing up unhurriedly to mask his irritation, he let out a dry, pointed laugh.

“A pity,” Redmont murmured, adjusting his cuffs. “Though perhaps impulsiveness runs in the family. One cannot help but wonder at the sheer haste of your wedding, Sappherton. It has certainly given the ton plenty of fodder. Tell me, are you managing the endless whispers and questions about the legitimacy of your sudden match?”

Henry stood tall, his voice dropping into a dangerous, icy register. “I will be direct with you, Redmont. My wife’s choices are her own. They were her own before she married me, and they are her own now. I do not discuss her decisions with other men, nor do I tolerate malicious insinuations about my household. We have covered everything.”

Redmont met his gaze for a long, tense moment, then inclined his head mockingly and reached for his hat and gloves. “As you say. I meant no offense. Merely concern for her sake.”

“I am certain of that,” Henry said, and it landed exactly as he intended.

Henry followed him into the hall.

Redmont was already at the foot of the stairs when Charlotte came down them. She stopped on the third step. Her face did not change—she was better at this than most people gave her credit for—but her hand had gone to the banister.

“Your Grace.” Redmont looked up at her with that smile.

“Lord Redmont.” Her voice was even. “I was not aware you had called.”

“A brief visit.” He settled his hat atop his head. “Sappherton has been most hospitable.” He tilted his head at her, the way he had in the ballroom corridor, the studied warmth that went nowhere. “You look well.”

“Thank you.” She came down the last three steps. She kept herself very straight. “I hope your business nearby has been productive.”

“Reasonably so.” A beat. “Your father is still incredibly angry, you know. I thought you ought to hear it plainly rather than through rumor.”

Charlotte’s chin came up a quarter inch.

“There is also some talk,” Redmont continued pleasantly, “about the suddenness of the match. People will draw their own conclusions. I’m sure you are aware of it. Some question whether⁠—”

“I am aware of what people say,” Charlotte said. “I have been aware of it since the Caldwell ball.”

“Of course.” Redmont picked at a glove seam. “I only think it worth considering. Your father’s connections. The legal questions that have been raised.” He glanced at Henry, then back. “These things have a way of becoming inconvenient.”

“I have no regrets,” Charlotte said.

“No.” Redmont looked at her. “I imagine you believe that.”

“I do not merely believe it,” she said. “It is a fact.”

Redmont smiled. It was a different smile from the one he’d worn in the sitting room. Smaller. More private. “You were always very certain, Charlotte. It was one of the things I most—” He stopped himself. “Well.” He inclined his head. “One day you may think differently.” He turned toward the door. The butler opened it. “Good day, Sappherton. Your Grace.”

He went, and the door closed. Henry looked at Charlotte.

She was standing at the foot of the stairs with her hand still on the newel post, and she was looking at the door with the expression she used when she was making herself not feel something quickly. Her chin was still up. Her posture was entirely correct. She looked exactly as she always did.

Except for her hand. She was pressing her thumb hard against the carved wood.

“Charlotte,” Henry said.

“I am perfectly fine.” She turned. “He is simply a man who cannot bear to be refused. I knew that.” She moved toward the drawing room. “Shall I ring for tea?”

“In a moment.” He followed her in. “What did he say? Before I came out.”

“You heard the exchange.”

“I heard the end of it.”

She sat. She smoothed her skirts with one hand, an automatic gesture, the kind she made when she was settling down from the inside. “He told me my father is still furious. People are questioning the marriage’s validity. They say I acted on impulse and may come to regret it.” She looked out of the window. “The usual catalogue.”

“And?”

“And nothing. I told him I had no regrets and he left.” She looked back at Henry. “It was nothing I had not already heard.”

“But it rattled you.”

She opened her mouth.

“Charlotte.”

She closed it. She looked at her hands for a moment. “It is not Redmont,” she said at last. “Redmont I can manage. I have managed him twice now and I will manage him again if it comes to it.” She paused. “It is my father. He mentioned my father.” She turned the cuff of her sleeve once, a small, tight motion. “Every time someone mentions him, I go—smaller. I told you about that. I know I do it. I can see myself doing it.” She looked up. “I cannot seem to stop.”

Henry was quiet.

“He is not here,” she said. “My father is not in this room. He is at Ashford and I am here and nothing he wants has any legal standing in my life anymore. I know all of that.” She said it flatly, reciting it, the way you recited things you were trying to believe. “And still.”

Henry crossed to the chair nearest to her. He sat.

She looked at him. He looked back.

“I am not going to dissolve,” she said. “I am simply telling you the truth of it. Since you asked.”

“I know you are not going to dissolve,” he said.

“Good.” She straightened slightly. “Then we need not make a great thing of it.”

“No,” Henry agreed. “But I want you to hear something.”

She waited.

He looked at her directly. “Nobody,” he said. The word landed quiet and entirely complete. “Not your father. Not Redmont.” He paused. “Not even your husband.”

Charlotte frowned. “What?”

“Nobody,” Henry said again, “will ever force you into anything again. Not while I am alive to prevent it.”

She stared at him.

“Your father has no authority over you. Legally, practically, in any manner that counts. What Redmont said about the marriage’s validity is noise. The documents are sound. The solicitors are satisfied. There is nothing there.” He kept his voice level. Not gentle, exactly. Something harder than gentle. The kind of certainty that had nothing to prove. “And as for the rest of it—the talk, the questions, the people in drawing rooms deciding what your marriage means—that is not your concern. It is mine. And I will deal with it.”

Charlotte was still looking at him. “You said not even your husband.”

“Yes.”

“You were including yourself in the list?”

“I was.”

Charlotte was quiet. She seemed to be working something out.

“Henry.” She leaned forward slightly. “You have never forced me into anything.”

“I know that.”

“Then why⁠—”

“Because I wanted you to hear it.” He held her gaze. “Because Redmont stands at the foot of your stairs and mentions your father’s name and your thumb goes white on the newel post, and I think someone ought to have told you a very long time ago that your wishes are the only ones that matter. And I am telling you now.” He stopped. Something in his expression was doing the thing it did when he had said more than he had planned to. He did not take it back. “That is all.”

Charlotte sat very still.

She was not going to cry. He could see that. But she had gone very still. This conversation had struck her so hard that it was evident she would need a moment to recover. Charlotte did not typically leave her defenses so unguarded, but now, she looked lost and uncertain.

Henry glanced out the window. He was going to have to examine what he had just said at some point as well as what had moved in him when Redmont stood in his hall talking to Charlotte with that smile.

Later, he told himself.

CHAPTER 28

“You have not heard a word I’ve said,” Tristan remarked.

Henry kept his gaze on the open field. “I heard every word.”

“Really?” Tristan shifted on the rug and reached for a slice of cold chicken. “What did I just say?”

Henry regarded him. “You proposed driving to Scotland twice a year instead of once.”

“That was ten minutes ago.” Tristan grinned. “Since then I have outlined a scheme to invest in a new mill, complained about the quality of London air, and remarked that your ward has the energy of three boys. You responded to none of it.”

Henry glanced toward the stream. Ian was racing across the grass, wooden sword in hand, shouting something to Tristan’s three-year-old son James about dragons. James toddled behind him, with the intent of keeping up, his curls bouncing with each step.

“They are entertaining,” Henry said.

“They are exhausting,” Tristan replied. He wiped his fingers on a napkin. “So. Why are you staring at your wife as if she is about to vanish?”

Henry’s eyes shifted, almost against his will. Across the picnic blanket, under the shelter of a broad oak, Charlotte sat with Lavinia and Sophia. Charlotte had removed her bonnet and set it beside the basket. Sun filtered through the leaves above, touching her hair. She was laughing at something Lavinia had said, one hand curved around a cup of lemonade.

Henry looked away. “I am not.”

“You are,” Tristan said. “You have been doing so for half the afternoon. In fact, I am inclined to believe your heart is succumbing to your wife.”

Henry reached for the ledger he had abandoned near the basket. “We are supposed to be enjoying a family outing.”

“I am enjoying it.” Tristan tipped his head back and closed his eyes. “My son is attempting to duel a stream. My daughter is enjoying a picnic. My wife is content. And my best friend is trying hard to pretend he is not losing his mind.”

Henry cut a slice of cheese with calm care. “I am quite composed.”

“Hmm.” Tristan watched Ian and James race past a clump of buttercups. “You know, when I married Lavinia, I did not spend our first months together staring from a distance like an admirer at a musicale. I spoke. I acted. I kissed her on purpose rather than by accident in a broom closet.”

Henry gave him a flat look. “This is not comparable.”

“You are married. She is your Duchess. You share a house, a carriage, and a ward. The situation is more than comparable.” Tristan leaned closer. “Henry. You care for her. Anyone with eyes can see it.”

Henry kept his gaze on the food. The hills rose gently beyond them, green rolling into paler sky, and a narrow stream cut through the meadow in a quiet line. Care for her. Certainly. She has brought the proverbial sunshine to a household that was bleak. She has steadied Ian. She has…

He stopped himself. “We have an arrangement.”

“Everything is an arrangement,” Tristan said. “Marriage merely adds paperwork.”

Henry did not smile. “This marriage is one of convenience. I have told you that.”

“Convenience does not explain why you look murderous when someone upsets her,” Tristan said. “Nor why you spent last week arguing with a solicitor about her jointure until he nearly cried.”

Henry’s hand stiffened on the knife. “The solicitor was incompetent.”

“Ah. Of course.” Tristan nodded, then plucked a strawberry. “You know what I have observed today?”

Henry did not ask. Tristan told him anyway.

“You have spoken to me. You have spoken to Lavinia. You have spoken to Sophia. You have scolded Ian twice and James once. And yet you have spent more time watching Charlotte than participating in any conversation.”

Henry’s jaw tightened.

I am not watching. I am…

He did not find a better word. “You imagine things.”

“I do,” Tristan agreed. “But even my imagination could not improve upon that scene.”

He gestured toward the oak. Charlotte was listening to Lavinia, eyes bright, head bent slightly. Sophia was arranging wildflowers in a small jug, her fingers deft.

Henry followed the motion before he caught himself. He looked away. “Lavinia wished for fresh air. I provided it.”

“And placed your wife where you could see her from every vantage.” Tristan chuckled. “Tell me, Henry. Has anything changed?”

“Nothing has changed.” Henry aligned the cheese on the plate. “I am simply more aware of my responsibilities.”

“Responsibilities do not look like that,” Tristan said. “They do not involve staring at your Duchess every time she removes her bonnet.”

Henry kept his expression neutral. Inside, something shifted.

I saw her laugh with Ian yesterday. I watched her face when George Ashford left. That is awareness. Not attraction.

“You are wrong,” Henry said.

Tristan gave him a maddeningly patient look. “If you say so. But you have spent half the afternoon watching Charlotte instead of joining us. I am going to tell Lavinia. She will be delighted.”

“You will not,” Henry said sharply.

“There now.” Tristan sat back, satisfied. “At last. Something that has changed. You used to let me tell Lavinia anything.”

Henry stared at him.

He is insufferable.

“You should attend to your children.”

“My children are busy conquering the hill.” Tristan rose, stretching. “Come. We are about to be conscripted into some ridiculous game. You may continue pretending nothing has changed while throwing a ball for my son.”

Henry watched Tristan walk toward the oak. His gaze moved, following, and settled on Charlotte again before he could stop it.

She had turned her head toward the field, watching Ian. A smile curved her mouth, quick and fond.

Henry looked down at his hands and set the knife aside.

Nothing has changed. Except, perhaps, everything.

* * *

“I am beginning to suspect marriage is very confusing,” Charlotte said.

Lavinia laughed softly and reached for a slice of cake. “Oh, it inherently is in the beginning.”

Charlotte took a sip of lemonade to hide the way her chest tightened. The air was warm. A breeze lifted the edges of the blanket. Ian’s shouts carried faintly from the far end of the meadow, mingled with James’s smaller cries.

“How so?” Charlotte asked.

Sophia shrugged one shoulder. “You look…different. More settled. Less as if you are planning your escape at every moment.”

Charlotte smiled. “I have fewer trees to climb now.”

“You are welcome to climb ours,” Lavinia said. “Evermere has several that would oblige you.”

Charlotte set down her cup.

Do I look different? Perhaps. I feel different. Less alone. Less as if every decision is being made in another room without me.

She picked up a strawberry. “Marriage is odd. Henry says extraordinarily little. Yet somehow, I see more in what he does than in anything he might say.”

Lavinia watched her. “That sounds promising.”

“I am not certain.” Charlotte plucked a stem from the fruit. “He is forever insisting this is a practical union. A solution. A way to keep Ian safe and my father at bay. He reminds me often.”

“And yet?” Lavinia prompted.

Charlotte looked toward the field. Henry and Tristan were near the edge of the blanket, discussing something, while the boys darted about with the kind of energy that made her palms itch with concern. Ian had found a stick and was waving it as if it were a sword. James followed, chanting some nonsense about dragons.

“And yet he does things,” Charlotte said quietly. “Small things. He keeps Ian’s favorite biscuits in his study and pretends not to know how they appear. He brings me accounts to look at. He listened to me about the northern venture. He stood between me and my father until the Earl could not take a single step toward me.” She paused. “He wrapped my ankle when I was foolish near that coaching inn.”

Sophia’s eyes widened. “He wrapped your ankle himself? Not the footman?”

“Yes.” Charlotte looked down at the blanket.

His hands were steady. He did not scold when he touched me. He only muttered about my inability to follow instructions.

“That is not a small thing,” Lavinia said. “That is care. Henry expresses himself poorly with words. He has always done so. You may have noticed.”

“I have,” Charlotte said. “He claims he experiences nothing. Then he looks at Ian when the boy laughs and it is all over his face.”

Lavinia smiled. “Then believe his actions. Look for his heart there. Men like Henry hide it behind ledgers and schedules. They forget that they are seen.”

Charlotte toyed with the fringe of the rug.

Look for his heart within his actions. He asked me to marry him like a business proposition. Then he kissed my hand at the altar as if it mattered more than he wished to admit. He told my father no one would take me from Sappherton. He does not treat that as a contract. He treats it as truth.

“It is difficult,” she said. “To know what is real and what is duty.”

“Duty can be real,” Lavinia replied. “But it is different from affection. Affection rearranges everything. It makes a man leave his papers to sit on the grass and watch his wife talk.”

Charlotte glanced toward Henry. He was standing now, arms folded, as Tristan gestured toward the stream. She found his profile. He was not looking at the food. He was looking at her.

Her breath caught.

There it is again. The way his gaze finds me, as if he is checking that I have not vanished.

“He watches you,” Lavinia said, very mildly.

Charlotte’s cheeks warmed. “It is not as it appears.”

“Is it not?” Lavinia raised one dark eyebrow. “Your actions and your husband’s would suggest otherwise, my dear.”

“Then perhaps I should ask him why he watches me.”

Lavinia touched her hand. “You may not need to ask. Just listen when he forgets to guard himself. It happens more often than he thinks.”

A shout interrupted them. “Charlotte! Come play!”

Ian was sprinting toward them, wooden sword held high. James trailed after, clutching a leather ball nearly as large as his head.

Lavinia sighed. “Here we are. Drafted into battle again.”

“What is it this time?” Charlotte called as Ian skidded to a halt near the blanket.

“We’re playin’ ‘Squads and Sentinels’,” Ian announced. “Tam taught me. Ye stand in a circle and pass the ball, and if ye drop it, ye’re taken prisoner by the enemy.”

“That sounds entirely unreasonable,” Tristan said, arriving with Henry at his shoulder.

“It sounds delightful,” Sophia said, already rising.

James flung the ball down and clapped. “Prisoners!”

“We shall keep the rules modest,” Lavinia said. “I am not being dragged to any imaginary gaols.”

Charlotte pushed herself up, her skirts gathered in one hand. The grass was soft. The hill sloped gently downward toward the stream, which glimmered between reeds.

“Very well,” Henry said. “We circle here. No one near the bank.”

Ian rolled his eyes. “I know where the water is, Sappherton.”

“And you will remain well away from it,” Henry replied.

They formed a rough circle on the flattest portion of the meadow. Ian took command at once, assigning roles with great seriousness.

“James is the messenger. He carries the ball. Sophia and Lavinia are sentinels. Tristan an’ Henry are captains.” He pointed at Charlotte. “Ye’re the keeper.”

“What does the keeper do?” Charlotte asked.

“Ye save folk,” Ian said. “If they drop the ball, ye run in an’ pull them out before the enemy gets them.”

“An admirable occupation,” Henry murmured.

She ignored the way the words brushed her skin.

Keeper. I am already that. For Ian. Perhaps for Henry.

The game began. James toddled from person to person, handing over the ball with solemn care. Each adult tossed it lightly to the next. Ian shouted instructions. Sophia laughed. Tristan pretended to misjudge and nearly dropped it, just to make James shriek.

Charlotte moved with the circle, her eyes on the children. The grass grew more uneven as they edged toward the lower part of the field. Henry shifted to keep the line from straying too near the stream, but excitement had taken hold.

“Throw it to Charlotte!” Ian cried. “She’s the keeper!”

James obliged, hurling the ball in her direction with more enthusiasm than skill. It veered, skidding across the grass toward the bank.

“I’ll get it!” Ian shouted, already in motion.

“Wait,” Henry called.

Ian did not wait. He ran fast, drawn by the gleam of water and the sudden appearance of a mother duck shepherding her ducklings along the shallows. James tore after him, laughing.

Charlotte’s heart lurched.

They will fall. The bank is muddy. Ian will not see it until too late.

She gathered her skirts and ran.

“Ian, stop!” she cried.

He did not. He had dropped the sword and was crouching, hands on his knees, talking to the duck as if she were an old acquaintance. James hopped at his side, trying to mimic him.

Charlotte reached the bank. The ground beneath the grass was softer than it looked. Her boot slid. Mud slicked away, and her foot slipped toward the water.

She felt herself tipping.

I am going to fall into the stream in full view of everyone.

A hand closed firmly around her waist.

She stopped, breath catching hard in her chest. Strong fingers steadied her. She felt the solid line of Henry’s arm behind her, his body a barrier between her and the stream.

“Careful,” he said quietly.

Charlotte stared at the water, then at her boot half-buried in mud.

I did not hear him come near. He followed me. He was watching.

“I had it entirely under control,” she said, though her pulse was racing.

“Of course you did,” Henry replied. His hand did not move. He pulled her gently back onto firmer ground, keeping his grip sure around her waist until her feet held.

She swallowed.

His arm is still there. His coat against my back. His breath near my neck. I am not thinking clearly.

Ian straightened and looked at them. “We werenae going in,” he said. “We were talkin’ to the ducks.”

“So I see,” Henry said. “You may continue speaking to the ducks from a safer distance.”

James pointed at the ducklings. “Babies.”

“Yes,” Charlotte said faintly. “They are very dear.”

Ian glanced at her, then at Henry. “Ye got her,” he observed.

“Yes,” Henry said. “I did.”

Ian nodded, satisfied, and turned back to the ducks.

The boys moved a step away from the edge, absorbed in their own world. Charlotte was suddenly very aware that Henry had not yet let go.

Her hand rested lightly on his forearm, fingers curling there for balance.

This is foolish. I should step away. I should thank him and return to the blanket. Instead I am standing here, held in place, unable to move.

He seemed reluctant to release her. His fingers flexed once at her waist before easing.

“Are you hurt?” he asked.

Charlotte took stock. Her boot was muddy. Her skirts bore evidence of her poor judgment. Her heart was in disarray. “No,” she said. “Perfectly intact. Only my dignity is bruised.”

“You had me worried for a moment.”

She huffed a small laugh. “You ought to save your worry for Ian and James. They are the ones intent on joining the ducks.”

“They are mobile,” Henry said. “You nearly went headlong into the stream.”

“I would have made a very dramatic splash,” she replied. “Sophia would have enjoyed it.”

“She would have screamed,” Henry said.

Charlotte turned her head slightly. His face was extremely near.

I should step back. I should say something light and move away. Why is it suddenly hard to think?

“You came after us,” she said. “I did not realize.”

“I watched you run.” His gaze held hers. “I knew the ground was treacherous. I did not intend to allow you to discover it in the worst way.”

“That sounds very dutiful,” she said.

“It was not duty,” he replied.

Her breath caught.

Not duty. Then what?

He reached up and brushed a loose curl from her face. His fingers grazed her temple. She could feel the warmth of his skin against her cheek.

Charlotte went very still. Her heart beat hard.

He is touching me in full daylight. By a stream. With Tristan and Lavinia somewhere behind us. I should move.

“Henry,” she said quietly.

“Yes.”

“You are staring,” she managed.

“I am aware,” he answered.

Her lips parted. She could not seem to find a jest to deflect him.

The boys had darted a few yards away, chasing a dragonfly. Their laughter drifted across the grass. For a brief moment, the world narrowed to Henry’s arm, his hand at her face, and the small space between them.

He leaned closer.

Charlotte did not move. She felt the slight change in distance, the new weight of his presence. Her fingers tightened on his sleeve.

This is madness. We are married and yet this feels like stepping off a cliff. Please let it be real. Not duty. Not convenience. Something else.

His mouth brushed hers.

The kiss was almost nothing. A soft, careful touch. He seemed to pause, as if giving her a chance to pull away. She did not. Her eyes fell closed. The world tilted.

Heat swept through her in a wave.

Oh. So this is what it feels like when he stops guarding himself.

His hand at her waist tightened, drawing her a fraction nearer. Her free hand found the front of his coat, gripping there, because her knees did not feel entirely trustworthy.

“Charlotte!” Ian’s shout cut across the field.

She jerked back and Henry let her go at once. They stepped apart, not quite coordinated, the space between them suddenly wide and awkward.

Ian was waving a wooden sword. “Are ye seein’ this?” he cried. “The ducks are marchin’ like soldiers!”

“Yes,” Charlotte said. Her voice came out steadier than she felt. “I see them.”

James ran in circles around Ian, chanting something about the ducklings.

Henry adjusted his coat. “We should return to the blanket,” he said.

“Of course,” Charlotte replied.

Charlotte’s feet felt oddly uncertain on the grass, as if the ground were tilting even as she walked.

What is the matter with me?

CHAPTER 29

“Iliked James,” Ian announced. “He’s wee, but he can throw.”

Charlotte made herself smile. “He did very well.”

“When will I see him again?” Ian swung his legs under the chair. “Will we go back to Evermere next week? Or will they come here, an’ I can show him the rock in the garden that looks like a cow?”

“I am not certain when we shall see them again,” Charlotte answered. She broke off a corner of toast and forgot to eat it. “Soon, I hope.”

Soon. That is sensible. Perfectly ordinary. Unlike kissing one’s husband by a stream.

Her stomach gave an odd flutter. She pressed her hand flat against the table and tried to focus on the marmalade rather than the memory of Henry’s mouth brushing hers.

“Ian,” she said carefully, “did you enjoy the game? Squads and Sentinels?”

“Aye.” He grinned. “James kept droppin’ the ball, but we didnae let the enemy get him. An’ ye near fell in the water, but Sappherton caught ye.”

She felt heat climb into her cheeks. “Yes. That was truly kind of him.”

More than kind. Closer than any kind thing has any right to be.

Footsteps sounded in the passage. Charlotte’s spine straightened on instinct. She turned her head toward the breakfast room doorway.

Then she looked back at her plate as if toast required her whole attention.

“I liked the ducks too,” Ian went on. “They marched. Did ye see?”

“I did,” she said. She had. Right before Henry’s hand had gone to her waist. Right before everything else had gone entirely strange.

Henry walked into the room.

Charlotte raised her eyes. Their gazes caught and held.

Say something. Say good morning. Say anything at all.

“Good morning,” he said.

“Good morning, Henry,” Charlotte managed.

“Good mornin’,” Ian added. “We’re talkin’ about James.”

“So I recall,” Henry replied.

He crossed to his place, each movement neat, and sat. A footman stepped forward at once with the coffee pot. Charlotte watched the dark liquid pour, watched Henry reach for the newspaper as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

It was not natural. He never read the paper at breakfast. He always spoke to Ian. He often drew Charlotte into some ridiculous argument about trade.

Today he lifted the paper like a shield.

Ian frowned. “Why are ye readin’ that now? Ye daenae read it in the mornin’.”

Henry kept his eyes on the print. “There is news I must address.”

“But ye can talk an’ read,” Ian protested. “Ye did it on the journey. Ye read letters an’ still scolded me.”

Charlotte bit the inside of her cheek.

Do not laugh. Do not make this worse.

“Today is different,” Henry said. “I have neglected the London reports. It will not take long.”

He did not look at her. Not once. Not even when she reached, somewhat blindly, for her cup and nearly upset the marmalade.

He regrets it. Or he has decided it was nothing at all. Lips touch in streams every day, apparently. Perhaps he thinks I misinterpreted him. Perhaps I did.

Ian stabbed his egg. “Ye’re bein’ dull.”

“I am being responsible,” Henry said.

Charlotte buttered the same piece of toast twice. Her hand shook.

Was it truly a kiss? It was so brief. So soft. Perhaps I imagined it. Perhaps I pressed more meaning into it than there was. Oh, this is insufferable.

Ian nudged her arm. “Charlotte, tell him he’s dull.”

“I am attempting to eat my breakfast,” she answered. The words came out thinner than she liked. “And I do not call Dukes dull at the table.”

“I do,” Ian muttered.

Henry turned a page. “You may refrain from that as well.”

Silence settled over the table, broken only by the rattle of china and Ian’s occasional sighs. Charlotte stared at her untouched toast.

If he wishes to pretend nothing occurred, I can do the same. I am entirely capable of pretense. I did it for years.

Her stomach fluttered again at the lie.

Henry saw them before they saw him.

He had come out of his study with a file in hand, intent on the steward. The corridor stretched long and straight to the main staircase. At the far end, Charlotte and Ian were walking side by side.

Ian was talking with his whole body, arms waving, head bobbing. Charlotte listened, head bent toward him, her hand resting lightly on his shoulder.

Henry stopped.

Turn back. Go the other way. There is another route to the morning room. No one will know.

Charlotte lifted her head. She saw him.

She stopped too.

They faced each other down the length of the corridor like two generals who had not prepared for this particular battle.

Her lips parted. He saw it even in the distance. She looked as if she were going to speak.

Then she closed her mouth again, the line of it tightening. Her hand dropped from Ian’s shoulder.

Ian squinted. “Are ye stuck?” he called.

Charlotte cleared her throat. “No. We are not stuck.”

Henry’s fingers tightened around the file.

For heaven’s sake. This is absurd. She is my wife. We have shared a bedchamber while traveling and a carriage. I cannot be brought to a standstill by the sight of her in a corridor.

He made himself take a step forward.

Charlotte took a small step too. Then she seemed to think better of it. She turned, put a hand on Ian’s shoulder again, and steered him in the opposite direction.

“We are going this way,” she said.

Ian dug in his heels. “But the library’s that way. Ye said we were goin’ to the library.”

“You need more sunshine,” Charlotte said briskly.

“We just came from the gardens,” Ian objected. “Ye said I was as brown as a nut.”

“That is why you may grow even more brown,” she replied. “Variety, Ian.”

Henry stopped again and pinched the bridge of his nose.

This is ridiculous. She is avoiding me. Turning entire routes about simply not to speak to me. I kissed her once, and now she is fleeing down corridors. Well done, Sappherton. You have managed to terrify your own wife.

Ian had twisted around. “Henry, are ye comin’ to the sunshine too?”

Henry lowered his hand. “I have business.”

Ian scowled. “Ye always have business.”

Charlotte kept walking, her grip gentle but firm on the boy’s shoulder. She did not look back.

Henry watched them go, his chest tight.

She disliked it. She must have. Or she would not be pulling Ian about like a pawn on a chessboard to avoid passing me in a hall.

He should not have touched her. He should not have kissed her. And he certainly should not be thinking about that kiss every hour since it happened.

* * *

“Will ye read to me afore bed?” Ian asked.

Dinner had just ended. The candles were still bright. The servants moved quietly along the walls, clearing plates. Henry’s wine sat untouched.

“Of course we will,” Charlotte said. She folded her napkin. “We always do.”

Ian looked at Henry. “Both o’ ye.”

Henry set down his glass. “If you wish it.”

“I do,” Ian said. He slid off his chair. “Come on. If we wait, your nurserymaid, Miss. Holt will say it’s too late.”

Henry rose. Charlotte did the same. Their gazes crossed for a fleeting second.

Do not think of streams. Do not think of kisses. Think of nursery stories. There are dragons. Dragons are safe.

They walked up to the nursery together, Ian in the lead, clutching his toy soldier. Charlotte kept a small distance between herself and Henry, enough to be proper, and enough to make him acutely aware of it.

In Ian’s chamber, the fire burned low. Toys were scattered across the rug in a line only Ian understood. Charlotte went straight to the wardrobe.

“Nightshirt,” she said. “Come here.”

Ian wriggled out of his jacket and raced toward her. “Tell the story about the pirate again.”

“We shall see,” Charlotte replied. She pulled the nightshirt over his head, smoothing it down. “It depends on whether you get into bed without argument.”

“I never argue,” he said, indignant.

Henry stared into the fire.

Do not look at her. There is no need to watch her tie the ribbon on his nightshirt. You have seen nightshirts before. This is nothing new.

He looked anyway when she laughed.

Ian scrambled into bed and burrowed under the covers. “Ye have to get in too,” he said. “One on each side. Like a fort.”

Charlotte glanced at Henry. “I do not think that is quite necessary.”

“It is entirely necessary,” Ian said. “Else the dragons get in.”

Henry cleared his throat. “Very well.”

He removed his coat and laid it over the back of a chair. The bed was not made to accommodate a duke, a boy, and a duchess. He managed to fit himself on the edge, shoulder against the headboard, careful not to jostle Ian.

Charlotte climbed in on the other side, skirts tucked, her shoulder making the smallest contact with the boy’s.

Henry could smell her scent at once. Roses. Not heavy. Just there.

Of course she wears rose water. Half the ladies in London wear it. This is nothing unusual. Except it is. Because it is on her skin. Because it is inches from your own.

Ian sighed contentedly. “This is better.”

Charlotte reached for the storybook on the table. “Which one tonight?”

“The ship one,” Ian said. “Wi’ the storm.”

She picked up the book and leaned across to hand it to Henry. Their fingers brushed.

Both of them pulled back too fast. The book slipped.

It landed squarely on Ian’s stomach.

He sat up a little and stared at them. “What are ye doin’?”

Charlotte forced a smile. “We are merely clumsy this evening.”

Henry retrieved the book. “It appears so.”

Ian looked from one side of the bed to the other. “Ye’ve been strange all day.”

Charlotte smoothed the blanket. “Have we?”

“Aye,” Ian said. “Ye didnae talk at breakfast. Ye turned round in the corridor like ye were avoidin’ him. An’ now ye’re droppin’ books on me. Has there been a quarrel?”

“There has been no quarrel,” Charlotte said quickly. “Your guardian and I are simply…tired.”

“Ye daenae look tired,” Ian replied.

Henry opened the book. “The sooner I begin, the sooner you will sleep, and then you will care very little whether we look tired or not.”

Ian made a face. “That’s true.”

Charlotte settled back against the pillows. Henry started to read.

The words came haltingly at first. His mind was not on the storm or the brave sailor or the ship that refused to sink. It kept sliding toward the warmth of Charlotte at his side. The faint brush of her sleeve against his arm when she shifted. The rise and fall of her breathing as she listened.

This is lunacy. You are a grown man. You have addressed Parliament. You have negotiated with men twice your age. You should not be undone by the sound of your wife breathing.

The rhythm of the story took hold at last. Ian’s eyelids drooped. His head settled more heavily into the pillow.

By the third page, his grip on the toy soldier had loosened. By the fifth, his soft snores cut through Henry’s sentence.

“He is asleep,” Charlotte whispered.

Henry closed the book. “Yes.”

He eased himself out of the bed with care. The mattress dipped, then stilled. Charlotte slipped free on her side, moving with the kind of quiet that comes only from practice.

Ian did not stir.

Henry set the book on the small table. He kept his eyes on the cover, tracing the worn edge with his thumb.

Do not look at her. Do not say anything. Leave. It will be safer if you leave.

He turned toward the door.

A soft knock came.

He stopped and glanced at Charlotte. She had frozen near the foot of the bed.

Henry crossed to the door and opened it.

Mr. Gedge stood in the corridor, a folded paper on a tray. “Forgive the interruption, Your Grace. This was delivered at once from Scotland. The rider said it was urgent.”

Henry’s stomach tightened. “Thank you.”

He took the paper directly from the tray. The seal bore the mark of Nathan’s solicitor.

Charlotte had come to stand just behind him. He could feel her nearness like heat.

His fingers were not as steady as he wished when he broke the seal.

He unfolded the note and read.

Nathan and Eleanor Drummond have been found alive.

Henry read the line again.

Alive.

The words sat on the page, simple and impossible.

Alive. After all this time. After every letter. Every search. Every plan made on the assumption that they were gone. Alive.

It sounded almost too impossible to believe.

CHAPTER 30

“They’re comin’ now, arenae they?” Ian hopped in front of the drawing room window. “Is that one of them?”

Charlotte looked up from the sofa. “You must give the carriage a chance to stop, Ian. If it does not stop here, it cannot be your parents’.”

The carriage rolled past. Ian groaned. “That one didnae stop. What about that one?” He pointed again. “It’s grand. Maybe that’s them.”

“Watch the gate,” she said. “If it comes in, then we shall know.”

Four days of this. I cannot remember the last time I watched a road this closely. My own heart jumps every time a horse passes.

Another carriage rattled along the street. Ian pressed his nose to the glass. “Is that them? It looks like them. It has their colors.”

Charlotte folded her hands in her lap. “Wait, Ian. If it does not stop, it cannot be them.”

The carriage slowed.

“It’s stoppin’,” Ian yelped. “It stopped!”

“Ian, wait⁠—”

He was already gone, the drawing room door banging against the wall.

“They’re here!” he shouted down the corridor.

Charlotte sprang up and ran after him. Her skirts caught a little on the carpet.

Mr. Gedge will have apoplexy. Ian will be out of the house before the door is fully open.

She reached the hall as Mr. Gedge swung open the front door.

Ian tore outside and straight into his father’s arms.

Nathan caught him at once, lifting him off the ground. He was a tall, broad-shouldered man, bearing the same deep, dark eyes and quiet intensity that Ian had inherited, though his features were now sharply weathered by weeks of hardship and exposure. “There ye are,” he said. He turned in a quick circle with the boy in his arms. “Look at ye. Ye’re twice the size ye were.”

Ian wrapped his arms around his neck. “Ye’re alive,” he said. “Ye’re really alive.”

Eleanor stepped closer. She was slender and pale-faced, with dark hair slipping from its pins around a travel-weary yet radiant face, her right arm lay in a sling against her body, but her left went around both of them at once, drawing them together in a fierce embrace.

“Me clever boy,” she said. “Let me look at you.”

Charlotte stopped in the doorway. Her fingers curled around the jamb.

They are real. Not ink in a letter. Not names spoken in a quiet room. Moving. Laughing. Holding him. He is theirs, and they are his.

Footsteps sounded behind her. Heavy. Quick.

Henry came up to her shoulder and went past her at once.

“Nathan,” he called.

Nathan set Ian on his feet and turned. His face broke into a wide grin. “Henry.”

The cousins clasped each other hard. Nathan slapped Henry’s shoulder. Charlotte saw their heads bend together for a moment and looked away.

They needed this. All of them. We have been living in a half-world, waiting for an answer that never came.

Henry moved to Eleanor. “Eleanor.”

She smiled. “Henry.”

He took her left hand, careful of the sling on the other arm, and bowed over it, kissing her knuckles. “You have cost me years of my life,” he said.

“I will repay ye somehow,” she said. “When I’m allowed to carry a tray again.”

A laugh caught in Charlotte’s throat. She swallowed it back and stepped down from the doorway when Henry turned toward her.

“This is my wife,” he said. “Charlotte. Duchess of Sappherton.”

Nathan stared. Eleanor’s brows rose.

Yes. That sounds as strange as it did the first time I heard it.

Nathan bowed, caught Charlotte’s hand, and kissed it. “Is the world endin’?” he asked. “How in the name of all sanity did Henry Kingswell get married?”

Charlotte’s lips curved. “He asked,” she said. “I answered.”

Henry made a small sound that might have been a cough. “It is a longer story than I intend to tell on the doorstep,” he said.

Eleanor took Charlotte’s fingers gently. “I am very glad of ye already,” she said. “I can see what you’ve done.”

Charlotte squeezed her hand. “We are very glad of you.”

Ian darted between them. “Henry an’ Charlotte made me a cake,” he told his parents. “An’ there was a hunt in the garden with toys, an’ they brought Tam.”

Nathan blinked. “Tam?”

“Aye,” Ian said.

Henry cleared his throat. “We should go inside,” he said. “Mr. Gedge, tea in the drawing room.”

“At once, Your Grace,” Mr. Gedge replied.

They moved into the hall. Footmen converged to take coats, trunks, and bags. Charlotte led the way toward the drawing room, her pulse still racing.

Eleanor walked with care, Nathan close to her side, his hand hovering near her elbow. Charlotte watched them from the corner of her eye.

They move like people still listening for thunder.

In the drawing room, she indicated the sofa. “Please sit.”

Nathan sank down with a sigh. Eleanor followed more slowly, her sling carefully settled. Ian scrambled up between them, plastering himself against Eleanor’s good side.

“Ye have grown,” Nathan said. He touched Ian’s hair. “What have ye been doin’ here all this time?”

“I’ve been busy,” Ian said. “Charlotte made the house less dull. We moved the chairs. Mrs. Wick said it was scandalous. An’ there’s a dragon in the hedge, but Henry says it’s a topiary.”

Charlotte sat opposite, hands linked loosely in her lap.

I did move chairs. I did annoy Mrs. Wick. I would do it again.

Ian turned to his parents, eager. “On me birthday, they hid toys in the garden,” he said. “Ye ken, so I had to find them. There was a box full of soldiers with red coats, and a ship, and a spyglass. And then Tam came.”

Eleanor’s face softened. “Tell me more about Tam. Has he grown bigger?”

“Oh, yes!” Ian bounced. “Still got the white patch on his nose. He still runs fast. Henry said I couldnae gallop yet, but I did anyway when he wasnae lookin’.”

Nathan shot Charlotte a look and then Henry. Charlotte lifted a shoulder. “I tried to dissuade him,” she said. “Ian is not easily dissuaded.”

“He never has been,” Eleanor said. Her gaze lifted to Charlotte. “Ye took very good care of him,” she said. “I can hear it.”

Charlotte felt her throat tighten. “He took very good care of us,” she said.

He made this house into something alive. I will not say that aloud. It would sound as if I am complaining.

Tea arrived, carried in on two trays. Mr. Gedge supervised. Charlotte rose at once, grateful for something to do.

She moved to the table. “Milk?” she asked Eleanor. “Sugar?”

“Both, please,” Eleanor said.

Charlotte poured and passed cups, the familiar motions steadying her hands. Nathan watched Henry as he took his own cup.

“How did ye manage all this?” Nathan asked. “A wife, a ward, an’ a household that looks like it’s actually breathin’?”

Henry sat forward. “It began⁠—”

Charlotte cleared her throat. He glanced at her. She looked at Ian, who was already sliding off the sofa in his eagerness.

“Perhaps Ian would like to show his parents Tam?” Henry read her meaning at once.

We should not speak of all the details with Ian present.

Henry set down his cup. “Ian,” he said. “Go to the stables. Ask the groom to help you prepare Tam. He must be presented properly to your parents.”

Ian nearly tripped over the rug in his haste. “I’ll make him ready,” he promised. “He’ll look grand.”

“Walk,” Henry said.

Ian slowed his step only a little. “Tam!” his voice echoed down the hall. “We’re comin’!”

When the door closed behind him, the room felt smaller.

Henry’s gaze returned to Nathan. “Tell me,” he said. “What happened?”

Nathan ran a hand through his hair. “We were on the north road,” he said. “Nae the usual one. I wanted to show Eleanor a view ye can only see from a particular ridge.”

Eleanor made a face. “Ye can see it fine from the safer road,” she said.

Charlotte watched them, her fingers tightening around the teapot.

Of course he wanted a view. Henry would call it folly. I call it something else. They lived the story I used to dream and nearly died for it.

“The storm came quicker than the shepherds said,” Nathan went on. “Rain ye wouldnae believe. The river swelled. The road crumbled under the wheels.”

“The carriage went down,” Eleanor said quietly. “We were still in it. It struck a rock. I broke my arm. Nathan’s head met something harder than it is.”

Nathan gave a rueful snort. “I woke with crofters lookin’ down at me. They live far off. Nay town. Nay post. Nothin' but sheep and stubbornness.”

“The storms kept them in,” Eleanor said. “Nay one was travelin'. Nay one could reach a village. We lay there for weeks, getting' better while the world went on without us.”

Charlotte pictured it, the small house on a hill, rain on a slate roof, a boy in England wondering when his parents would return. Her stomach turned.

Their story proved that the shepherd Henry and Charlotte had questioned was wrong. Besides, he’d been into his cups that night and his story should not have been relied upon.

“When I could stand without seein’ three of everythin',” Nathan said, “we made it to a town. First thing we saw was a notice.” He looked at Henry. “Drummond. Deceased. Wife also. I nearly threw it in the fire.”

Henry’s jaw tightened. Charlotte saw his hand whiten around his cup.

“We had no word,” he said. “Only rumors. Only the carriage. Nothing more.”

“I know,” Nathan said. “That’s why we sent the rider at once. Ye deserved to ken as soon as we did.”

Teacups clinked softly as everyone settled more firmly. Charlotte passed Henry his second cup without comment.

He looks steadier now.

Eleanor lifted her cup with her good hand. “My arm will mend,” she said. “Nathan’s head is as bad as ever but we are lucky.”

Nathan snorted. “We are stubborn. That’s more likely.”

Charlotte let herself smile. The room felt warmer. For a moment, the terror of the last months receded.

Ian burst back in. “Tam's ready!” he announced. “His mane’s brushed an’ he's standin’ straight. Ye have to see him now.”

Eleanor smiled. “We shall see him,” she said. “But first, come and have tea. Ye have been runnin' about, and I must make sure ye are eatin'.”

Ian groaned. “Tea first?”

“Yes,” Eleanor said. She patted the sofa. “Come sit.”

He obeyed, climbing up between them again. Charlotte watched him settle and felt something twist inside.

He is back where he belongs. This is what we wanted. So why does my chest feel like this?

She poured another cup and tried to ignore the ache.

* * *

“Ye have to kiss me forehead,” Ian said.

Henry stood near the doorframe, watching. Charlotte sat on the edge of the bed, smoothing the blanket over Ian’s legs.

“Do I?” she asked.

“Aye,” Ian said. “Ye did it afore, when ye said goodnight, an’ ye have to do it now. It keeps the dragon dreams away.”

Henry’s hand curled around the wood of the frame.

Of course she kisses his forehead. Of course he accepts that as the surest guard against dragons.

Charlotte smiled and leaned in, pressing her lips lightly to Ian’s brow. “Goodnight,” she said. “Sleep well.”

Ian sighed and settled deeper into the pillow. “Ye’ll be here in the mornin’?” he asked, eyes already drooping.

“We are nae leavin',” Eleanor said. She sat on the far side of the bed, her sling supported by a small cushion. Nathan stood just behind her, one hand resting on her shoulder.

Henry felt the words settle.

They are not leaving. That is the point. That is what this has all been for.

He watched Charlotte straighten. She moved toward the door and toward him. When she came close, her shoulder passed within inches of his chest, and for a moment her eyes met his. They held.

Say you are glad. Say you are relieved. Say you are exhausted. Any of those would be true.

She said nothing. Then she brushed past him and stepped into the corridor.

Nathan chuckled quietly. “We’ve lost him already,” he said, looking down at Ian’s slack hand on the blanket. “He’s asleep.”

Eleanor’s fingers lay gently on Ian’s arm. “He’s happy,” she said.

Henry stayed where he was. He watched them together, a small knot at the center of the room. Ian’s head turned slightly toward Eleanor even in sleep. Nathan’s shoulders sloped, his entire attention on the child between them.

This is right. This is exactly what should be. Ian with his parents. A family restored. No more guardianship letters about stable roofs and haylofts and tutors fleeing in terror.

Henry did not feel the calm he had expected. Instead, he felt strangely bereft.

Ian will not need you now, a voice in his thoughts said. Not in the same way.

He would not be the one Ian called for in the night, nor the person the boy looked for in the morning. He had been standing in for Nathan, and that need had returned to where it belonged.

The thought moved further.

And the reasons for your marriage no longer exist.

Nothing remained to justify Charlotte’s presence. There was no scandal to manage, and no practical argument that required his wife at his side. Only Charlotte herself was left along with what he felt for her.

His heart began to pound, and he felt slightly unsteady.

CHAPTER 31

“I’ve been thinking we ought to⁠—”

Henry pushed the drawing room door open still speaking, but then he stopped.

Charlotte was standing on a footstool near the far window with both arms raised and fingers stretching for a tall vase on the upper shelf. Her back was to him. One heel had lifted slightly off the stool, and the whole arrangement looked deeply precarious.

He crossed the room. Her balance wavered, and his hands found her waist. They both went completely still. Then the vase slid from the shelf and hit the carpet with a dull, anticlimactic thud.

Neither of them looked at it.

“I’ve been thinking we ought to host a dinner,” Henry said. His hands were still on her ribs. He could feel her breathing. “For Nathan. We should seem⁠—”

“Happy?” Charlotte supplied. Her voice was entirely even. Which was impressive, given the circumstances.

“Content,” he corrected.

His thumbs pressed in. Just slightly. Then he released her and took a step back, as if the whole thing had been entirely routine.

Charlotte looked down at the vase on the carpet. “Well,” she said. “That is one way to redecorate.”

“The vase is undamaged.”

“You sound almost disappointed.”

He reached down and picked it up. He set it on the side table rather than back on the high shelf because whatever had just happened, there was no reason to invite a repeat. He looked at her. She was still on the stool. She had not descended.

“Why,” he said, stepping closer, “are you standing on a wobbly stool instead of letting the maids handle it?”

She blinked. “Because the upper vase needed filling.”

“Mrs. Ellison manages this household with considerable competence. There are also, to my knowledge, at least three maids whose positions do not require you to risk a broken ankle.”

“I am not going to break my ankle.” She stepped down from the stool, gathering the stems she had set on the side table. “I wanted to do it myself.”

“You wanted to climb household furniture.”

“Is that bewildering?”

“It is unnecessary.”

“Most pleasant things are.” She moved to the mantel and began placing stems with a care that suggested she had done this many times and found it genuinely satisfying. “It keeps me occupied. There is not—" She paused. Her hands kept moving, but her shoulders tightened. “There is not as much to do now that Ian no longer needs me.”

She said it lightly, but she was looking at the flowers when she said it, not at him. Henry watched her.

There was nothing dramatic about the sadness. It sat quietly in the line of her back, in the slight turn of her head.

He had stood in a stable doorway ten days ago and understood, all at once, that he had not meant to care this much. He had been doing something similar ever since.

“He still needs you,” Henry said.

Charlotte set a stem down. She turned to look at him. “He has his parents back,” she said. “He should need them. That was the point.” She smiled, and it was the other smile, the one she deployed when she did not want you to notice the one underneath it. “I am not complaining. I am glad.”

“I know that.”

“Good.”

“Charlotte.”

She looked at him.

“The sadness is allowed,” he said. “It does not contradict the gladness.”

She was quiet for a moment.

“You sound like me,” she said.

“Do I?”

“When you told me guilt borrows from the present.” She turned back to the flowers. “I did not enjoy being on the receiving end of that.”

“No,” Henry agreed. “I suspect not.”

She arranged the last stem and stood back to look at the result. He stood where he was. She had stepped down from the stool, but he had not stepped back, and the distance between them was rather less than was strictly necessary for a conversation about flowers.

He was aware of it. She was almost certainly aware of it. Neither of them addressed it.

“A dinner,” Charlotte said at last. “How many?”

“Tristan and Lavinia. Nathan and Eleanor, of course.” Henry looked at the flowers. They were, he noted, extremely well arranged. “Perhaps Lavinia’s sister, Frances and her husband Alexander, if they can make the journey.”

“Friday would give us enough time to write.”

“Friday, then.”

She nodded. She turned back to the mantel, making some small adjustment to a stem that did not look to him like it required any adjustment at all. “You should host it,” she said. “Formally. Nathan will enjoy being toasted.”

“He will enjoy it entirely too much.”

She laughed, short and real. “Yes. He will.”

He wanted, very much, to take the stem out of her hand and set it down. He wanted to turn her toward him and say something plain and unguarded, the way she said things to him, without the careful architecture of duty and practicality holding it all in place.

He did not.

She did not turn, and he did not reach, and the drawing room stayed exactly as it was: a vase on the side table instead of the high shelf, a faint smell of crushed leaves from where the stems had been trimmed, and two people standing close enough to feel the warmth of each other without touching.

“I will have Mrs. Ellison write up the menus,” Charlotte said.

“Good.”

“And you will write the toast.”

“I will write the toast.”

She gave him a sideways look. “It should be warm.”

“I am capable of warmth.”

“In a toast?”

“Charlotte.”

“I am simply noting,” she said. “For accuracy.”

He looked at her. She looked back. Her chin was lifted the smallest degree, and there was a gleam her eyes that was not quite amusement and not quite challenging.

“Friday,” he said.

“Friday,” she agreed.

He picked up the footstool and set it against the wall where it could not be climbed on by anyone. Charlotte watched him do it with an expression that suggested she found this entirely reasonable and somewhat funny in equal measure. She did not say so.

He left the drawing room.

He did not look back.

* * *

Something small hit Charlotte’s ankle.

She looked under the table. James was sitting on the carpet between her chair and Nathan’s, arranging what appeared to be an especially important row of bread rolls. Ian knelt beside him, directing operations.

“They’re not for eatin’,” Ian told James. “They’re a fort.”

James nodded, solemn, and placed another roll.

Charlotte straightened and reached for her wine. “Your son,” she told Lavinia, “is building fortifications under the dining table.”

“He builds them everywhere,” Lavinia said. “Last week it was the conservatory.”

“Bread will go stale,” Nathan remarked.

“The fortress will hold until pudding,” Tristan said. “I have complete confidence.”

The table laughed. It was that kind of evening—easy and generous, the fire burning well, the food excellent, everyone glad to be in the same room. Nathan was on his best form, which meant he was currently embroiled in a story about a Highlander, a missing sheep, and a disputed boundary wall that had Lavinia pressing her napkin to her mouth. Eleanor listened with a smile, as if she had heard this story before and found it funnier every time.

Charlotte was glad about all of it. She was genuinely pleased. She watched Nathan and Eleanor and felt the weight of the last months lift a degree. They were here. They were whole. That was the thing she had wanted, and it had happened.

She was also aware, the way she was always aware lately, of Henry at the head of the table.

He had been very correct all evening. Attentive host, engaged in conversation, generous with the wine. He had asked Eleanor twice about her arm and had spoken to Nathan at some length about the estate. He had been, in every observable way, perfectly fine.

It was the not-quite-fine underneath that Charlotte kept catching.

A fork on his plate, set down without purpose. A pause in conversation he filled with the wrong word. The way he looked at Ian, once, when the boy’s laugh came up from under the table, and then immediately looked away.

She knew that look. She had worn it herself all afternoon.

Nathan was winding down his story. The table had found its rhythm again, that warm back-and-forth of people who have been through something difficult together and arrived on the other side.

Henry pushed back his chair, rose, and lifted his glass. Charlotte’s attention sharpened. “Nathan and Eleanor,” he began. “I am most relieved that you are safe and back with us. I wish you health and prosperity.”

Nathan and Eleanor beamed. Then Henry turned to Charlotte. He meant to be brief but somehow diverted, and she could see it. The set of his shoulders, the slight intake of breath… it was supposed to be the kind of toast that concluded things neatly.

His gaze lingered on her, and she felt heat flood her cheeks. His brows furrowed. She did not know what to make of his expression, but it was not the carefully arranged one he wore for dinner parties.

“To finding your way home,” he said, “even when you didn’t know you were lost.”

The table went quiet.

Charlotte’s hand tightened on her stemware. The crystal was cold. She could feel the trembling start at her fingers and try to travel upward, and she pressed down hard to stop it.

Nathan’s brows had risen. He was looking at Henry, and beside him, Eleanor had gone very still.

Tristan lifted his wine and put it to his lips and did not drink. His shoulders were shaking to the smallest degree.

Lavinia was watching Charlotte.

Charlotte did not look at her. She looked at Henry.

What does that mean? She turned the words over. To finding your way home. Is he saying I have found mine? Is this home? Or is he saying—that he found his way back? To himself. To Nathan. To the life the accident interrupted.

Or is he telling me that I should find my own way home to something that is not this?

The silence stretched. Two seconds. Three.

She lifted her glass.

“To family,” she said.

Too quickly. Too bright. She heard herself say it and knew, even as the words left her mouth, that her tone was wrong. She sounded like she did at Ashford when she was managing her father’s drawing room. Smooth and hollow and slightly too fast.

Henry sat down.

Everyone drank. The moment broke into ordinary sounds again, the clink of glass, Nathan reaching to refill Eleanor’s water, James handing a bread roll up through the legs of his chair.

“That,” Tristan said, into a general murmur, “was rather amusing.”

“It was a toast,” Henry said.

“Hmm.” Tristan’s eyes moved between them. “Was it?”

“Have some wine, Tristan,” Charlotte said.

“I have wine. I am thoroughly supplied.” He was still smiling into his glass. “Nathan, how are the roads north this time of year?”

Nathan, bless him, took the subject and ran with it. Eleanor joined in. The conversation reformed around them all, warm and purposeful, and Charlotte sat inside it, smiled at the right moments, and turned the toast over and over in her mind like a stone she could not put down.

Even when you did not know you were lost.

Did she look lost to him? Had she always looked lost to him? Was that what this was—not feeling, not longing, but Henry Kingswell doing what the Duke of Sappherton did, which was to identify a problem and construct a solution? She had been the solution. Perhaps he had simply made a toast about it.

She was aware she was being an idiot.

She was not sure she could stop.

“Charlotte,” Eleanor said, low, meant only for her. “The soup was extraordinary.”

Charlotte turned, grateful. “Cook will be so pleased. She’s been terrifying the kitchen staff since Tuesday.”

“Tell me she makes pudding.”

“She does. Three kinds, because Ian made a formal petition.”

Eleanor laughed. Under the table, the bread roll fort made a structural noise and James mumbled something incomprehensible.

The meal continued. Charlotte continued inside it. She filled her glass again when Nathan reached for the decanter and she deflected Lavinia’s one careful look with a smile that she suspected did not convince either of them.

At the other end of the table, Henry answered Tristan’s question about the northern route and did not look at her again.

She told herself that it was better.

The candles burned down slowly. Ian and James were retrieved from under the table when the pudding arrived, both red-cheeked and full of extremely vital information about bread architecture. Ian climbed into his chair and looked down the table at Henry.

“Was that a good toast?” Ian asked.

The table stilled.

“Yes,” Nathan said, after a beat. “It was.”

Ian considered this. “Mine would’ve been shorter,” he said. “I would’ve just said ‘good, ye’re back’.”

Nathan laughed, loud and warm. The table followed. Charlotte laughed too. The sound came out easier than she expected, and she was grateful for it. She let it carry her through the rest of the pudding, the leave-taking, and the moment when Nathan shook Henry’s hand in the hall and said something quiet that made Henry look at the floor.

She did not hear what it was.

She was already in the corridor, walking toward the stairs, turning the toast over one more time.

Even when you didn’t know you were lost.

* * *

The house was quiet.

Charlotte lay in the dark and stared at the ceiling, She thought about the toast, which was still sitting somewhere in her chest like a small stone she could not cough up or swallow.

Even when you didn’t know you were lost.

She had been turning it over for two hours. She was no closer to understanding it than she had been at the table. She understood Henry’s accounts. She understood his silences. She had learned, slowly and at some cost to her dignity, to read the things he did not say. But this had been a thing he did say, plainly, in front of everyone, and she still did not know what he meant by it.

She pushed back the covers and got up.

She did not go toward the library. She did not go downstairs. She went up.

The nursery corridor was dark, only a thin wash of moonlight coming through the window at the far end. She moved quietly, her hand trailing the wall. She was not sure she had decided to come here. She had simply found herself walking in this direction, the way she always did when she could not sleep, drawn by the room at the end of the hall like a habit she had not noticed herself forming.

She turned the corner.

Henry was there.

He was standing outside Ian’s door. Still dressed. His coat was on, but barely—jacket open, no cravat, his hands loose at his sides. He was looking at nothing in particular. He turned when he heard her step.

They looked at each other.

Neither spoke.

The moonlight was thin and grey, and in it, the sharp, composed lines of his face had gone softer. He looked tired. He looked like a man who had also been lying in the dark not sleeping, which she found, in a quiet and entirely unhelpful way, rather a comfort.

She came to stand beside him. Not close. Just near. Two people in a hallway, both of them pretending they had not come here for the same reason.

“He talked in his sleep,” Henry said.

His voice was incredibly low. She leaned slightly toward it.

“About the stream,” he continued. “And the fish we never caught.”

Charlotte looked at the door. She could picture it perfectly: Ian tucked under his blanket, the wooden horse somewhere near his pillow, his face doing the small, complicated work of a sleeping child.

Henry’s breath came out softly. Not quite a laugh. But almost. “He was arguing with someone about it,” he said. “Quite firmly. Apparently, the fish were enormous and were simply choosing not to cooperate.”

Charlotte pressed her lips together. “That sounds right.”

A small silence.

“He’ll forget,” Henry said. “When he returns to Scotland. He’ll forget the stream. The fish. The birthday hunt.” He paused. “Children forget.”

“Will he?”

She had not meant to say it like that. It came out lower than she intended. She was already closer to him than she’d realized, one step toward the door, toward the sound of Henry’s voice in the quiet.

In the dim light, his face was not hiding anything. He looked simply like himself—stripped of the careful architecture, the controlled expression, the practiced authority. He looked tired, fond, and sad, and she had to direct her attention back to the door because looking at him like that was not safe.

“I’ll miss him,” she said. “I know I shouldn’t say it. I know our arrangement was never meant to be permanent. I know he belongs with Nathan and Eleanor, and I am glad for that, I am entirely glad, but I will miss him until it⁠—”

She stopped.

She pressed her mouth closed and shook her head once.

Until it what? She did not know how to finish that. Until it stops? It would not stop. Until I find somewhere else to put it? She had nowhere else.

She did not know why she had said it at all. That was not entirely true. She knew exactly why. She had said it because she was standing in the dark two feet from Henry and she was still turning over his toast and some small, reckless part of her had hoped that if she said something open and unguarded, he would answer with something equally unguarded in return. That he would ask her to stay. Not because Ian needed her. Not because the marriage required managing. Simply because he wanted her there.

She wanted the kiss to mean something. She wanted to know that he had felt it too, that soft, terrifying collision by the stream, that he thought about it at odd moments the way she did. She wanted to be seen.

He was looking at her.

Really looking. The way he had at the dinner table, that still, intent attention that felt like being read. She stood inside it and did not move and let him look, because she had nothing left to hide and little dignity to lose.

Ask me to stay.

She did not say it.

Say it means something. Say it was not duty. Say the toast was for me.

The silence stretched.

“I will miss him, too,” Henry said. The words were barely audible. Just breath, almost, the faintest edge of voice.

From inside the nursery, Ian murmured. Something about the fish, probably.

Henry turned his head toward the door. Then he looked back at Charlotte. His expression was unreadable now—locked again with all the stripped-back honesty folded away somewhere she could not reach.

“Good night, Charlotte,” he said and walked past her.

His shoulder nearly grazed hers. Nearly. Charlotte stood and did not move. She closed her eyes. Her fingers curled tight, the nails biting against her palms.

Don’t. She told herself. Don’t care. Not now. She breathed as evenly as she could.

Not ever.

CHAPTER 32

“Ye’ve given us back our boy,” Nathan said. “I daenae ken how to thank ye for that.”

Henry stood at the foot of the steps, watching the carriage being readied. “You might begin by getting in the carriage on time,” he said.

Nathan laughed. “Aye, that too. But truly, Henry. Ye can have yer old life back now.”

Henry’s fingers tightened behind his back.

My old life. Ledgers. Silence. No dragons in the nursery. No wooden swords in the corridors. Do I want it?

Ian bounded across the gravel. Charlotte had crouched in front of him, her skirts pooling, bonnet ribbons loose. Her arms were already open.

“I daenae want to go,” Ian said. He threw himself on her neck. “I like it here.”

Charlotte wrapped him close. “You are going home,” she said. “Home is worth liking too.”

Henry saw the way her shoulders strained as she held the boy.

She has spent months making him laugh. And now she has to let him go.

Ian pulled back, eyes bright and wet. “I’ll come back,” he said. “Soon. I promise. As soon as Da says.”

“I shall hold you to that,” Charlotte replied. “Though I may beat you to it and visit you first.”

“Nay, I’ll come first,” Ian insisted. “I’ll come all the way with Tam.”

Charlotte smiled. “Then I shall be waiting for both of you.”

Ian sniffed, then gave a watery smile. “I’m glad to be goin’ home, though,” he admitted. “But I’ll miss Sappherton.”

“We shall miss you,” Charlotte said.

Henry felt something twist under his ribs.

We shall miss you. She is including me.

Ian turned toward Henry and marched across the gravel. “Ye have to hug me,” he said.

“That sounds like an order,” Henry replied.

Ian held out his arms.

Henry crouched and pulled him in. The boy’s small arms wrapped around his neck.

“I’ll write,” Ian said against his shoulder. “About dragons. An’ sheep. An’ if Da falls off his horse again.”

“That will make valuable reading,” Henry said.

“Ye have to visit,” Ian added. “Ye promised afore. Ye cannae take it back.”

Henry’s throat felt tight. “I will come,” he said.

I would come even if I had to walk.

He rose and turned to Eleanor. “Allow me.”

He offered his arm and helped her into the carriage, careful of the sling. Ian hopped in after her, squeezing past to claim the seat at her side.

Nathan clapped Henry’s shoulder again. “Write often,” he said. “Else I’ll think ye’ve forgotten us.”

Henry’s mouth curved. “I doubt anyone could forget you.”

Nathan climbed in. The door closed with a solid click. Mr. Gedge signaled the driver.

Henry stepped back.

Charlotte moved to stand beside him as the carriage jolted forward. Ian’s face appeared at the window; hands pressed to the glass. Eleanor’s profile, Nathan’s hat, all fit in one crowded frame.

They watched until the carriage turned out through the gates and vanished down the lane.

For a moment, the drive was quiet.

Charlotte turned at last. Henry caught the small movement of her hand toward her face, the white scrap of a handkerchief, the quick dab at her eyes.

His heart twisted.

Go to her. She has just given up a child. She has earned comfort if anyone has.

His feet did not move.

What if she does not want comfort from me? What if she would prefer it from someone whose marriage did not begin as an arrangement drawn on paper? She deserves more than a man still trying to decide whether to keep his own heart involved.

She tucked the handkerchief away and walked toward the house.

Henry followed after a moment. The hall door closed behind them.

Sappherton House felt empty.

* * *

“His Grace shan’t be joining you tonight,” Mr. Gedge said.

Charlotte looked up from her seat at the end of the dining table. “Again?”

“I believe he is detained with business,” Mr. Gedge replied. “He asked that you not wait.”

“Very well,” she said.

He bowed himself out. The door shut softly.

She stared at the bowl in front of her.

He is always detained now. Three nights. I am eating alone in a room meant for a household. I should not mind. I did it at Ashford often enough.

She picked up her spoon and tasted the soup. It sat flat on her tongue.

It tasted like nothing.

Apparently, I do mind. How inconvenient. I am being sentimental over soup.

She finished the course slowly, because some part of her still believed that at any moment Henry might walk in and say he had changed his mind about correspondence. He did not.

As she stood to leave, voices sounded in the hall. Mr. Gedge again. Henry’s lower tones, saying something about a dispatch rider and a shipment.

She froze.

Stay and see him. Or leave. You have been avoiding him since he began avoiding you. This is childish. You are an adult. You are his Duchess. You should be able to share a corridor without feeling your heart drop to your ankles.

The conversation ended. The footsteps moved toward the staircase.

Charlotte stepped quickly out of the dining room in the opposite direction.

Coward.

She made for the library. A book. Any book. Something large enough to distract her while she lay awake.

She opened the library door and stopped.

Henry sat by the fire.

He was not in his usual place at the desk. He was in one of the armchairs, legs long, a glass on the small table beside him. The fire cast light on his face.

Charlotte’s hand tightened on the doorknob.

Turn around. Leave. You have done fairly well at avoiding him. You can continue.

She shifted, ready to retreat.

“Charlotte,” Henry said.

He rose.

She stilled.

“I wish to speak with you,” he said.

Her stomach knotted.

You kissed me by a stream and then began eating in other rooms. Now you wish to speak. This cannot be good.

She stepped in and closed the door behind her. “Very well.”

They took the chairs by the fire. Not too close. Not too far. The distance felt wrong no matter what she did with it.

Henry rested his forearms on his knees. “Ian has gone,” he said, as if she might have forgotten.

“Yes,” she replied. “I was present.”

He winced faintly. “Of course.”

She looked at the flames because glancing at his face felt like too much.

Say what you came to say. If it is going to hurt, better quickly than slowly.

“Now that Ian has left,” Henry said, “we should discuss what comes next.”

Her heart dropped. It was almost a physical sensation. “What comes next,” she repeated.

“Yes.”

She forced herself to look at him. His expression was guarded. Too guarded.

He is going to unravel it. The marriage. The arrangement. He has realized that his duty has ended and that he has no further need for a duchess who climbs trees.

“What do you wish to do?” she asked.

His jaw tightened. “I do not know.”

She stared. “If you do not know what you wish to do, why are we having this conversation?”

He looked momentarily cornered. “It seemed…necessary.”

“For whom?” she asked.

He did not answer.

Charlotte sat back, her fingers digging into the arm of the chair.

He wants me to go, and he does not know how to say it. So he invites me to invent the future myself. How very tidy. How very Henry.

She took a slow breath. She would do it for him and leave before he asked. She had done harder things; had run from an Earl with her hair pinned beneath a cap. Now, she could leave the Duke’s house with her head held high instead of waiting to be dismissed.

But Charlotte did not say any of that aloud.

Not yet.

CHAPTER 33

“The carriage is ready, Your Grace,” Edith said.

Charlotte stood at the window, looking down at the gardens. The bed where she and Ian had planted marigolds sat neat and orderly, the flowers nodding in the breeze as if nothing at all had changed.

“I shall be down momentarily,” she said, without turning.

Edith withdrew. The door clicked shut.

Charlotte drew a long breath.

Compose yourself. You have survived worse than a garden view.

Her throat felt tight. Her eyes stung. She blinked hard until the room stopped blurring.

She made her way down to Henry’s study. The door was unlocked, as it always was when he traveled. She stepped inside. The room smelled of ink and leather, exactly as it always did.

She set the letter in the center of his desk, squared to the blotter.

He is in Matlock. He will not return for two days. No scene. No argument. No last conversation where I have to watch his face while I say something I can barely stand to think.

She had waited on purpose. She wanted no theatrics. Not that there would have been any, not with Henry. He would have simply nodded, thanked her for her honesty, and let her go. That was almost worse than shouting.

She looked around the study once and stared at the chair he always sat in. She glanced through the window that faced the drive. She ran the tip of her finger along the small dish where he kept his seals.

She turned and walked out, closing the door behind her.

In the front hall, Mr. Gedge held the door open, his face carefully blank.

Charlotte took a step toward it.

“Your Grace.”

She turned. Mrs. Ellison was crossing the hall, a small basket in her hands. She curtsied.

“Victuals for the road, Your Grace,” she said, holding it out.

Charlotte took the basket. Her fingers brushed the woven handle. “Thank you, Mrs. Ellison.”

Charlotte had not told any of the Sappherton servants what she had intended to do, but her actions and the preparations she’d made must have spoken for her. She managed to smile at the housekeeper, and it felt thin on her face.

Mr. Gedge bowed as she passed him. She stepped through the door and into the daylight. The carriage stood waiting, the horses shifting their weight.

A footman handed her up. Edith climbed in after her and settled onto the opposite seat.

Charlotte sat very still as the wheels began to turn beneath her.

Surrey. An aunt I have exchanged perhaps a dozen letters with throughout my entire life. A house I have never seen. A life I have no notion of how to build.

She watched Sappherton House shrink behind the window until the drive curved, and the trees closed over it.

What else could she do? Henry did not know what he wanted, and he did not understand why he had begun that conversation.

And I love him. I love him so much it has become unbearable to sit in the same room and wait for him to decide whether he wants me there at all.

The carriage rolled on, and her pain grew.

* * *

“Welcome home, Your Grace,” Mr. Gedge said, opening the door wide.

Henry stepped inside and pulled off his gloves. “Gedge. Is there correspondence?”

“Several pieces, Your Grace. Waiting in your study.”

“Very good.” Henry started toward the stairs, already thinking of Charlotte, of what he might say to her, of how he might begin to undo whatever damage that conversation in the library had done. He stopped and turned back. “Where is the Duchess?”

Mr. Gedge shifted his weight. His gaze dropped to the floor. “She is not at home, Your Grace.”

Henry frowned. Gedge never looked at the floor. Gedge usually looked people directly in the eye, even Dukes, even when delivering unwelcome news about missing silver or drunken footmen.

“Where has she gone?” Henry asked. “Did she mention when she would return?”

“She left two days ago, Your Grace,” Gedge said. “For Surrey. She is not coming back.”

The floor seemed to tilt.

Not coming back. She has decided. She has made the decision for both of us, exactly as I feared she might, and I was not even here to stop it.

“There is a letter, Your Grace,” Gedge added. “In the stu⁠—”

Henry did not wait for him to finish. He crossed the hall in long strides and shoved open the study door.

The letter sat on his desk, squared to the blotter, precisely where she would have known he would look first.

He broke the seal.

Henry,

By the time you read this, I shall be at my aunt’s house in Surrey. I did not wish to make a scene of my departure, and I thought it kinder to both of us if I simply went.

I am grateful for everything you have done. You gave me safety when I had none. You gave me a home, however briefly, and you gave me Ian, who I shall love for the rest of my life regardless of distance. I do not regret a single day of our arrangement.

I understand that circumstances have changed, and that the reasons for our marriage no longer hold the weight they once did. I did not wish to wait for you to find the words to tell me so. I have saved you the trouble.

I wish you every happiness, Henry. I mean that.

Charlotte

Henry read it twice. Then a third time, as though the words might rearrange themselves into something less final.

She thinks I wanted her gone. She thinks that conversation in the library was me searching for a way to end this. I was searching for a way to ask her to stay. I simply did not know how to say it.

He wanted to tell himself it was for the best. He tried the words in his head.

This is what should happen. The arrangement has run its course. She deserves a life she has chosen for herself.

None of it settled. The ache in his chest only sharpened, spreading until it felt like something physical, something that might crack a rib if he breathed too deeply.

He set the letter down and walked out of the study.

The drawing room held her books, three of them stacked on the side table, a ribbon marking a page she would never finish here. The garden beyond the window showed the marigolds she and Ian had planted, still blooming in their crooked row, entirely unaware that the people who planted them were both gone.

He walked the length of the house. Every room held some trace of her. A shawl left over the back of a chair. A vase of flowers she had insisted brightened the hall. The warmth she had brought into every space she touched, gone now, leaving the walls exactly as they had been before she arrived.

Quiet. Empty.

He stood in the center of the hall, and for the first time in months, Sappherton House felt precisely as it had before her, before Ian, before any of it.

He had never told her. Not once. He had let her walk out of the study with a letter meant to spare them both, when all he had wanted, for weeks now, was to ask her to stay. He loved her. He had loved her since a coaching yard in the rain, and he had said nothing.

And now she was gone.

CHAPTER 34

“Lemon cake,” Georgiana, Countess De Clare and Charlotte’s paternal aunt, announced, setting the slice on Charlotte’s plate. “It will not fix anything, but it will make the afternoon considerably less bleak. Eat it.”

Charlotte looked at the cake. It was a generous slice, the sort that assumed its recipient had an appetite. She did not, particularly, but she picked up her fork.

The conservatory was pleasant in the late afternoon. Light came through the glass in long, golden panels, and the garden beyond the windows was the kind of orderly English countryside that looked as though it had been arranged specifically to soothe the troubled. Charlotte found it irritating.

“You are not eating it,” Georgiana observed. “You are holding the fork and thinking at the cake.”

“I am about to eat it.”

“You have been about to eat it for three minutes.” Georgiana poured herself more tea with the serenity of a woman who had long since learned to outlast stubbornness. “It is cake, Charlotte. It does not require deliberation.”

Charlotte put a bite in her mouth. It was good. She did not say so.

Her aunt watched her lovingly. Georgiana had always been like that. Charlotte had exchanged perhaps a dozen letters with her over the years, and still the woman had opened her house without a single question, installed Charlotte in the best guest room, and proceeded to feed her at regular intervals as though nutrition were the only thing standing between Charlotte and total ruin.

Perhaps it was.

“Another cup?” Georgiana lifted the pot.

“Please.”

The tea was poured. Charlotte stared at the wrought iron table and thought about nothing in particular, which was her current method of thinking about everything.

Then something orange and enormous launched itself from the garden steps, landed squarely on the table with a sound like a small cannon going off, and sent Charlotte’s teaspoon flying into the flower bed.

Georgiana burst out laughing.

The cat—Apollo, carroty as a harvest moon, with the authority of a creature who had never been seriously inconvenienced in his life—blinked at Charlotte from among the teacups.

Charlotte stared at him. Then she laughed too, just a little, because it was impossible not to. She set down her fork and lifted him off the table, settling him in her lap. He went with magnificent indifference, as if being picked up were a privilege she had earned.

“You,” Charlotte told him, “have absolutely appalling manners.”

“Oh, don’t scold him,” Georgiana said, still smiling.

“Someone must.” Charlotte stroked his ears. He began to purr, deep and mechanical, like a small engine that had found its proper setting. “He nearly upset the cream.”

“He always nearly upsets the cream,” Georgiana said. “It is one of his finest qualities.”

“It is not a quality. It is a deficiency.”

Georgiana raised her eyebrows with great good humor. “Are you saying I did not raise him well?”

“I am saying you have done your best,” Charlotte said. “But cats like Apollo have a mind of their own. They do as they please regardless of what anyone wishes.”

Georgiana smiled. Then the smile softened into something quieter. “So do you, Charlotte.”

Charlotte looked down at Apollo.

“I mean it as a compliment,” Georgiana said. “You always have had a mind of your own. You simply were not always allowed to use it.”

Charlotte said nothing. She kept her fingers moving through the cat’s fur.

“I am very glad you are here,” her aunt continued. “You may stay as long as you wish. I mean that without reservation.” She paused. “But I think you ought to know that someone may come looking for you. And it is better to be prepared than to be caught unawares.”

Charlotte’s chest tightened. “My father will have heard by now,” she said.

“I was not thinking of your father.”

Charlotte looked up. “Then who⁠—”

“The Duke,” Georgiana said simply.

Charlotte made a sound that was somewhere between a laugh and a dismissal. “He will not come. He is perfectly content without me.” She reached for her tea. “I have been in this house four days, and there has been no letter, no rider, no word whatsoever. That tells me everything I need to know about how greatly my absence is felt.”

Georgiana said nothing.

She only lifted one eyebrow, very slightly, with the expression of a woman who had lived considerably longer than Charlotte and had formed a different opinion entirely.

Charlotte looked at her. “What?”

The eyebrow did not come down.

“Aunt Georgiana.”

“More cake?” Georgiana asked pleasantly and lifted the serving knife.

Apollo purred on in Charlotte’s lap, oblivious to everything, thoroughly content. Charlotte stared at her aunt’s perfectly composed face and felt, for the first time in four days, that she might not have the full picture.

“You have a visitor,” Georgiana said from the library doorway.

Charlotte’s heart lurched. She did not look up from her book immediately, because looking up immediately would give her away, and she had not yet arranged her face.

Henry.

She arranged her face. Then she said, steadily, “I have no wish to see anyone.”

“You would want to see this one,” Georgiana said. “Otherwise he is likely to come in regardless.”

Charlotte looked up.

“Your father,” Georgiana said.

Charlotte’s shoulders fell. She closed her eyes.

Of course. Of course it was her father. Henry was at Sappherton House, perfectly content, reading dispatches and not thinking about her at all, and here was her father, who never needed an invitation.

She lifted Apollo from her lap and set him gently on the sofa beside her. He gave her an injured look. She smoothed the cushion around him and rose.

Lord Ashford was standing at the drawing room window when she came in. He turned when he heard her step, and he gave her a smile that she could not quite read. It was either warm or mocking. With her father, those were sometimes the same thing.

“Charlotte,” he said.

“Papa.” She kept her back straight. “I did not know you were coming.”

“I was in the neighborhood.” He looked her over once, assessing what has been lost and what might still be recovered. “You look well enough, considering.”

“Considering what?”

He sat. She remained standing.

“I have heard,” he said, “that you left Sappherton House. Alone. Without the Duke.” He let a small pause do its work. “I think we both know what that means.”

“I took a short holiday to visit my aunt,” Charlotte said. “I am not certain what conclusions you have drawn from that, but⁠—”

“The marriage has failed,” he said. “It was inevitable, frankly. You ran from one hasty arrangement into another, and now you are here, and he is there, and the whole thing has come to nothing.” He crossed one leg over the other. “Come home, Charlotte. We can manage this quietly if we move quickly.”

I could tell him he is wrong.

She wanted to. The words were right there.

I am on a holiday. The marriage is perfectly intact.

But her father had a talent for hearing the thing beneath the words, and he would hear the crack in her certainty, and then she would be precisely where she did not want to be.

She clasped her hands. “I have no reason to return to Ashford,” she said. “I am the Duchess of Sappherton. That does not change simply because I am currently in Surrey.”

Her father laughed. Not unkindly. That almost made it worse. “You are the Duchess of Sappherton until the Duke applies for a divorce. Given that you have left his house, I doubt that will take long.”

The word landed.

Divorce.

Cold and final.

Would he?

She didn’t know. She had never considered it in those terms. Henry was dutiful. Henry abhorred scandal. Divorce was the kind of scandal that followed a family for generations. Surely, he would not. Surely.

She was not certain.

“I have it on good authority,” her father continued, “that Redmont is still willing to consider the matter. Given everything. He would be prepared to⁠—”

“No,” Charlotte said.

Her father blinked.

“No.” She said it again, quieter, and more final than the first time. “I would rather live alone for the rest of my life than marry Lord Redmont. That is not a position I am willing to revisit.”

Her father’s expression shifted. “Sappherton has put these notions in your head.”

“No one put them there. They are my own.”

“Before that man, you were sensible,” he said. “You understood how the world worked. You understood what was expected of you.”

“I understood that my wishes were irrelevant,” Charlotte said. “Henry taught me that they are not.”

“Foolishness.” He stood up. “Pretty words from a man who has no intention of honoring the marriage he trapped you into.”

“He did not trap me.”

“Charlotte—”

“He gave me choices.” Her voice had gone flat and clear. “Every one of them mine. He asked before he acted. He waited when I needed time. He—” She stopped. She was saying more than she had intended to. She pressed on anyway. “He showed me that I was entitled to decide what happened to my own life. And I will not unlearn that simply because it is inconvenient for you.”

Her father opened his mouth.

“If my happiness has ever mattered to you,” Charlotte said, “why did you never once ask what I wanted?”

The question sat between them.

Her father did not speak. He looked at her. Something moved behind his face—not anger. Not dismissal. Something older than both.

The silence stretched.

“I believed I was securing your future,” he said at last. His voice had lost its edge. “I thought I was protecting you.”

“I know that.” Charlotte’s chest ached. “I believe you meant well. I do.” She met his eyes. “But all I ever wanted was the chance to choose it myself.”

He said nothing for a long moment. He picked up his hat from the chair. He turned it once in his hands.

“If you love him,” he said, not looking at her, “do not let your pride keep you from fighting for the marriage.” He set his hat on his head. “That would be a waste.”

She stared at him.

He was already crossing toward the door.

“Father,” she said.

He paused.

She could not think of anything to say. He gave her one short nod, not warm exactly, but not cold either, and walked out.

The front door opened. Closed.

Charlotte stood very still.

Then her aunt was there, quiet in the doorway, and Charlotte did not bother holding herself together any longer.

“I love Henry,” she said. The words came out roughly. “I love him and I do not know if he knows it and I do not know if it matters and I left because I thought he wanted me to go.” She pressed her fingers against her mouth. “I want him to come. I keep waiting for a letter or a rider or—something.” Her throat tightened. “He hasn’t come, Georgiana. He hasn’t even written.”

Georgiana crossed the room and took Charlotte’s hands.

“I wish he would come,” Charlotte said. “I wish he would walk through that door and be insufferably calm about the whole thing and tell me I have been ridiculous.” She laughed, and it broke a little. “I would not even argue with him.”

Georgiana said nothing and only held her hands. Perhaps she thought Charlotte’s wish an impossible one.

CHAPTER 35

The letter came from Scotland, and Henry recognized Nathan’s handwriting before he had even fully broken the seal.

He had been staring at the dispatch on his desk for the better part of an hour without reading it. The house was quiet. It had been quiet for six days. He had told himself he preferred quiet.

He broke the seal.

Nathan’s note was short, which was unlike him. The man could fill three pages discussing a single sheep.

Henry. Ian drew this for you. He asked me to send it. I thought you should have it straightaway. We are all well. Come north when you are ready. Bring your Duchess. Ian asks about her every morning.

There was something folded inside. A small square of paper, thicker than writing paper, the kind used for sketching.

Henry unfolded it.

Three figures stood beneath a tree. Stick arms, round heads, uneven legs planted in a row of green scribbles that were presumably grass. The tree above them was enormous, sprawling, its branches taking up most of the top of the page, and from one of the branches hung what might have been a bird or a very confused hat.

The tallest figure had dark scribbles on his head. The middle figure had a skirt and brown curls. The smallest had a gap-toothed smile inked in with great care.

At the bottom, in Ian’s uneven, seven-year-old hand: Me Family.

Henry sat very still.

He turned the drawing once. The paper was slightly crumpled at one edge, as though it had been carried in a pocket before Nathan thought to fold it properly. Ian had pressed hard with the pencil. The letters were proud. Not uncertain. Not provisional.

Me Family.

Henry set the drawing on the desk.

He looked at it.

He thought about Ian counting soldiers on the garden path with one careful finger. He thought about Charlotte on her knees in the snow trying to talk him down from a roof. He thought about lemon sponge in the margins of a list and raspberry jam between the layers and Ian laughing at the candles, that short, startled, completely unguarded laugh.

Before, he had not dared to name all he felt while having these experiences. He had called it arrangement and duty and practicality, and he had told Tristan nothing had changed, and he had told himself the same thing every morning, and he had been lying.

Somewhere between the carriage steps and the picnic by the stream and the nursery and the atlas under the elm tree, it had become real.

And he had let it fall apart.

He decides what is best for me without asking what I want.

Charlotte’s voice in his memory. Not speaking of Henry. Speaking of her father.

Henry pushed back from the desk.

He sat there for a moment with the drawing in front of him and that sentence sitting in his chest like a coal still burning, and he saw it—clearly, suddenly, the way you saw a thing when you had been standing too close to it for months.

He had done the same thing. Exactly the same. He had sat in the library and opened that conversation about what comes next, and when Charlotte had gone quiet, he had not asked. He had not said: I want you to stay. I want you here. I am asking, not assuming. He had let the silence answer for him, and the silence had answered wrong, and then he had been in Matlock when she left, and he had come home to a letter on his blotter, squared to the edges, written in the hand of someone trying very hard to be gracious about being let go.

He had decided what was best for her. He had decided she would be better off making her own choices elsewhere, and he had not once asked her what those choices were.

Her father had done that. Henry had done it too.

He picked up the drawing and looked at it one more time. The three figures under the tree. The enormous bird-hat. His own dark scribbles, Charlotte’s skirt, Ian’s gap-toothed smile.

Me Family.

He folded it, tucked it inside his coat, and stood.

He was across the hall in six strides.

“Gedge.”

The butler appeared from the direction of the kitchen passage.

“Your Grace.”

“I require the carriage,” Henry said. “Today. Within the hour.”

“Of course, Your Grace. Shall I⁠—”

“Surrey.” Henry pulled on his coat and held out his hand for his hat without slowing. “The Countess De Clare’s house. You have the direction. If you do not, find someone who does.”

“I have it,” Gedge said. He already had Henry’s hat in hand. He had, in Henry’s estimation, always had whatever was needed at exactly the right moment. It was one of his finest qualities.

“I do not know how long I shall be,” Henry said. He checked that the drawing was still in his breast pocket. It was. “Do not wait supper.”

“Very good, Your Grace.”

Henry nodded.

He stepped outside. The morning was bright, cold, and the carriage horses were already being walked from the stable block. Someone had wasted no time.

He stood on the steps and felt the drawing against his chest.

Come north when you are ready. Bring your Duchess.

He was going to bring his Duchess home first.

* * *

“You have a caller,” Georgiana said from the doorway.

Charlotte set down her book. Her heart did the thing it had been doing for six days: it leapt before she could stop it.

Her aunt’s face answered the question before she could ask it.

“It is not your husband,” Georgiana said. “It is Lord Redmont.”

“What the devil does he want?”

Georgiana’s brow went up.

“Mind your language, Child.”

Charlotte pressed her lips together. “I have no wish to see him.”

“He has been here an hour,” Georgiana said. “When he first arrived, I took the liberty of telling him you were indisposed. He sat down.” She looked faintly incredulous. “He simply sat down and waited.”

“Then he may continue waiting until he comes to his senses and leaves.”

“Charlotte.” Georgiana came fully into the room and closed the door. “See him. Say what you need to say. Send him away yourself. It will be considerably more effective than my doing it for you.”

Charlotte looked at her aunt.

“He will not stop,” Georgiana said. “Not until you have given him an answer he cannot argue with.”

Charlotte got up, smoothed her skirts, and went downstairs.

Redmont was standing at the window when she came in. He turned and bowed. Then his gaze moved over her once, quick and appraising.

“You look very well,” he said. “Surrey clearly agrees with you.”

“What do you want, Lord Redmont?”

He smiled. “Directness. I have always admired it in you.”

“Then I shall continue in that vein.” Charlotte remained near the doorway. “You have traveled some distance. I would like to know why.”

Redmont moved away from the window. “I think you know why. Your marriage is over, Charlotte. Anyone can see it. You are here. He is in London. You have been here nearly a week, and there has been no word from Sappherton.” He clasped his hands behind his back, perfectly composed. “I am offering you a way forward.”

“I am the Duchess of Sappherton,” Charlotte said. “That does not change because I am visiting my aunt.”

“It will change,” he said, “when your husband completes the legal proceedings he has already set in motion.”

Charlotte looked at him steadily. “I do not believe you.”

“I have it on good authority⁠—”

“Henry will not divorce me.” She crossed her arms. “He abhors scandal. A divorce would follow the Sappherton name for generations. You know that as well as I do.”

Redmont tilted his head, that small, considered movement she had always found irritating. “Perhaps he decided severing ties with you was worth the scandal,” he said. “Because he let you leave, Charlotte. He watched you walk out of his house, and he did not come after you.” A pause. “That is not the behavior of a man in love.”

The words found their mark. She felt it, a cold little arrow somewhere in her chest.

But she did not let it show.

“I am not going to marry you,” she said. “I was not going to marry you before, and that has not changed. I did not want this match when my father arranged it. I do not want it now. I would not want it if I were standing in the ruins of everything else that I had ever known.” She held his gaze. “I am sorry if that is painful to hear. But it is the truth, and I think you deserve the truth rather than excuses.”

Redmont opened his mouth.

The door burst open.

Georgiana stood in the frame, both hands gripping the wood, entirely without her usual composure.

“He is here,” she said. “Charlotte. Your Sappherton is here.”

Charlotte did not breathe.

And then Henry walked into the room.

He was travel-worn, his coat dusty from the road, his hair not quite as neat as it usually was. He looked exactly like a man who had driven to Surrey without stopping to think about whether he was in any state to arrive. His eyes swept the room once.

They found Redmont and his jaw hardened. Then he walked past Redmont entirely, as though the man were a piece of furniture he had already catalogued and dismissed and came straight to Charlotte.

“I owe you an apology,” he said.

Charlotte realized her hands were shaking. She pressed them against her skirts.

“I let fear make my decisions,” Henry said. “I sat in that library and opened a conversation I had no idea how to finish, and when you went quiet, I said nothing. I did not ask what you wanted. I simply assumed.” He stopped. His jaw was tight. “I did the same thing your father did. I decided what was best for you without asking.”

Charlotte stared at him.

“I was wrong,” he said. “That is all I know how to say. I was wrong, and I have spent six days in a house that has managed to feel empty in every room simultaneously, which I did not previously believe was architecturally possible.” He reached into his breast pocket and held out a small, folded paper.

She opened the page and stared at it.

It was a drawing that she guessed must have been made by Ian. It featured the three of them under a tree.

Me Family.

Her throat closed.

“I did not see it clearly until this arrived,” Henry said. “But it has been real for rather a long time. You have been real for rather a long time.” He looked at her directly. “I love you, Charlotte. Losing you made it impossible to pretend otherwise.”

“How very affecting,” Redmont said from behind them. “But Charlotte, consider⁠—”

“She is considering,” Charlotte said, without turning around.

“He has just arrived on impulse after six days of silence. That is not love. That is wounded pride dressed up as⁠—”

“Lord Redmont.” She turned then because she wanted him to see her face clearly. “I am staying with my husband. That is my choice, freely made, with full knowledge of everything you have just said.” She folded Ian’s drawing carefully and held it in both hands. “Go home.”

Redmont looked at Henry. Then back at Charlotte. His expression shifted through several things before landing on the polished surface he always fell back on.

“Charlotte—”

“The Marquess,” Georgiana said from the doorway, where she had apparently been standing for some time, “has quite overstayed his welcome. I will have your horse brought round, Lord Redmont. I am certain you will find the return journey bracing.”

Redmont picked up his hat.

He bowed once, to the room at large, and walked out. The front door opened and closed, and the sound of hoofbeats on gravel faded down the lane.

The drawing room was incredibly quiet.

Henry looked at Charlotte. Charlotte looked at Henry.

“Come home with me,” he said. “Not because the marriage requires it. Not because of duty or propriety or any other word I have used as a shield.” He was not guarded now. Not even a little. “Because I want a life with you. Because Sappherton House has about a dozen empty rooms that have apparently been waiting for someone who moves the furniture, argues about cake recipes, and lets small boys talk her into building a fort.”

Charlotte laughed. It broke a little. She did not mind.

“You once made it clear,” Henry said, more quietly, “that you would fight rather than let anyone else write your future. I am choosing to lay mine entirely at your feet. I love you. That is the whole of it.”

She looked at him. At the travel-worn coat and the undone effort and the eyes that were doing the thing they always did when he had run out of places to hide.

“I love you too,” she said. “I have loved you for rather a long time as well, as it happens. Since Scotland, I think. Possibly since an ankle and a coaching inn.”

Something changed in his face. Something that had been held very tightly for an extraordinarily long time.

He crossed the last foot of distance between them and kissed her.

Not like the stream. Not soft, careful, and uncertain. This was a man who had driven to Surrey knowing exactly what he intended to say and finally, finally saying it, and Charlotte’s hands found the lapels of his dusty coat and held on, because her knees were once again making no promises.

When they broke apart, his forehead rested against hers for a moment.

“Sappherton House,” he said.

“Yes,” she said. “Let’s go home.”

EPILOGUE

FOUR MONTHS LATER

Charlotte still had not turned the page.

Henry stopped just inside the bedchamber door, coat half-buttoned, and watched his wife sit very still with a letter held close to the flame’s light. Her lips moved slightly. Rereading, not reading.

“Bad news?” he asked.

She startled, then held up the paper like evidence. “From my father.”

He crossed the room and finished the last button as he came. “That explains the expression.”

“What expression?”

“The one you wear when you are deciding whether to be angry or something else entirely.” He sat on the arm of her chair. “Well? Which is it?”

Charlotte handed him the letter without comment. He read it once, quickly, the way he read contracts. Then he read it again, slower.

My dear daughter. I confess I did not expect to feel such joy at the news of your condition. A grandchild. I find myself already impatient for the spring. I hope, in time, you will allow me the chance to know this child, and perhaps, in some measure, to get to know you better as well. Your mother would have been beside herself. I think of her often these days, more than I have permitted myself in years.

Henry lowered the paper. “This is not the same man who negotiated your marriage settlement like a shipping contract."

“No,” Charlotte said. “It is not.”

“He used the word joy.”

“I noticed.”

“Lord Ashford. Experiencing joy.” Henry turned the page over as if a second, more sensible letter might be hiding on the back. “I keep expecting to find a codicil about property values.”

Charlotte laughed, short, and startled, then pressed her fingers to her mouth as though she had not meant to.

“It is not amusing,” she said. “It is confusing. I do not know what to do with a father who writes like that.”

“You do not have to do anything with it tonight.” Henry set the letter on her lap and covered her hand with his. “You may simply let it sit there being strange.”

“He says he thinks of my mother,” Charlotte said. “Often. He has never said that to me before.”

“Grandchildren have a way of loosening tongues that daughters could not manage alone.” Henry considered this. “Also mortality. Men of your father’s generation tend to discover sentiment around the same time they discover their knees.”

“That is a terrible thing to say.”

“It is also accurate.” He tucked a curl behind her ear, unhurried about it. “For what it is worth, I do not think it is only the child. I think he has had a great deal of time to sit in that house alone and consider what he lost when he lost you.”

Charlotte looked at the letter again. “I am not ready to forgive him. Not entirely.”

“No one is asking you to. Not tonight, and not because he wrote one warm paragraph after so many cold years.” Henry’s hand found hers properly now, fingers threading through. “You may take as long as you like deciding what he has earned.”

“You are remarkably reasonable about my father, for a man who once threw him out of a sitting room.”

“I did not throw him. I asked him to leave a study.” Henry’s mouth curved. “There is a difference.”

“A very small one.”

“An important one.” He glanced at the letter once more, then at her. “For what it is worth, Charlotte, I understand him rather better than I once did. Regret arrives late for men like your father. Men like me too if we are being honest about it.” He paused. “I sat in a house for six days once, convincing myself I preferred an empty one to admitting what I actually wanted.”

“I remember,” Charlotte said, quietly.

“I am simply saying belated wisdom is still wisdom.” He tapped the letter. “Even from an Earl who thought marriage settlements were poetry.”

She smiled at that, properly this time, and folded the letter along its worn crease. “We have come rather a long way from a coaching yard in the rain.”

“We have.” Henry looked at her, at the firelight moving over her face, at the small, undeniable curve beneath her hand where it rested on her middle. “I did not expect any of this, you know. When I opened that carriage door.”

“I recall you being furious.”

“I was furious for approximately four minutes. After that I believe I felt a sensation that was considerably more complicated, and it took me the better part of a year to admit what it was.” He leaned in and kissed her temple. “Come to breakfast. Ian has been awake since five, apparently, interrogating Mrs. Wick about whether Father Christmas prefers the east or west chimney.”

“There is only one chimney in this house large enough for a grown man.”

“Ian is aware of that. He simply does not accept it as an obstacle.” Henry stood and offered his hand. “He learned that from you, incidentally.”

“I have never once climbed down a chimney.”

“No,” Henry agreed, drawing her up. “But you have climbed a great many other things you were told not to.”

* * *

“He’s comin’ down the east chimney,” Ian announced, before anyone had finished sitting down. “I’ve decided.”

“Have ye,” Nathan said, reaching for the teapot. “And what convinced ye of that, exactly?”

“It’s closer to the stables. He’ll want to check on the reindeer first.”

“A sound strategy,” Henry said, taking his seat. “Logistically.”

Ian beamed at him, delighted to be taken seriously.

The dining room had been dressed for the season with more holly than strictly necessary, most of it, Henry suspected, arranged by Ian personally and adjusted only slightly by Mrs. Wick before it became a genuine hazard. A fire roared in the grate. Frost patterned the windows in sharp white lines, and beyond them the moor sat white and silent under the sky the color of old pewter.

“Mrs. Wick,” Ian said, “did ye tell him about the biscuits? He willnae come if there’s nae biscuits.”

“I left him shortbread and a wee dram for the cold,” Mrs. Wick said, setting down a platter. “As I do every year.”

“Good,” Ian said, satisfied, and returned to his eggs.

Eleanor caught Charlotte’s eye across the table and smiled. “He has been unbearable since Tuesday.”

“He has been thrilled since Tuesday,” Nathan corrected. “Unbearable implies we mind.”

“I mind a little,” Eleanor said. “He woke me at five askin' if reindeer preferred carrots or apples.”

“Carrots,” Ian said, without looking up. “Everyone kens that.”

“I did not know that,” Henry said.

“Ye’re a duke,” Ian said. “Ye’re nae meant to ken things like that. Ye ken about ships an’ money.”

“An unimpeachable summary of my character,” Henry said.

Nathan laughed into his tea. “He’s rather correct.”

“He is entirely wrong. I know a great many things beyond ships and money.”

“Name one,” Ian said, chin propped on his fist.

Henry considered this with the seriousness the question deserved. “I know that you prefer jam to butter on your toast by a considerable margin.”

Ian looked briefly impressed. “That’s true.”

“I also know,” Henry went on, “that you broke the head off at least one wooden soldier attempting to make it survive a fall from the stable roof, which you were absolutely forbidden from climbing.”

Silence.

“That was a long time ago,” Ian said, with dignity.

“It was March,” Charlotte said.

“A long time ago,” Ian repeated, and returned to his eggs with great focus.

Eleanor was still laughing when she turned to Charlotte. “How are ye feelin'? Truly.”

“Tired in the mornings. Ravenous by noon.” Charlotte glanced at the platter of shortbread and reached for a piece without any apparent shame. “Otherwise, remarkably well.”

“The tiredness passes,” Eleanor said. “Around the fifth month, if I recall. Then ye simply feel enormous instead, which some days is an improvement.”

“That is not comforting.”

“It wasnae meant to be comfortin'. It was meant to be honest.” Eleanor’s eyes were warm. “Ye will do wonderfully. I have watched ye with Ian. Ye already ken the important parts.”

Charlotte’s throat did something unexpected. She covered it by reaching for her tea.

Nathan, meanwhile, had turned his attention fully on Henry, one eyebrow raised. “D’ye recall,” he said, “the last letter I sent ye, asking ye to visit? Before all this?”

“I recall several letters.”

“The one where I told ye to come north an’ find yerself a wife, because London wasnae producing’ any results.” Nathan’s grin widened. “I was joking.”

“I am aware.”

“I didnae actually expect ye to arrive with one.”

“Neither did I,” Henry said.

“Best joke I ever accidentally told,” Nathan said, and raised his cup in a small, private toast that Henry answered with his own.

After the plates had been cleared and Ian had been sent, with visible reluctance, to help Mrs. Wick with something involving ribbon, Henry found his coat and his wife’s cloak and steered her toward the garden door before anyone could assign either of them a task.

The air outside was sharp and clean, and their breath rose in pale clouds. The gardens sat under a light frost, every hedge and stone edged in white, and somewhere beyond the wall a church bell had begun to ring, slow and deliberate, calling the parish to service.

“You are abducting me,” Charlotte said, tucking her hand into the crook of his arm.

“I am taking a walk with my wife. If Mrs. Wick assigns you to ribbon duty, I cannot be held responsible for what happens to the ribbon.”

“That is an unfair assessment of my ribbon skills.”

“I have seen your ribbon skills.” He led her along the path toward the old rose bed, bare now, its arched trellis dusted white. “They are enthusiastic. That is not the same as skilled.”

“You wound me.”

“I would never.” He drew her beneath the trellis, into the small stone alcove where, in summer, the roses grew thick enough to hide two people entirely. In winter it offered no such cover, only bare branches, and frost and the quiet that came from being slightly apart from the house.

Charlotte looked up at him, cheeks pink from the cold. “What are we doing out here, Henry?”

“Standing,” he said. “Being married. The usual.”

She laughed, and the sound of it did something to his chest that he had stopped trying to name months ago.

A year ago I did not know this woman existed. I sat in a study drawing up lists of tutors and thought myself managing a crisis. I had no notion I was about to be handed the whole of my life.

“Thank you,” Henry said.

Charlotte blinked. “For what?”

“For the carriage. For Scotland. For every argument you have ever won against me, which is most of them.” He took her hands, cold despite her gloves, and held them against his chest. “For staying, eventually, even after I gave you every reason not to.”

“You came after me,” she said. “That counts for a great deal.”

“I nearly didn’t. That is the part I think of most, some days. How close I came to letting silence decide things for both of us.” He looked at her, at the frost catching in her lashes, at the small curve beneath her cloak that would, by spring, be someone entirely new. “I do not intend to let that happen again. Not with you. Not with anything that matters.”

“Henry.”

“I love you,” he said. “I have loved you since a coaching yard I still cannot pass without thinking of you, and I intend to keep saying it until you are thoroughly tired of hearing it.”

“I do not think that will happen.”

“No,” he agreed. “I do not think it will.”

He kissed her then, slow, and certain. Her hands caught against his chest, and somewhere past the garden wall the church bells kept ringing, calling the whole parish toward whatever came next. The first snow of the morning began to fall, catching in her hair and collar before settling soft and silent over the frozen plants.

Charlotte pulled back only far enough to look at him. The sapphire at her throat caught the pale morning light, no longer merely a Kingswell jewel, but hers.

“Happy Christmas, Henry.”

“Happy Christmas, my darling Duchess.” He kissed her again, unhurriedly, entirely certain of exactly where he wanted to be.

The End?

EXTENDED EPILOGUE

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PREVIEW: DUKE OF MOONSTONE

“Is this truly how you propose to a lady, Your Grace?”

A masquerade scandal forces Frances into marriage with the cold-hearted Duke of Whitestone. But as she brings warmth to the orphaned child in his care, Alexander begins to question the one rule he has always lived by: that love has no place in a marriage.

CHAPTER 1

“Iam in love!”

Alexander set down his quill.

He did not look up immediately. He had learned, over years of managing estates, creditors, and one very dramatic younger sister, that a pause was often more effective than an immediate response.

He let the silence linger between them for a moment then raised his eyes to where Eleanor stood in the middle of his study, her cheeks flushed and her hands clasped together as if she had been rehearsing this entrance since breakfast.

“I beg your pardon?” he asked.

“I am in love,” Eleanor repeated, and the way she said it the second time, slower, clearer, as though he were the one who needed help understanding, made the muscle in his jaw tighten. “With Malcolm, the schoolmaster. And before you say a single word, Alexander, I want you to know that I have thought about this very carefully, and I do not care what society thinks.”

Of course, she does not.

He rose from behind his desk because this conversation was clearly not going to be a short one, and it seemed wrong to have it sitting down. He moved to the window and looked out at the street below where a pair of footmen were carrying in fresh flowers for tomorrow evening’s preparations. Everything was as it should be. He turned back to his sister.

“A schoolmaster,” he said.

“Yes.”

“A commoner.”

“He is not a commoner. He is educated and principled and⁠—”

“Eleanor.” His voice was not raised. It never was. “A schoolmaster is a commoner. You are the sister of a duke. I trust you understand that these two facts present something of a difficulty.”

Eleanor’s chin came up in that particular way it always did when she was preparing to be unreasonable. She looked so like their mother in that moment that it caught him somewhere behind the ribs though he did not allow it to show.

“Other people have married for love,” she said. “Lady Lavinia married Tristan, and no one thought the worse of her for it.”

“Tristan is the Duke of Evermere, and she is the daughter of an earl. That is a rather different circumstance.”

“It is no different at all. She chose happiness over expectation, and she is better for it.”

Alexander folded his hands behind his back and regarded her steadily. She was twenty years old, and she believed the world arranged itself around feeling.

“I will tell you what I have told you before,” he said. “You are the sister of the Duke of Whitestone. The name you carry opens doors, secures alliances, and protects you in ways you do not yet fully appreciate. If you throw that away for a man who cannot provide for you, who cannot move in our circles, who has no title and no estate and no means⁠—”

“He has enough means.”

“—then you will spend the rest of your life watching doors close rather than open. And I will not allow that to happen.”

“You will not allow it?” Eleanor’s voice had gone very quiet which was, in Alexander’s experience, a far more dangerous sign than shouting. “You speak as though I am a piece on a chess board, Alexander. As though my feelings are simply inconvenient obstacles to your arrangements.”

I speak as though I am responsible for you. He did not say it. He had learned that saying it only made her angrier.

“I speak as the head of this family. And as the head of this family, I am telling you that this attachment cannot continue.”

“Cannot or will not be permitted to?”

“In this instance, Eleanor, it amounts to the same thing.”

She looked at him, and he could see the struggle behind her eyes—the hurt, the anger, and beneath both, a grief she was desperately trying not to show. He was not entirely unmoved by it.

“The masquerade is in three days,” he said, his voice gentler now though still firm. “I have invited half of London. There will be any number of suitable gentlemen present, Eleanor, men of good family and good character. I am not asking you to fall in love with a title. I am asking you to give a proper match a chance.”

“You are asking me to forget Malcolm.”

“I am asking you to remember who you are.”

Eleanor pressed her lips together. She remained silent for a moment, and Alexander had the unsettling thought that she might simply agree, nod, and leave the room, and that her silence could signify something far more troubling than another argument.

Then she said, “And if I cannot?”

“You will.” He held her gaze. “I expect you at dinner tonight, and I expect you at the ball. That is all I am asking of you at present. The rest will follow.”

She looked at him for one long moment then turned and walked out of the study without another word.

Alexander stood very still after the door had closed behind her. He turned back to the window, watching nothing in particular, and let himself breathe. She would come around. She always did, eventually. She was young and feeling, and she would come to see, as he had, that a life built on duty was steadier than a life built on hope.

He picked up his quill and returned to his task.

* * *

His mother’s room was quieter than the rest of the house when he opened the door and stepped in several hours after his argument with Eleanor.

She was sitting up against her pillows which was a better sign than yesterday, when she had barely been able to lift her head.

She is smaller than she was a year ago. He noticed it every time, no matter how he tried not to.

“Alexander.” Her face changed when she saw him, not dramatically—she did not have the energy for that—but something in it softened and settled, and she lifted one hand toward him.

He crossed the room and took it, pulling the chair close to her bedside and sitting down. Her hand was thin, with skin looser than it should be for a woman of four-and-fifty, and he carefully wrapped both of his around it.

“You look tired,” she said.

“I am perfectly well.”

“Hmm.” She studied him in that particular way she had, the way that made him feel seventeen again, caught in some small deception. “Eleanor?”

“We spoke this morning.”

“And?”

“And we disagreed as we frequently do.” He paused. “She will be at the ball. She will behave herself.”

His mother did not look entirely convinced, but she did not press it. She turned her head slightly toward the window, and for a moment, they simply sat together in the quiet. These were the visits he valued most, not when she was well enough to worry over him, not when she had advice he hadn’t asked for, but these still moments when it was enough to simply be present.

“How is the child?” she asked at last.

“She is well.” He kept his voice even. “She wants for nothing.”

“That is not quite what I asked.”

He met his mother’s eyes and found them patient and steady and far too perceptive for his comfort. “She is cared for,” he said. “She is safe. The governess writes regularly, and the reports are satisfactory.”

“Satisfactory.” His mother repeated, the word in a tone that made it sound considerably less reassuring than he had intended. “She is a little girl, Alexander, not an estate account.”

“I am aware of that.”

“Are you?” She did not say it unkindly. She never did anything unkindly. “You ought to bring her here. To us. She should not grow up in the countryside with a governess for company when she has family who could⁠—”

“She has every comfort.”

“Comfort is not family.” She shifted against her pillows, and he adjusted them behind her without being asked. “You need a duchess, my dear. You have needed one for some time. Bring the child home, find a good woman who will love her, and allow yourself to⁠—”

“I will marry when Eleanor is settled. That is how it ought to be done. The younger sister must be established first.”

“That is not a rule, Alexander. That is an excuse.”

“It is a convention, and conventions exist for a reason.”

She looked at him for a long moment with an expression that was equal parts affection and exasperation. Then she let out a small breath and squeezed his hand. “You are very like your father,” she said, “in all the ways that I loved him. And very unlike him in all the ways that I did not.” She paused. “I only want you to be happy.”

“I am content.”

“That is not the same thing.”

I know, he thought, but did not say. Instead, he lifted her hand briefly and set it back against the coverlet then rose to straighten the curtain that had slipped slightly on its rod.

“Rest,” he said. “I will come again this evening.”

“What about the ball?” she reminded him.

“I know you want the ball to be perfect, and so do I, but I shall see you in the evening.” He glanced back at her from the doorway. She was watching him with those quiet eyes, and the expression on her face was one he had never entirely learned to read. He gave her a small nod and pulled the door closed behind him.

In the hallway, he stood for a moment, one hand still on the door handle.

The child is well. Eleanor will come to her senses. The ball will go smoothly. Everything is in order.

He let go of the handle and walked on.

CHAPTER 2

“Mr. Fraser! Good morning. Is the primer for the younger ones still on the shelf by the window, or has someone moved it again?” Lady Frances Pembroke asked the schoolmaster as she stepped over the threshold.

“Good morning, Lady Frances. I moved it to the cupboard last week, I’m afraid. Someone kept knocking it into the ink.”

Frances laughed and crossed the room toward the cupboard in question. The school was already beginning to fill with the morning’s noise, the murmur of children settling into their seats, and the occasional sharp whisper that preceded some minor act of mischief.

She loved this hour. She had loved it since the first morning her sister Lavinia had brought her here, two years ago now, and she had sat beside a little girl who could not read her own name and taught her the letters one by one until the girl could sound them out herself.

She found the primer and tucked it under her arm. “Has Lady Eleanor not arrived yet? I had thought she would be here before me.”

The smile on Malcolm’s face shifted, just slightly. He set down the papers in his hand and looked at her with an expression that was careful in a way it had not been a moment ago.

“No, she... she has not come,” he said. “I received a letter from her this morning.”

Frances stilled. “A letter?”

“She writes that her brother will no longer permit her to leave the house,” he said it quietly, but she could see beneath the surface that he was working very hard to remain composed. “She was inconsolable, and she wrote that she did not know when she would be able to come again.”

Frances stood holding the primer and said nothing for a moment because what she wanted to say was not at all suitable for a charity school on a Tuesday morning. Of course, he had. She had known the moment Eleanor had mentioned her brother’s name and title at their last visit that something like this was coming. Eleanor had been frightened then though she had tried to laugh it off, but Frances had told herself it would come to nothing.

She had been wrong.

“I see,” she said at last because she could not say what she actually though, which was that the Duke of Whitestone was the most cold-blooded, high-handed, insufferable man in all of London.

She had never met him directly; they moved in overlapping circles but had never been formally introduced. He also had never been around when she visited her friend, yet Eleanor’s descriptions over the past year had been thorough enough for Frances to form a very complete picture.

Frances watched him for a moment then turned back to her work.

But she did not stop thinking about it. Someone ought to challenge that duke.

* * *

By the time she left the school two hours later, she had made up her mind.

She told herself, as the carriage turned toward Whitestone House, that she was going for Eleanor’s sake—which was entirely true. Eleanor was her dearest friend, and if her brother had shut her inside that house with no explanation beyond his own authority then someone ought to go and find out what had happened. And Frances was as good a person as any.

The butler admitted her almost immediately, took her card, and led her to the drawing room.

Frances sat and waited, not fidgeting because her sister had taught her never to fidget, especially when she was nervous, and some lessons stuck regardless of how one was feeling. She looked at the painting above the mantelpiece, then at the arrangement of the chairs, then at her own hands in her lap.

The door opened, and she looked up then her stomach knotted.

Frances had expected a butler, or perhaps a footman, to come to tell her that Eleanor would be down shortly. She had not expected the Duke of Whitestone himself.

He was taller than she had imagined, which was saying something because Eleanor’s descriptions had not exactly suggested a small man. He carried himself with a kind of authority that was not performed but simply there.

He had dark hair, a face that was perfectly controlled, revealing nothing, and piercing blue eyes that surveyed the room and her with an intensity she found instantly irritating.

So, this is the beast, she thought and then corrected herself because she was going to be perfectly civil.

He nodded which was the minimal gesture that could genuinely be called a greeting.

She curtsied. “Your Grace,” she said. “I hope I do not intrude. I came to inquire after Lady Eleanor. She was expected at the school this morning.”

“My sister will not be attending the school anymore,” he said without preamble, without softening, as though it were simply a fact he was imparting of no more significance than the weather. “She will remain at home under my supervision going forward. If you wish to call upon her, you are welcome to do so here at Whitestone House, but she will not be returning to the school.”

Frances looked at him.

She had prepared herself for coldness. Eleanor had warned her often enough. But there was something about hearing it directly, the complete absence of any acknowledgment that Eleanor might have feelings worth consulting on the matter, that made her chest tighten.

“I see,” she said, and she meant to leave it there, she truly did. “And Eleanor is in agreement with this arrangement?”

Something moved across his face, but then it was gone. “It is not a matter that requires her agreement.”

Oh. Frances felt the words land somewhere below her ribs and discovered that being civil was rather more difficult than she had anticipated.

“So, she will be kept from the school against her will? She is a grown woman. She is capable of⁠—”

“She is yet to be one-and-twenty,” he said. “She is still under my care.”

“Surely one might still show some mercy to his charges.”

His eyes narrowed, and he looked at her the way a man looks at something that has surprised him by being more troublesome than expected.

“Miss—”

“It is Lady Frances Pembroke, Your Grace.”

He went very still for a moment. Then he took one step toward her, deliberate and unhurried, and the effect was rather like watching something large and quiet decide to move—the room seemed to contract slightly around it.

Frances did not step back. She made a conscious decision not to step back which required slightly more effort than she was willing to admit.

“Lady Frances,” he said, and there was something in the way he said it, and just a fraction too, that made it sound less like an acknowledgment and more like a warning. “I would advise you to have a care for your tongue. Were I to determine that your influence was not conducive to my sister’s wellbeing, I would have little difficulty prohibiting the association altogether.”

Frances held his gaze. He would do it. She could see that clearly. The knowledge was infuriating, and he was, frustratingly, persuasive enough to have her keep her mouth shut when she would have preferred to speak.

He regarded her for one more moment, as though filing something away, and then the door opened, and Eleanor appeared in the doorway, a little breathless and looking rather as though she had been listening from the hallway and decided to intervene before matters deteriorated.

“Frances!” she said it with so much warmth. “I did not know you had called. How lovely!”

Then the Duke turned and walked out of the room without another word, and the door closed behind him with a quiet, definitive click.

Frances let out a long breath.

“He is utterly impossible,” Eleanor said the moment she was certain he was out of earshot.

They had settled together on the settee, close enough to speak in low voices which Frances suspected was a habit Eleanor had developed out of necessity. She had taken both of Frances’ hands in hers and was holding them with the particular grip of a person who needed something solid to hold.

“He told me I could no longer come to the school,” Eleanor continued. “Just like that. No discussion. He simply informed me as though I were a child and not a woman of twenty. And when I told him that I had responsibilities there, that the children expected me, that Malcolm...” She stopped. “He would not hear it. He will not hear any of it. He says only that I must think of my position and my future and the masquerade ball, as though a ball is any sort of answer to anything.”

“What does he intend?” Frances asked. “For your future, I mean.”

“A suitable match of course.” Eleanor’s voice carried a dry edge that did not suit her usual warmth which told Frances how long she had been living with this. “A nobleman. Someone of rank and fortune and absolutely nothing else to recommend him. He has arranged for half of London to attend this masquerade in two days’ time, and he expects me to smile and dance and allow myself to be looked over like a horse at Tattersall’s.”

“Eleanor—”

“I love Malcolm,” she said plainly, and that was somehow more affecting than tears would have been. “I know what people will say. I know what Alexander says. I know the arguments, Frances, every one of them, and I have turned them over a hundred times, and the answer is always the same. I love him, and I cannot imagine my life without him, and I do not know what to do.”

Frances looked at her friend, at the unhappiness that she was clearly trying very hard to hold inside the shape of something manageable, and she felt the irritation she had carried in from the drawing room transform into something quieter and more resolute.

“We will think of something,” she said.

“Actually.” Eleanor’s grip on her hands changed, tightening slightly. Her eyes, which had been cast down, came up. “I have been thinking of something already.”

Frances recognized that expression. She had seen it before, most memorably during an incident at Lady Hartwell’s garden party three summers ago that she still preferred not to think about in great detail. It was the expression Eleanor wore when she had conceived of a plan that was either very clever or very inadvisable, and there was often very little distance between the two.

“Ellie—”

“The masquerade.” Her friend leaned forward, her voice dropping further. “In two days. Alexander will have invited hundreds of people. The house will be full to the walls, Frances, everyone in masks and costumes, no one quite certain who is who.” She paused, and something bright and frightened and determined moved behind her eyes all at once. “It may be the only chance I have.”

“A chance for what, precisely?” she said though she was beginning to suspect she already knew.

Eleanor’s hands tightened around hers, and the look on her face was the look of someone who had already spent several sleepless nights arriving at the only answer she could find.

“I need your help,” she said. “Will you hear me out?”

Frances thought about the Duke as he had spoken of what he would and would not permit. Then she looked down at Eleanor’s hand clutching hers.

“Yes,” she said. “Tell me.”

CHAPTER 3

TWO DAYS LATER

“Ishould never have promised to help you. What if we are caught?”

Eleanor looked up from the dressing table. “We will not be caught.”

“You cannot possibly know that.”

“Frances.” Eleanor set down the ribbon she was holding and turned on the stool to face her properly. “I have thought about this for a long time. Every single detail. I have gone over it so many times that I could recite it in my sleep, and I am telling you, we will not be caught.”

Frances looked at her friend, then at the two identical costumes laid out across the bed, then back at her friend. “Tell me again,” she said. “All of it.”

Eleanor took a breath. “Tonight the house will be full, two hundred guests at the very least, possibly more. Everyone in masks and costumes. Alexander has invited half of London, and no one refuses the Duke of Whitestone.”

A small, tight note entered her voice at his name, but she pushed past it. “In a room of two hundred people in disguise, no one will be looking too carefully at any one face. That is the entire point of a masquerade.”

“Go on.”

“We dress identically. Both of us as the Goddess Diana.” Eleanor smiled. “Are you not glad we have the same hair color?”

Frances held back a sigh. “Go on, Ellie.”

“When the ball begins, you will go down in my stead while I hide in there.” She nodded toward the door that led to her small dressing room. “After perhaps an hour, once the rooms are full and the dancing is well underway, I will slip out through the side door to the mews where Malcolm will be waiting. No one will know.”

“Are you sure about that?” Frances asked. “There might be two hundred people, but most of them know you rather well.”

“You know all of my circle. You have spent three Seasons with them. You know whom Eleanor Moonwell dances with, whom she avoids, and what she says when Lady Ashworth corners her about her embroidery. All you must do is get through the evening without anyone looking too closely.”

Eleanor reached across and took her hand. “And then, before midnight, you go out through the garden as though you are stepping out for air, and the carriage I have arranged will take you home. By the time Alexander notices I am gone, Malcolm and I will be well on our way.”

Frances looked at the costumes on the bed for a long moment. She knew that this was the point where a sensible person would say no. She also noticed that Eleanor’s hand was trembling slightly around hers and that the brightness in her friend’s eyes was the light of someone holding themselves together through sheer determination, who had been doing so for several days.

“All right,” she said, and Eleanor’s grip tightened immediately. “But if we are caught, I am telling everyone it was entirely your idea.”

“It entirely was my idea,” Eleanor agreed, and for the first time since Frances had arrived, she laughed.

They dressed without the lady’s maid’s help—Eleanor had sent her off on an errand with enough specificity to keep her occupied for the better part of the evening—and they helped each other with the small, fiddly things that usually required assistance.

The costumes were well-made, flowing white with a gold border, and the masks were full-faced and carefully matched. Standing side by side in front of the glass, Frances had to admit it was quite effective. She looked at Eleanor’s reflection and saw herself, and when she turned to look at her own reflection, she saw Eleanor. The whole setup was either very clever or absolutely terrifying, and she had not yet decided which.

When the first sounds of the guests began to drift up from the floors below, Eleanor drew her into an embrace. “Frances, you are saving my life, and for that, I owe you.”

Frances held her tighter. “You deserve to be happy.”

“You may call upon me for whatever you need. I promise.” Eleanor pulled back and smiled.

“Then I shall hold you to it,” Frances said with a grin.

With one final embrace, Eleanor ran into the dressing room to hide.

Frances sat on the edge of the bed and listened to the house fill up around her. Then she told herself to breathe and checked the clock on the mantelpiece rather more frequently than was useful.

She had just made up her mind that it was time to join the ball in Eleanor’s stead when a knock at the door made her flinch so sharply, she nearly came off the bed entirely.

Frances pressed her hand to her chest. Then, in the steadiest voice she could muster, “Who is it?”

“You are late for the ball,” a deep, male voice called from the other side.

Frances’s stomach dropped somewhere in the approximate direction of the floor. That was the Duke.

For a moment, she contemplated joining Eleanor in the dressing room, but then the lady in question poked her head out. She made a gesture that Frances interpreted as ‘go on then’.

This is it. Frances stood and adjusted her mask. She thought briefly of every decision that had led her to this moment, and then she opened the door.

Whitestone was dressed for a ball at which he clearly had no intention of actually participating in the spirit of the occasion—everything immaculate and formal with only a silver demi-mask conceding to the evening’s theme.

Frances was deeply, profoundly grateful for her full mask.

She stood very still beneath it and kept her breathing even by force of will. Then he offered his arm.

She took it, and they walked.

His arm beneath her hand was solid in a way that she had not quite anticipated, not that she had anticipated anything, and the warmth of it came through the fabric of his coat, making it rather difficult to keep her attention where it needed to be: on the hallway ahead of them, not on the arm she was holding.

Stop it, she told herself firmly and focused on the middle distance.

They had almost reached the top of the staircase when he stopped.

Frances’s heart went immediately from a manageable pace to something considerably less so. She kept her eyes forward, her hand still on his arm, and she hoped the mask was doing everything she needed it to.

He was looking at her. She could feel it.

“You seem taller,” he said.

Frances took a breath that she devoutly hoped was not audible. “The Goddess Diana is tall and regal, brother,” she said, pitching her voice to Eleanor’s particular cadence which was a shade warmer than her own. “I had the shoes made for accuracy.”

There was a pause that lasted long enough that she was genuinely unsure, for two or three of the longest seconds of her life, which way it was going to go. Then he turned back toward the staircase, and they continued walking.

Frances discovered that it was possible to feel profound relief and profound terror simultaneously, a new experience she did not particularly wish to repeat.

The ballroom was everything Eleanor had promised, full to the point of warmth and bright with candlelight, two hundred people in costumes, and masks moving and talking and dancing. Frances let out a slow breath.

Here, at least, I am simply one person among many.

The Duke drew them to a stop just inside the doorway. He surveyed the room for a moment with the look of a man taking inventory, and then he turned to her.

“Ensure your dance card is full tonight,” he said. “I will be watching you.”

Frances looked up at him, and behind the mask, she pressed her lips together against everything she wanted to say, which was quite a lot. Instead, she curtsied and said nothing at all which she suspected was the most Eleanor-like response available to her.

He held her gaze for one more moment then moved away into the crowd, and Frances turned to face the ballroom and began the work of becoming someone else entirely.

She knew Eleanor’s circle well enough—three Seasons of shared dinners and assemblies and morning calls had seen to that—and she moved through the room with the particular confidence of someone who knew exactly which conversations to join and which to avoid.

She danced when asked, spoke when spoken to, and laughed at the right moments, and if the mask helped considerably, she was grateful for every inch of it.

It was going rather well, all things considered, until a young woman in a blue domino caught her arm with a delighted smile.

“Lady Eleanor! I had begun to fear you were not coming. Where, might I ask, is your friend Lady Frances? I did not see her arrive.”

“Indeed, I am surprised she is not here,” another young woman agreed, appearing at the first one’s elbow with the timing of someone who had been waiting for a gap in the conversation. “You two are quite inseparable.”

Frances smiled. “Lady Frances is indisposed tonight, I’m afraid. A tiresome headache. She sends her regrets.”

The young women made sympathetic noises, and the conversation moved on, and Frances filed away the small, strange feeling the exchange had left in her chest to examine at a later time.

She had been to dozens of balls in the past three Seasons. She had danced at all of them, pleasantly enough, with the small, rotating collection of men who either did not know about the Pembroke debts—which had been repaid—or did not care. The rest of the ton, though not unkind, usually avoided her company.

She had grown used to it, but tonight, wearing Eleanor’s name, she had danced four times before supper and had three more requests she had been obliged to decline.

So that is how it is, she thought, watching a young lord she recognized bow over her hand with an attentiveness he had never once directed at Lady Frances Pembroke in three years of shared social engagements. She filed that away too, under a different heading.

The evening wore on, and the nervousness that had been manageable in the first hour began to accumulate. Across the room, she could see the Duke—not difficult to spot, even masked, given that he was the tallest man in the room.

He was not always looking at her, but often enough that she felt it, and when she turned and found his gaze across a room full of people, it was like walking into something solid and having to correct her balance.

He is watching me because he thinks I am Eleanor, she reminded herself. He is watching because he is suspicious of Eleanor. It has nothing to do with me.

This was a perfectly rational thought, and she was going to keep thinking it.

By half eleven, her nerves had reached a pitch that she did not think she could sustain much longer without something giving way. She worked her way gradually toward the edge of the room, paused to exchange a few words with a group near the doors to the terrace, and then, when no one was looking directly at her, she slipped through them and out into the night.

* * *

He had been watching her all evening.

Alexander was not entirely sure when the unease had begun. It was somewhere between the second dance and the supper interval though he could not have said precisely what had unsettled him.

Eleanor had performed well enough. She had moved through the room with ease, spoken to the right people, and filled her dance card as he had instructed. By any observable measure, the evening had proceeded exactly as he had intended.

And yet...

As he watched his sister laugh at something Lord Ashworth’s youngest son said, a thought nudged the back of his mind.

She is taller, and that is not due to shoes.

He had noticed it at the top of the staircase and accepted the explanation readily enough. Eleanor was prone to theatrical choices, and the shoes were not impossible, but the thought had not quite left him. Nor had the stillness. Eleanor was not a still person. She moved through rooms the way she moved through conversations with an energy that sometimes exhausted him. Tonight, she was contained, somehow. Present but careful, and Eleanor had never once been careful in her life.

Alexander set down his glass on a nearby table.

He was overreacting. He was a man who had spent ten years anticipating problems, and he was applying that habit where it was not needed. Eleanor was simply on her best behavior, which was what he had asked of her, and he ought to be grateful for it rather than standing here manufacturing reasons for suspicion.

He looked across the room.

Where did she go?

He scanned the ballroom once, quickly, the dancers, the groups near the windows, the people clustered around the supper table, and she was not among any of them. The doors to the terrace stood slightly open which they had not been a few minutes ago, and Alexander was moving before he had consciously decided to move.

The terrace was empty. He crossed it without stopping and went down the steps into the gardens, and there, further along the path than she should have been, moving fast and away from the house in the direction of the far gate, was the white figure of his sister.

She is meeting him here? The damned chit! The certainty landed in his chest like something cold. She had arranged it tonight, here, with two hundred of London’s finest in his ballroom not thirty yards away.

“Eleanor.”

She did not stop; she only walked faster which told him everything he needed to know. Alexander moved after her, jaw set and a very controlled anger building steadily behind it. He was not a man who shouted. He had never needed to. But Eleanor knew his voice well enough to recognize when he meant something, and she was choosing to ignore it. That choice was going to have consequences she would not enjoy.

Then she ran.

Alexander stopped for precisely half a second, surprised, because Eleanor had never in her life actually run from him, and then he followed because apparently this evening was determined to exhaust every resource of patience he possessed.

The path curved, and the figure ahead of him was faster than he had expected, but he caught up to her. As he was reaching for her shoulder, she stumbled forward before he could make contact. His body moved entirely without instruction.

He caught her around the waist, both of them jolting with the impact of it, and for a moment, neither of them moved. His arm was locked around her, and she was breathing hard, and the whole situation was so far beyond what he had imagined his evening would contain that he had not yet caught up to it.

Then he registered, with a confusion that took a moment to resolve itself, that the figure in his arms was definitely not Eleanor. There was also a scent that was not his sister’s, a detail so small and so certain that it cut through everything else with startling clarity.

With his arm still around her waist, Alexander turned her to face him, and to his surprise, she didn’t resist.

He reached up and pulled the mask away.

The face that looked up at him in the darkness was not his sister’s.

He knew it immediately and completely: the line of it, the eyes, the particular stillness with which she was looking back at him. He had last seen that face across his drawing room two days ago when it had been considerably less frightened and considerably more combative.

Lady Frances Pembroke.

“You,” he rasped, his heart pounding. “Where is my sister?”

Want to know how the story ends? Tap on the link below to read the rest of the story

Duke of Moonstone

Thank you very much!

ALSO BY EMMA LINFIELD

Thank you for reading Duke of Sapphire.

I hope you enjoyed it! If you did, may I ask you to please write a review HERE? It would mean very much to me. Reviews are very important and allow me to keep writing the books that you love to read!

Some other stories of mine:

A Duchess for his Baby

The Duke’s Chosen Family

Duke of Moonstone

The Duke’s Orphaned Baby

Her Stranger Duke

A Wager with the Widowed Duke

* * *

Also, if you liked this book, you can also check out my full Amazon Book Catalogue HERE.

Thank you for allowing me to keep doing what I love!

Emma Linfield

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Emma Linfield has always been passionate about historical romances. Ever fascinated with the world of Regency England and being utmost inspired by Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer’s work, she decided she wanted to write her own stories. Stories of love and tradition being mixed in the most appealing way for every hopeless romantic, much like herself.

Born and raised in Southern California, Emma Linfield has a degree in Creative Writing and English Literature, and she has been working as a freelance writer for the past 10 years. When she isn’t writing,  Emma loves spending her time with her own prince charming and two beautiful children, all the while enjoying the famous Californian sun and ocean.

So, hop on to this exciting journey of Dukes, Earls and true love with Emma and find pleasure in the old fashioned world of Regency - an Era of pure romance, elegance and high fashion!

Emma is part of Cobalt Fairy’s team of authors! Visit cobaltfairy.com for new, bargain and free deals for every dedicated bookworm there is out there!

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