Page 114 of Duke of Sapphire

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.”