Page 124 of Duke of Sapphire

“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.