Page 65 of Duke of Sapphire

“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.