Page 90 of Duke of Sapphire

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.