Page 10 of Duke of Sapphire

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.