Page 115 of Duke of Sapphire

She looked at him.

“The sadness is allowed,” he said. “It does not contradict the gladness.”

She was quiet for a moment.

“You sound like me,” she said.

“Do I?”

“When you told me guilt borrows from the present.” She turned back to the flowers. “I did not enjoy being on the receiving end of that.”

“No,” Henry agreed. “I suspect not.”

She arranged the last stem and stood back to look at the result. He stood where he was. She had stepped down from the stool, but he had not stepped back, and the distance between them was rather less than was strictly necessary for a conversation about flowers.

He was aware of it. She was almost certainly aware of it. Neither of them addressed it.

“A dinner,” Charlotte said at last. “How many?”

“Tristan and Lavinia. Nathan and Eleanor, of course.” Henry looked at the flowers. They were, he noted, extremely well arranged. “Perhaps Lavinia’s sister, Frances and her husband Alexander, if they can make the journey.”

“Friday would give us enough time to write.”

“Friday, then.”

She nodded. She turned back to the mantel, making some small adjustment to a stem that did not look to him like it required any adjustment at all. “You should host it,” she said. “Formally. Nathan will enjoy being toasted.”

“He will enjoy it entirely too much.”

She laughed, short and real. “Yes. He will.”

He wanted, very much, to take the stem out of her hand and set it down. He wanted to turn her toward him and say something plain and unguarded, the way she said things to him, without the careful architecture of duty and practicality holding it all in place.

He did not.

She did not turn, and he did not reach, and the drawing room stayed exactly as it was: a vase on the side table instead of the high shelf, a faint smell of crushed leaves from where the stems had been trimmed, and two people standing close enough to feel the warmth of each other without touching.

“I will have Mrs. Ellison write up the menus,” Charlotte said.

“Good.”

“And you will write the toast.”

“I will write the toast.”

She gave him a sideways look. “It should be warm.”

“I am capable of warmth.”

“In a toast?”

“Charlotte.”

“I am simply noting,” she said. “For accuracy.”

He looked at her. She looked back. Her chin was lifted the smallest degree, and there was a gleam her eyes that was not quite amusement and not quite challenging.

“Friday,” he said.