Page 132 of Duke of Sapphire

Henry looked at Charlotte. Charlotte looked at Henry.

“Come home with me,” he said. “Not because the marriage requires it. Not because of duty or propriety or any other word I have used as a shield.” He was not guarded now. Not even a little. “Because I want a life with you. Because Sappherton House has about a dozen empty rooms that have apparently been waiting for someone who moves the furniture, argues about cake recipes, and lets small boys talk her into building a fort.”

Charlotte laughed. It broke a little. She did not mind.

“You once made it clear,” Henry said, more quietly, “that you would fight rather than let anyone else write your future. I am choosing to lay mine entirely at your feet. I love you. That is the whole of it.”

She looked at him. At the travel-worn coat and the undone effort and the eyes that were doing the thing they always did when he had run out of places to hide.

“I love you too,” she said. “I have loved you for rather a long time as well, as it happens. Since Scotland, I think. Possibly since an ankle and a coaching inn.”

Something changed in his face. Something that had been held very tightly for an extraordinarily long time.

He crossed the last foot of distance between them and kissed her.

Not like the stream. Not soft, careful, and uncertain. This was a man who had driven to Surrey knowing exactly what he intended to say and finally, finally saying it, and Charlotte’s hands found the lapels of his dusty coat and held on, because her knees were once again making no promises.

When they broke apart, his forehead rested against hers for a moment.

“Sappherton House,” he said.

“Yes,” she said. “Let’s go home.”

EPILOGUE

FOUR MONTHS LATER

Charlotte still had not turned the page.

Henry stopped just inside the bedchamber door, coat half-buttoned, and watched his wife sit very still with a letter held close to the flame’s light. Her lips moved slightly. Rereading, not reading.

“Bad news?” he asked.

She startled, then held up the paper like evidence. “From my father.”

He crossed the room and finished the last button as he came. “That explains the expression.”

“What expression?”

“The one you wear when you are deciding whether to be angry or something else entirely.” He sat on the arm of her chair. “Well? Which is it?”

Charlotte handed him the letter without comment. He read it once, quickly, the way he read contracts. Then he read it again, slower.

My dear daughter. I confess I did not expect to feel such joy at the news of your condition. A grandchild. I find myself already impatient for the spring. I hope, in time, you will allow me the chance to know this child, and perhaps, in some measure, to get to know you better as well. Your mother would have been beside herself. I think of her often these days, more than I have permitted myself in years.

Henry lowered the paper. “This is not the same man who negotiated your marriage settlement like a shipping contract."

“No,” Charlotte said. “It is not.”

“He used the word joy.”

“I noticed.”

“Lord Ashford. Experiencing joy.” Henry turned the page over as if a second, more sensible letter might be hiding on the back. “I keep expecting to find a codicil about property values.”

Charlotte laughed, short, and startled, then pressed her fingers to her mouth as though she had not meant to.

“It is not amusing,” she said. “It is confusing. I do not know what to do with a father who writes like that.”