Page 30 of Duke of Sapphire

Charlotte pointed a finger at him. “Do not cite my own opinions back at me. That is entirely unfair.”

“Nevertheless.”

“Have you completely lost your mind?” She began to pace, feeling a sudden spurt of energy. Her ankle did not smart one bit as she stalked the length of the room and back again. “A proposal. Just like that. In a library. With no—no forewarning whatsoever.”

“I did send a note.”

She turned. “The note said nothing about a marriage proposal.”

He huffed, showing an ounce of impatience. “I could not very well put such matters down on paper.”

“And I cannot very well—” She stopped. “You cannot be serious.”

“I am always serious.”

“That,” Charlotte said, “is precisely the problem.” She stopped walking and pressed her hands together and tried to find some order in the chaos of her own thoughts. “Let me understand this. You are proposing marriage. To me. A woman you have known for less than two weeks, most of which was spent in a carriage.”

“It has been an instructive two weeks.”

“Instructive.” She stared at him. “That is what you might say about a particularly dull lecture.”

“The analogy is imperfect,” he allowed.

“The analogy is catastrophic.” She folded her arms. “And you propose this because—because Ian needs a governess and you cannot bring me to London as a governess and the alternative is leaving me in Scotland, and none of those options solve the problem to your satisfaction.”

He looked at her for a moment. “That is a fairly accurate summary.”

“Of course it is.” She pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead. “You have genuinely lost your mind.”

“My mind is perfectly intact.”

“It is demonstrably not.” She looked up at him. “You are proposing a marriage because it is convenient.”

He tipped his head thoughtfully. “I suppose I ought to answer in the affirmative, although this conversation is hardly one I would consider to be convenient.”

She chose to ignore his last statement and proceeded with unraveling her own musings. “To a woman you barely know.”

“I know you considerably better than most people manage after a month of morning calls,” he said. “You have argued with my shipping venture, repaired a battalion of soldiers with yarn, and held a six-year-old boy through his grief. I would say the acquaintance is reasonably thorough.”

She opened her mouth, then shut it. “That is not—that is not how marriages work.”

“Most marriages,” Sappherton said, “work considerably less efficiently than ours would.”

“There is no ours. " She stopped. “What, exactly, are you offering?”

He moved to the chair across from her and sat down, which was the first time he had sat since she arrived. It made the conversation feel different. Less like a board meeting. Not entirely, but somewhat.

“Complete freedom,” he said. “You would have your own rooms. Your own time. No obligations beyond those you choose to take on with Ian. You would not be asked to—perform any of the other functions of a wife.” He made this statement completely without showing any signs of embarrassment. “I could offer you security. You would have income, a household, legal standing, and your father could not touch you. Redmont could not touch you. No one could.” He paused. “And I will give you a home. A permanent one.”

Charlotte sat very still.

Freedom. Security. A home.

She turned the words over. They were the right words. They were the exact words she had wanted for years, the words she had thought about in the library at Ashford estate with the door shut and nobody listening. She had wanted those three things more than she could say, and the Duke had just lined them up across from her as though they were items in a contract.

Which was, she supposed, exactly what they were.

Something cold moved through her chest.