Page 35 of Duke of Sapphire

Henry raised the rifle and fired once into the air. The sound cracked wide across the woods, scattering something from the branches above. Somewhere in the dark, he heard an answering shout—one of the other pairs, changing course toward them.

“Come,” he said, and turned back toward the manor path.

* * *

Mrs. Wick was in the front hall when they arrived, her shawl still clutched in both hands, and the relief on her face was the kind that sits in the body rather than the face alone. She took one look at Charlotte and let out a long breath.

“Oh, my dear. Are you quite all right? Your frock is torn.”

Charlotte produced a sheepish smile. “I got turned about in the woods. I am sorry to have caused such a fuss.”

“No fuss,” Mrs. Wick said firmly, which was not true at all, but was kind. She was already steering Charlotte toward the staircase. “Come. I’ll order a bath.”

“That is truly not necessary⁠—"

“It absolutely is,” said Mrs. Wick.

They went up the stairs. Charlotte, somewhere near the landing, glanced back over her shoulder. Her eyes found Henry for one moment in the hallway below. Then she looked away again. Whatever was in her face, she took it with her before he could read it.

Henry stood in the entrance hall.

She would rather climb a tree in the Scottish dark at midnight than say yes to my proposal.

He set the rifle against the wall with more care than it required.

He was not angry at Charlotte. He understood, better than he would admit, what had driven her out of that library and into the trees. He understood it because he had sat in Nathan’s study afterward and tried hard not to understand it and had failed entirely.

He was angry at the circumstances. At the neat and impossible shape of everything—the deed of guardianship, the post roads, the fact that the only solution available was the one she could not yet accept. At Nathan, slightly, for writing that clause. At himself, considerably, for delivering a proposal with the warmth of a timber contract.

He picked up the lantern from the hall table.

He blew it out.

He went back to the study, and he sat down, but he did not pick up his pen for a long time.

He heard them before he saw them. A sharp crack of wood on wood rang out, and then Ian’s voice, high and indignant, followed.

“You moved!”

And Charlotte’s reply, entirely composed: “That is the point, generally.”

Henry stopped at the garden gate.

Charlotte had a stick. A proper one, not some twig she had picked up idly—a straight length of young ash, about three feet, which she was holding at an angle that suggested she knew exactly what she was doing with it. Ian had a shorter branch in both hands and was circling her with the absolute seriousness of a six-year-old who had decided to win.

She parried his next swing without looking. Her feet shifted on the grass, weight back, then forward. She moved the stick in a short, controlled arc that redirected Ian’s blow sideways and left him stumbling.

Henry did not move.

Her footwork was clean. Her grip was right. She kept her elbow down and her wrist loose and she was absolutely teaching a child correct form, which meant at some point in Lady Charlotte Ashford’s life, someone had taught these techniques to her first.

She climbs trees, he thought. She argues shipping ventures. And apparently, she can sword fight.

Who on earth is this woman?

He cleared his throat.

Charlotte went still. She turned.