Page 37 of Duke of Sapphire

He opened his mouth. He closed it. He opened it again. “Charlotte⁠—”

“I have accepted your offer,” she said.

He blinked. “That is an odd way to accept.”

“Your proposal was rather odd too.”

He stood on the cobbled path in the grey Scottish morning and looked at her. She looked back at him. And then, because he could not help it—because the relief and the bewilderment and the image of her descending from a tree at midnight with her hair catastrophically disordered all arrived at once—he laughed.

He laughed properly. The kind that came from somewhere he had not opened in quite some time. It surprised even him.

When he finally recovered, he found her watching him. She had gone still. Her expression was different now—something was in it that was quiet and curious and not, for once, performing anything at all.

“You should do that more often,” she said.

Henry looked at her keenly. Her cheeks were pink from the morning air. Her hair was properly pinned today but a strand had already escaped near her ear. He was standing, he realized, rather close.

“Should I?” He took one step toward her. “And why is that? Do you find me more agreeable when I laugh?”

Her cheeks went from pink to something closer to rose. But her chin came up. “Any man can be handsome if he is agreeable.”

“And if he is disagreeable?”

“Then he has only himself to blame.”

“A severe standard.”

“A sensible one,” she said. “I should think a man as rigidly orderly as yourself would appreciate true sensibility.”

“I appreciate it enormously.”

“Then what is your response to my point?”

“My response,” Henry said, “is that agreeable and handsome are not as intricately linked as you suggest. I have met a great many agreeable men who were decidedly ordinary.”

“Then it is fortunate for you that you are not ordinary.”

The sentence sat in the air for a moment. They both seemed to notice it at the same time. Charlotte looked briefly as though she regretted it. Henry filed it away somewhere he did not intend to examine until later.

He cleared his throat. “We need to marry quickly. The sooner the arrangement is in place, the sooner we can address your father and Redmont. It cannot wait.”

“Agreed,” Charlotte said. “But I will need a written contract. Stating clearly that I maintain my freedom within the marriage. My time, my choices. In writing.”

“That is a reasonable condition.”

She looked slightly surprised that he had agreed without argument. “Good.”

“I will have the solicitor draw something up today.” He paused. “It will be straightforward.”

“Then we are in agreement.”

“We are.” He looked at her for a moment, then: “Where did you learn to do that?”

She blinked. “Do what?”

He gestured back toward the garden, toward Ian and the stick and the clean, controlled footwork he had watched from the gate.

Charlotte smiled. It was a different smile from the others. Smaller. Satisfied in a way that did not quite invite further inquiry.