Page 38 of Duke of Sapphire

“You will have to earn that answer,” she said.

CHAPTER 12

“If anyone can show just cause why these two persons should not be joined in holy matrimony,” the minister said, “let them speak now or else forever hold their peace.”

No one spoke.

Charlotte had half-expected her own voice to betray her. It did not. The chapel held its breath, and so did she, and then the minister moved on.

The chapel was small. Beautiful, in its way. Mrs. Wick had done remarkable things with late heather and a handful of stubborn autumn roses, threading them into the simple wooden arch above the altar and setting candles in every stone niche along the walls. At the back of the chapel, the estate solicitor stood beside the butler, and behind them a dozen indoor staff had arranged themselves with the quiet careful dignity of people who knew they were witnessing something unusual and intended to be worthy of it.

Charlotte kept her eyes on the minister.

She had told herself, very firmly, three times over breakfast and once in the mirror before she came down, that this was a legal formality. A practical framework. The most sensible available solution to a problem that had no sensible solutions. The contract was drawn. The terms were clear. She was not a girl in a story. She was a woman with a plan.

Then Henry began to speak.

“I, Henry Matthew Kingswell, take you, Charlotte Renee Ashford, to be my wife.”

He said it the way he said everything—directly, without decoration. But there was something underneath it that had not been there in the library, something that sat in each plain word like weight on a scale. Charlotte’s hand tightened at her side. She did not look at him.

“To have and to hold from this day forward. To love and to cherish. Until death us do part.”

The old words. She had heard them at other people’s weddings, in other people’s chapels, and they had always seemed like ceremony. Now they sounded like something else entirely. Like a door opening somewhere she had not thought to look through before.

She breathed.

It was her turn.

“And I—” She stopped. She had not intended to stop. “Charlotte. R-Renee Ashford.” A half-second. She got it back. “Take you, Henry Matthew Kingswell, to be my husband.”

Her voice was steady after that. She made certain of it.

She got through the rest of the vows without looking at him once, which was its own small victory. But she could feel him beside her—the stillness of him, the set of his shoulder just at the edge of her vision.

She told herself she was imagining it.

The minister spoke the final words.

Henry turned toward her. He took her gloved hand in both of his, and she felt the warmth of his fingers even through the satin. He lowered his head and pressed his lips to her knuckles.

It was correct. It was proper. It was the safest possible gesture in the circumstances, and Charlotte was entirely unprepared for the way an emotional response moved through her. Slow and inconvenient and not even slightly willing to be argued away. It traveled from her knuckles straight up her arm. She stood very still and kept her chin level. She did not let any of it reach her face.

Henry released her hand and stepped back.

His expression was composed. But the set of his jaw had shifted, and she had learned enough in the past few days to read it.

The minister closed his book.

Ian launched a handful of roses into the air jubilantly.

He had been standing beside Mrs. Wick with a flat basket of flower heads, and if he had been exercising any restraint at all up to this point, it evaporated entirely the moment the book shut. The first handful of petals caught Charlotte full across the cheek and shoulder. The second went directly over Henry’s head and skittered down his coat. A third volley landed somewhere on the stone floor near the solicitor’s boots with an audible skid.

“Mind where you aim, young man!”

Ian, undaunted, reached into the basket for more.

Charlotte laughed. She could not help it. It came out of her before she had decided anything about it, genuine and helpless, and it startled Ian so much that he laughed too—a bright, surprised sound—and then the chapel was entirely full of noise and petals and Mrs. Wick’s voice from somewhere behind them saying, “Ian Drummond, those were for after the door—” in a tone that was trying very hard to be stern and failing at every syllable.