Page 39 of Duke of Sapphire

Henry looked at Charlotte.

She looked back at him. Her cheek still had a petal on it. She was fairly certain her hair had three more.

“Effective,” he said.

“Extremely,” Charlotte agreed.

She reached up and extracted a rose petal from the hair above her ear. Henry watched this with an expression she could not quite place, and then he turned to address Ian on the matter of basket management, and Charlotte tucked the petal into her glove because she had no pocket and did not examine why.

Outside the chapel doors, the rest of the household had assembled.

They had rice. They had more petals. They deployed both with the wholehearted enthusiasm of people who had been holding it in through the ceremony. Charlotte walked into the crowd with her arm tucked correctly into Henry’s and felt all the warmth of it, the ordinary human warmth of strangers wishing her well. She smiled at them and beamed at young Ian.

Mrs. Wick stood on the chapel steps. Her hands were folded, and her eyes were misted with unshed tears.

Charlotte met her gaze, and the housekeeper gave her a single, meaningful nod.

Ian was darting between the adults with the remaining flower heads from his basket, assigning them without particular logic to whoever was closest. The butler received one with great seriousness. The kitchen maid received two and giggled.

Charlotte caught Henry watching the child.

He had gone still, just for a moment, with the thin Scottish light on his face and Ian spinning in and out of the small crowd before him. His expression was not the one he used for contracts, solicitors, or situations that required management. It was quieter than that. More uncertain. Like a man who had written a careful plan and was only now beginning to understand what he had actually signed up for.

She knew that feeling.

She did not say so.

Ian arrived at Henry’s feet and held up the last flower head. Henry looked down at it. Then he took it, which Charlotte had not expected. Ian looked deeply satisfied with this outcome and ran back to Mrs. Wick.

Henry glanced sidelong at Charlotte.

She looked forward. The drive stretched south, the sky was low and pale, and somewhere ahead of it was London.

She kept her chin level and told herself it was only the cold making her chest feel that way.

It was not the cold.

“Will there be trees to climb in London?”

Ian was on the rocking horse with both hands on its carved mane, sitting perfectly still, which was not how one usually used a rocking horse. Charlotte was resting on the footstool beside him. She had come up after the household’s warmth on the drive had subsided into the particular quiet of a house being dismantled, and Ian had been here already, not playing, just sitting.

“There will be a garden,” Charlotte said. “A large one. I have not seen it myself, but I intend to investigate every tree in it within the first week.”

Ian ran his fingers through the horse’s fine mane. “What if they’re not the right kind?”

“What is the right kind?”

“Ones that go high enough.” He considered this. “And with branches you can sit on without sliding.”

“Those are extremely reasonable criteria. I shall apply them rigorously.” She looked at him. “Are you ready?”

He was quiet for a moment. “Mrs. Wick won’t be there.”

“No.”

“Or Tam.”

Charlotte held still. She did not fill the silence with reassurance he had not asked for.