Page 42 of Duke of Sapphire

“There’s a wall fallen down,” Ian said. “A whole one. Just—all the stones everywhere.”

“Mm.”

“Was it a battle?”

“No.”

“How do you know?”

“Because it is a field wall, not a fortification.”

Ian considered this. “It could have been a very small battle.”

Henry set his pen down. He looked out the window and then at Charlotte across from him, and she was currently pressing her lips together with an expression of great composure and no sincerity whatsoever.

He picked up his pencil. The carriage hit a rut.

The document case shifted, the graphite ran slightly into the margin, and Henry held the case level with one hand and wrote with the other. He had done worse in rougher carriages. He had once annotated a shipping contract in a gale off the Northumberland coast, in a vehicle that should not technically have been in motion.

“There’s a farmhouse,” Ian said. “With a blue door.”

Henry made no response. He was mid-sentence, the pen moving, and the sentence was important because it addressed the exclusivity clause, which Charlotte had also been right about, and which he was not going to think about right now.

“Henry.”

“Yes, Ian.”

“The door was blue.”

“I heard you.”

“You didnae say anythin'.”

“I was thinking.”

“About the door?”

“About the letter.”

Ian turned from the window. He studied Henry’s profile with the focused attention of a child who has decided an adult’s silence is a personal affront. “You didnae look at it.”

“No.”

“Then you daenae ken if it was blue.”

Henry looked up. Ian looked back at him, entirely serene.

Charlotte made a small sound beside Ian. It was not a cough. It was the sound a person makes when they are preventing a larger sound and doing so imperfectly.

Henry looked back at the letter. “It was blue,” he said. “I accept this on your authority.”

Ian appeared satisfied and returned to the window.

Charlotte’s shoulder shook, just once, and then she had it under control.

They sat in companionable silence for perhaps three minutes. The springs groaned. The afternoon light moved across the case. Henry had finished his note on the exclusivity clause and was moving to the next paragraph when Ian sat bolt upright.

“A crow!”