Page 44 of Duke of Sapphire

“Three for luncheon,” she said, “myself, my husband, and our ward. We shall require a private room if one is available.”

My husband. She said it with caution and Henry was two feet behind her and had heard every word.

He stepped forward. “We will also require the carriage horses changed. My driver will speak to your ostler.”

He said it to the innkeeper, not to Charlotte, and his voice was entirely even, and the innkeeper heard exactly what he was meant to hear, which was a duke managing a routine stop on a long road south.

The inn yard was mud, several days deep.

Ian took both their hands at the step. He did not ask. He simply reached up and took Charlotte’s on one side and Henry’s on the other and walked between them across the yard with the practical confidence of a child who has decided this is the natural arrangement and sees no reason to discuss it.

Henry looked at his own hand, and then at the distance between himself and Charlotte. Then he glanced at the three sets of boot prints they were leaving across the mud.

Charlotte did not look at him either. They walked.

The market town came an hour later. A busy crossroads, carts and tradespeople. They had stepped out of the carriage to stretch their legs while the driver tended to the horses at the bustling crossroads. Ian found a display of wooden spinning tops outside a shop front and was occupied. Henry had stopped to check the wheel brace on the carriage—the road had been rough, and the left wheel was making a sound he did not trust—when an older gentleman approached. Silver-haired and wearing a good coat.

The gentleman looked at Ian. Then at Henry. Then at Charlotte.

“Fine boy,” he said. “Does he take after you, or his mother?”

Henry opened his mouth.

Charlotte opened her mouth.

“He’s not—” Henry said.

“He is actually—" Charlotte said.

They both stopped.

“He is my ward,” Henry said.

“My husband’s ward,” Charlotte said.

The gentleman blinked pleasantly at both of them, absorbed neither explanation, tipped his hat, and moved on.

Henry looked at Charlotte. Charlotte looked at Henry.

Neither said a word.

“What does London smell like?” Ian appeared at Charlotte’s elbow, top clutched in both hands, entirely unaware that anything had happened.

Charlotte looked at him for one beat. Then she said, “Smoke, mostly. And horses. And the river, which is not always agreeable.”

“Nae agreeable how?”

“Considerably not agreeable. Particularly in summer.”

Ian wrinkled his nose. “Like the drain by the stables?”

“Very much like that. But larger.”

“Much larger?”

“The entire city.”

Ian absorbed this with an expression of profound reconsideration. “Oh,” he said. He turned the top over in his hands. “Are there still trees?”