Page 52 of Duke of Sapphire

“Good. Gedge, there are dispatches waiting, I imagine?”

“On your desk, Your Grace. Considerable accumulation.”

“I’ll see to them within the hour.” Henry turned toward the staircase, paused, and looked back. “The kitchens are to be advised we have a child in residence. He eats adequately when given things he recognizes. Mrs. Ellison will coordinate with Cook.”

“Yes, Your Grace.”

It went on. Each instruction was delivered cleanly, each one met with immediate, unquestioning agreement. No one hesitated. No one asked for clarification. When Henry said a thing, the house simply moved.

Charlotte watched a footman take his coat before Henry had fully finished removing it. She watched a maid appear with towels for Ian before Ian had reached the first landing. She watched every person in that entrance hall orient, slightly, toward Henry the way compass needles orient north—not fearfully, but with the absolute, trained certainty that the north was there and dependable.

She had known he was a duke. She had traveled with him across most of Britain and knew exactly how he managed a coaching yard and a difficult solicitor and a grieving child. But this was different. This was his house. The authority here was not performed. It was structural, and it had been structural for years, and Charlotte, standing in the middle of it, felt the full weight of what she had agreed to become.

Ian had been quiet since reaching London. She had noticed it in the carriage—he’d stopped looking out the window somewhere around Hyde Park and had sat with his soldier in both hands, not turning it. She had not pressed him. Now, standing in the entrance hall, she reached for him and found only air.

She looked.

He was not beside her. He was not on the stairs. The footmen were carrying trunks past, and a housemaid was directing someone toward the kitchens, and Ian was simply not present.

Henry was speaking with Mr. Gedge. Charlotte turned toward a young footman near the door. “Have you seen Master Ian? Just now, in the last few minutes?”

“He went up the stairs, Your Grace. The nursery on the third floor, I think. He didn’t stop.”

Charlotte went up.

She checked the room they had designated for him; it was empty, the bed freshly made and everything arranged with the neat blankness of a room that had never held a child. She tried two more doors. A sitting room. A linen store. At the third door at the end of the hall, she stopped and listened.

Nothing. But the door was not fully closed.

She pushed it open.

It was a small room, clearly used for extra furnishings—chairs stacked against the wall, a rolled carpet, and a covered mirror. Ian was sitting in the corner, on the floor with his knees pulled to his chest. He had his soldier. He was not doing anything with it. He was just holding it.

Charlotte came in and sat down beside him. The rolled carpet was not a comfortable surface, but she had sat on worse.

Neither of them said anything for a moment.

“It smells different,” Ian said.

“London does,” Charlotte said. “We discussed this. The drain.”

“It’s nae the drain.” He turned the soldier over. “It just—doesnae smell like anythin' I know.”

Charlotte looked at the covered mirror across from them.

“Tam will come,” she said. “When the stable is ready for him.”

“That’s nae—I ken that.”

“I know you know.”

Ian pressed his thumbnail into the soldier’s painted coat. “Mrs. Wick put shortbread in my bag,” he said. “There are only two pieces left.”

“That was thoughtful of her.”

“I didnae want to eat them because then they’d be gone.” He looked at the floor. “That’s stupid.”

“It isn’t,” Charlotte said. “It’s perfectly sensible.”