Page 53 of Duke of Sapphire

“Henry thinks I just need time,” Ian said. “I heard him say it to the butler on the stairs.”

Charlotte did not answer that directly. “Do you?”

There was a long pause. “Maybe.” His shoulder dropped slightly. “It doesnae look like the pictures I had in my head.”

“Of London?”

“Yes—” He stopped. “I thought it would be like an adventure.”

“And it doesn’t feel like one now?”

“No.”

“It’s a massive change,” Charlotte conceded softly, sitting down beside him. “And it’s completely fine if it feels scary rather than exciting right now.” She looked at the covered mirror, the stacked chairs, all the things that hadn’t been put somewhere useful yet. “This room is dreadful.”

Ian looked at it. “Too dreadful.”

“We are going to have to do something about it.”

“What kind of somethin'?”

“I haven’t decided yet. I’m open to suggestions.”

Ian considered this before looking at the stacked chairs, then the covered mirror. “Could we take the cover off that?”

“Absolutely,” Charlotte said.

She stood. She crossed the room and pulled the dust sheet from the mirror, and the two of them looked at themselves—Charlotte slightly rumpled from the journey, Ian with his soldier and his serious face and one slightly unlaced boot.

“Better,” Ian said.

“Much better.” She held out her hand. “Come. There’s supper.”

He took it. He did not let go until they were on the landing, and even then, it was only to put the soldier back in his pocket, and Charlotte pretended not to notice when he reached for her hand again on the stairs.

Henry was crossing the entrance hall below. He looked up and saw them descending.

“There you are,” he said to Ian. “Gedge was about to mount a search.”

“I was with Charlotte,” Ian said.

Henry looked at Charlotte just for a moment.

“Mrs. Ellison will show you the household accounts tomorrow,” he said. “When you are ready.”

“Of course,” Charlotte said.

He turned back toward the study.

Charlotte watched him go, and Ian tugged her hand, saying, “I saw the dinin’ room earlier. It is grand.” She let herself be pulled toward wherever supper was.

The dining room at Sappherton House seated twenty. There were three of them.

Ian sat on his cushion—Henry had produced one without comment, exactly as he had at Evermere, and Charlotte had decided not to remark on it—and applied himself to a bowl of soup. He had managed through the introductions and the unpacking and the long echoing silence of a house that did not yet know them. He was managing still.

Until he wasn’t.

It happened between the soup and the second course. Charlotte was asking Henry something about the garden—she had seen it from her window before she dressed for dinner, and it was formal and quite well-kept, and she had wanted something neutral to say—when she heard the small sound. Not a sob. Just the particular silence that followed one.