Page 55 of Duke of Sapphire

“I beg your pardon?”

“That.” She gestured at his face. “You should do that more often.”

“Neglect my wife?”

“Smile.” She said it simply. “It suits you.”

Henry looked at her steadily. Then the smile deepened, just slightly, and Charlotte’s breath caught while her cheeks grew warmer.

She looked away.

She found a great deal to appreciate about the portrait to her left.

Henry said, to the portrait, “Shall we continue?”

“Yes,” Charlotte said to the portrait. “Let’s.”

They finished the gallery.

He walked her back through the upper hall to the door of her chambers, which sat at the opposite end of the hallway from his. A respectable distance. Their own agreed terms, put plainly in the contract and observed without comment.

He stopped at her door.

“Good night,” Henry said.

“Good night,” Charlotte said, deciding she must go up to the nursery to bid Ian good night before she retired.

He did not move.

The candle he was carrying threw a low light up across his face, and the hallway was noticeably quiet.

“I hope,” Henry said, “that you will find some measure of happiness here.” He said it plainly, without embellishment. “That is—what I hope for you.”

Charlotte looked at him. “I hope the same,” she said. “For both of us.”

And then, because her mouth had always operated at a slight delay from her better judgment, she said, “I hope they find Nathan and Eleanor.”

The change in Henry’s face was immediate.

It was not dramatic. He did not move. His expression did not collapse. It simply went still, in the way it went still when something required controlling, and the warmth that had been there a moment ago receded entirely.

“Henry.” She straightened. “The note. At Evermere. That was about them.”

He was quiet for a moment.

“I received word,” he said. “Before we left Evermere.” A pause. “It is very bleak. No one has seen any sign of them. Not since the accident. No trace.”

The words landed one by one.

Charlotte stood in the hallway with the door to her chambers at her back and thought about Ian on the floor of a Scottish playroom, turning a soldier over and over in his hands. They’re coming back. Said flat and certain, the way a child says a thing they have decided to believe.

She thought about it, and her chest broke open, quite quietly, and she could not say a single word.

Henry looked at her, his own grief carefully held.

CHAPTER 16

“Send a note to Edith Barnes at Ashford House,” Charlotte told Mr. Gedge. “Today, if possible. Tell her I require her here.”