Page 69 of Duke of Sapphire

“Iwonder,” Redmont said, pleasantly, “if Her Grace would honor me with the next dance.”

He said it to Henry, but he was looking at Charlotte. The two ladies to their left had stopped pretending to talk. Three more people nearby had turned, just slightly, the way people turn when something interesting is happening and they do not wish to appear to notice.

Charlotte opened her mouth.

“She will not,” Henry said. “My wife will be dancing with me.”

His words were not rough. Not particularly loud. Just entirely, completely final. He offered Charlotte his arm and she took it, and Henry led her toward the floor before Redmont had finished inclining his head.

“Well,” Charlotte said, under her breath.

“Don’t.”

“I was simply going to say thank you.”

“Later,” Henry said.

The cotillion had already begun to form at the far end of the room. Henry placed her hand correctly, and they took their position in the set. Then the music opened up around them like something that had been waiting.

Charlotte glanced at him. His jaw was set. Not the composed, administrative set she had catalogued over three weeks of marriage—this was something tighter. She had seen it once before. In the blue sitting room, when her father had used her mother’s name.

“You are furious,” she said.

The opening figure separated them before he could answer.

They came back together. His hand met hers.

“I am entirely calm,” Henry said.

“Your jaw disagrees.”

“My jaw is fine.”

The figure turned them apart again. Charlotte moved through it correctly, smiled at the gentleman across from her with the automatic competence of someone who had been trained to dance since she was nine, and came back around to Henry.

“He was simply asking for a dance,” she said. “He cannot have any genuine interest in a married woman. He can only…”

“Do not,” Henry said, “finish that sentence.”

“I was going to say it is entirely improper⁠—”

“I know what you were going to say.”

The figure separated them again. He returned.

“You do not know men like Redmont,” Henry said. “You might know his drawing room manner.” His hand at her back was correct, formal, but his fingers pressed once, briefly. “But I know his business dealings.”

“And what do his business dealings tell you about whether he intends to dance with a duchess?”

“They tell me,” Henry said, “that he does not do anything without a purpose.”

The music turned them. Charlotte completed the figure, and when she came back, the set had rearranged and she was briefly beside him rather than across from him.

“He wanted to unsettle me,” she said quietly. “He succeeded, briefly. But I would not have agreed to the dance.”

“I know that.”

“Then why⁠—”