Page 71 of Duke of Sapphire

“None of my affair.” He repeated it pleasantly. “You were to be my wife.”

“I was never to be anything,” Charlotte said. “I was not consulted. I was not asked. My father arranged on my behalf, and I chose not to honor the deal.” She met his pale grey eyes. “That is all.”

“That is not quite⁠—”

“Lord Redmont.” She kept her voice level. “Mind your own business.”

His smile shifted. He took one step closer.

Charlotte held her ground for exactly one second. Then she stepped to the right, neat and clean, putting the wall on her other side, and walked past him.

He did not touch her. He did not say anything else. But she felt the full weight of his attention follow her every step down the corridor, and she did not look back. She did not slow her pace, and it was only when the double doors opened into the noise and the light and the crowd of the ballroom that she allowed herself a single quiet breath.

Henry was at the east door.

He saw her before she reached him.

“Are you all right?” he said.

“Perfectly,” Charlotte said.

He looked at her.

“Redmont was in the corridor,” she said. “He wanted a conversation. I told him my decision to marry you was none of his affair. And then I came back.”

Henry’s gaze sharpened.

“I am fine,” Charlotte said. “He said nothing I could not manage, and I managed it.”

“What did he say?”

“That he was curious how I had come to be married to a duke.” She paused. “I told him to mind his own business.”

Henry looked across the room, and Charlotte did not need to follow his gaze to know who he was looking for.

“He is not worth the trouble,” she said. “Not tonight. Tonight, I would very much like to dance again and allow everyone in this room to see me having an entirely pleasant evening.”

Henry looked back at her.

“Is that,” he said, “a request?”

“It is an extremely reasonable suggestion.” She tilted her head. “I believe the quadrille is next.”

For a moment he said nothing. Then: “Can you manage it? After what must’ve been a⁠—”

“Henry.” She looked up at him. “I have managed considerably worse. I once spent three hours in a tree at midnight in Scotland.” She held out her hand. “I can manage a quadrille.”

“You are never going to let me forget that tree,” he said.

“Not while I live.”

He looked at her for one more moment, and his expression was not composed in any of its usual ways. It was open, briefly, in the place just behind his eyes. Charlotte looked at it and then looked away. He took her hand and they went to the floor.

She saw Redmont once, from the far corner of the quadrille’s second figure. He had positioned himself near the edge of the room, a glass in one hand, entirely still. Watching.

She did not look at him again.

The figure brought her back to Henry. His hand steadied hers through the turn. She straightened and found him looking not at her but across the room, and she knew, without following his gaze, that he had found Redmont.