Page 78 of Duke of Sapphire

A pause.

“What else did he do?” Ian said. “When ye were young.”

Henry was quiet for a moment. Charlotte did not look at him directly. She watched the fire.

“He liked to walk,” Henry said. “The mountains. He would go out at first light with nothing but a coat and be gone half the day. He said the high ground cleared his head.” A pause. “He tried to take me once. We got about halfway up, and I suggested we return and make better use of the time, and he told me I was the most unromantic creature he had ever encountered.”

Ian’s mouth dropped open. “He said that to you?”

“He said that to me.” Something moved in Henry’s voice. “He also said I needed Scotland. He wrote to me every month for six years telling me to come north and visit.” He was quiet for a moment. “I did not.”

The room was very still.

“He hunted too,” Henry said to Ian, and his voice was a shade rougher now. “He was a remarkable shot. Better than anyone I knew. He had a way of going completely still before—he said you had to become part of the landscape.”

“He taught me,” Ian said softly. “He said I’d be as good as him someday.”

“You will be,” Henry said.

Charlotte felt her heart expand.

Ian slid sideways against her arm eventually, his eyelids going heavy. He did not fall asleep for a little while—he asked two more questions about Nathan, and Henry answered them both while the fire burned lower and the afternoon dimmed at the windows. Then Ian’s breathing slowed, his weight settled, and he slept.

Henry sat in the wing chair. Charlotte sat with Ian, and neither of them spoke.

The library was quiet. Henry had not planned to stay.

He had come in after dinner to find a letter he had left on the side table before supper, and Charlotte had been there already, seated near the fire with a book she was not reading. She looked up when he came in. She did not leave. And Henry, who had retrieved the letter and had no further reason to remain, sat down.

That had been twenty minutes ago.

“Tell me about the search,” Charlotte said, lowering her book. “And forgive me for asking, but why didn’t you mount a full-scale search while we were in Scotland?”

Henry let out a heavy breath, acknowledging the logic of her question. “I did, but my focus was entirely consumed by securing the guardianship, stabilizing the panicked household, and managing our hasty wedding,” he admitted, his expression tightening with retrospective guilt. “I needed to ensure you and Ian were safely settled in London before I could turn my full attention outward.”

Charlotte nodded, softening her tone. “And now?”

“Now, I have sent men to cover the northern roads more thoroughly,” Henry continued, picking up his letter. “Passes that weren’t checked the first time. If those produce nothing, I will send a second party to the crofting communities further west.”

Charlotte turned a page. “And if that produces nothing?”

“Then I go myself.”

She looked up.

“To Scotland,” Henry said. “If it comes to it.”

“When?”

“When I determine that no one else can do it as well as I can.” He held her gaze. “Which I have not yet determined. But I will not sit in London indefinitely while men I have hired report back empty-handed.”

She was quiet for a moment. “Do you think they’re alive?”

It was direct. He expected nothing less. He looked at the fire.

“I don’t know,” he said. “No one has recovered their bodies. I know Nathan has survived worse than a Highland winter. He was the sort of man who—” He stopped. “He found his way through things. He always had.”

“Tell me about him,” Charlotte said. “Before Scotland. When you were boys.”