Page 81 of Duke of Sapphire

“That is very kind,” Charlotte said.

Lady Hartwell curtsied to Henry. Henry inclined his head. And then she was gone, in a rustle of pale-yellow silk and a cloud of rosewater. The drawing room door closed behind her with a click that was somehow both quiet and final.

Henry looked at Charlotte.

“What was that?” he said.

“A social call.” Charlotte set her cup down. “She came to congratulate us.”

“She congratulated us on a marriage that happened nearly two months ago?”

“She is very thorough.”

Henry looked at the door. Then at Charlotte. “You are doing the thing.”

She looked up. “What thing?”

“The thing where you say everything is fine when it is not.”

Charlotte opened her mouth. Then she closed it.

Tell him. She turned it over. He will want to know. He should know. That is exactly the kind of thing a duke needs to know about, not because his pride requires managing, but because those are threats to his name and his household and he is not a man who makes decisions blind.

And also: it is my problem. I handled it. I don’t require anyone to fight my battles.

She was aware those two positions were not, strictly, compatible.

Henry was still looking at her with that particular expression; the patient one he deployed when he had decided to wait.

“She had some things to say,” Charlotte said. “About the marriage.”

“What things?”

“That it was very swift.” Charlotte stood. She moved toward the window, not because she needed to look at anything, but because she needed to think better while moving. “That people are talking. That some people are suggesting you married me because a… situation had arisen. During the weeks I was away.” She turned back. “That the marriage may not be legally sound.”

Henry was very still.

“The last one is absurd,” Charlotte said. “I told her as much. The documents are lodged, the solicitor is satisfied, there is nothing to question. But the first two—” She stopped. “The first two are already in circulation. Whatever she heard, she heard it from someone who heard it from someone else, and that is how these things travel.”

“What exactly,” Henry said, “did she suggest about the time you were away?”

Charlotte looked at him. “That I was compromised. And that you married me to contain it.”

The room was incredibly quiet.

Henry turned the letter over in his hand, once, and then set it on the side table with considerable care.

“She is not the first to think it,” Charlotte said. “I imagine she will not be the last. We were alone together for weeks. We married very quickly. It is the obvious conclusion for anyone who does not know the actual sequence of events.”

“The actual sequence of events was entirely proper.”

“I know that.”

“There was nothing⁠—”

“Henry.” Charlotte looked at him steadily. “I know. I was there.”

He looked at her. Something in his expression was working hard.