Page 83 of Duke of Sapphire

Henry stood very still for a moment.

Then he said, “You are coming with me.”

Charlotte blinked. “You just said⁠—”

“I said Ian needs you here.” He reached for the letter again, then stopped. His hand dropped. “But that was before you told me the marriage is being questioned in drawing rooms across London.” His jaw tightened. “You are right. It is not only social. And the best answer to speculation about whether this marriage is real⁠—”

“Is to be seen,” Charlotte said slowly, “in it.”

“Is to leave London together, only the two of us,” Henry said. “Openly. Loudly, if necessary. A journey north. A visit to the estates. Any number of reasons a newlywed Duke might take his Duchess away from town for a sennight.”

Charlotte stared at him. “You want to take me to Scotland as a romantic trip?”

“I want the ton to believe we are going to Scotland on a romantic trip.” His eyes met hers and held.

Traveling companions, she thought. Again.

CHAPTER 23

The Swan at Biggleswade had four rooms above the common room and a fire that had been burning since morning. Henry knew both facts from his previous stay.

“One room,” Henry said. “Your best. My wife is fatigued from the road.”

The innkeeper did not blink. He did, however, straighten considerably. “Of course, Your Grace. At once.” He was already reaching for the key, already nodding to the boy at his elbow. “We are honored to have the Duke of Sappherton—and Her Grace—under our roof. Quite honored.”

Charlotte, standing just behind Henry’s shoulder, said nothing.

He signed the register, accepted the key, and followed the boy upstairs.

The room was clean. That was the first thing. The bed was wide and the fire in the small grate was doing its work, and a branch of candles on the table gave enough light to see by without making the room feel like a stage.

Which was, at the moment, the problem.

Charlotte set her reticule on the chair and turned to look at him, one eyebrow cocked.

“One room,” she said.

“Yes.”

“There were other rooms.”

“There were.” Henry moved toward the fire and checked it out of habit. “A duke traveling apart from his wife on a romantic journey north would be remarked upon before we reached York. You know that.”

“I know that,” she said. “I was simply noting.”

“By raising an eyebrow.”

She smiled, and he straightened. “The story holds or it doesn’t. Separate rooms would undo it before it started.”

Charlotte looked at the room. At the bed. At the chaise longue against the far wall. Then she looked back at him with the expression she wore when she had arrived at a conclusion she intended to keep to herself for the time being.

“Very well,” she said. “Logical.”

It was. And she had filed the other rooms away somewhere in that sharp, cataloguing mind of hers, he was quite certain of it.

He sent down for supper rather than taking it in the common room, because the common room meant an audience, and an audience meant the performance had to be sustained for the duration of the meal. The room meant no performance at all.

That was, as it turned out, a different kind of difficulty.