Page 9 of Duke of Sapphire

“You are dressed as a boy. You have the natural poise of a lady of quality, which no cap and borrowed coat can disguise. You are about as invisible as a candelabra.”

She opened her mouth.

“At a funeral,” Henry added.

She shut it again.

He watched her think. It was an unusual thing to watch—she did it visibly, her expression moving through frustration and calculation and something remarkably close to genuine despair before settling back into composure. She was trying hard, he noted, not to beg.

He admired her courage and persistence.

Lady Charlotte allowed a small sigh. “I suppose I must find another way to escape marriage to Lord Redmont.”

Henry’s brows drew a fraction at her mention of the name. “Lord Redmont?”

Her eyes met his, and her mouth tightened at the corners, as if in disgust. “Yes, Vincent Carrington, the Marquess of Redmont.”

Henry went still.

He knew the name the way he knew the contents of a bad report—immediately, with a cold recognition that settled in his chest.

Redmont.

Beyond the perfunctory bows exchanged in the House of Lords or across crowded London ballrooms, Henry knew the Marquess of Redmont from three specific commercial negotiations over the past four years. On each occasion, Redmont had arrived impeccably mannered and departed with an unearned advantage gained through underhanded tactics: poached contacts, a falsified ledger submitted to a shipping consortium, and a whisper that had deliberately tipped a rival venture into ruin.

Redmont was the sort of man who smiled at you while counting your silver, and by the time you noticed, he had already left the room.

Henry had not trusted him once in their entire acquaintance.

He looked at Lady Charlotte. She was watching him with that careful, waiting expression, trying to read what she saw in his face.

“You know him,” she said.

“I know of him.”

“Is that good or bad?”

Henry said nothing. He was still turning it over. The man was wealthy, connected, influential in the right rooms. He was also—and Henry had never been able to prove it, only to observe it—entirely devoid of scruple when it suited him. Not a monster by any visible measure. Simply a man who had decided, at some early point, that other people existed to serve his purposes.

The thought of Lady Charlotte, with her folded arms and her stubborn chin and her eyes that pretended not to care, being handed to a man like Redmont at fourteen days’ notice⁠—

He caught himself.

“This changes nothing,” Henry said.

“Are you certain?”

“The situation remains what it was. I have obligations in Scotland that cannot⁠—”

“He is dishonest,” she said. “Isn’t he? You know it. I can see it.”

Henry looked at her for a moment. “What I know is not your concern.”

“It is entirely my concern. I am the one being traded away to him.”

His lips parted, but before any words could form, she rushed to continue her speech.

“And the moment you return me to my father, that arrangement resumes within the week. I would be married off without a say.” She leaned forward slightly. “You know how my father is, I am sure. You know the misery that awaits me. So do not tell me this changes nothing.”