Page 98 of Duke of Sapphire

Henry was quiet.

“He is not here,” she said. “My father is not in this room. He is at Ashford and I am here and nothing he wants has any legal standing in my life anymore. I know all of that.” She said it flatly, reciting it, the way you recited things you were trying to believe. “And still.”

Henry crossed to the chair nearest to her. He sat.

She looked at him. He looked back.

“I am not going to dissolve,” she said. “I am simply telling you the truth of it. Since you asked.”

“I know you are not going to dissolve,” he said.

“Good.” She straightened slightly. “Then we need not make a great thing of it.”

“No,” Henry agreed. “But I want you to hear something.”

She waited.

He looked at her directly. “Nobody,” he said. The word landed quiet and entirely complete. “Not your father. Not Redmont.” He paused. “Not even your husband.”

Charlotte frowned. “What?”

“Nobody,” Henry said again, “will ever force you into anything again. Not while I am alive to prevent it.”

She stared at him.

“Your father has no authority over you. Legally, practically, in any manner that counts. What Redmont said about the marriage’s validity is noise. The documents are sound. The solicitors are satisfied. There is nothing there.” He kept his voice level. Not gentle, exactly. Something harder than gentle. The kind of certainty that had nothing to prove. “And as for the rest of it—the talk, the questions, the people in drawing rooms deciding what your marriage means—that is not your concern. It is mine. And I will deal with it.”

Charlotte was still looking at him. “You said not even your husband.”

“Yes.”

“You were including yourself in the list?”

“I was.”

Charlotte was quiet. She seemed to be working something out.

“Henry.” She leaned forward slightly. “You have never forced me into anything.”

“I know that.”

“Then why⁠—”

“Because I wanted you to hear it.” He held her gaze. “Because Redmont stands at the foot of your stairs and mentions your father’s name and your thumb goes white on the newel post, and I think someone ought to have told you a very long time ago that your wishes are the only ones that matter. And I am telling you now.” He stopped. Something in his expression was doing the thing it did when he had said more than he had planned to. He did not take it back. “That is all.”

Charlotte sat very still.

She was not going to cry. He could see that. But she had gone very still. This conversation had struck her so hard that it was evident she would need a moment to recover. Charlotte did not typically leave her defenses so unguarded, but now, she looked lost and uncertain.

Henry glanced out the window. He was going to have to examine what he had just said at some point as well as what had moved in him when Redmont stood in his hall talking to Charlotte with that smile.

Later, he told himself.

CHAPTER 28

“You have not heard a word I’ve said,” Tristan remarked.

Henry kept his gaze on the open field. “I heard every word.”