Chapter 10
“What?” Charlotte asked, unsure she’d heard him correctly.
“The arrangement would address your situation with regard to your father and Lord Redmont,” the Duke explained.
“You would have the protection of my title and household. Ian would have the consistency he requires without the disruption of a formal governess. The terms would be practical. A marriage in name, at minimum, until circumstances allow for a fuller assessment.”
He stopped, and he was watching her.
Charlotte did not move. She was aware of the Duke standing six feet away, staring at her as though he had just offered her a sensible solution to a contract dispute and was waiting for her to run the numbers.
And Charlotte, who had fled a proposal she did not want in the small hours of a cold morning, who had ridden north in a stolen valet’s coat and repaired broken soldiers with yarn and promised a grieving six-year-old that all shall be well —
Everything came at once: indignation, puzzlement, fear… She bolted to her feet and took a step sideways, knocking a brass figurine off the side table. She did not care.
“This is your solution?”
Sappherton blinked owlishly, clearly confounded by her sudden burst of passion. “You are displeased?”
“I fled a wedding a few days ago. I have been hiding in a carriage, spraining my ankle in coaching yards, and I have somehow arrived at the other end of Scotland only to receive another proposal of marriage.” She looked at him. “Do you see why I am struggling with this?”
“I see why you are surprised.”
“Surprised.” She pressed her fingers to her temple. “That is one word for it.”
“It is the accurate word.”
“The accurate word,” Charlotte said, “is something considerably less polite.” She took one step back and then stopped, because there was a wall behind her and she was not going to be cornered. “What on earth makes you think I would accept?”
Sappherton was quiet for a moment. “I know you,” he said, “will not leave a child lost in the woods.”
She stopped.
He did not say Ian’s name. He did not have to. She could hear it in the shape of the sentence; in the way he held her gaze without flinching.
“Taking care of a child, helping him through this difficult time,” she said, after a moment, “is not a reason to marry someone.”
“No. But it is a reason to stay.”
“You are using a six-year-old boy as a negotiating instrument.”
“I am stating a fact.”
“You are being deeply manipulative.”
“I am being practical,” he said. “Which you have generally found useful.”
Charlotte pointed a finger at him. “Do not cite my own opinions back at me. That is entirely unfair.”
“Nevertheless.”
“Have you completely lost your mind?” She began to pace, feeling a sudden spurt of energy. Her ankle did not smart one bit as she stalked the length of the room and back again. “A proposal. Just like that. In a library. With no—no forewarning whatsoever.”
“I did send a note.”
She turned. “The note said nothing about a marriage proposal.”
He huffed, showing an ounce of impatience. “I could not very well put such matters down on paper.”
“And I cannot very well—” She stopped. “You cannot be serious.”
“I am always serious.”
“That,” Charlotte said, “is precisely the problem.” She stopped walking and pressed her hands together and tried to find some order in the chaos of her own thoughts.
“Let me understand this. You are proposing marriage. To me. A woman you have known for less than two weeks, most of which was spent in a carriage.”
“It has been an instructive two weeks.”
“Instructive.” She stared at him. “That is what you might say about a particularly dull lecture.”
“The analogy is imperfect,” he allowed.
“The analogy is catastrophic.” She folded her arms. “And you propose this because—because Ian needs a governess and you cannot bring me to London as a governess and the alternative is leaving me in Scotland, and none of those options solve the problem to your satisfaction.”
He looked at her for a moment. “That is a fairly accurate summary.”
“Of course it is.” She pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead. “You have genuinely lost your mind.”
“My mind is perfectly intact.”
“It is demonstrably not.” She looked up at him. “You are proposing a marriage because it is convenient.”
He tipped his head thoughtfully. “I suppose I ought to answer in the affirmative, although this conversation is hardly one I would consider to be convenient.”
She chose to ignore his last statement and proceeded with unraveling her own musings. “To a woman you barely know.”
“I know you considerably better than most people manage after a month of morning calls,” he said. “You have argued with my shipping venture, repaired a battalion of soldiers with yarn, and held a six-year-old boy through his grief. I would say the acquaintance is reasonably thorough.”
She opened her mouth, then shut it. “That is not—that is not how marriages work.”
“Most marriages,” Sappherton said, “work considerably less efficiently than ours would.”
“There is no ours. " She stopped. “What, exactly, are you offering?”
He moved to the chair across from her and sat down, which was the first time he had sat since she arrived. It made the conversation feel different. Less like a board meeting. Not entirely, but somewhat.
“Complete freedom,” he said. “You would have your own rooms. Your own time. No obligations beyond those you choose to take on with Ian. You would not be asked to—perform any of the other functions of a wife.” He made this statement completely without showing any signs of embarrassment.
“I could offer you security. You would have income, a household, legal standing, and your father could not touch you. Redmont could not touch you. No one could.” He paused.
“And I will give you a home. A permanent one.”
Charlotte sat very still.
Freedom. Security. A home.
She turned the words over. They were the right words.
They were the exact words she had wanted for years, the words she had thought about in the library at Ashford estate with the door shut and nobody listening.
She had wanted those three things more than she could say, and the Duke had just lined them up across from her as though they were items in a contract.
Which was, she supposed, exactly what they were.
Something cold moved through her chest.
Her hands, she noticed, were trembling.
“You have thought of everything,” she said.
“I try to.”
“You have considered every angle, every practical benefit, every—” Her voice was thinner than she wanted it to be. She pressed her lips together. “You have reduced a marriage to a business arrangement and presented it to me as though you were offering me something generous.”
“I am offering you something—”
“Do you know what I have wanted?” She was on her feet again without entirely meaning to be.
“Not what would solve your problem. What I have wanted, for myself, my whole life.” She could feel it building behind her ribs, the particular pressure that came when something had been held down too long.
“My father told me what was best for me.
Lord Redmont—" She said the name like a curse. “Lord Redmont never once looked at me and asked what I thought. And now you stand there with your timber contracts and your deed of guardianship and your perfectly arranged list, and you tell me you are offering me freedom.” Her voice cracked just once before she got it back. “I cannot believe this. You are just another man who thinks he knows what’s best for Lady Charlotte Ashford.”
The Duke’s expression shifted. He opened his mouth.
“I need to breathe.”
The dress was too tight. It had not been too tight a moment ago, but it was worse now with the wool pressing against her ribs, the fire too hot, the room too small. She did not wait for a response. She turned and walked to the door and out of it, and behind her she heard it slam.
She did not slow down.
The hallway. The stairs. The entrance hall, where a footman looked up with mild alarm at a young woman moving through it at considerable speed. She went past him, through the front door, and out into the night air, and it hit her like icy water—sharp and clean and entirely necessary.
Charlotte kept walking.
The gravel path to the stables crunched under her feet. She could see the outline of the stable block against the dark, and for one moment she pondered her options.
A horse.
One of the big greys she had admired when they arrived, or even the smaller roan in the far stall. She could ride. She had ridden since she was six. She could be across the moor before anyone knew she was gone.
She stood at the stable yard gate.
Then she thought about where, exactly, she would go.
She turned away from the stable and looked at the tree line in the distance. The woods were dark and the moon was partial behind the clouds, but it was not raining, and the path into the trees was visible enough if she kept moving.
She shook her head, dismissed the idea, but continued striding away from the manor.
The woods were birch and oak, old growth, the kind that did not care about Dukes or proposals or the sound of a slamming door.
Charlotte walked until the house lights were dim behind her, until the noise of the evening settled into the ordinary sounds of the dark.
Her skirts caught twice on undergrowth. She freed them without stopping.
She found the oak by almost walking into it. It was enormous—wide-trunked and ancient, its lower branches sprawling out at an angle that invited exactly the sort of thing she was about to do. She circled around it once. Then twice.
Then she folded the skirt of her dress up over her arm, gripped the lowest branch, and pulled herself up.