Chapter 35
The letter came from Scotland, and Henry recognized Nathan’s handwriting before he had even fully broken the seal.
He had been staring at the dispatch on his desk for the better part of an hour without reading it. The house was quiet. It had been quiet for six days. He had told himself he preferred quiet.
He broke the seal.
Nathan’s note was short, which was unlike him. The man could fill three pages discussing a single sheep.
Henry. Ian drew this for you. He asked me to send it. I thought you should have it straightaway. We are all well. Come north when you are ready. Bring your Duchess. Ian asks about her every morning.
There was something folded inside. A small square of paper, thicker than writing paper, the kind used for sketching.
Henry unfolded it.
Three figures stood beneath a tree. Stick arms, round heads, uneven legs planted in a row of green scribbles that were presumably grass.
The tree above them was enormous, sprawling, its branches taking up most of the top of the page, and from one of the branches hung what might have been a bird or a very confused hat.
The tallest figure had dark scribbles on his head. The middle figure had a skirt and brown curls. The smallest had a gap-toothed smile inked in with great care.
At the bottom, in Ian’s uneven, seven-year-old hand: Me Family.
Henry sat very still.
He turned the drawing once. The paper was slightly crumpled at one edge, as though it had been carried in a pocket before Nathan thought to fold it properly. Ian had pressed hard with the pencil. The letters were proud. Not uncertain. Not provisional.
Me Family.
Henry set the drawing on the desk.
He looked at it.
He thought about Ian counting soldiers on the garden path with one careful finger.
He thought about Charlotte on her knees in the snow trying to talk him down from a roof.
He thought about lemon sponge in the margins of a list and raspberry jam between the layers and Ian laughing at the candles, that short, startled, completely unguarded laugh.
Before, he had not dared to name all he felt while having these experiences. He had called it arrangement and duty and practicality, and he had told Tristan nothing had changed, and he had told himself the same thing every morning, and he had been lying.
Somewhere between the carriage steps and the picnic by the stream and the nursery and the atlas under the elm tree, it had become real.
And he had let it fall apart.
He decides what is best for me without asking what I want.
Charlotte’s voice in his memory. Not speaking of Henry. Speaking of her father.
Henry pushed back from the desk.
He sat there for a moment with the drawing in front of him and that sentence sitting in his chest like a coal still burning, and he saw it—clearly, suddenly, the way you saw a thing when you had been standing too close to it for months.
He had done the same thing. Exactly the same.
He had sat in the library and opened that conversation about what comes next, and when Charlotte had gone quiet, he had not asked.
He had not said: I want you to stay. I want you here.
I am asking, not assuming. He had let the silence answer for him, and the silence had answered wrong, and then he had been in Matlock when she left, and he had come home to a letter on his blotter, squared to the edges, written in the hand of someone trying very hard to be gracious about being let go.
He had decided what was best for her. He had decided she would be better off making her own choices elsewhere, and he had not once asked her what those choices were.
Her father had done that. Henry had done it too.
He picked up the drawing and looked at it one more time. The three figures under the tree. The enormous bird-hat. His own dark scribbles, Charlotte’s skirt, Ian’s gap-toothed smile.
Me Family.
He folded it, tucked it inside his coat, and stood.
He was across the hall in six strides.
“Gedge.”
The butler appeared from the direction of the kitchen passage.
“Your Grace.”
“I require the carriage,” Henry said. “Today. Within the hour.”
“Of course, Your Grace. Shall I—”
“Surrey.” Henry pulled on his coat and held out his hand for his hat without slowing. “The Countess De Clare’s house. You have the direction. If you do not, find someone who does.”
“I have it,” Gedge said. He already had Henry’s hat in hand. He had, in Henry’s estimation, always had whatever was needed at exactly the right moment. It was one of his finest qualities.
“I do not know how long I shall be,” Henry said. He checked that the drawing was still in his breast pocket. It was. “Do not wait supper.”
“Very good, Your Grace.”
Henry nodded.
He stepped outside. The morning was bright, cold, and the carriage horses were already being walked from the stable block. Someone had wasted no time.
He stood on the steps and felt the drawing against his chest.
Come north when you are ready. Bring your Duchess.
He was going to bring his Duchess home first.
* * *
“You have a caller,” Georgiana said from the doorway.
Charlotte set down her book. Her heart did the thing it had been doing for six days: it leapt before she could stop it.
Her aunt’s face answered the question before she could ask it.
“It is not your husband,” Georgiana said. “It is Lord Redmont.”
“What the devil does he want?”
Georgiana’s brow went up.
“Mind your language, Child.”
Charlotte pressed her lips together. “I have no wish to see him.”
“He has been here an hour,” Georgiana said. “When he first arrived, I took the liberty of telling him you were indisposed. He sat down.” She looked faintly incredulous. “He simply sat down and waited.”
“Then he may continue waiting until he comes to his senses and leaves.”
“Charlotte.” Georgiana came fully into the room and closed the door. “See him. Say what you need to say. Send him away yourself. It will be considerably more effective than my doing it for you.”
Charlotte looked at her aunt.
“He will not stop,” Georgiana said. “Not until you have given him an answer he cannot argue with.”
Charlotte got up, smoothed her skirts, and went downstairs.
Redmont was standing at the window when she came in. He turned and bowed. Then his gaze moved over her once, quick and appraising.
“You look very well,” he said. “Surrey clearly agrees with you.”
“What do you want, Lord Redmont?”
He smiled. “Directness. I have always admired it in you.”
“Then I shall continue in that vein.” Charlotte remained near the doorway. “You have traveled some distance. I would like to know why.”
Redmont moved away from the window. “I think you know why. Your marriage is over, Charlotte. Anyone can see it. You are here. He is in London. You have been here nearly a week, and there has been no word from Sappherton.” He clasped his hands behind his back, perfectly composed. “I am offering you a way forward.”
“I am the Duchess of Sappherton,” Charlotte said. “That does not change because I am visiting my aunt.”
“It will change,” he said, “when your husband completes the legal proceedings he has already set in motion.”
Charlotte looked at him steadily. “I do not believe you.”
“I have it on good authority—”
“Henry will not divorce me.” She crossed her arms. “He abhors scandal. A divorce would follow the Sappherton name for generations. You know that as well as I do.”
Redmont tilted his head, that small, considered movement she had always found irritating.
“Perhaps he decided severing ties with you was worth the scandal,” he said.
“Because he let you leave, Charlotte. He watched you walk out of his house, and he did not come after you.” A pause.
“That is not the behavior of a man in love.”
The words found their mark. She felt it, a cold little arrow somewhere in her chest.
But she did not let it show.
“I am not going to marry you,” she said.
“I was not going to marry you before, and that has not changed. I did not want this match when my father arranged it. I do not want it now. I would not want it if I were standing in the ruins of everything else that I had ever known.” She held his gaze.
“I am sorry if that is painful to hear. But it is the truth, and I think you deserve the truth rather than excuses.”
Redmont opened his mouth.
The door burst open.
Georgiana stood in the frame, both hands gripping the wood, entirely without her usual composure.
“He is here,” she said. “Charlotte. Your Sappherton is here.”
Charlotte did not breathe.
And then Henry walked into the room.
He was travel-worn, his coat dusty from the road, his hair not quite as neat as it usually was. He looked exactly like a man who had driven to Surrey without stopping to think about whether he was in any state to arrive. His eyes swept the room once.
They found Redmont and his jaw hardened. Then he walked past Redmont entirely, as though the man were a piece of furniture he had already catalogued and dismissed and came straight to Charlotte.
“I owe you an apology,” he said.
Charlotte realized her hands were shaking. She pressed them against her skirts.
“I let fear make my decisions,” Henry said.
“I sat in that library and opened a conversation I had no idea how to finish, and when you went quiet, I said nothing. I did not ask what you wanted. I simply assumed.” He stopped.
His jaw was tight. “I did the same thing your father did. I decided what was best for you without asking.”
Charlotte stared at him.
“I was wrong,” he said. “That is all I know how to say. I was wrong, and I have spent six days in a house that has managed to feel empty in every room simultaneously, which I did not previously believe was architecturally possible.” He reached into his breast pocket and held out a small, folded paper.
She opened the page and stared at it.
It was a drawing that she guessed must have been made by Ian. It featured the three of them under a tree.
Me Family.
Her throat closed.
“I did not see it clearly until this arrived,” Henry said. “But it has been real for rather a long time. You have been real for rather a long time.” He looked at her directly. “I love you, Charlotte. Losing you made it impossible to pretend otherwise.”
“How very affecting,” Redmont said from behind them. “But Charlotte, consider—”
“She is considering,” Charlotte said, without turning around.
“He has just arrived on impulse after six days of silence. That is not love. That is wounded pride dressed up as—”
“Lord Redmont.” She turned then because she wanted him to see her face clearly. “I am staying with my husband. That is my choice, freely made, with full knowledge of everything you have just said.” She folded Ian’s drawing carefully and held it in both hands. “Go home.”
Redmont looked at Henry. Then back at Charlotte. His expression shifted through several things before landing on the polished surface he always fell back on.
“Charlotte—”
“The Marquess,” Georgiana said from the doorway, where she had apparently been standing for some time, “has quite overstayed his welcome. I will have your horse brought round, Lord Redmont. I am certain you will find the return journey bracing.”
Redmont picked up his hat.
He bowed once, to the room at large, and walked out. The front door opened and closed, and the sound of hoofbeats on gravel faded down the lane.
The drawing room was incredibly quiet.
Henry looked at Charlotte. Charlotte looked at Henry.
“Come home with me,” he said. “Not because the marriage requires it. Not because of duty or propriety or any other word I have used as a shield.” He was not guarded now.
Not even a little. “Because I want a life with you. Because Sappherton House has about a dozen empty rooms that have apparently been waiting for someone who moves the furniture, argues about cake recipes, and lets small boys talk her into building a fort.”
Charlotte laughed. It broke a little. She did not mind.
“You once made it clear,” Henry said, more quietly, “that you would fight rather than let anyone else write your future. I am choosing to lay mine entirely at your feet. I love you. That is the whole of it.”
She looked at him. At the travel-worn coat and the undone effort and the eyes that were doing the thing they always did when he had run out of places to hide.
“I love you too,” she said. “I have loved you for rather a long time as well, as it happens. Since Scotland, I think. Possibly since an ankle and a coaching inn.”
Something changed in his face. Something that had been held very tightly for an extraordinarily long time.
He crossed the last foot of distance between them and kissed her.
Not like the stream. Not soft, careful, and uncertain. This was a man who had driven to Surrey knowing exactly what he intended to say and finally, finally saying it, and Charlotte’s hands found the lapels of his dusty coat and held on, because her knees were once again making no promises.
When they broke apart, his forehead rested against hers for a moment.
“Sappherton House,” he said.
“Yes,” she said. “Let’s go home.”