Chapter 12
“If anyone can show just cause why these two persons should not be joined in holy matrimony,” the minister said, “let them speak now or else forever hold their peace.”
No one spoke.
Charlotte had half-expected her own voice to betray her. It did not. The chapel held its breath, and so did she, and then the minister moved on.
The chapel was small. Beautiful, in its way.
Mrs. Wick had done remarkable things with late heather and a handful of stubborn autumn roses, threading them into the simple wooden arch above the altar and setting candles in every stone niche along the walls.
At the back of the chapel, the estate solicitor stood beside the butler, and behind them a dozen indoor staff had arranged themselves with the quiet careful dignity of people who knew they were witnessing something unusual and intended to be worthy of it.
Charlotte kept her eyes on the minister.
She had told herself, very firmly, three times over breakfast and once in the mirror before she came down, that this was a legal formality.
A practical framework. The most sensible available solution to a problem that had no sensible solutions.
The contract was drawn. The terms were clear.
She was not a girl in a story. She was a woman with a plan.
Then Henry began to speak.
“I, Henry Matthew Kingswell, take you, Charlotte Renee Ashford, to be my wife.”
He said it the way he said everything—directly, without decoration. But there was something underneath it that had not been there in the library, something that sat in each plain word like weight on a scale. Charlotte’s hand tightened at her side. She did not look at him.
“To have and to hold from this day forward. To love and to cherish. Until death us do part.”
The old words. She had heard them at other people’s weddings, in other people’s chapels, and they had always seemed like ceremony. Now they sounded like something else entirely. Like a door opening somewhere she had not thought to look through before.
She breathed.
It was her turn.
“And I—” She stopped. She had not intended to stop. “Charlotte. R-Renee Ashford.” A half-second. She got it back. “Take you, Henry Matthew Kingswell, to be my husband.”
Her voice was steady after that. She made certain of it.
She got through the rest of the vows without looking at him once, which was its own small victory. But she could feel him beside her—the stillness of him, the set of his shoulder just at the edge of her vision.
She told herself she was imagining it.
The minister spoke the final words.
Henry turned toward her. He took her gloved hand in both of his, and she felt the warmth of his fingers even through the satin. He lowered his head and pressed his lips to her knuckles.
It was correct. It was proper. It was the safest possible gesture in the circumstances, and Charlotte was entirely unprepared for the way an emotional response moved through her.
Slow and inconvenient and not even slightly willing to be argued away.
It traveled from her knuckles straight up her arm.
She stood very still and kept her chin level.
She did not let any of it reach her face.
Henry released her hand and stepped back.
His expression was composed. But the set of his jaw had shifted, and she had learned enough in the past few days to read it.
The minister closed his book.
Ian launched a handful of roses into the air jubilantly.
He had been standing beside Mrs. Wick with a flat basket of flower heads, and if he had been exercising any restraint at all up to this point, it evaporated entirely the moment the book shut.
The first handful of petals caught Charlotte full across the cheek and shoulder.
The second went directly over Henry’s head and skittered down his coat.
A third volley landed somewhere on the stone floor near the solicitor’s boots with an audible skid.
“Mind where you aim, young man!”
Ian, undaunted, reached into the basket for more.
Charlotte laughed. She could not help it.
It came out of her before she had decided anything about it, genuine and helpless, and it startled Ian so much that he laughed too—a bright, surprised sound—and then the chapel was entirely full of noise and petals and Mrs. Wick’s voice from somewhere behind them saying, “Ian Drummond, those were for after the door—” in a tone that was trying very hard to be stern and failing at every syllable.
Henry looked at Charlotte.
She looked back at him. Her cheek still had a petal on it. She was fairly certain her hair had three more.
“Effective,” he said.
“Extremely,” Charlotte agreed.
She reached up and extracted a rose petal from the hair above her ear.
Henry watched this with an expression she could not quite place, and then he turned to address Ian on the matter of basket management, and Charlotte tucked the petal into her glove because she had no pocket and did not examine why.
Outside the chapel doors, the rest of the household had assembled.
They had rice. They had more petals. They deployed both with the wholehearted enthusiasm of people who had been holding it in through the ceremony.
Charlotte walked into the crowd with her arm tucked correctly into Henry’s and felt all the warmth of it, the ordinary human warmth of strangers wishing her well.
She smiled at them and beamed at young Ian.
Mrs. Wick stood on the chapel steps. Her hands were folded, and her eyes were misted with unshed tears.
Charlotte met her gaze, and the housekeeper gave her a single, meaningful nod.
Ian was darting between the adults with the remaining flower heads from his basket, assigning them without particular logic to whoever was closest. The butler received one with great seriousness. The kitchen maid received two and giggled.
Charlotte caught Henry watching the child.
He had gone still, just for a moment, with the thin Scottish light on his face and Ian spinning in and out of the small crowd before him.
His expression was not the one he used for contracts, solicitors, or situations that required management.
It was quieter than that. More uncertain.
Like a man who had written a careful plan and was only now beginning to understand what he had actually signed up for.
She knew that feeling.
She did not say so.
Ian arrived at Henry’s feet and held up the last flower head. Henry looked down at it. Then he took it, which Charlotte had not expected. Ian looked deeply satisfied with this outcome and ran back to Mrs. Wick.
Henry glanced sidelong at Charlotte.
She looked forward. The drive stretched south, the sky was low and pale, and somewhere ahead of it was London.
She kept her chin level and told herself it was only the cold making her chest feel that way.
It was not the cold.
“Will there be trees to climb in London?”
Ian was on the rocking horse with both hands on its carved mane, sitting perfectly still, which was not how one usually used a rocking horse.
Charlotte was resting on the footstool beside him.
She had come up after the household’s warmth on the drive had subsided into the particular quiet of a house being dismantled, and Ian had been here already, not playing, just sitting.
“There will be a garden,” Charlotte said. “A large one. I have not seen it myself, but I intend to investigate every tree in it within the first week.”
Ian ran his fingers through the horse’s fine mane. “What if they’re not the right kind?”
“What is the right kind?”
“Ones that go high enough.” He considered this. “And with branches you can sit on without sliding.”
“Those are extremely reasonable criteria. I shall apply them rigorously.” She looked at him. “Are you ready?”
He was quiet for a moment. “Mrs. Wick won’t be there.”
“No.”
“Or Tam.”
Charlotte held still. She did not fill the silence with reassurance he had not asked for.
“Tam could come later,” Ian said, as if he was trying the idea out. “When there’s a proper stable.”
“That is a very sound arrangement.”
He dismounted from his horse and scooped one of his toy soldiers out of a toy chest. Ian looked at the soldier in his palm. Then he nodded once, the way he had when she had first asked him to make the solemn vow over the broken toys—small, certain, decided.
“All right,” he said.
They went downstairs.
The afternoon had been consumed by the practical machinery of departure.
Two maids were ferrying trunks to the front entrance with the focused efficiency of people on a deadline.
The solicitor’s papers had been laid out across the dining room table in careful sequence, and Charlotte had signed her name three times in increasingly legal company while Henry explained each document to her without being asked, which she appreciated more than she intended to admit.
She was crossing the hallway with her traveling cloak when Henry appeared from the study.
“I have met with the stewards. Nathan divided his affairs between too many parties, and I have remedied that situation. Now, there is one man in charge and that steward has his instructions,” he said. “The estate should run adequately in my absence.”
“Adequately,” Charlotte repeated. “What a ringing endorsement.”
“It is a capable estate, and the situation is under management.”
“You say that,” Charlotte said, “as though you have any idea what Ian is going to do in a London townhouse.”
Henry glanced toward the staircase where Ian had just disappeared around the upper landing with something tucked under his arm that had not been there before.
“I have some idea,” Henry said.
“You have very little idea.” She pulled on her glove. “But I expect you will learn quickly.”
He looked at her for a moment with the expression she had decided was his version of amusement—not quite a smile, something more contained, but present if a person knew where to look.
“I generally do,” he said.
On the drive, the household had assembled again.
It was smaller than the morning crowd. The outdoor staff had returned to their posts, and what remained was the core of the indoor household—the butler, the housemaids, the nursery maid who had packed Ian’s things under Mrs. Wick’s close supervision and looked slightly winded by the experience.
Ian appeared at the front door with his coat on and the repaired soldier tucked into his breast pocket.
“All aboard,” Henry said.
Ian made for the carriage step without ceremony.
Mrs. Wick was standing near Charlotte’s elbow.
Charlotte turned towards her, and Mrs. Wick took her hands in both of hers. They were warm and very sure. She did not say anything. She held Charlotte’s hands for the space of three breaths, looked at her with those sharp, kind eyes, and then released her.
Charlotte swallowed.
“Thank you,” she managed. “For everything.”
Mrs. Wick gave a single nod. She stepped back.
Charlotte turned to the carriage before she did something unforgivable like cry.
Ian had already installed himself in the forward-facing seat with his coat arranged neatly and his soldier visible above the pocket. He wore an expression that suggested he had been waiting some considerable time. Henry stood at the carriage door and offered Charlotte his hand.
She took it and climbed in.
They settled across from Ian. Charlotte arranged her cloak. Henry straightened his coat. Ian watched them both as if deciding whether the seating arrangement was satisfactory.
“Is there food?” Ian said.
Henry looked at the traveling case. “There is.”
Ian appeared appeased. He looked out the window.
Henry rapped the roof with his knuckles.
The carriage moved.
Charlotte watched Drummond Hall through the window. She admired one last time the stone front of it, the wide drive, the kitchen garden wall she could just make out at the eastern edge. Mrs. Wick had gone back up the steps and was standing at the front door. She did not wave. She just watched.
Charlotte looked back until the bend in the drive swallowed the house and it was gone.
She turned away from the window.
Henry had his traveling case open and a document across his knee. He was already reading. He had a small crease between his brows that appeared when the text required close attention, and his thumb moved along the margin the way it did when he was annotating in his head.
Ian shifted on his seat. His eyes had gone heavy already. He fought it for perhaps two minutes and then he listed sideways and rested against a cushion. The soldier in his breast pocket tilted at an angle.
Charlotte looked down at him. Then she glanced at Henry.
He turned a page without looking up. The crease between his brows deepened.
Outside, the road north curved away behind them and the Scottish afternoon pressed gray and cool against the carriage windows, and the miles were already beginning to accumulate between her and the only world she had ever run from.
This is not what you expected, she thought. None of it is.
She had climbed into a stranger’s carriage in the dark with borrowed clothes and no plan and the dim conviction that anything was better than standing still.
She had expected to be discovered within the first hour.
She had expected to be sent home within the day.
She had not expected Ian, or the broken soldiers, or the woods at midnight, or a duke who laughed when she was not prepared for it.
She had not expected to return to town as the Duke of Sappherton’s wife with a child in tow.
Henry turned another page.
Charlotte swallowed as her nerves coiled. She did not know what was waiting for her in London.