Chapter 18
Henry took the velvet box from the jewel chest four days later, opened it, and looked at the contents for a long moment. Then he closed it. He carried it downstairs.
The drawing room fire had been built up. He sat in the chair near it and set the box on his knee and did not open it again. He looked at the flames instead.
He heard her on the stairs before she appeared in the doorway, and he stood. It was instinctive.
And then he stopped, because Charlotte was standing at the threshold in a sapphire-blue silk dress embroidered with white flowers and glass beads, and the firelight was catching every bead in turn.
He could not—for the space of three full seconds—reconcile the woman in front of him with the person he had found at a coaching inn in a borrowed valet’s coat with mud on her boots.
Arranging for new clothes to be made for his duchess upon their return to Town was a decision he was most grateful for. Henry cleared his throat.
“You look—” He stopped. He tried again. “The carriage is waiting.”
Charlotte tilted her head. “That was an interesting sentence.”
“It was a complete sentence.”
“It was the beginning of one.” She came further into the room, and the glass beads caught the light again, and Henry looked at the fire. “You were going to say something and then you didn’t.”
“I was going to say the carriage is waiting. Which I said.”
“After a notable pause.”
“I was composing my thoughts.”
Charlotte smiled, and it was the kind that suggested she was filing the entire exchange for later use.
Henry crossed to her. He held out the velvet box.
She looked at it, then at him. “What is this?”
“Open it.”
She took it from him. She lifted the lid.
Inside, on a bed of deep blue velvet, sat a necklace—sapphires set in gold, each stone reflecting with a rich blue that matched the silk of her dress so exactly it was almost architectural. Beside it, the matching earrings, and the tiara, which was not so much a tiara as a statement.
Charlotte was very still. “Henry.”
“They belonged to two Duchesses before you,” he said. “My grandmother wore the set to present at court. My mother wore it during her first Season.” He paused. “They have been in the chest for twenty-two years.”
She looked up at him. “Did you speak with Edith?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“My dress.” She glanced down at the silk. “Did you ask Edith what color I would be wearing? In order to—” She gestured between the jewels and the gown. “Match.”
“I did not.” A soft smile illuminated his features. “This is our first ball as Duke and Duchess, and I wish for the ton to see you.”
She narrowed her eyes. “This is a remarkable coincidence.”
“A fortunate one,” Henry said.
“You have a remarkable poker face.”
“I am telling you the truth.”
She looked at the necklace again. The smile returned, smaller this time, and something in it was not quite what he expected—not pleasure exactly. Something closer to wonder, and underneath it, a quiet ache she had not entirely covered.
“My father never gave me any of my mother’s jewelry,” she said. “He put it away after she died. I asked him once when I was seventeen. He said it wasn’t appropriate for the occasion.” She turned the box slightly in her hands. “He never named another occasion.”
Henry said nothing for a moment.
“This is your family now,” he said. “The Sappherton women have worn that set for sixty years. It will hold your legacy just as it held theirs.”
Charlotte looked at him. Not the quick, assessing look she used when she was deciding what to say next. The other one. The one she did not usually let him see for more than a second or two before she put it away.
He held her gaze.
She held his.
“May I?” Henry said.
She turned. He took the necklace from the box.
She lifted her hair clear of the chain, the loose strand near her ear brushing the back of his hand as she did, and he brought the clasp together at her nape.
His bare fingers rested against the back of her neck for the space of a breath.
Her skin was warm. He felt her go perfectly still.
And then—just once, just briefly—she shivered.
He let his hands drop.
She turned back around and looked somewhere past his shoulder at the mantelpiece. Henry looked at the velvet box. He closed the clasp on it with considerably more attention than the task required.
“The earrings,” he said.
She put them on without comment. Henry lifted the tiara and held it out. She took it, settled it into her hair, and then turned to the mirror above the fireplace.
She looked at her own reflection for a moment. Then she looked at his, just behind her left shoulder.
“Well,” she said.
“This brings out the gold in your eyes, Charlotte,” Henry murmured.
She turned back. Her chin was up, her eyes were bright, and she looked like someone who had been handed something real and was deciding how much weight to put on it.
He offered his arm, and she took it.
“I am going to need you to warn me,” Charlotte said, as they moved toward the door, “if anyone’s tiara is more impressive than mine. I want time to prepare.”
“No one’s tiara will be more impressive than yours.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I have been to a considerable number of balls,” Henry said. “I know that.”
“Because you are a duke or because you have an exceptional eye for jewelry?”
“Both,” he said. “Historically, both.”
She laughed at that—the short, genuine kind—and they went out together into the evening.
“You are not to worry,” Henry said.
The carriage had stopped. Through the window, the torchlight was bright on the steps and the queue of arriving guests stretched halfway to the street.
Charlotte looked out of the window then at him.
“You are telling me not to worry,” she said, “as we are about to be announced to every person of consequence in English Society, most of whom have not expected me to become a duchess.” She smiled, and it was the nervous kind, the one that was working extremely hard.
“That is the irony, you see. The advice and the situation are entirely at odds.”
“They are not at odds.”
“They are considerably at odds.”
“Charlotte.” He held her gaze. “You are wearing the Sappherton sapphires. You are the Duchess of Sappherton. And you have faced considerably worse than a ballroom.”
She looked at him. “You are referring to the tree.”
“I am referring to Scotland generally.”
The footman opened the door. Henry descended first and offered his hand. She took it and stepped down. They went up the steps together.
The majordomo had a voice built for exactly this purpose. It carried across the full width of the entrance hall and died away in the room beyond it like a stone dropped in still water.
“His Grace, the Duke of Sappherton. Her Grace, the Duchess of Sappherton.”
The room turned.
Not all at once. It was more gradual than that, a current moving through the assembled guests—heads shifting, fans pausing, conversations trailing off mid-sentence.
Henry had been announced at a hundred balls and had never registered the sound of a room turning toward him with quite this quality of attention.
It was not toward him. It was toward Charlotte.
He watched it happen. She stood at his side in the blue silk with the sapphires at her throat and held herself very correctly, chin level, and said nothing. A few people near the door smiled. Several were already moving toward them.
Then, for approximately the next forty minutes, Henry stood at Charlotte’s side, shook hands, made introductions, and watched person after person find her warm and charming and entirely worth speaking to, and found himself, to his considerable surprise, irritated by all of them.
Not at Charlotte. That was the thing. He was irritated at the gentlemen who found reasons to bow a fraction too long over her hand, and at the matrons who asked questions that were really just excavations.
Every time a young lord laughed at something Charlotte said, Henry found something adjacent to require his attention. He was aware that this was not rational.
He was also aware that he had no intention of examining it at present.
During a brief respite near the edge of the room, Charlotte leaned slightly toward him. “You are scowling,” she said.
“I am not scowling.”
“Your face is contorted as though you are in pain.”
“I am attending to the room.”
“You have been attending to every gentleman who has spoken to me for the last half hour.” She glanced at him. “It is very attentive of you.”
“I am simply vigilant.”
“You are remarkably vigilant.” But she said it with a smile that was entirely for him, quick and private, and he looked at the floor.
“Is it always like this?” Charlotte asked.
“The first ball is always watched more closely. After tonight it will be less.”
“Less,” she repeated. “Not none.”
“You are a duchess. It is never none.”
She absorbed that. “I suppose I had better get used to it.”
“You are doing perfectly well at it already.”
She looked at him again, and this time the smile was different. He did not want to think of what that meant. He’d developed the tendency, as of late, to give meaning to every one of his interactions with his wife.
He saw it before she did. He saw it because he had been scanning the room by habit all evening, the way one scanned shipping rosters for anomalies, and Vincent Carrington, the Marquess of Redmont, was an anomaly he had been half-expecting and half-hoping to avoid for the entire evening.
Redmont was moving through the crowd toward them. He was as Henry remembered—tall, impeccably dressed, and moved with the kind of ease in a ballroom that looked born rather than learned. He was smiling. He was always smiling.
Charlotte turned.
She went still. Henry felt it through her arm.
“Easy,” he said, very quietly.
She said nothing.
“Your Grace.” Redmont arrived with his hands behind his back and his smile at full deployment.
“How extraordinary an occasion. My heartfelt congratulations.” He turned to Henry and extended his hand.
“Sappherton. I trust you will forgive my tardiness in calling. The last several weeks have been rather… eventful.”
Henry shook the hand. “Redmont.”
“A most unexpected marriage.” Redmont managed to make the words sound entirely friendly. “Though I suppose the most interesting ones always are.”
“Quite,” Henry said.
“Your Grace.” Redmont turned to Charlotte.
His eyes were warm. They had always been warm.
That was the particular quality of them, the warmth that sat on the surface and went no deeper.
“You are looking exceptionally well. London clearly suits you.” He paused.
“Though I confess we were all rather… concerned, during the period of your absence. Your father especially. It caused considerable difficulty.”
Charlotte said, “I am sorry to hear that.”
“Are you?” He said it pleasantly. “Well. All’s well that ends well, as they say.
Though I must admit—and forgive me, for I say this only as someone who had a particular investment in the matter—there are one or two details left somewhat unresolved.
Between us.” He glanced at Henry with an expression of perfect good humor.
“I am certain Sappherton understands. Matters of this kind rarely tie up neatly. Settlements, correspondence, certain… understandings that were formed in good faith and never formally dissolved.”
Henry was aware of two ladies standing three feet to his left who had stopped talking entirely.
“I was not aware,” Henry said, “of any unresolved matters.”
“Of course not.” Redmont’s smile did not move. “You would not be.” He looked at Charlotte. “But I am sure Her Grace knows precisely what I mean.”
The two ladies exchanged a glance.
Henry placed his hand at Charlotte’s back, flat and firm, and drew her gently toward him. She came without resistance. She was very still, her chin was still up, and whatever she was feeling she had locked behind her eyes.