Chapter 19
“Iwonder,” Redmont said, pleasantly, “if Her Grace would honor me with the next dance.”
He said it to Henry, but he was looking at Charlotte. The two ladies to their left had stopped pretending to talk. Three more people nearby had turned, just slightly, the way people turn when something interesting is happening and they do not wish to appear to notice.
Charlotte opened her mouth.
“She will not,” Henry said. “My wife will be dancing with me.”
His words were not rough. Not particularly loud. Just entirely, completely final. He offered Charlotte his arm and she took it, and Henry led her toward the floor before Redmont had finished inclining his head.
“Well,” Charlotte said, under her breath.
“Don’t.”
“I was simply going to say thank you.”
“Later,” Henry said.
The cotillion had already begun to form at the far end of the room. Henry placed her hand correctly, and they took their position in the set. Then the music opened up around them like something that had been waiting.
Charlotte glanced at him. His jaw was set. Not the composed, administrative set she had catalogued over three weeks of marriage—this was something tighter. She had seen it once before. In the blue sitting room, when her father had used her mother’s name.
“You are furious,” she said.
The opening figure separated them before he could answer.
They came back together. His hand met hers.
“I am entirely calm,” Henry said.
“Your jaw disagrees.”
“My jaw is fine.”
The figure turned them apart again. Charlotte moved through it correctly, smiled at the gentleman across from her with the automatic competence of someone who had been trained to dance since she was nine, and came back around to Henry.
“He was simply asking for a dance,” she said. “He cannot have any genuine interest in a married woman. He can only…”
“Do not,” Henry said, “finish that sentence.”
“I was going to say it is entirely improper—”
“I know what you were going to say.”
The figure separated them again. He returned.
“You do not know men like Redmont,” Henry said. “You might know his drawing room manner.” His hand at her back was correct, formal, but his fingers pressed once, briefly. “But I know his business dealings.”
“And what do his business dealings tell you about whether he intends to dance with a duchess?”
“They tell me,” Henry said, “that he does not do anything without a purpose.”
The music turned them. Charlotte completed the figure, and when she came back, the set had rearranged and she was briefly beside him rather than across from him.
“He wanted to unsettle me,” she said quietly. “He succeeded, briefly. But I would not have agreed to the dance.”
“I know that.”
“Then why—”
“Because I did not want to watch you decline him in front of thirty people while they all waited to see how you did it.” The words came out flat, almost businesslike, but she caught the faint edge of irritation beneath them. “You should not have to manage Redmont in public. That is not your work.”
Charlotte said nothing.
The figure closed and they separated again, and she moved through the rest of the set with her chin level, and her form correct and her heart behaving with considerably less dignity.
When the cotillion ended, Henry returned her arm to his and steered her toward the side of the room with a certainty that suggested he had already identified the precise location he wished her to occupy.
“You are keeping me very close,” Charlotte observed.
“Yes.”
“Is this a permanent arrangement for the evening?”
“I have not decided.”
She looked at the room. Redmont had withdrawn. She could not immediately find him, which was, she thought, its own kind of information.
“He is not going to approach me again tonight,” Charlotte said. “Not with this many people watching.”
Henry looked at her. “You are very confident of that.”
“I am very confident that he is too careful to make a scene in a room full of the ton.” She tilted her head. “Whatever his purposes are.”
Henry did not look reassured.
Half an hour later, Charlotte leaned toward him. “I need the retiring room.”
“I’ll find you near the east door when you return.”
She nodded and went.
The retiring room was down a side corridor, past two sets of double doors and around a short turn that cut the ballroom noise to almost nothing. A housemaid was stationed there with pins and a small pot of powder. Charlotte sorted herself, thanked her, and started back.
She was three steps from the turn back to the corridor when she heard him.
“Your Grace.”
Charlotte stopped.
Redmont was standing at the end of the short corridor. He had positioned himself—and it was a position; she understood that immediately—between her and the route back. He was smiling.
“A fortunate coincidence,” he said.
“Lord Redmont.” She kept her voice even. “Excuse me.”
She moved forward. He did not move.
“I only want a moment,” he said. “One small conversation. Surely that is not too much to ask.”
Charlotte looked at him.
“You disappeared,” Redmont said. “Overnight. Not a word, not a note. And now, here you are as the Duchess of Sappherton.” The smile was still in place, but the warmth in it had gone somewhere else entirely. “I find myself rather curious.”
“I cannot think why.”
“Can you not?” He tilted his head. “We had an understanding, your father and me. It had been discussed at some length. And then you—” He paused, as though choosing the word. “Elected otherwise.”
“I married someone else,” Charlotte said. “That is what I did. It is entirely legal and entirely final, and it is, I’m afraid, none of your affair.”
“None of my affair.” He repeated it pleasantly. “You were to be my wife.”
“I was never to be anything,” Charlotte said. “I was not consulted. I was not asked. My father arranged on my behalf, and I chose not to honor the deal.” She met his pale grey eyes. “That is all.”
“That is not quite—”
“Lord Redmont.” She kept her voice level. “Mind your own business.”
His smile shifted. He took one step closer.
Charlotte held her ground for exactly one second. Then she stepped to the right, neat and clean, putting the wall on her other side, and walked past him.
He did not touch her. He did not say anything else.
But she felt the full weight of his attention follow her every step down the corridor, and she did not look back.
She did not slow her pace, and it was only when the double doors opened into the noise and the light and the crowd of the ballroom that she allowed herself a single quiet breath.
Henry was at the east door.
He saw her before she reached him.
“Are you all right?” he said.
“Perfectly,” Charlotte said.
He looked at her.
“Redmont was in the corridor,” she said. “He wanted a conversation. I told him my decision to marry you was none of his affair. And then I came back.”
Henry’s gaze sharpened.
“I am fine,” Charlotte said. “He said nothing I could not manage, and I managed it.”
“What did he say?”
“That he was curious how I had come to be married to a duke.” She paused. “I told him to mind his own business.”
Henry looked across the room, and Charlotte did not need to follow his gaze to know who he was looking for.
“He is not worth the trouble,” she said. “Not tonight. Tonight, I would very much like to dance again and allow everyone in this room to see me having an entirely pleasant evening.”
Henry looked back at her.
“Is that,” he said, “a request?”
“It is an extremely reasonable suggestion.” She tilted her head. “I believe the quadrille is next.”
For a moment he said nothing. Then: “Can you manage it? After what must’ve been a—”
“Henry.” She looked up at him. “I have managed considerably worse. I once spent three hours in a tree at midnight in Scotland.” She held out her hand. “I can manage a quadrille.”
“You are never going to let me forget that tree,” he said.
“Not while I live.”
He looked at her for one more moment, and his expression was not composed in any of its usual ways. It was open, briefly, in the place just behind his eyes. Charlotte looked at it and then looked away. He took her hand and they went to the floor.
She saw Redmont once, from the far corner of the quadrille’s second figure. He had positioned himself near the edge of the room, a glass in one hand, entirely still. Watching.
She did not look at him again.
The figure brought her back to Henry. His hand steadied hers through the turn. She straightened and found him looking not at her but across the room, and she knew, without following his gaze, that he had found Redmont.
She watched him look directly at Redmont with an expression that was not threatening, or theatrical, or anything that could be remarked upon in polite company. It was simply clear. Absolutely, entirely clear. The kind of look that did not require words.
The quadrille carried them through the next figure and Charlotte could not see Redmont from where she stood, but she did not need to. She had seen Henry’s face.
Whatever was between those two men, it was not finished.
Not even close.