Charlotte moved to the hearth and began ladling tea from the pot into the chipped porcelain cups. The silver spoon clinked against the rim.
“She’s in Scotland,” Reginald added, not looking at them. “With her aunt in Dumfries. She won’t consider... anything more between us unless she believes I have done right by you.”
Charlotte handed him the cup.
Reginald took it carefully, like it might burn.
“I have travelled for two days,” he croaked. “Slept in a stable one night and a barn the next. Paid two different postmasters to forward gossip in exchange for news of a Duke with a London accent.”
“Well, you’ve found us, old boy,” Seth shrugged at last.
Charlotte stared at the tea in her hands, steam curling over her fingers. She had not thought she would hear such sincerity from her cousin again. Reginald had always been a creature of flash and charm and convenience. This version—rumpled, weary, without pretense—was someone else entirely.
And yet...
“You hurt me,” she said quietly. “Not simply by the threat, but by confirming what I already feared.”
He looked up.
“That my sister and I would always be an afterthought. Even to family.”
Reginald’s throat worked. “I know. I’m sorry. I wish... I had spoken to you properly before I tried to use you.”
Charlotte had just set the tray on the table when Reginald, warming his hands near the fire, suddenly reached into his inner coat pocket.
“Oh, I almost forgot,” he said, producing a folded letter sealed with red wax. “This came into my hands by accident, but I thought it best to bring it,” he said, tapping the seal with a gloved finger. “The butler at Hillcrest—Blythe, I think it was—arranged for it to be sent. Couldn’t find where to reach you, and the Viscount Arkendale asked me to pass it along if I found you.”
He handed it to Seth, who took it slowly, his expression unreadable. The seal was familiar. Hillcrest’s coat of arms: the griffin and oak. A thing from another life, or at least, a former one.
Charlotte watched her husband closely, the slight tension in his jaw as he turned the letter over in his hands.
“You got the wrong man, I’m afraid,” Seth said quietly, his thumb brushing the edge of the paper. “I am no longer the Duke of Bellmonte.”
Reginald blinked, then smiled faintly, as if certain he’d misheard. “I beg your pardon?”
“It is a rather long tale, but in short, I married someone not named in my father’s will,” Seth began, “and in so doing, I forfeited the title. The Bellmonte Dukedom was always a fragile one. I knew the terms. I imagine Monkton has Tewkesbury warming my old seat in Parliament right this moment.”
Charlotte felt the familiar flicker of sorrow in her chest, the memory of that day vivid again—the stormy weather, the weight of hopelessness, and Seth’s brave smile as they took the road deeper into the Scottish Highlands in search of her sister.
But now Reginald was staring at her husband as if he’d grown horns.
“I don’t understand,” he said carefully. “You believe you lost the title?”
“I don’tbelieve,” Seth replied. “I know I did. I have lived with the fact for the last few months.”
Reginald looked utterly at sea. “But... that can’t be right.”
“Whyever not?” Charlotte put in, furrowing her brows.
“Because it’s been the talk of the entire capital for the past several weeks,” Reginald said, looking between them with something like wonder. “Not the scandal, mind you, though that did fuel a few fire-side whispers. But the reinstatement. The correction. Everyone thought you’d ruined yourself until word came that the Prince Regent had received a proper marriage declaration—witnessed, signed, notarised, and delivered personally by some blacksmith’s son in Gretna Green. It was sent not only to Monkton’s office, but to Whitehall. There were three copies, I’m told. One of them made theGazette.”
Charlotte fell to a nearby chair, her knees no longer steady.
She’d expected many things from this visit. An apology, perhaps a chance to settle old bitterness. But not… this.
That… that can’t be true….
Seth didn’t speak. His fingers curled loosely around the letter from Blythe, now forgotten in his lap.
