HER MOTHER TOLD THE DUKE SHE COULDN’T READ—THEN HE FOUND HER SECRET ROOM OF LAW BOOKS

Chapter 29

The wedding took place in April at the small chapel on the Ravenshire estate.

Charlotte refused a grand London ceremony. Nathaniel was relieved. Lady Margaret pretended to object for exactly one afternoon, then redirected her energy toward flowers with the focus of a general planning a campaign.

Spring rain fell in the morning and stopped before noon. The chapel smelled of damp stone, wax, and white roses, and sunlight came through the narrow windows while the guests settled into the wooden pews.

Lady Eleanor cried before the ceremony had even begun. Henry claimed she had started because the organ was badly tuned. She hit him with her fan.

Olivia stood beside Charlotte in pale blue. She had not accepted another proposal. She was learning Italian and helping Eleanor with the correspondence for the legal fund — a development Lady Margaret described, with some resignation, as contagious scholarship.

Edward walked Charlotte down the short aisle. Halfway along it, his grip tightened.

“I am proud of you,” he whispered.

Charlotte looked at him. “I know.”

She knew that was new, too.

Nathaniel waited at the front. He did not look like a duke then. He looked like the man who sharpened pencils with a pocketknife, hated raisins, forgot his tea beside difficult documents, and had once stood in a crowded hearing room insisting that a date remained a date no matter who discovered it.

Charlotte took his hand.

The vows were simple.

The life afterward was not.

There were arguments over estate reform. Winters with flooded roads. Committee cases that ended badly, and families she could not help, and nights when she came home silent because someone had trusted the wrong adviser and there was nothing left to recover.

There were family dinners where Margaret still occasionally interrupted before thinking, and long evenings when Charlotte and Nathaniel worked at opposite ends of the same table until one of them remembered food, and mornings when he read the newspaper standing up because he was already impatient with the day.

That was exactly what Charlotte wanted.

Not a perfect ending.

A real continuation.