Henry looked baffled. “I thought that was just the way it was—”
“Do you think I don’t know why you married me?” Charlotte cried. “Do you think I don’t know about the money your father owed my father, or that my father promised to forgive the debt if you’d marry me? He always wanted a boy, someone to run the Institute after him, and if he couldn’t have that, wel , why not pay to marry his unmarriageable daughter—too plain, too headstrong—off to some poor boy who was just doing his duty by his family—”
“CHARLOTTE.” Henry had turned brick red. She had never seen him so angry. “WHAT ON EARTH ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?”
Charlotte braced herself against the desk. “You know very wel ,” she said. “It is why you married me, isn’t it?”
“You’ve never said a word about this to me before today!”
“Why would I? It’s nothing you didn’t know.”
“It is, actual y.” Henry’s eyes were blazing. “I know nothing of my father’s owing yours anything. I went to your father in good faith and asked him if he would do me the honor of al owing me to ask for your hand in marriage. There was never any discussion of money!”
Charlotte caught her breath. In the years they had been married, she had never said a word about the circumstances of her betrothal to Henry; there had never seemed a reason, and she had never before wanted to hear any stammered denials of what she knew was true. Hadn’t her father said it to her when he had told her of Henry’s proposal? He is a good enough man, better than his father, and you need some sort of a husband, Charlotte, if you are going to direct the Institute. I’ve forgiven his father’s debts, so that matter is closed between our families.
Of course, he had never said, not in so many words, that that was why Henry had asked to marry her. She had assumed . . .
“You are not plain,” Henry said, his face stil blazing. “You are beautiful. And I didn’t ask your father if I could marry you out of duty; I did it because I loved you. I’ve always loved you. I’m your husband.”
“I didn’t think you wanted to be,” she whispered.
Henry was shaking his head. “I know people cal me eccentric. Peculiar. Even mad. Al of those things. I’ve never minded. But for you to think I’d be so weak-wil ed—Do you even love me at al ?”
“Of course I love you!” Charlotte cried. “That was never in question.”
“Wasn’t it? Do you think I don’t hear what people say? They speak about me as if I weren’t there, as if I were some sort of half-wit. I’ve heard Benedict Lightwood say enough times that you married me only so that you could pretend a man was running the Institute—”
Now it was Charlotte’s turn to be angry. “And you criticize me for thinking you weak-wil ed! Henry, I’d never marry you for that reason, never in a thousand years. I’d give up the Institute in a moment before I’d give up . . .”
Henry was staring at her, his hazel eyes wide, his ginger hair bristling as if he had run his hands madly through it so many times that he was in danger of pul ing it out in chunks. “Before you’d give up what?”
“Before I’d give you up,” she said. “Don’t you know that?”
And then she said nothing else, for Henry put his arms around her and kissed her. Kissed her in such a way that she no longer felt plain, or conscious of her hair or the ink spot on her dress or anything but Henry, whom she had always loved. Tears wel ed up and spil ed down her cheeks, and when he drew away, he touched her wet face wonderingly.
“Real y,” he said. “You love me, too, Lottie?”
“Of course I do. I didn’t marry you so I’d have someone to run the Institute with, Henry. I married you because—because I knew I wouldn’t mind how difficult directing this place was, or how badly the Clave treated me, if I knew yours would be the last face I saw every night before I went to sleep.” She hit him lightly on the shoulder. “We’ve been married for years, Henry. What did you think I felt about you?”
He shrugged his thin shoulders and kissed the top of her head. “I thought you were fond of me,” he said gruffly. “I thought you might come to love me, in time.”
“That’s what I thought about you,” she said wonderingly. “Could we real y both have been so stupid?”
“Wel , I’m not surprised about me,” said Henry. “But honestly, Charlotte, you ought to have known better.”
She choked back a laugh. “Henry!” She squeezed his arms. “There’s something else I have to tel you, something very important—”
The door to the drawing room banged open. It was Wil . Henry and Charlotte drew apart and stared at him. He looked exhausted—pale, with dark rings about his eyes—but there was a clarity in his face Charlotte had never seen before, a sort of bril iance in his expression. She braced herself for a sarcastic remark or cold observation, but instead he just smiled happily at them.