Page 47 of Her Temporary Duke (Rakes and Roses #2)

“She said if I ever wanted her to look at me again with anything other than contempt, I had to become a man she might respect. And that began with owning my sins… for driving my cousin away.”

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’t believe ,” 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 the Gazette . ”

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.

“It was published?” Charlotte asked, her voice distant.

“Yes. I think it began as a clerical notice—something dry and dull—but it caught attention when it became clear it involved you two. There was a full account in The Morning Chronicle. Some speculation about your wife being the ‘other sister,’ though it stopped short of naming you, Charlotte. I suppose your departure made it difficult to confirm anything. Still, the consensus has been that the marriage stood—and more importantly, that it satisfied your late father’s will. The marriage contract itself—”

“—was never rescinded,” Seth finished, his voice faint. “And if two more copies were sent, then Monkton had no legal grounds without a formal objection from the bride herself…”

Reginald nodded slowly. “Exactly. And since no such objection was made...” He narrowed his eyes at the pair of them now. “I, and almost all of London, I should add, had presumed you had settled elsewhere to avoid the fallout. You mean to say, all this time, you thought…?”

Charlotte found herself staring into the fire, not quite seeing it.

The storm, the lost opportunity, the terrible guilt of preventing her husband from maintaining his birthright—all of it had sat like stone in her chest for months. But now... that weight had shifted. It had never needed to be carried at all.

“We thought...” she began, then faltered.

Seth stood suddenly, unfolding the letter from Blythe with a briskness that betrayed his hands weren’t quite steady. He read it in silence. A moment passed. Then another.

“What does it say?” she asked quietly.

Seth looked up, eyes shadowed with disbelief. “It says that tenants in Hillcrest have begun their spring petitions, some details of business closures, and that I should return when next I have the chance.”

Charlotte rose as well, walking to his side.

They stood together, shoulder to shoulder, and she took the letter from his hands, scanning the lines.

The familiar handwriting. The mundane details. As though nothing extraordinary had happened at all over the last two months. As though it were only natural that they would return.

“What will you do?” Reginald asked, quieter now, clearly unsure whether he’d brought news or upheaval.

Seth’s answer was delayed. Slow, deliberate, and laced with something unreadable. “I’ll… think about it.”

Charlotte placed a cup of tea into Seth’s hands, her fingers lingering against his. His gaze met hers, and something unspoken passed between them—something vast and complicated and quietly astonishing.

“I won’t intrude any further,” her cousin abruptly said, standing and drawing on his coat.

“I am headed back to London. Or Scotland. I’m not entirely sure.

I’ll find Victoria and tell her I did what she asked.

Now, whether she will accept me, I have no idea.

But I rather think she’ll enjoy rejecting me in person. ”

Charlotte couldn’t help the small smile that tugged at her lips. “Safe travels, Reginald.”

He nodded, more sincere than she’d ever seen him, and stepped out into the fading afternoon.

The door clicked softly shut.

Charlotte turned toward her husband, who was now staring into the fire like a man who had just realized his entire world had tilted underfoot.

The shadows moved across Seth’s face, but she saw his eyes—clear and unfocused, staring somewhere not into the hearth, but far beyond it. Perhaps to the long drive at Hillcrest. The scarred writing desk in the study his father used to sit behind. The long corridor of ancestors in oil and dust.

She reached out and touched his wrists. “I never thought we’d have to choose.”

Seth’s mouth twitched, not quite a smile.

“Neither did I.” He looked down at her, the weight of something heavy—not regret, not quite—resting behind his gaze.

“When I left it all behind, I thought I was giving up a life. A legacy. But what I see now is... it was just waiting for me. As if it knew I’d return. ”

“But do you want it?” she asked gently.

He didn’t answer. Not yet.

Charlotte let her hand slide into his. “You don’t have to know this minute. We don’t owe them anything—not tonight. We can still choose.”

His fingers curled around hers. His voice was quiet. “Do you think we have been cowards?”

She shook her head. “I think we were brave. We walked away from everything, and we built something real on our own.”

He nodded slowly, almost to himself. “And yet, Blythe writes as though I’ve merely been delayed at the coast. As if… as if the world expects us to return, slip back into our places without remark.”

Charlotte glanced at the letter still crumpled on the side table. “Perhaps it does. But we are not the same as when we left.”

A silence settled between them, thick but not uncomfortable. The warmth of the fire pulsed against her back. Outside, the clouds had cloaked the once blue afternoon sky, wrapping their cottage in dusky hush.

Charlotte hesitated. Her fingers flexed lightly against his.

“There’s… there’s something else,” she said, carefully. “I hadn’t planned to say anything today. It never felt like the right moment. Or… or perhaps I just wasn’t ready to share it yet.”

Seth looked down at her, his features alert now, softened with concern. “What is it, dear?”

She lifted one hand and reached for his, guiding it gently—deliberately—down between them, resting his palm against her lower stomach. The moment stretched, full of silence. His skin was warm and steady, the pressure of his touch light but attentive. He didn’t speak. He didn’t need to.

Charlotte searched his face as understanding began to rise behind his eyes—not in a rush, but like a tide drawing in.

“I was going to wait longer,” she said, barely more than a whisper. “But today changed everything. And it didn’t feel right to keep it to myself any longer.”

Seth’s hand didn’t move from her belly. He looked down, as if he could see beneath her dress, through her skin, as if the idea of what lay growing inside her was too sacred to grasp all at once.

When he looked back up, his expression was unlike anything she had ever seen in him…

so open, it nearly unmade her. Awe, fear, joy, and something else she couldn’t name—something almost reverent.

“I’m… I’m going to be a father…?” he breathed.

Charlotte nodded primly, throat tight.

He took a small breath, and then a deeper one, and brought both his hands to either side of her waist, anchoring himself to her as if she alone were the only solid thing in a world that had just changed shape.

“How—how long have you known?”

“I suspected not long after we arrived here. But I wanted to be sure. Mrs. Newton noticed before me.” Her lips curved faintly. “All the recent visits from her… well...”

“I—I didn’t put it together.” His hand spread more firmly over her stomach now, grounding himself. “God, Charlotte…”

They stood like that for a long moment. Their cottage felt smaller now—not cramped, but close. Full of life not yet born.

Seth’s head bowed slightly, resting his brow against hers. “Everything I thought mattered this morning feels different now. The title, the estate… Hillcrest. I thought I might go back to it, if only for duty’s sake. But now—”

She didn’t interrupt. She simply listened.

“I can’t put them through what I lived,” he said at last. “The expectations. The scrutiny. The legacy. I remember being small and terrified of disappointing a man who never truly saw me. I remember what it cost to be born into something I didn’t choose.

And I’ll be damned if our child feels that way. Ever.”

Charlotte drew him closer, their foreheads still touching.

Her hands moved to rest atop his, still resting over her belly.

She closed her eyes and let herself feel the full weight of what was between them now—not only the child, but the certainty of this life.

Not the imagined one they had once been promised, but the one they had fought for. The one they had chosen .

“I don’t need Hillcrest,” she affirmed softly. “I want this. I want them to grow up knowing wildflowers and muddy boots, with a father who sings when he works and a mother who reads poetry aloud by the fire.”

He gave a choked laugh, quiet and thick. “That sounds like the opposite of every ducal upbringing I’ve ever known.”

“Precisely.”

She smiled up at him then, full of warmth and conviction. “Let the dukedom survive without us. We’ll send letters. Make sure Blythe has what he needs. Perhaps someday we’ll go back and walk through the old house again. But not now. And not for them.”

He kissed her then. Slowly. With the kind of reverence usually reserved for cathedrals or vows. As if he were saying thank you without speaking the words aloud.

When they parted, his eyes were damp, and hers were too.

“We are truly going to be parents,” he half-chuckled.

“We are.”

“And we get to do it like this,” he finished. “Our way.”

Charlotte looked around their little cottage home—simple and imperfect, but deeply theirs—and felt her heart expand in a way she hadn’t known it could.

They would raise their child in a place made not of marble and portraits, but of warmth and choice. There would be no titles echoing down the halls, only laughter. No legacy but love.

They had been many things already—Duke and debutante, fugitives, lovers, husband and wife. Now they would become something more.

And this time, they wouldn’t allow the world to shape them.

They would shape the world.

Together .

The End?