Page 69 of The Duke's Auctioned Virgin
“You did not raise me. You are younger than me.”
“I raised you back from the dead, Valeria. That counts.”
The words landed hard.
Caroline’s hands were shaking. She picked up the veil again. Her stitches were uneven. Richard would have offered to help if he were here. He had once offered to hem a curtain. The result was so catastrophic that the maid had to burn it.
Valeria watched her sister sew and thought about the woman who had arrived at Thornhill three weeks ago. Six months pregnant, carrying an easel and a box of opinions. Her face hadcontorted with an emotion Valeria would never forget. Not pity. Not horror. But recognition.
“What would you have me do?” she asked softly.
“Go to him tonight. Tell him what you want. And if he cannot give it to you, at least you will know.” Caroline snipped a thread. “But I think he can. I think he is terrified. He has spent twelve years being told he is a weapon, and he has started to believe it. And the only person who can convince him otherwise is the woman he is too afraid to touch.”
Valeria’s throat tightened. She pressed her fingers to her eyes and laughed, the kind of laugh that was one breath away from tears. “When did you become wise?”
“I have always been wise. You were just too busy surviving to notice.” Caroline pressed both hands to her belly. The baby must have kicked because she winced. “Go tonight. Before I have this baby on your wedding veil.”
CHAPTER 25
Indeed, the night before the wedding, Valeria could not take the distance between them anymore.
She had spent the evening pretending to read. The book was the same novel she had been pretending to read the night Gordon had died. She did not care about the sea captain or the stolen gold. She cared about the man at the end of the guest corridor, who was probably standing by his window in the dark, watching for threats that were not there.
She put the book down. Pulled on her nightrobe. Tied it at the waist. Checked the mirror. Hair loose. Eyes bright with something that was not quite anger.
She walked to his room. Dark corridor. Cold stone under her bare feet. She had walked through this corridor before, on that first night.
The memory of every other time she had walked toward a man’s room was there, too. Gordon’s corridor. Gordon’s door. The difference was that Gordon had never given her a choice, while Edward gave her nothing but choices.
She was so tired of choosing.
She walked. Her bare feet made no sound on the stone. The candles burned low in the sconces. The house was quiet in the way that old houses were quiet at night, full of the sounds of settling, the creak of old wood and the whisper of wind through windows that were no longer locked.
She passed the library. The study. The music room where the pianoforte sat with its lid closed and its keys dusty and its silence like a held breath.
She knocked.
The sound was louder than she had intended. Three sharp raps that echoed down the empty corridor. She heard them bounce off the stone walls and come back to her, and she thought that it was the sound of a woman done waiting.
She heard movement inside. A chair scraping across the floor. Footsteps. Not hurried, but the deliberate steps of a man who knew who was on the other side and was debating whether to open the door or pretend he was asleep.
She counted to three. If he did not open it by three, she would knock again. Louder. She would keep knocking until the whole house woke up or until he let her in, whichever came first.
Silence. Footsteps. Then the door opened.
Shirtsleeves. No coat. Collar open. Hair pushed back. He looked as though he had not slept in days. The circles under his eyes were dark. His jaw was rough with stubble. He looked at her with an expression that was half relief, half dread.
He had not been sleeping. She could see that now. The bed was made, but the pillow had not been touched. The chair by the window had a blanket folded over the armrest.
He had been sitting up. Watching the grounds. Watching for threats that were not there, or watching for the one threat that was her, walking down the corridor to demand answers he did not know how to give.
“Valeria.”
“We need to talk.”
He stepped aside, and she walked in. The fire was crackling in the grate. His bed was untouched, and he was sitting in the chair by the window with a glass of water. No alcohol.
The room smelled of woodsmoke, soap, and the clean, sharp scent that was uniquely him. She had not been in this room sincethe first night of the house party, when he had told her to leave and she had. She was not leaving tonight.
