Page 97 of The Duke's Auctioned Virgin
She and Edward stood alone in the drawing room, in the sunlight filtering through the windows.
“A fresh start,” he said.
“A fresh start,” she agreed.
They wrote letters that afternoon. Side by side at the desk in the study, sharing an inkpot because the house only had one that wasn’t dried out.
Edward wrote to Nathaniel. The letter was longer than the three words he had sent before, though not by much. He told his brother about the wedding. About George. About the woman he had married and the house with the blue door and the fact that he was, against all reasonable expectations, happy.
He wrote the wordhappyand looked at it for a long time. It looked strange on the page. He had not written it before. He was not sure he had said it aloud more than twice in his adult life.
Valeria told Bridget everything. She told her sister about the auction, the games, the storm, the man who carried her through the rain and painted flowers on Gordon’s portrait, and who had, after considerable stubbornness and several interventions by their siblings, finally admitted that he loved her.
She said she was happy, and her voice trembled over the word because the last time she had spoken to Bridget about her life, she had said she was well, which was a lie, and the difference between well and happy was the distance between surviving and living. She wrote to her father. She had not written to him since the wedding announcement. The letter was short.
Dear Father,
I chose well. He is good. He is difficult and stubborn. He does not dress according to fashion, and his table manners are questionable. But he is good. And I am happy.
Your daughter, Valeria.
She sealed it and thought about the man who had sat in his study and worried about all five of his children, and who had never stopped blaming himself for not reaching her in time. She hoped this letter would ease some of that weight. She hoped he would readI chose welland understand what it meant. Not that she had chosen a duke or a title or a fortune. But that she had chosen a man who saw her.
That was all she had ever wanted—to be seen.
Edward looked up from his letter. “What are ye writing?”
“A letter to my father.”
“What does it say?”
“That you are difficult and stubborn, and your table manners are questionable.”
“That’s fair.” He paused. “Does it also say I’m handsome?”
“It does not.”
“Ye should add that.”
“I will not.”
“Ye wound me, Duchess.”
She smiled. He smiled back. And the study, which had been Gordon’s study, which had been the room where she had sat alone for three years, writing letters that were read and censored before they were sent, became something else. Something warm. Something shared. Something that belonged to both of them.
Edward pulled her close and kissed her forehead. They stood together in the quiet room and looked at the empty wall and the future it held. A house without ghosts. A marriage without fear. A life that belonged to them.
“I need to write to Nathaniel,” he said after a moment.
“What will you tell him?”
“That his brother is happy.” He paused. “It will be a short letter. He’ll know what it means.”
She smiled. He smiled back. And for the first time in years, she felt like she was home.
EPILOGUE
THREE YEARS LATER
