Page 2 of The Duke's Auctioned Virgin
Gordon’s study was at the end of the east corridor, past the library and the music room nobody used. She knew the house in the dark by now. Which boards creaked. Which doors let a draft through.
She passed the music room. The door was open. She could see the pianoforte in the dark, lid closed, dust on the keys. She hadasked to play it once, in the first month since their wedding. Gordon said the noise disturbed him. She had not asked again. She played in her head instead, fingers moving on her knees under the table at supper, running through the Haydn sonata her mother had taught her. Gordon never noticed. It was one of the few things she had that he did not know about.
Two footmen stood outside the study. They were both gray in the face. They stepped aside. Neither said a word.
Then she went inside.
Gordon Hansley, the Duke of Thornhill, was indeed dead.
The physician came within the hour. He was a round man, ink on his fingers, with a medical bag that rattled.
Gordon’s heart had stopped. No wound. No poison. Nothing dramatic. He had died in his chair with a glass of brandy in one hand and a ledger of debts in front of him.
Ironic. The man who controlled the butter on the breakfast table could not control his own heart. It just failed. Valeria understood.
The physician was gentle with her. He spoke slowly, as though she might not follow, and she let him because correcting himwould cost her energy she did not have. He smelled of pipe smoke and ink.
“Was he in pain?” she asked.
“I do not believe so, Your Grace. It must have been very quick.”
“Good,” she said, and then caught herself.
The physician looked at her. She looked back. Neither of them said anything else.
The physician said the usual things. Condolences. Laudanum, if she needed it.
“No,” Valeria uttered. “Thank you.”
He left.
She stood in the doorway and looked at Gordon. Eyes closed. Mouth slack. Signet ring catching the lamplight.
He looked smaller dead. Take the cruelty out, and he was just a man in a chair. Not tall. Not anything. She had been afraid of him for three years, and standing there now, she could not remember why.
There was a stain on his waistcoat. Port, probably. She had never seen a stain on his clothes before. He would have been furious.
The thought almost made her laugh. She pressed her lips together and held it in.
His desk was covered in papers. Ledgers, letters, bills. She had never been allowed in this room.
She walked to the desk, looked at the papers, and realized she could not read his handwriting. Three years married to this man, and she had never seen his handwriting up close.
She did not know if he pressed hard or wrote light, or if he crossed his Ts or left them open. She did not know anything about him except the ways he had hurt her, and standing in his study for the first time, she understood that this was by design. He had made himself unknowable so that she could never predict him. He had failed at that, too.
She felt nothing.
No. That was not true. Something sat low in her chest. Unfamiliar. Warm. She had to think about it before she knew what it was.
It was relief.
And behind the relief, pushing up hard, was what might have been anger. Not at him, though there was plenty of that. But at the years. At the wasted time. At waking up every morning in a house that was not hers.
She pressed her lips together and turned away.
The servants moved around her. Drawing curtains. Preparing the body. Sending for the vicar. Nobody wept. She noticed that too. Several years under Gordon Hansley and not a single tear in the house.
Mrs. Adler, the housekeeper, had clearly been waiting for this day. She went about things with the calm of a woman who already had a list. She caught Valeria’s eye once. Briefly. Her face said what her mouth did not.
