Page 62 of The Duke's Auctioned Virgin
Valeria looked at Edward. His hand was on her waist again, and his face was calm and controlled. The face of a man who had just done something violent and filed it away in the part of his mind where violent things lived.
She did not know how to feel about that. The man she was about to marry was capable of violence that made a room fall silent, and he committed it as easily as breathing. The question was whether that frightened her or made her feel safe.
Both, she decided. It was both.
The two things existed together, and she did not know what to do with either of them.
CHAPTER 22
Edward pulled Valeria closer, his hand tightening on her waist. They were dancing again. She was still frozen.
“How did you know?” she whispered. “That someone was going to…”
“Hound,” he murmured.
“Right.”
He touched her shoulders, and she flinched. Not from fear, but from the note, the words. His true self. She had thought she was learning what that meant. The quiet voice, the steady hands, the man who painted flowers on a dead man’s portrait just to make her laugh. But four days ago, he had left without an explanation, and tonight he punched a man in her ballroom and snatched a threat out of the air like it was nothing.
He felt the flinch. His hands came up, palms open.
“I just wanted to make sure ye’re all right,” he said. A bitter smile spread across his lips. “Are ye finally afraid of me?”
Valeria blinked and shook her head. “No. I mean, not really. But your friend doesn’t agree with our wedding. Why?”
Edward’s face shuttered. The wall came down behind his eyes. “Because I cared for him too much when I had the chance,” he said coldly.
Valeria was shocked. She opened her mouth to press further, but the look in his eyes stopped her. Not the anger, but the exhaustion. A man carrying something heavy for a very long time.
“I don’t wish to speak about it. We should finish our dance and go to bed.”
“You cannot say something like that and then refuse to explain it.”
“I can. I just did.”
“Edward.”
“Valeria.” His voice was flat. A door closing.
She recognized the sound. Gordon used to do that, too. Shut conversations down with a tone that said the discussion was over and she would not resume it.
But Edward’s eyes were not Gordon’s eyes. Gordon’s eyes went cold when he shut a door. Edward’s eyes went hot. As though the thing behind the door was burning and he was trying to keep her from getting singed.
She let it go. For now.
She glanced toward the south wall, where George had been standing. He was gone. She had not seen him leave. That bothered her more than the smile had.
She filed it away. Another detail to add to the catalog she was building of Edward’s world. The friends. The threats. The notes thrown in ballrooms. The men who disappeared from rooms. None of it was what she had expected when she planned an auction for her hand.
She had expected polite men with polite manners who would say polite things and leave her alone. Instead, she had gotten a spy who punched people in her ballroom, a villain who smiled without his eyes, and a ballroom full of candles, roses, and the best waltz she had ever danced.
They still danced. The waltz was slow. Edward’s hand remained on her waist. Her hand was on his shoulder. They moved together in the candlelight, and she tried not to think about the note or the punch or George’s flat eyes.
She tried not to think about the warmth of Edward’s body against hers. The way his thumb absently rubbed circles on her waist. The way his warm breath brushed her temple.
She failed at not thinking about any of it.
She thought about the fact that this was the first time a man held her while she danced and she did not want to pull away. Gordon had taken her to one ball early in their marriage, before he stopped letting her leave the house.She had stood rigid in his arms while the music played, counting the seconds until it ended. And when it did, she went to the retiring room and pressed her hands to the cold stone wall until her breathing steadied.
