Page 77 of The Duke's Auctioned Virgin
He had chosen. Standing in that barn with George’s blood on his knuckles and George’s words in his ears, he had chosen. Not the kill. The cord. But the binding. Walking away. He had chosen to be the man Valeria believed he could be, even if George was right that the weapon was still inside him.
Maybe that was the point. Maybe being a good man did not mean the violence was gone. Maybe it meant choosing, every time, not to use it. Maybe it meant lowering his fist when every muscle in his body was screaming at him to swing.
He opened his eyes. The house was waiting. Somewhere inside, a woman was waking up and reaching for a hand that was not there.
He would be there. He would stand at that altar and say the words and mean them. Not because he deserved her. He didnot. But because she had asked him to prove it, and this was the proof. Not the fists. Not the cord. Not walking away. But coming back.
Always coming back.
He thought about the vows he would say in less than an hour—to have and to hold, for better or for worse. The words meant something different now than they had earlier. Earlier, they had been obligations. Now, they were choices. His choices. Made freely, with eyes open, by a man who had spent twelve years having his choices made for him by the Crown.
He closed his eyes. Breathed. Then he rode to the house to marry the woman who thought he was more than that.
The sun was warm on his face. The horse shifted under him. Somewhere in the house, Valeria was waking up.
But he had not left. He had dealt with the last piece of his old life, and now he was going back to the new one. The one with breakfast tables, rose gardens, and a woman who designed mazes and cheated at relay races, and who had looked at the most dangerous man in England and chosen him anyway.
CHAPTER 28
Valeria woke alone, again.
The bed was warm where she had slept and cold where Edward had not. The chair by the fire was empty. The blanket was folded over the armrest.
She lay still for a moment, listening for him. The house was quiet. No footsteps. No breathing. No creak of leather as a large man shifted in a chair too small for him.
She sat up. The room smelled of woodsmoke and the faint, clean scent he had left behind. His shirt from last night was on the floor beside the bed. She picked it up. Held it. Did not press it to her face because she was not that woman. She set it on the chair.
Today was her wedding day.
She said it aloud to the empty room. “Today is my wedding day.”
The words sounded strange. Flat. She had said them once before, in a different room, in a different life, and the memory of that morning rose unbidden.
October. Rain on the windows. A gown that pinched. A vicar who would not look at her. Two strangers standing witness because Gordon did not have friends; he had arrangements.
She pushed the memory away. This was not that morning. This morning, there were roses on the windowsill and sunlight on the floor, and somewhere in this house, her sister was already awake, already crying, already arguing with Richard about the flowers.
She rang for Mary.
Mary arrived with tea and the wedding dress over her arm and the expression of a woman who had been preparing for this moment since dawn and would accept nothing less than perfection.
“Sit,” she urged. “Drink. Do not speak until I have finished your hair.”
“Good morning to you, too, Mary.”
“It will be a good morning when you are dressed and standing at the altar. Until then, it is a morning full of potential disasters.” Mary set the dress on the bed and began laying out pins. “Your sister has already changed her mind about the flowers twice.Richard has been sent to the garden three times. The cook is weeping because the cake has a crack in the icing, and she believes this is an omen.”
“Is it an omen?”
“It is a cake. Cakes crack. People read too much into baked goods.”
Valeria drank her tea. It was too hot, but she did not care.
Mary began with her hair. Pins and combs and the steady, practiced hands that had dressed Valeria for three years of dinners she had not wanted to attend and mornings she had not wanted to face.
“The ivory dress,” she said. “Not white. White washes you out. Ivory with the gold thread along the neckline. I pressed it twice. The veil is Caroline’s. She hemmed it herself. The stitches are uneven, but she will cry if you mention it.”
“I will not mention it.”
