Page 78 of The Duke's Auctioned Virgin
"Good." Valeria touched her ears. She would wear her mother's pearls again today. At the ball where she fell in love, and now at the ceremony where she would say so in front of God and a chapel full of people who had watched her survive Gordon and were now watching her try again.Try again.The phrase sat in her chest like a stone.
She had tried once. She had stood in a cold chapel in a dress that pinched and said words she did not mean to a man she did not choose, and she had spent three years paying for it.
Now she was trying again. With a different man. A man she had chosen. A man who put bread on her plate and painted flowers on portraits and held her hand while she slept and watched her breathe as though breathing were the most important thing a person could do.
She wasterrified. Not of Edward. Not of marriage. But of hoping. Three years of Gordon had taught her that hope was the most dangerous thing a woman could carry.
Hope made you soft. Hope made you reach for things that could be taken away. Hope made you stand at the altar and believe that this time would be different, and if it was not different, the fall would be worse because you had climbed higher.
“You are thinking too loudly,” Mary said, pinning a curl.
“I am thinking a normal amount.”
“You are thinking the way you thought before the auction—with your jaw set and your hands in your lap and your eyes somewhere I cannot reach.” Mary paused. “He is not Gordon, Your Grace.”
“I know he is not Gordon.”
“Then stop bracing for disaster.”
Valeria looked at Mary in the mirror. Three years with this woman. Three years of warm milk and hidden bruises and secrets washed with the household linens.
Mary had dressed her for Gordon’s dinners and had undressed her afterward, careful around the silence. Mary had never once said what she was thinking. She did not need to.
“What if he leaves?” Valeria asked quietly.
The real fear. The one she had not voiced to anyone—not Caroline, not the unsent letters, not the dark.
Mary set down the pins and looked at her in the mirror. “Then he leaves, and you survive it the way you have survived everything.” She picked up the pins again. “But he will not leave. That man is wound so tight around you that cutting him free would take a blade and a miracle. And I do not believe in miracles.”
The dress went on. Ivory silk. Gold thread along the neckline. It fit perfectly because Mary had altered it three times, adjusting the seams as Valeria’s appetite returned and filled out the spaces that Gordon’s rules had hollowed. The fabric was soft against her skin. Nothing pinched. Nothing itched. She could breathe.
She looked at herself in the mirror. Auburn hair pinned with pearl combs. Her mother’s earrings. The veil Caroline had hemmed with uneven stitches and shaking hands.
She looked like a bride. Not Gordon’s bride, but her own.
Caroline appeared in the doorway wearing a lavender dress, tears streaming down her face. “Oh, Valeria.”
“Do not start. If you start, I will start, and Mary will kill us both.”
“I have already started. It is too late.” Caroline crossed the room and took both of Valeria’s hands in her own, her grip fierce. “You look like Mother.”
Valeria’s throat closed up. She did not trust herself to speak.
“She would be so proud,” Caroline whispered. “So proud.”
“The chapel,” Mary said firmly. “Now. Before you ruin the dress with your tears and I am forced to resign.”
The chapel was full.
White roses covered every surface. Candles were burning. The vicar stood with his Bible and the patient expression of a man who had been told the groom would be here and was choosing to believe it.
Caroline stood behind her, holding a bouquet of roses and lavender, trying not to cry and failing. John hung by thedoor, watching the drive. Richard stood near the front, looking worried about everything.
Mrs. Grady sat in the third row, dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief that had gravy on the corner. Sir Humphrey hovered in the back with his flask. Mr. Ashworth had a poem in his pocket. Lord Barton had promised to behave.
Valeria stood at the altar and waited.
The chapel was warm. The sunlight filtering through the stained glass painted colors across the stone floor. It smelled of beeswax, roses, and the lavender Mary had tucked into the bouquet.
