Page 83 of The Duke's Auctioned Virgin
“I am not terrified.”
“You are holding your bouquet so tightly that the stems are bending.” Bridget gently pried the flowers from her hands and set them on the windowsill. “Talk to me.”
Valeria looked at her eldest sister. Bridget had their mother’s calm. The steady, unhurried patience of a woman who believed that most problems could be solved by sitting still and thinking clearly.
It was Bridget who had written the long, practical letters over those hellish three years. Bridget who had arranged for the solicitor. Bridget who had said, in her quiet way,You will survive this, and had been right.
“He won’t tell me what happened this morning,” Valeria revealed. “He arrived at the altar with blood on his hands and has not explained it.”
“Will he explain it?”
“He says he will when he can do it without anger.”
Bridget considered this. She looked across the room at Edward, who was sitting at the head of the table with his jaw tight and his eyes distant and his hand wrapped around a glass he was not drinking from.
“Matthew was the same,” she admitted. “When we first married, he had things he could not say. Things from before, from his family, from the years when his father was ill. He carried them like stones in his pockets. I could see the weight of them, but I could not reach them.” She paused. “It took time. Patience. The willingness to sit in a room with a man who would not speak and not fill the silence with demands.”
“I am not patient.”
“No, you are not. You are impulsive and stubborn. You have Caroline’s temper and John’s tongue, and you have never once in your life waited for anything without fidgeting.” Bridget smiled. “But you are also brave. And sometimes bravery looks like patience. Sometimes the bravest thing you can do is wait.”
Valeria shifted her gaze to Edward. He caught her looking. For a moment, just a moment, the wall dropped, and she saw him. Not the spy. Not the duke. But the man who had held her hand while she slept and said,I will always come back.
“I will wait,” she sighed. “But not forever.”
“You won’t need to,” Bridget assured her. “That man is not Gordon. He is carrying something heavy and does not know how to put it down. But he will, because you will show him how.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because you showed me.” Bridget’s voice was quiet. “When I married Matthew, I was terrified. An arranged marriage. A stranger. I wrote to you for advice, and you wrote back,Watch his hands.If his hands are gentle with small things, he will be gentle with you. I watched Matthew’s hands. He was gentle with the dog. Gentle with the horses. Gentle with the servants’ children when they played in the garden. And I knew.” She looked at Edward. “Your husband let a child put a beetle in his pocket and thanked him for it. His hands are gentle, Valeria. Give him time.”
Valeria’s eyes stung. She blinked. Bridget handed her a handkerchief. It was embroidered with her initials, neat and precise, because her stitches were always neat and precise, unlike Caroline’s, which looked like they had been done during an earthquake.
“Thank you,” Valeria whispered.
“We are sisters. It is what we do.”
They stood together by the window and watched the dancers and the candles and the man at the head of the table, who was slowly, carefully, learning how to be a husband.
The evening went on. The candles dripped wax onto the tablecloth. The wine flowed. Mrs. Grady brought out a second trifle because the first one disappeared in twenty minutes, which she took as both a compliment and a personal affront.
Edward watched the room, counting faces, reading expressions, cataloging who was drunk, who was pretending, and who was genuinely happy.
Most of the guests were genuinely happy. Sir Humphrey was three sheets to the wind and telling a story about a horse that nobody believed. Mr. Ashworth had read his poem, which was terrible and heartfelt and made Caroline cry so hard that Richard had to escort her out for air. Lord Barton had behaved, which was a minor miracle.
Evan approached him during a lull between courses. He was Valeria’s eldest brother. Rigid. Proper. The kind of man who pressed his handkerchief before using it.
“Duke,” he greeted, as though addressing a general.
“Mr. Hughes.”
“I trust you understand the responsibility you have undertaken today.”
“I do.”
“My sister has suffered considerably. I was not able to prevent it, but I will not fail her again.” His voice was clipped. Controlled.
But beneath the control, Edward heard something he recognized—guilt. The corrosive guilt of a man who believed he should have done more.
