The anger flared, quick and hot and visible in his eyes, before he could stop it.
He did not try to stop it. He wanted John to see it. He wanted someone in this family to know that the Hound’s capacity for violence extended to dead men who had hurt people he cared about.
“You should be asking me that question,” interjected a voice from behind them.
Both men turned.
Valeria stood at the end of the corridor in her dressing gown, hair hanging loose over her shoulders, feet bare on the cold stone. She had not been sleeping either. Her face was pale in the lamplight, and her eyes were steady. She looked at both of them with the calm of a woman who had been eavesdropping long enough to hear everything she needed to hear.
John had the sense to look apologetic. He stood up immediately and kissed the top of her head.
“Goodnight, Val,” he said apologetically.
“Goodnight, John.”
He looked at Edward, looked at Valeria, then walked away without looking back. His footsteps faded down the corridor until the house swallowed them and the silence closed in again.
CHAPTER 11
Valeria invited Edward to her study, head high and layers of metaphorical armor in place. Clearly she had no wish to pursue the question he’d asked John.
“Since neither of us can sleep,” she said, “we might as well discuss how we can tend to the people you care for.”
The study was small and warm. Bookshelves lined the three walls, piled with volumes that Gordon had never read but had bought by the yard because a gentleman’s study required books. The desk at the center was littered with papers. Valeria’s papers now, covered in her neat handwriting, lists and plans and ideas that she had been making since the day Gordon died. A fire that someone had banked but not extinguished glowed in the grate.
She sat behind the desk, while Edward took the chair across from her. Between them, a lamp burned low, throwing warm light across the papers and the ink and her hands.
They talked about the orphanages. She asked him about the ones he had visited across Europe and in London. He told her about the ones that were barely standing. Children in rags sleeping on straw, eating what they could steal or beg. He told her about a boy in Constantinople who reminded him of himself—sleeping under a bridge, thin as a rail, with eyes that were too old for his face. He told her about a girl in Vienna who had followed him for three blocks because he gave her bread and she could not believe there was no catch.
She listened with the focus of a woman who was already making a plan in her head. She asked questions. Good ones. How many children? Where were they? What did they need most urgently? Food? Clothing? Medicine? Schooling? Who was in charge of these places, and were they competent, and could they be trusted with resources?
She pulled a clean piece of paper from the top drawer and started writing notes. Her handwriting was neat and fast, and she pressed hard with the quill.
She organized her thoughts into three columns: names, needs, and actions. She was already thinking three steps ahead. The orphanage in the village first. Then Whitechapel. Then the south field, the one that had been fallow for two years, and whether it could be planted in time for a harvest that would feed the orphanage through winter.
She talked about the empty rooms in the east wing, and whether families could be housed there temporarily while they found work. She talked about a school. A proper school, with booksand a teacher and a room with a fireplace. They agreed to visit the orphanage in the village tomorrow. She would arrange for food from the kitchens, enough for the children, the matron, and anyone else who needed it. Edward would assess the building, the roof, the walls—the things that a man who had a rough upbringing knew how to evaluate. They would send supplies to the people in Whitechapel the following week.
She wrote it all down. Every detail. Every name.
Edward watched her work and thought that this woman could have run a war office. She could have planned campaigns, managed supply lines, and organized the movement of armies across continents. Instead, she had been locked in a house for three years and had not been allowed to send a letter without supervision.
The waste of it, the sheer waste of it, a mind like hers locked behind a door for three years, made him want to dig Gordon back up and kill him again.
Then he asked the question he had asked her brother. The one that had been building in his chest since the entrance hall, growing heavier with every piece of her story he learned.
“What did Gordon do to ye?”
Her hand stopped. The quill hovered above the paper. A drop of ink fell and spread into a small black star on the page. She watched it spread. She did not look at him.
She set the quill down. The study was very quiet. The fire crackled in the grate, and the clock on the mantelpiece ticked.
“He was awful,” she muttered.
The word was too small. A teacup for an ocean. She knew it. He knew it. But she said it, and her voice did not break, and her eyes did not water.
Edward had expected tears, but he should have known better. She was the Hound’s bride-to-be, after all.
“Let us just say that he tried every possible way to control me,” she added.
