Edward shook his head slowly. He was looking at her with an expression she had not seen from him before. Not admiration, exactly. It was deeper than that. It was the respect of one operative for another. The recognition that she had run a long-term intelligence operation from the inside of a locked bedroom with no training, no backup, and no margin for error, and she had won.
“Ye are the most dangerous woman I have ever met.”
“I will take that as a compliment.”
“It is one. And I have met very dangerous women.”
“The one in Florence who tried to get you killed?”
“Among others. None of them deceived a man who lived in the same house as them for three years without slipping once.” Edward paused. “The Crown should have recruited ye.”
“The Crown does not recruit women.”
“That is their loss.” He paused and looked at the ceiling. “Three years. Ye kept up a lie for three years under the same roof as the man ye were lying to. Ye managed his expectations. Ye recruited an asset. Ye maintained cover under pressure. Ye adapted to changing conditions. And ye did it all without a single day of training.”
“You make it sound like espionage.”
“Itwasespionage. The best kind. The kind where the target never knew he had been deceived, even before he died.” He shook his head. “Ye are wasted on the aristocracy, Duchess.”
“And you are wasted on compliments, Duke. You sound almost sincere.”
“I am entirely sincere. It is the most alarming thing that has happened to me in years.”
She laughed. The sound was small, warm, and real. He felt it in his chest like a match striking.
He finally understood what her sister had meant. The flowers on the forehead. The frog in the boot. The apple and the false holiday.
This was who Valeria was. Not the careful, controlled widow. Not the measured, polite duchess. But this woman. The one who had survived Gordon Hansley by lying to his face every single day for three years with a smile so innocent that nobody questioned it. The hellion that Caroline had described.
That girl had not died. She had gone underground. She had hidden inside the careful woman the way a seed hid inside a shell, waiting for the conditions to change, waiting for warmth and light and space. And now the shell was cracking, the girl was pushing through, and she was lying on a carpet with paint on her hands and a smirk on her face, and she wasmagnificent.
A wave of possessiveness hit him like a blow, hot and primal. He wanted to pull her against him and never let her go. He wanted to claim her right there on the carpet, make her his in every way possible. He wanted to hear her say his name the way she had said it five minutes ago—breathless, broken, and full of want.
But he could not. Because he truly did not think he was worthy of being a father.
The things he had done. The men he had killed. The years he had spent in the dark, doing the Crown’s dirty work. Those were not the foundation a child deserved. And if he touched her again, if he took her the way his body was demanding he take her, he would not be able to stop. And nine months later, there would be a consequence that neither of them had planned for and that he did not deserve.
He silently vowed, lying on the carpet beside her with paint on his hands and her taste on his lips, not to let himself near her again. Not like this. Because the next time, he would not be able to control himself. And control was the only thing standing between him and a future he did not believe he had earned.
They lay there with paint on their hands and the fire burning low. She was warm beside him, and he could smell lavender, paint, and the salt of her skin.
He did not move. He looked at the ceiling. She looked at the ceiling. The ruined portrait watched them from the wall, eyeless and faceless and finally, mercifully,powerless.
“We should get dressed,” he said eventually.
“Probably.”
Neither of them moved.
A knock sounded at the door.
“Valeria?” Caroline’s voice, muffled through the oak. “If you are still in there, you should come out because we must plan a ballanda wedding, and we have no time.”
Valeria sighed and closed her eyes.
“We also need to discuss the seating chart and the menu, and Richard wants to know if the baby can be the ring bearer, even though the baby has not been born yet. And honestly, Valeria, I do not have time for whatever is happening in there.”
“Nothing is happening.”
