“I do not believe you. Five minutes.” Caroline’s footsteps retreated.
Valeria opened her eyes.
Edward sat up and helped her get dressed. His hands were steady on the laces. He tied them with the same care he had used to undo them. He did not look at her while he worked.
When her bodice was straight, her skirt was smooth, and the only evidence was the paint on their hands and the flush on her skin, he turned her around.
“Yer hair,” he said.
“What about it?”
“There is blue paint in it.”
She reached up and felt the stiff streak. “I will say it is Caroline’s fault.”
She walked to the door. Stopped. Looked back at him.
He was still sitting on the floor, paint on his jaw, his shirt untucked. His expression was the same one he wore when he was feeling too much and trying to contain it.
She knew that face now. She was learning all his faces.
“See you at supper?” she asked.
“I will be by the window.”
“Of course, you will.”
She opened the door and checked the corridor. It was empty.
She walked out with her chin up, her back straight, paint under her fingernails, and blue in her hair.
Edward spent the afternoon in the library. He pulled a book from the shelf, sat in a chair by the window, opened it, but did not read a single word.
He was thinking about Valeria. About the way she had looked on the carpet with paint on her hands and firelight on her skin. About the sounds she had made when he had touched her. About her lie, the brilliant, audacious lie that had kept Gordon out of her bed and kept her safe and whole.
He was thinking about what Caroline had said. He had been wrong about Valeria. Not about her strength. Not about her intelligence. But about her nature. He had seen the composure, the careful control. Yet he had not seen what was underneath.
Underneath was a hellion. A trickster. A woman who had survived a monster by out-lying him, and who had walked out of her cage, painted over his portrait and laughed until she cried, and lay with a killer on a carpet in front of a dying fire.
Edward closed the book. He would not touch her again. Not until the wedding. Not until he could trust himself to stop.
CHAPTER 18
They did not see each other for the rest of the day. Caroline seized Valeria the moment she appeared and pulled her into a whirlwind of wedding preparations, seating charts, and arguments about flowers that lasted until supper.
The florist came and went. The cook presented three menu options. Bridget’s letter arrived with twelve pages of suggestions and a separate page dedicated entirely to why Lord Barton should not be seated near the wine.
Valeria handled all of it. She approved the menu. She chose the flowers: white roses, greenery, and sprigs of lavender. She resolved the seating chart by putting Lord Barton at the furthest possible point from the wine fountain and Sir Humphrey at the head of the guest table, where he could tell stories to anyone who would listen.
She listened to Caroline’s opinions about ribbons, candles, and the precise shade of ivory that the tablecloths should be. She agreed to most of them. She disagreed with some.
She made decisions.
She made decisions all afternoon, and none of them felt small.
Caroline and Mary arrived at her door the following evening with fabric samples, ribbons, and opinions.
Valeria had not asked for any of them. She was sitting at her writing desk in her dressing gown, staring at a blank sheet of paper. She had been staring at it for twenty minutes. She was supposed to be writing to Bridget. She had picked up the quill three times. Each time, her mind would drift back to the drawing room, the carpet, the fire, the paint, and the sound Edward made when she kissed him, and she would put the quill down because she could not write to her sister while thinking about that.
