“In two days.”
“Her Grace is a good woman. The servants speak well of her. The old Duke, God rest his soul, was not so well-liked, but she kept this place running when he wouldn’t.” He paused and shifted in the saddle. “The lads in the village are glad of it. A steady hand at Thornhill means steady work.”
Edward looked at him. A man who cared about his sheep and his fences and whether the manor above him had a master who would keep the roof patched and the wages paid.
Simple things. The things that mattered to people who did not live in shadows.
“Did ye know her husband?” Edward asked.
The farmer’s face changed, but not much. A tightening around the mouth, a flicker in the eyes. The expression of a man who had opinions he had learned to keep behind his teeth.
“I knew of him,” he replied carefully. “Kept to himself. Didn’t ride the land. Didn’t know the tenants by name.” A pause. “She did, though. Even when he didn’t let her out much, she used to find ways. Sent the maid with bread when my wife took ill. Wrote a letter to the physician in the village when my boy broke his arm and asked him to waive the fee.” He looked at Edward squarely. “That’s the kind of woman you’re marrying, Your Grace. Just so you know.”
“I know,” Edward said.
“Good.” The farmer touched his cap again. “Then I wish you well, and I’ll be getting back to my ewe.” He rode down the slope.
Edward watched him go. The gray gelding picked its way along the fence line, and the dog that had been waiting at the bottom of the hill fell in behind them. A man and his horse and his dog, going about the quiet business of keeping things alive.
“That’s the kind of woman you’re marrying.”
He knew. That was the whole problem. He knew exactly what she was. He had known since the gazebo, since she shivered in his coat and challenged him with a cocked eyebrow and told him he was welcome to play as long as he did not cheat.
He had known since she laughed at the ruined portrait with paint on her fingers and joy on her face, and he had felt something crack open in his chest that twelve years of discipline had not prepared him for.
He knew what she was. He was not sure whathewas. That was the difference.
She deserves a man, not a weapon.
He turned the thought over in his mind. It had George’s fingerprints on it. George, who had spent years telling him what he was, shaping the story until Edward believed it. A weapon. A Hound. A thing built for a purpose, useful until it was not.
But Valeria had not looked at him like a weapon. Not once. She looked at him like a man who had painted flowers on her dead husband’s portrait and held her hand while she told him the worst thing that had ever happened to her. She looked at him and saw someone he did not recognize.
Maybe she sees what is actually there.Maybe George is the liar.
The thought sat in his chest like a coal, warm and dangerous. The kind of thing that could either light a fire or burn the house down, depending on what he did with it.
He mounted the mare and turned her south toward the house.
He should write to Nathaniel. Tell him about the wedding. Tell him to come if he could, though the notice was short and Nathaniel would grumble about the roads and arrive anyway with a bottle of wine and an opinion about everything.
Nathaniel would like Valeria. He would see past her composure and her steady voice to the steel underneath. He would look at Edward across the dinner table and know, without being told, that his brother was in more trouble than any mission had ever put him in.
Dear Nathaniel,Edward composed in his head as the mare picked her way down the slope.I am getting married in two days to a woman who is braver than I am and funnier than I deserve, and I am sitting on a hill at dawn because if I stay in her room for one more hour, I will tell her that I love her, and I am not sure either of us is ready for that.
Nathaniel would read that letter and ride through the night. Or he would write back something short and maddening, the way he always did. Something like,Then tell her, you stubborn fool. He had a gift for reducing complicated things to simple instructions. Edward had a gift for ignoring them.
The stable boy took the mare when Edward rode in. A lad of fifteen, quiet and efficient. He brushed the mare down without being asked and did not flinch when Edward dismounted. Most people flinched. The boy just nodded and got on with his work.
“What is yer name?” Edward asked.
The boy started at that. People did not ask stable boys their names. Especially not dukes.
“Henry, Your Grace.”
“Ye handle her well, Henry. She is particular about who touches her.”
“So am I, Your Grace.” The boy turned red the moment he said it. “I mean—that is… I only meant?—”
