John caught her arm in the corridor. “Val.”
“Not now,” she said, pulling free.
“That is Edward Langton. The Hound. Do you understand what that means?”
“It means I have twenty-four suitors instead of twenty-three.”
“It means you have a killer in your house.”
She shook her head. “I had a killer in my house for three years, John. At least this one asked permission.”
CHAPTER 3
Edward had expected fear. Revulsion, maybe. A polite request to leave. He had prepared for all of it on the ride over.
He had not expected her to hold his gaze.
She was shaking. He could see it in her fingers. Her face had gone pale except for two spots of color high on her cheekbones. Her eyes were blue and wide. Not from terror, but from nerve. He knew the difference.
She was not what Nathaniel had described. A quiet young widow, his brother said. Lovely. Fragile. Edward had pictured someone delicate. Instead, he was looking at a woman with a killer in her entrance hall who looked like she was deciding whether to hit him or feed him.
She had impressed him already. That was a problem. He had come here to find a wife the way one found a good horse. Check the teeth, test the temperament, and make sure it did not kick.
Being impressed was not part of the plan. Being impressed made you slow. Slow got you killed. He had learned that in enough cities to fill a map.
But she was looking at him. Not away from him, butathim. And the part of his brain that was supposed to be calculating exits and threats and contingencies was instead noticing that her eyes were the blue of the harbor in Dubrovnik at dawn, which was a comparison he had no business making and which he filed away in the part of his mind he did not talk about.
He nodded at the maid already on her knees with a cloth, mopping tea off the marble.
“Ye do recognize the name, then, Duchess,” he said.
She nodded. Then she stuck out her hand. Not the limp hand of a society lady. She held it out straight.
“I do. As long as you don’t plan to use your… less common… skills to cheat, you’re welcome to play,” she said, raising one eyebrow.
He took her hand. It was small. Cold. Rough at the fingertips. He turned it over and kissed her knuckles, because he was a killerbut not an animal. When he looked up, the color in her face had spread down her neck. Her pulse fluttered at her wrist. Fast.
She turned back to the hall and smiled. He knew that smile. He had worn it a hundred times. She was terrified but refused to show it.
“Gentlemen, supper is through the corridor to your left.” She paused. “You will find that I have not assigned the seats.”
Polite murmurs rose from the crowd.
“Your first challenge is to sit down without causing a scene.”
A stout man near the back scoffed. “Surely you cannot expect us to scramble for chairs like schoolboys at a–”
“I need a gentle husband,” Valeria interrupted. She walked toward the dining hall. “If you can’t handle that, then quit.”
The stout man went purple.
Edward watched two dozen men shuffle after her. He did not follow.
The dining hall was long and warm. A table for thirty occupied the center, adorned with candles. Trays of roast meat lay on the sideboard.
At present, it was a battlefield.
Edward leaned against the oak tree outside the dining hall windows and watched the carnage unfold through the glass.
