“Ye couldn’t have known,” he reasoned.
“I should have known. I am the eldest. It was my duty to protect her.” Evan’s jaw tightened. “I failed. And now she is your responsibility, and I am trusting that you will not fail her as I did.”
Edward looked at him. Evan’s eyes were the same blue as Valeria’s. The same steel. The same refusal to look away, even when it was painful.
“I’ll protect her,” he vowed. “With everything I have.”
“See that you do.” Evan nodded once, turned, and then walked away.
His back was straight, his shoulders squared. He looked like a man carrying a weight he would never set down.
Edward watched him go and thought about brothers and duty and the particular agony of loving someone he could not save. He thought about George, tied up in a barn, paying for crimes that started with loneliness and ended with a threat.
He thought about Nathaniel, who was probably riding through the night right now with a bottle of wine and a head full of worry. He thought about Evan, who had watched his sister disappear into a terrible marriage and who carried the failure like a stone around his neck.
Brothers. The bonds one was given and the bonds one chose and the ones that broke and the ones that held. He had lost George today. He had lost the brother he had chosen. But he had gained something else. A family. Loud, complicated, opinionated, tear-streaked, paint-covered, and entirely his.
He looked across the hall. Valeria was laughing at something John had said. Her head was tipped back. Her throat was exposed. Her hair was coming loose from its pins, the way it always did by the end of the evening, and the candlelight caught the auburn and turned it into fire.
His wife. His family. His life.
CHAPTER 30
The guests retired late. The candles burned down to stumps. Mrs. Grady cleared the table with the quiet efficiency of a woman who had been cleaning up after celebrations for thirty years and who would not stand for crumbs on her floor, wedding or no wedding.
Valeria went to her bedroom.Theirbedroom, she supposed, though the thought sat strangely in her chest. The last time she had shared a bedroom with a man, the door locked from the outside.
She changed into her shift. The silk one. Caroline had packed it in her trousseau with a look that suggested she knew exactly what she was doing. Valeria had rolled her eyes at the time. Now, she smoothed the fabric over her hips and looked at herself in the mirror, feeling her stomach tighten.
The silk was thin. Ivory. It caught the firelight and turned translucent at the edges. She looked like a bride. She looked like a woman who was waiting for her husband to come to her bed.
The thought made her heart hammer against her ribs because the last time she had waited for her husband in a shift, she had been planning to lie her way out of consummation.
She was not planning to lie tonight. She was not planning anything tonight except the truth, which was that she wanted him. She had wanted him since the gazebo, since the storm, since he had carried her through the rain and she felt his heartbeat against her ribs and understood, with a certainty that had terrified her, that this man was not a convenience.
She sat on the edge of the bed and waited.
The room was different tonight. Mary had changed the linens. White cotton, fresh and crisp, smelling of lavender and the particular care she took with things that mattered. There were flowers on the nightstand, white roses from the garden. A candle flickered on the mantelpiece.
Mary had prepared this room for a wedding night with the quiet efficiency of a woman who understood what it meant for Valeria to choose a bed instead of dreading one.
Valeria touched the roses. The petals were soft and cool to the touch. She thought about the last time flowers had been placed in her bedroom for a man. Lilies. Gordon’s choice. They smelled like funerals, and she had asked Mary to remove them. Mary had done so without a word, and they had never appeared again.
These roses were different. These roses smelled like the garden where Edward had carried her through the rain. These roses smelled like a new beginning.
She pressed her fingers to the satin ribbon at the neckline of her shift. She had tied it once. Untied it. Tied it again.
She was being ridiculous. She was a grown woman. A duchess. She had survived three years of Gordon Hansley. She could survive a wedding night, even one that might not go the way she wanted.
The question was what she wanted. She had spent so long not wanting that the wanting itself felt dangerous. Like standing at the edge of a cliff and looking down. The fall would be either exhilarating or catastrophic, and there was no way to know which until she jumped.
She heard his footsteps in the corridor. The fire crackled. The house settled around her, footsteps retreating, doors closing, the quiet that came after a celebration.
She opened the door before he could knock.
He was in his shirtsleeves. The coat was gone. The cravat was gone. His collar was open, showing the scar on his neck. His hair was pushed back, his eyes were tired, and his jaw was rough with a full day’s stubble.
He looked exhausted. He looked beautiful. He looked like a man who had been fighting all day and was not sure the fighting was over.
