“I thought you’d want to talk,” she said, stepping aside.
He walked in and looked around the room as though seeing it for the first time. The bed. The fire. The chair where he had sat so many nights, watching her sleep. The silk shift she was wearing. His eyes caught on that. Lingered. Then moved away, deliberately, the way a man moved away from a fire when he knew he was standing too close.
“Everything is all right,” he assured.
The words sounded rehearsed. A speech he had prepared on the walk from the great hall. Flat and careful and nothing like the man who had saidloveat the altar.
“Edward.”
“It is. The threat has been dealt with. Ye’re safe.”
She studied him. His rigid shoulders. His hands at his sides, fists clenched, knuckles still raw beneath the bandage. He was standing in the center of her bedroom on their wedding night, looking like a man bracing for a blow rather than a bridegroom.
“Now that we are married,” she said carefully, “I think we should revisit our terms.”
Something flickered across his face, but it was gone before she could name it. She saw his jaw tighten. Saw his hands twitch at his sides. Saw the war in his eyes between the man who wanted to cross the room and the man who believed he should not.
“I don’t.” His voice was rough. “I’m sorry.”
The words landed like a door closing.
She stood very still. The fire popped. The silk shift that Caroline had packed with such confidence suddenly felt foolish. Valeria had dressed for a wedding night, and he was giving her an apology.
He crossed the room, took her hand, and raised it to his lips. Pressed a kiss to her knuckles that was so gentle it made her eyes sting. Then he turned her hand over and kissed her palm. His mouth lingered there, warm against her skin.
She could feel the roughness of his jaw and the softness of his lips and the contradiction of him in that single gesture, the violence and the tenderness, always at war, always pulling in opposite directions, always leaving her breathless and confused and aching for more.
Then he released her hand. Kissed her cheek. The corner of her mouth. Close enough that she could feel his breath on her lips, close enough that if she turned her head even slightly, their mouths would meet, and the night would become what it was supposed to be.
She did not turn her head. She wanted him to choose it. Sheneededhim to choose it.
“Goodnight, wife,” he whispered.She heard the ache in it.
And then he left. The door clicked shut behind him.
Valeria stood there with her hand still raised, her palm still warm, and the taste of almost on her lips. She pressed her fingers to her mouth. Closed her eyes.
He kissed my palm on our wedding night and then left. He left. Again.
She sat on the bed and pulled the ribbon at the neckline loose. There was no point in the silk now. She changed into the cotton shift Mary had laundered that morning, the one that was soft from years of washing and smelled of lavender and home.
She sat in the candlelight, feeling foolish, angry, and sad. She did not know which feeling deserved the most attention, so she gave them all equal weight and let them sit in her chest like a collection of stones.
She thought about the women she had met at Gordon’s dinners. The wives who smiled too brightly and drank too much sherry and who told her, in whispered conversations in the retiring room, that marriage was a business arrangement, love was for novels, and the sooner she accepted that, the happier she would be.
She had not believed them then. She had thought they were wrong, or broken, or simply resigned to something she would never accept. She had held onto the belief that somewhere, somehow, there existed a man who would look at her and see a person rather than a possession.
Edward saw her. She knew that with a certainty that went beyond logic. He saw her in a way no one else had ever seen her. He saw the fire, the humor, the stubbornness, and the scars Gordon had left on the inside, where they did not show. He saw all of it and wanted her anyway.
She knew this because of the way he looked at her when he thought she was not watching. The way his eyes went soft. The way his breath hitched. The way his whole body leaned toward her, involuntary, as though she were a fire and he were cold.
He wanted her. And he had walked away. Because he was afraid. Not of her. But of himself. Of the thing George had told him he was. The weapon. The Hound. The man who could not be trusted with tender things, because tender things broke in his hands.
She wanted to shake him. She wanted to cross the corridor, bang on his door, and tell him that he was wrong, that George was a liar and a manipulator, that the man who let children put beetles in his pockets and who painted flowers on dead men’s portraits was not a weapon.
He was a man. A good man. A man who was so busy being afraid of what he might become that he could not see what he already was.
But she would not chase him. She had chased Gordon. Not in the same way, not willingly, but she had spent three years trying to understand him, trying to please him, trying to find the version of him that might treat her with kindness. She had chased a ghost. She had run herself ragged chasing a man who did not exist.
