“I nearly killed a man yesterday morning,” he admitted. The words came out flat. Stripped of everything except the truth. “Before the wedding. George Turner. My partner. My friend. He threatened Valeria, and I had my hand on his throat, and Inearly crushed it. I wanted to. Every muscle in my body wanted to finish it. George said something to me, and he was right.”
“What did he say?”
“That I’m a weapon. That I’ll always be a weapon. That she’s in danger with me.”
John was quiet for a moment. The birds sang in the hedgerows. Somewhere in the house, Caroline was giving instructions to someone about something. Her voice carried in the warm air.
Then John punched Edward in the shoulder.Hard. Hard enough that Edward staggered sideways and had to catch his balance.
“Ow.”
“That’s for being an idiot.” John lowered his fists and wiped the sweat from his forehead with his sleeve. “You listened to the man who threatened your wife over the wife who chose you. A man who lied to you, who used you, who manipulated you for years. You took his word over hers. Think about that, Edward. Really think about it.”
Edward stood there, breathing hard. His ribs ached. His knuckles were bleeding. The sunlight was warm on his face, and the shame was hot in his chest.
John was right. He was absolutely, devastatingly right.
“You should get yourself together before you lose her for good,” John advised. “She won’t wait forever. She’s waited long enough.”
Caroline appeared around the corner of the stables and took in the scene. Two men in their shirtsleeves, sweating and breathing hard in the afternoon sun, knuckles bloodied. She did not look remotely surprised. She looked like a woman who had been expecting this for days and had been wondering what took so long.
“If you are quite finished beating each other,” she called, “I have something to show you, Edward. Come.”
She led him to the drawing room. The same room where he and Valeria had ruined Gordon’s portrait. Where they had laughed and kissed, and he had touched her for the first time, and she had come apart under his hands and looked at him with wonder, as though she had not known her body could experience such pleasure.
On the easel was a portrait. Caroline’s work. Fresh paint, still drying.
There were two figures. A man and a woman. The woman wore a blue dress, the same one Valeria had worn the first day of the auction, and was standing at the top of the stairs with her chin raised and her eyes bright with something between defiance and hope.
The man stood beside her. Dark coat. Dark hair. Green eyes that Caroline had mixed from three different pigments until she got them right. He was not smiling, but his hand was on her waist, protective and certain, and his face was turned toward her with an expression that Caroline had captured with devastating precision. Not hunger. Not possessiveness. Not the cold assessment of a spy cataloging an asset. But devotion. The quiet, steady, bone-deep devotion of a man who would stand between this woman and the world and never move.
Edward stared at it. His throat was tight. His hands were shaking. He had not known his hands could shake. Twelve years of holding pistols and blades, and his hands had never shaken. They were shaking now.
“That is what she sees when she looks at you,” Caroline said softly. “Not the Hound. Not the weapon. Not the man George Turner told you you were. But that.” She gestured toward the portrait. “That man.”
“I need to speak with her,” he rasped.
“She went to the orphanage.”
“I know.” He was already moving toward the door.
"Wait. Edward–" Caroline called after him. But he was already gone. He stopped and looked back over his shoulder. For the first time since the barn, he almost smiled.
“I’m her Hound,” he said.
Not the Hound. ButherHound.
He left.
Caroline stood in the gallery and looked at her painting. She pressed both hands to her belly, smiling. Outside, she heard hoofbeats on gravel, fast and certain.
The Hound was running. But this time, he was running toward something.
CHAPTER 32
Valeria sat in the small garden behind the orphanage with a sketchbook on her lap, a piece of charcoal in her hand, and absolutely no talent for drawing.
The apple tree she was attempting to draw looked like a large mushroom with ambitions. The fence behind it resembled a set of teeth. She had tried to draw a bird earlier and produced something that looked more like a potato with wings. She was fairly certain that if Ruth saw it, the girl would be too polite to say anything, which would somehow be worse than honesty.
