Page 65 of The Duke's Auctioned Virgin
Edward liked that about horses. They did not ask questions. They did not look at you with blue eyes full of trust you had not earned. They wanted feed and a firm hand and a rider who knew when to let them run.
Simple terms. He could meet them.
He rode north along the ridge as the sky turned from black to gray. The air was cold and smelled of wet grass and the last of the night rain. Beneath him, the mare moved easily, sure-footed on the soft ground. He gave her the length of the reins and let her set the pace.
He had left Valeria’s room before dawn. Watched her sleep for three hours, maybe four. Watched the way her breathing shifted when she turned, the way her hand curled under her chin, the way the firelight caught the auburn in her hair and turned itcopper. He watched without touching her, and the not-touching was the hardest thing he had done in twelve years of hard things.
He had promised to be there in the morning. And he would be. He just needed to think first.
He just could not think in that room. Not with the smell of her skin permeating the air, and the memory of her mouth on his, and the quiet, devastating sound of her voice sayingthank you for coming backas though it were the bravest thing she had ever said.
The ridge flattened out past the tree line. Open country. He could see the village below, smoke rising from chimneys, the church spire catching the first gray light. Further out was the road to London. He had ridden that road six days ago with purpose and certainty. He was riding this ridge now with neither.
George’s voice. That was the problem. Not the threat at the masquerade. Not Peter and his theatrics. But George’s voice, low and amused, curling through his skull like smoke.
“You are a weapon. Weapons do not sit on shelves. They rust..”
The worst part was that George had not been trying to hurt him. He had been telling the truth as he understood it. And he understood Edward better than anyone alive.
The mare slowed at the crest of the hill. Edward let her stop and then dismounted. He stood at the edge and looked down at Thornhill, the dark mass of it against the lightening sky.
Somewhere in that house, Valeria was sleeping in a bed he had just left. In two days, she would stand at the altar and marry him. She would take his name. She would trust him with her safety, her future, her body if she chose to offer it.
She would give those things to a man who had spent twelve years breaking people for the Crown and liked it some nights more than he should have.
He sat on the wet grass. Did not care about the damp.
He thought about Valeria’s face when she had watched him with the children. The softness in it. The way her hand went to her stomach without her knowing, a gesture so quick and unconscious that she would have denied it if he pointed it out.
She wanted children. She had not said it yet, but she did not need to. He had spent twelve years reading people. Some things did not require words.
He could not give her that. Not because he was unable, but because he was afraid. Afraid that the thing inside him—the cold, efficient thing that the Crown had built and George had sharpened—would pass to a child the way his father’s jaw had passed to Nathaniel and his mother’s eyes had passed to him.
He did not want a son with his hands. He did not want a daughter who flinched at loud sounds because her father had trained her to hear threats in everything.
Nathaniel would call this foolish. He would say that a man was not his work. That what Edward did for twelve years did not have to be what he was for the rest of his life.
Nathaniel believed in fresh starts with the optimism of a man who had never held a knife to another man’s throat in a dark room in Vienna and felt nothing afterward except relief that it was done.
The sky was turning pink at the edges. Dawn was coming on fast. Edward should move.
He did not move.
There was a sound below. Hooves on packed earth.
Edward’s hand went to his hip before he remembered he was not carrying a weapon.
Old habits died hard.
He looked down the slope and saw a man on a gray gelding, riding the fence line of the lower field. It was the tenant farmerhe had seen the day before, checking on a ewe that had been limping.
The man spotted him and reined up. Raised a hand. Edward raised his in return. The man took that as an invitation, which it was not, and rode up the slope to meet him.
“Morning, Your Grace.” He touched his cap. He was older than Edward by a decade, with a weathered face and hands like leather. “Early for a ride.”
“Early for fence work,” Edward corrected.
“Aye, well. The ewe won’t wait for a civilized hour to get herself tangled in wire.” The farmer glanced at the manor below. “Heard there’s a wedding.”
