Page 79 of The Duke's Auctioned Virgin
Everything was different from her first wedding. The light. The warmth. The people. The flowers. Everything except the waiting. The waiting was the same.
She had waited for Gordon, too. Stood at a cold altar in a cold chapel and waited for a man who arrived late and did not apologize and who kissed her forehead the way one sealed a letter. Quick. Dry. Done.
Five minutes passed. Then ten.
Caroline shifted behind her. The baby kicked. Valeria could hear the whispers starting. The rustle of guests turning in their seats. The particular silence that settled over a room when people began to suspect something had gone wrong.
“He said he would come,” she said, voice bitter.
The bitterness surprised her. She had not expected bitterness. She had expected fear, sadness, or the numb blankness she had perfected during her marriage to Gordon. Instead, she was angry. Angry and frightened, and standing at an altar in her mother’s pearls, waiting for a man who had promised to come.
John had not moved away from the door since they had arrived. He was watching the drive with the focused attention of a man who understood that the next five minutes would determine whether his sister’s heart would break or hold.
“He will come,” Caroline said firmly from behind her. The voice she used when she was not certain but refused to admit it.
“You do not know that,” Valeria argued.
“I know him.”
“You have known him for a month, Caroline.”
“And I have known men for three decades. This one is coming back.” Caroline reached for Valeria’s hand.
Bridget appeared at her other side, quiet and steady, the way she always was in a crisis. She said nothing. She did not need to. She simply stood there.
Evan went to stand beside John, rigid and proper, jaw tight, already composing the speech he would deliver if the groom did not appear.
Valeria gripped the bouquet. The stems bit into her palms. She thought about the promises Edward had made. In the corridor. In the dark. In the bed where he had held her hand and said,I will always come back. She thought about how easily promises were broken.
Gordon had made promises, too. He had promised to cherish her. He had promised to protect her. He had promised a great many things in a cold chapel with rain on the windows, and then he locked the windows and counted her meals and taught her that promises were just words men said to keep women still.
“Valeria.” John’s voice came from the door, quiet and careful. “There is a rider on the drive.”
She did not turn. She would not turn. She would not give him the satisfaction of watching her turn. She stood at the altar with her back straight and her jaw set, and she waited.
She could hear it now. Hoofbeats on gravel, coming fast. The sound of a man riding hard and arriving late, and who had better have a very good reason for making her stand at the altar in front of every person she knew and wonder if she had been abandoned again.
The chapel door opened.
She turned.
Edward was a mess. That was the first thing she noticed. Dust covered his coat. His cravat was untied, hanging loose around his neck. His hair was pushed back and damp with sweat. His boots were caked with mud. He had not shaved.
He looked as though he had been in a fight, which, she would learn later, he had.
He walked up the aisle. Every head in the chapel turned. The silence was absolute. Even Caroline stopped crying.
He stopped in front of Valeria, breathing hard. There was something on his knuckles. She looked. It was blood. Not his. She would ask him about it later.
“You are late.”
The same words she had spoken at the masquerade ball. The same tone. The same woman, standing in front of the same man, making the same observation with the same mix of fury and relief.
“I am here.”
The same answer. But his voice was different. Rough. Scraped raw by something she could not see.
“You have blood on your hands.”
