Page 88 of The Duke's Auctioned Virgin
Valeria had asked him to prove it. He had proved it in the gazebo, in the gallery, in the chair beside her bed. And then he had disproved it, night after night, morning after morning, by choosing distance when she was offering closeness. By choosing the Hound when she was offering him something better.
She compared him to Gordon. She had said it to wound him, and it had worked because it was true. Not the cruelty—he would never be cruel to her—but choosing. Deciding without asking her what she could handle.
Gordon had locked her doors. Edward locked his heart. The mechanism was different, but the result was the same: a woman alone in a room she did not choose to be alone in.
A knock sounded at the door. He did not answer. The door opened anyway.
John walked in. Looked at the broken glass. Looked at the water stain on the wallpaper. Looked at Edward sitting on the floor like a man who had lost a war he did not know he was fighting.
“Looks like you need to release some tension,” he suggested.
Edward looked up at him. John’s face was neutral. No judgment. No pity. The face of a man who had seen worse and had opinions about it, but was choosing to keep them to himself until after the punching was done.
“Outside,” John said. “Now.”
They boxed in the garden behind the stables, where the ground was flat and the servants could not see. John stripped down to his shirtsleeves and raised his fists.
Edward could see immediately that he had been trained. Good footwork. Balanced stance. The easy confidence of a man who had spent time in a ring and enjoyed it.
“Rules,” John began. “No blows to the face. Caroline will kill us both if either of us shows up to dinner with a black eye. She is already emotional enough without adding spousal violence to the list.”
“Fair.”
They circled each other. John threw the first punch. Fast, clean, aimed at the ribs. Edward blocked it. Countered. Pulled the strike at the last second because John was his wife’s brother, and hitting him at full force would shatter ribs and end the conversation before it started.
John noticed. “Don’t hold back. I’m not made of glass.”
“Ye don’t want me to stop holding back.”
“Try me.”
Edward hit him. Not with full force. Maybe half. John staggered back two steps, caught his balance, exhaled hard through his nose, grinned, and came back swinging.
They traded blows for ten minutes.
John was good. Edward was better. But John had something Edward did not: the ability to talk while fighting, which he used relentlessly and with devastating precision.
“So,” John said, dodging a jab. “Your wife left this morning.”
“I noticed.”
“You know where she went?”
“The orphanage.”
“And you’re here, breaking glasses and sitting on the floor.” John blocked a cross. “Very productive.”
“Ye talk too much.”
“And you don’t talk enough. That’s the problem.”
John landed a body shot that caught Edward off guard. He took it without flinching, but his ribs protested.
“My sister waited three years for a man who would treat her like a person. She found one. And now he’s sitting on the floor of her house, breaking things instead of holding her.” John threw another combination. “You see the difficulty.”
Edward stopped and dropped his fists. Sweat ran down his back in rivulets, and his knuckles, already raw from the morning, were bleeding through the bandage.
He looked at John and saw not the joking brother, not the comic relief, but the man who had been there when Valeria came home. The man who had watched his sister disappear into a marriage and come out of it diminished and who had quietly sworn to himself that it would not happen again.
