Page 33 of The Duke's Auctioned Virgin
The quill snapped in her hand. She looked at the two pieces, before carefully setting them down on the desk, then took another quill out of the drawer. Her hands were steady, but her jaw was trembling.
“He could not. And he grew ever more creative as the years passed.”
She gave a bitter smile. It was the worst smile Edward had ever seen. It was the smile of a woman who had learned to mold her pain into a shape that other people could look at without flinching.
“His latest success was keeping my meals. Allowing me to barely eat. Just enough to keep me alive. He thought that hunger would be the key to my bed.” She shook her head.
The lamplight caught her cheekbones. They had filled out, what with months of proper nutrition, but the shadows were still there.
“He would sit across from me at supper and watch me eat broth and bread while he had roast beef and three courses and dessert. He would count every bite. If I had too much butter, there would be consequences. Not violent ones; he was too clever for that. Just the quiet kind. The kind that nobody sees.”
She paused, took a deep breath, then continued.
“He used to read my letters before I could send them. Most of the time, he decided I could not. He counted the sheets of paper in my drawer and checked the ink levels. He timed how long I spent in each room and with each person. He chose what I wore and whom I spoke to. He oversaw every interaction I had with the staff, and if he heard me laugh at something Mary said, I would not be allowed meals the next day.”
Edward’s hands were flat on his knees. He kept them there. If he moved them, he would break the chair. He could feel the grain of the wood under his palms. He pressed harder.
“When I found out he was dead, I laughed.” She turned her gaze to him. It was steady and burning. “I actuallylaughed. And I am not sorry for it.”
The lamp flickered. A log cracked in the fireplace.
“Let us hope history does not repeat itself, Duke,” she said.
Edward nodded. He realized, sitting there in the lamplight with the broken quill on the desk and the fire dying down, and this woman looking at him with eyes that had seen the worst a man could do and were still open, how much he respected her.
He tried to say so. He opened his mouth to tell her that what she had endured was unconscionable and that her survival was an act of extraordinary courage and that he would spend every day of their marriage trying to be worthy of the trust she was placing in him.
But Valeria was far away from him at that moment. Lost in her memories. Her eyes distant.
She was not in the study anymore. She was somewhere cold and locked and hungry, and he could not reach her. He recognized that look. He had seen it on soldiers who had come back from places they could not talk about. The body was present, but the mind was elsewhere, racing through rooms it could not leave.
She blinked. The distance left her eyes, and she was in the study again, solid and present.
“I want to get married as soon as possible,” she declared. “In three weeks, after the banns are read.”
“Why the rush?”
“I am not safe while I am unwed.”
It was the first time he had actually seen her vulnerable. Not the careful composure. Not the sharp tongue. Not the woman who had stuck out her hand when the Hound walked in, or played riddles in a gazebo, or stood in the rain and told him to stop ordering her around. Just a woman. Afraid.
“I wish I could have killed him for ye,” Edward said. His voice came out rough. Wrong. He cleared his throat, but it did not help. “I would kill anyone who put that look in yer eyes, Duchess.”
She looked at him, her expression shifting. Not gratitude, but recognition. She had found someone who did not flinch at the ugliness of it.
He had not tried to comfort her. He had wanted to hurt the man who had hurt her. Those were different things. She seemed to know the difference.
Then she laughed. Short and dry. “You do not need to be so extreme. You can just make sure you are not the one to put it there.”
With that, she walked away.
He listened to her footsteps retreat down the corridor. The creak of her door. The click of the latch.
He sat in the study for a long time. The fire died. The broken quill was still on the desk in two pieces. He picked them up and held them together. They did not fit back the way they had been.
He thought about what she had said.
“Let us hope history does not repeat itself.”
