Page 39 of The Duke's Auctioned Virgin
“Who?”
“You, Your Grace. On your good days. And, I presume, before your marriage.”
Valeria looked at the ceiling. The steam curled around her. “Everyone keeps saying that. Before.”
“Because there was a before, and there will be an after. You are in the middle now. The middle part is the hardest.”
“You sound like a novel.”
“I have been reading your novels, Your Grace. The ones Gordon would not let you have. They are quite good. The one about the sea captain is my favorite.”
Valeria laughed. A genuine laugh. Small but genuine. “That book is terrible.”
“It is. But the sea captain reminds me of someone.”
“If you say the Duke of Welford, I will drown you in this bathtub.”
“I was going to say Mr. Ashworth, actually.”
Valeria stared at her. Mary’s face was perfectly straight. But then the corner of her mouth twitched, just barely. She threw a wet cloth at her, and Mary dodged it with the practiced ease of a woman who had been dodging thrown objects for three years, though the previous ones had been less playful.
“Now,” she said, “the masquerade ball is at the end of the week. We should discuss what you will wear.”
“I do not care what I will wear.”
“You say that now.”
“I always say it.”
“And I always ignore it. It is the foundation of our relationship,” Mary said.“You should be happy, Your Grace. You are going to be with the Hound. You will be extremely safe.”
“Safe,” Valeria repeated.
She turned the word over in her mouth. She had spent three years wanting nothing more than safety.
Safety was the absence of Gordon. Safety was a locked door she controlled. Safety was eating what she wanted, walking where she pleased, and sleeping without listening for footsteps.
She had safety now, the auction had given her that. But safety was not the same as happiness.
Safety was the foundation. Happiness was the house one built on top of it. And she did not know how to build that house because the last time she tried, the man she had married tore it down.
Valeria felt the tension of the day ease. The children. The running. The laughter. The look on Edward’s face when Ruth shook her hand. The way he let William win.
“I am just…” She searched for the right words. “I have forgotten who I was. And I do not know how I am going to remember when I become someone’s wife once again.”
Mary looked at Valeria with the steady patience of a woman who had been caring for her through the worst three years of her life and who was not about to let the best ones be ruined by doubt.
Valeria thought about the children running across the lawn. About Ruth’s handshake. About Horace’s caterpillars. About the way Edward crouched down so Thomas could tackle him and fell over backward like a man who had been felled by a giant.
His words echoed in her mind.
“Mothers always come back.”
The certainty in his voice, as though it were a fact and not a hope. She wondered if his mother had come back. She did not think so.
“He played with the children today,” she said.
“I saw, Your Grace.”
