Page 51 of The Duke's Auctioned Virgin
Caroline spoke up from the end of the table. “He is right, Valeria. Besides, you must stay. We need to make sure this wedding iseverything you deserve. I want it to be dreamy, Valeria. You have earned a dreamy wedding.”
Valeria looked at her sister. Caroline’s face was carefully neutral, which meant she was choosing Edward’s side and trying not to be obvious about it. She was failing. She always failed at being subtle. It was one of her most endearing qualities.
“It does not need to be dreamy, Sister,” Valeria said. “It can simply be a wedding I agreed to.”
The words came out harder than she had intended. She heard them land in the quiet room.
Caroline’s expression shifted. Edward’s jaw tightened. John looked down at his plate.
Valeria picked up her toast. Took a bite. Chewed. Swallowed.
“Go, then,” she said to Edward, without looking at him. “See your friends. Be back for the ball.”
“I will.”
“You had better.”
He stood there for a moment. She could feel him looking at her.
She did not look up. She ate her toast, drank her tea, but did not look at him. Because if she looked at him, she would see the riding boots, the coat, and the gloves, and she would think about the fact that he was leaving and she did not know when he would be back. The last man who had left her alone in a house did not come back the same person.
She heard him cross the breakfast room. The door opened. Closed.
She put down her toast. She was not hungry anymore.
Caroline reached across the table and took her hand. “He will come back.”
“Everyone says that,” Valeria scoffed. “It does not make it true.”
“He means it.”
She looked at her sister. Caroline’s eyes were steady. Her hand was warm. She was enormous with child and sitting at a breakfast table holding her sister’s hand and believing, with the fierce certainty of a woman who had fought for her own happy ending, that this one would work out too.
“Now,” Caroline said, squeezing her hand, “we have napkins to discuss. And I will not rest until I have your opinion on the napkins.”
“I do not have an opinion on napkins.”
“Then I will give you one. That is what sisters are for.”
Valeria almost smiled. Almost.
She let Caroline pull her into the wedding preparations, and for the rest of the morning, she chose flowers and approved menus and argued about seating charts.
She had resolved not to think about where Edward was going or who he was meeting or whether the friends from his former life were the kind of friends who carried weapons.
She thought about it anyway.
CHAPTER 19
The gentlemen’s club smelled of tobacco, old leather, and the particular brand of silence that men bought with money they did not earn. Dark wood paneling. Chairs cracked at the seams. A fire that nobody tended, but never went out.
Edward had been in rooms like this across half of Europe, though the ones on the Continent usually had better wine and worse intentions.
He had been in London for four days. Four days of George insisting on one more meeting, one more drink, one more conversation that circled back to the same question: why are you leaving?
Edward had come for a single evening. George had made it last four days.
George Turner was good at making him stay. He had done it for twelve years.
