Chapter 10
Later that night, Edward could not sleep.
He tried. The bed was too soft. Too clean.
Images of Valeria in that wet dress flooded his mind without mercy. The way the fabric clung to her body when the rain soaked it. The shape of her against his chest when he had carried her, warm and trusting and lighter than he had expected.
The muslin had become nearly transparent in the rain, and he had seen the dip of her waist, the flare of her hips, the long line of her thighs shifting with every step he took.
He had kept his eyes on the path. He had stared at the gravel and the hedges and the grey sky, and he had counted his steps and recited the names of European capitals in alphabetical order, which was a technique he used to stay focused during interrogations and which had never been applied in such an absurd situation before.
And then there was the kiss. He could not stop replaying the kiss in his mind. The stone wall cold behind her. His hand tangled in her wet hair. The way her mouth opened against his and the small, desperate sound she had made when he had pulled her closer.
She had never been kissed before, and she kissed him back like she knew exactly what she wanted. Her fingers curled into his coat, pulling him in. The heat of her through the wet fabric.
He threw his forearm over his eyes and breathed through his teeth.
He had carried her. That was the part that undid him. Not the kiss, though the kiss had been a disaster of a different kind.
The weight of her in his arms. The way she had fought him for the first thirty seconds and then stopped, not because he told her to, but because she chose to.
The way she had settled against his chest and her head tipped toward his shoulder and her breath came warm and fast against his neck.
He had thought, clearly and distinctly, that he would carry her across every country he had ever bled in, and he would not put her down.
That was not a thought a man had about a means to an end.
“What has the little witch done to me?” he asked the empty room.
The room did not answer. It did not need to. He knew what she had done.
She had looked at him without flinching. She had stuck out her hand and held his gaze and called him by his title instead of his name and treated him like a man instead of a monster. Nobody had done that in twelve years. And that single difference had ruined him for all other women.
He got up. He could not settle.
He pulled on his boots and a coat and stepped out into the corridor. He needed air. He needed to move. He needed to do something other than lie in the dark, thinking about the way her body had felt against his when the rain made her dress cling to her every curve.
He made it to the top of the main stairs before he heard the voice.
“Couldn’t sleep?”
John Hughes was sitting on the landing. Back against the wall. Glass of whiskey in his hand. His shirt was open at the collar, and his hair was mussed. He looked comfortable, the way a man looked when he had been sitting in one spot for a while and had no intention of moving.
Edward shook his head. He tried to move past him. He was not in the mood for conversation. He was in the mood for cold air and silence and possibly punching a wall.
But John stopped him. Not with his hand, but with his voice. Casual, easy, warm, but underneath it was a steadiness that Edward recognized.
John Hughes was humorous but assertive. He was the kind of man who made people laugh so they would not notice how carefully he was watching them.
Edward had known men like that in the intelligence service. They were the most dangerous kind.
“Sit,” John said. “Have a drink. I insist.”
Edward considered refusing. He could simply walk past him. John would not physically stop him. The man was half his size and did not have the training or the temperament for a confrontation.
But there was an edge to his voice that said this was not a casual invitation. This was a man who had been waiting.
Edward decided not to offend him. He sat down on the cold stone step. John handed him the glass. Edward took a sip. Good whiskey. Better than anything he had tasted outside of Scotland.
“I admire you, you know,” John began, taking the glass back. He drank while looking down the dark stairwell. “Not many men with a reputation like yours would walk into a room full of strangers and ask a woman for her hand.”
“Thank ye,” Edward returned.
“Drink,” John urged, handing the glass back. “You look like a man who has been rained on and kissed in the same afternoon. I recognize the symptoms. Richard had the same look after his first conversation with Caroline. Took him three days to form a coherent sentence.”
“I am perfectly coherent.”
“You are sitting on a stone step at midnight, drinking whiskey with a man you met yesterday. That is not coherent behavior, Your Grace. That is the behavior of a man who has been undone.” John took the glass back and drank again.
“I should know. I watched Richard go through it. He walked into walls for a week.”
“I do not walk into walls.”
“Give it time.”
John’s expression shifted.
“I heard her laughing tonight.” His voice had changed.
The humor was still there, but it was thinning, like fabric that had been washed too many times.
“From the corridor. When she came in from the storm. Caroline was with her, and they were laughing. I stood outside the door and listened because I had not heard my sister laugh since Gordon took her.”
He paused and took the glass for a swig.
“Three years,” he continued. “Three years I tried to get her out. I went to the magistrate. I went to the bishop. I wrote to every influential person I knew. Nobody listened. A husband’s authority was absolute, they said.
There was nothing to be done. And I stood outside her locked door during a visit and listened to the silence on the other side and knew that my sister was in there, not speaking, not laughing, barely eating, and there was nothing I could do. ”
He looked at Edward. “So when I say I am grateful that you made her laugh, I mean it. I am grateful in a way that I cannot fully express without doing something embarrassing like crying, which I am trying very hard not to do because I have a reputation as the funny one and crying would ruin it.”
“But…?” Edward prompted.
“But I am not sure you are the man my sister needs at the moment.”
Edward looked at him. “What do ye mean?”
“This is the first time in years that she is free to remember who she is.”
John was not smiling anymore. Underneath the humor was a man who had spent three years watching his sister disappear behind a locked door and could do nothing about it.
“I am worried that a man like you would overwhelm her.”
“I appreciate the warning,” Edward said. “But I have no intention of overwhelming her. I have no intention of controlling her. I have spent twelve years being told where to go, what to do, and who to kill. I know what it feels like to have no choice. I would not do that to another person.”
John looked at him, really looked. It was not the casual assessment of a brother sizing up a suitor. It was deeper than that. Searching.
“Why do ye say that anyway? Why is everyone worried about her, as if she might break?” Edward’s voice had gone flat.
The anger in his chest, the low, constant heat that he had carried since the first time he heard how Gordon had treated Valeria, pushed against his ribs.
“I have only ever seen fire from her.”
John looked taken aback. He stared at Edward for a long moment. The whiskey glass froze halfway to his mouth. His expression changed. Surprise, maybe. Or relief. The kind of relief that comes after hearing someone say out loud the thing you have been hoping is true, but have been afraid to believe.
“Then you might consider yourself lucky,” he said slowly. “Because that fire has been out for three years. If you can see it, then you are seeing more than the rest of us.”
“But why did ye say that? What did her previous husband do to her?” Edward asked.
The anger flared, quick and hot and visible in his eyes, before he could stop it.
He did not try to stop it. He wanted John to see it. He wanted someone in this family to know that the Hound’s capacity for violence extended to dead men who had hurt people he cared about.
“You should be asking me that question,” interjected a voice from behind them.
Both men turned.
Valeria stood at the end of the corridor in her dressing gown, hair hanging loose over her shoulders, feet bare on the cold stone.
She had not been sleeping either. Her face was pale in the lamplight, and her eyes were steady.
She looked at both of them with the calm of a woman who had been eavesdropping long enough to hear everything she needed to hear.
John had the sense to look apologetic. He stood up immediately and kissed the top of her head.
“Goodnight, Val,” he said apologetically.
“Goodnight, John.”
He looked at Edward, looked at Valeria, then walked away without looking back. His footsteps faded down the corridor until the house swallowed them and the silence closed in again.