Chapter 18
They did not see each other for the rest of the day. Caroline seized Valeria the moment she appeared and pulled her into a whirlwind of wedding preparations, seating charts, and arguments about flowers that lasted until supper.
The florist came and went. The cook presented three menu options. Bridget’s letter arrived with twelve pages of suggestions and a separate page dedicated entirely to why Lord Barton should not be seated near the wine.
Valeria handled all of it. She approved the menu.
She chose the flowers: white roses, greenery, and sprigs of lavender.
She resolved the seating chart by putting Lord Barton at the furthest possible point from the wine fountain and Sir Humphrey at the head of the guest table, where he could tell stories to anyone who would listen.
She listened to Caroline’s opinions about ribbons, candles, and the precise shade of ivory that the tablecloths should be. She agreed to most of them. She disagreed with some.
She made decisions.
She made decisions all afternoon, and none of them felt small.
Caroline and Mary arrived at her door the following evening with fabric samples, ribbons, and opinions.
Valeria had not asked for any of them. She was sitting at her writing desk in her dressing gown, staring at a blank sheet of paper.
She had been staring at it for twenty minutes.
She was supposed to be writing to Bridget.
She had picked up the quill three times.
Each time, her mind would drift back to the drawing room, the carpet, the fire, the paint, and the sound Edward made when she kissed him, and she would put the quill down because she could not write to her sister while thinking about that.
“We need to discuss your wardrobe,” Caroline announced, lowering herself into the armchair with the carefulness of a woman whose center of gravity had permanently shifted. She had a stack of fabric swatches in her lap and the determined expression of a general preparing for battle.
“I do not care about my wardrobe,” Valeria protested.
“You said that yesterday. And the day before. And every day since I arrived.” Caroline held up a swatch of deep blue silk. “This one. For the masquerade ball.”
“I thought Mary already chose the ivory.”
“The ivory is for the wedding. The ball requires something different. Something that says you are not a widow anymore. Something that says you are a woman who has made a choice and is not sorry about it.”
Mary stood by the wardrobe, pulling out dresses one by one and holding them up to the lamplight. She had been quiet since she arrived, which meant she was letting Caroline do the talking while she made the actual decisions.
It was how they had always worked. Caroline provided the enthusiasm. Mary provided the results.
“The blue one,” Mary said, holding up a dress Valeria had not seen before.
It was not the blue dress from her wardrobe. This one was new. Deep, rich, the color of a winter sky just before dark. The bodice was fitted, the sleeves hung off the shoulder, and there was gold thread along the neckline that glinted in the lamplight.
“Where did that come from?” Valeria asked.
“I had it made,” Caroline claimed airily, as though commissioning a gown during the final weeks of her pregnancy while simultaneously planning a wedding and a masquerade ball and managing a husband who paced when he was worried were all perfectly normal things to do.
“I sent your measurements to Madame Beaumont in London three weeks ago. It arrived this afternoon.”
“Three weeks ago, I had not even announced the engagement.”
“Three weeks ago, I saw the way you looked at the Duke of Welford across the dining hall, and I decided you were going to need a dress.” Caroline folded her hands on her belly. “I am rarely wrong about these things.”
Valeria looked at the dress. It was beautiful. It was the kind of dress she would have chosen for herself before Gordon, before the locked rooms and the counted meals and the blue shawl hidden in the back of her wardrobe. It was the kind of dress a woman wore when she wanted to be seen.
“Try it on,” Mary urged.
“I do not need to try it on.”
“Try it on,” Caroline pressed.
Valeria tried it on. Mary helped her with the laces, the hooks, and the dozen tiny buttons along the back that were clearly designed by someone who had never had to dress themselves.
The fabric was cool against her skin. The bodice fit like it had been made for her—which it had, because Caroline had sent her exact measurements, and Madame Beaumont was the best dressmaker in London and did not make mistakes.
She looked at herself in the mirror.
She did not flinch. That was new. For three years, she had avoided mirrors because the woman who looked back was thin, hollow, and tired, and she did not want to see her.
But the woman in the mirror now looked different.
She had color in her cheeks. Her collarbones were no longer sharp enough to cut.
Her hair was clean and brushed and falling in waves past her shoulders.
And the dress, the blue dress with its gold thread and its fitted bodice and its off-the-shoulder sleeves, made her look like a woman who had earned the right to be seen.
“Well?” Caroline prompted.
Valeria looked at herself. She thought about the drawing room, the carpet, the pigment still under her nails.
The way Edward looked at her when she was laughing.
The way his face changed when she told him the truth.
The feel of his mouth on hers and on her throat and on places she could not think about without heat climbing her neck.
She thought about the way he addressed her. Not Duchess. Not Your Grace. But Valeria. Low and rough and careful, as though the word itself were precious.
“Valeria?” Caroline’s voice cut through her thoughts. “You have been staring at yourself for two minutes without blinking. Are you all right?”
“I am fine.”
“You are not fine. You are blushing.”
“I am not blushing.”
“Your neck is red. It is the same color it was when you came in from the storm. I am beginning to recognize the pattern.”
Caroline looked at Mary. Mary looked at Caroline. Neither of them said anything. Neither of them needed to.
“The dress is lovely,” Valeria offered, turning away from the mirror before her face could betray anything else. “Thank you, Caroline. Both of you.”
“You are welcome,” Caroline said. “Now, sit down. We need to discuss the masquerade masks. I have three options, and one of them has feathers. I know how you feel about feathers, but I think in this case—”
“No feathers.”
“Just hear me out.”
“No feathers, Caroline.”
They argued about feathers for twenty minutes. Mary laid out three masks on the bed, and Valeria chose the simplest one, a half-mask of white silk with gold edges that matched the thread on the dress.
Caroline wanted the one with peacock feathers.
Valeria said no. Caroline said it would frame her face beautifully.
Valeria said she would rather frame her face with her own hands than wear a dead bird on it.
Mary said the white one was the correct choice, and that ended the discussion, because when Mary made a decision, nothing changed it.
After they left, Valeria sat on her bed in the blue dress and did not take it off. She sat there for a long time. The room was quiet. The lamp burned low. She could hear the house settling around her, the creak of old wood, the tick of clocks.
The drawing room. The carpet. The way Edward’s hands felt on her skin, steady and warm and patient.
He had stopped when she did not ask him to stop, because he had already given her everything she asked for and was choosing to give her more.
The sounds she made and the way he held her through them, and the look on his face afterward, open and unguarded and full of a feeling she was not ready to name.
She pressed her hands to her cheeks. They were warm.
I am in trouble, and I walked straight into it.
She took off the dress. Hung it in the wardrobe. Got into bed. Did not sleep for a very long time. But when she did, she dreamed about paint, laughter, green eyes, and a man who tasted her on his fingers and called her plenty of woman.
She woke up blushing. She blamed the pillow.
The following morning, a missive arrived for Edward.
Valeria was breaking her fast when he came into the breakfast room. He was dressed for riding. Boots, coat, gloves. He had not come for food. He had come to tell her something.
“I must go to London,” he announced. “Some old friends are in town. I need to see them. Make sure they are safe.”
Valeria put down her toast. “Friends.”
“From my former life. They would not have sent word unless it was important.”
“I will come with you.”
“No.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“It is not safe. These men, they are not the kind of people ye bring a duchess to meet. I will go alone. I will be back before the ball.”
“And if you won’t?”
“I will be.”
She looked at him. He looked at her.
The breakfast room fell quiet. Caroline was watching from the far end of the table with her teacup frozen midair. John had stopped chewing. Even Richard, who usually noticed nothing that was not directly related to Caroline’s comfort, had looked up from his plate.
“I insist that I come with you,” Valeria said. Her voice was steady, but her jaw was tight.
She did not like being told where she could and could not go. She had spent three years being told where she could and could not go.
“And I must insist that ye stay.” Edward’s voice was calm. Not commanding. Not controlling. Just certain. “These are not men who will be polite in the presence of a lady. And I cannot protect ye and have the conversation I need to have at the same time.”
Caroline spoke up from the end of the table. “He is right, Valeria. Besides, you must stay. We need to make sure this wedding is everything 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.