Chapter 21 #2
They had not been this close since that encounter in the drawing room.
She could smell him. Road dust and horse, and underneath it the warm, clean scent that was uniquely him, the one she had buried her face in when she pressed his coat to her nose in the gazebo, the one she would deny noticing until her dying day.
The ballroom spun around them. Candles and masks and silk and the sound of two hundred shoes on parquet.
She was aware of all of it and none of it.
The only thing that was real was his hand on the small of her back, the heat of his body, and the way his fingers curled around hers as though letting go were not an option.
“I missed you,” she murmured.
The words left her mouth before she could stop them.
She had not planned to say it. She had planned to be dignified and cold and slightly furious, to make him work for every inch of warmth. Instead, she said, I missed you.
The truth of it stood between them like a third person.
His hand slid to her waist. She could feel the heat of him through the silk. The muscle in his jaw flexed.
He did not say it back. But his thumb pressed against the small of her back, firm and deliberate, and the sensation traveled the length of her spine.
His eyes were not on her, though. He was looking over her shoulder, scanning the room, his jaw tight.
“I understand you don’t want me,” she whispered. “You regretted what happened between us and ran away. But you can at least pretend to look at me when we are dancing.”
His eyes snapped to hers. Green, sharp, and full of something that was not regret.
“It is nothing like that,” he said, voice low. Only for her. “I just feel like we’re being watched.”
“Well, of course we are being watched. Everyone is looking at—” She did not finish.
He moved fast. One arm wrapped around her waist, pulling her hard against his chest. His other hand cupped the back of her head. He spun them so that his back was to the room and her body was between him and the wall.
The motion looked like a dance step. It was not.
Something fluttered past them. A folded piece of paper aimed at her that Edward snatched out of the air with his free hand without looking.
He unfolded it. Read it. His expression did not change, but his posture did. Something flashed behind his eyes, something cold and hard.
She looked at the note.
You’ll regret marrying a spy once he starts showing his true self to you.
Edward cracked his neck. A slow, deliberate roll. He tucked the note into his coat. When he spoke, his voice carried across the ballroom like a blade through silk.
“Whoever dares to threaten the Hound’s bride, come out and play.”
The music stopped. Every head turned.
The silence was heavy. Nobody moved.
Then a figure emerged from the shadows near the south corridor and pulled his mask off.
It was George. He was flushed, his jaw set. He looked at Edward with the defiance of a man who had done something brave and was beginning to suspect it was also stupid.
“You didn’t manage to sniff me out, Hound?” he drawled.
Edward released Valeria and straightened his coat. “What the hell are ye playing at, George?
“You invited us, remember?”
“And what does this joke mean?” he gritted out, holding up the note.
George lifted his chin. “Just checking to see if your bride is strong enough to handle the real you, or if you just chose her for her pretty face.”
Edward looked at him. The ballroom was very still. Two hundred candles burning. Not a sound except the drip of wax.
“Ye know,” he said conversationally, “this is so easy, it’s getting boring. I might entertain my guests a little bit more by playing around, but this is what ye get when ye speak of her.”
He punched George. A single, clean strike.
George’s head snapped to the side. His knees buckled. He fell hard on the parquet floor and stayed there, blinking at the ceiling with the bewildered expression of a man who had been reminded of something he had temporarily forgotten.
Edward straightened his cuff, turned back to Valeria, and held out his hand. “Shall we continue?”
The musicians resumed playing. The first violinist looked at the cellist. The cellist looked at the conductor. The conductor looked at Valeria. She nodded.
The music started again.
George pushed himself up, rubbed his jaw, and then walked out. The guests, after a silence that lasted four seconds too long, resumed dancing.
The British’s capacity for pretending that nothing had happened was, in Valeria’s experience, their greatest talent.
Peter was nowhere to be seen. Valeria scanned the room. He had been hovering by the south wall earlier, but he was not there now.
The not-knowing sat in her stomach like a stone.
She thought about the way George had looked at her when they were introduced. The flat assessment. The smile that calculated rather than welcomed.
She had known men like that. Gordon had been one. Men who wore courtesy the way other men wore coats. Underneath, there was something colder.
Edward had been a spy. He had worked with men like George. He had perhaps been like George once. But somewhere in those twelve years, he had chosen differently. She did not know the details, but she could see the result.
George had not walked away. He was still running, and the running had made him reckless, and the recklessness had brought him here, to Thornhill, to the place where the man he could not let go of was trying to build a life without him.
Valeria looked at Edward. His hand was on her waist again, and his face was calm and controlled. The face of a man who had just done something violent and filed it away in the part of his mind where violent things lived.
She did not know how to feel about that. The man she was about to marry was capable of violence that made a room fall silent, and he committed it as easily as breathing. The question was whether that frightened her or made her feel safe.
Both, she decided. It was both.
The two things existed together, and she did not know what to do with either of them.