Chapter 28
Valeria woke alone, again.
The bed was warm where she had slept and cold where Edward had not. The chair by the fire was empty. The blanket was folded over the armrest.
She lay still for a moment, listening for him. The house was quiet. No footsteps. No breathing. No creak of leather as a large man shifted in a chair too small for him.
She sat up. The room smelled of woodsmoke and the faint, clean scent he had left behind. His shirt from last night was on the floor beside the bed. She picked it up. Held it. Did not press it to her face because she was not that woman. She set it on the chair.
Today was her wedding day.
She said it aloud to the empty room. “Today is my wedding day.”
The words sounded strange. Flat. She had said them once before, in a different room, in a different life, and the memory of that morning rose unbidden.
October. Rain on the windows. A gown that pinched. A vicar who would not look at her. Two strangers standing witness because Gordon did not have friends; he had arrangements.
She pushed the memory away. This was not that morning. This morning, there were roses on the windowsill and sunlight on the floor, and somewhere in this house, her sister was already awake, already crying, already arguing with Richard about the flowers.
She rang for Mary.
Mary arrived with tea and the wedding dress over her arm and the expression of a woman who had been preparing for this moment since dawn and would accept nothing less than perfection.
“Sit,” she urged. “Drink. Do not speak until I have finished your hair.”
“Good morning to you, too, Mary.”
“It will be a good morning when you are dressed and standing at the altar. Until then, it is a morning full of potential disasters.” Mary set the dress on the bed and began laying out pins.
“Your sister has already changed her mind about the flowers twice. Richard has been sent to the garden three times. The cook is weeping because the cake has a crack in the icing, and she believes this is an omen.”
“Is it an omen?”
“It is a cake. Cakes crack. People read too much into baked goods.”
Valeria drank her tea. It was too hot, but she did not care.
Mary began with her hair. Pins and combs and the steady, practiced hands that had dressed Valeria for three years of dinners she had not wanted to attend and mornings she had not wanted to face.
“The ivory dress,” she said. “Not white. White washes you out. Ivory with the gold thread along the neckline. I pressed it twice. The veil is Caroline’s. She hemmed it herself. The stitches are uneven, but she will cry if you mention it.”
“I will not mention it.”
"Good." Valeria touched her ears. She would wear her mother's pearls again today.
At the ball where she fell in love, and now at the ceremony where she would say so in front of God and a chapel full of people who had watched her survive Gordon and were now watching her try again.
Try again. The phrase sat in her chest like a stone.
She had tried once. She had stood in a cold chapel in a dress that pinched and said words she did not mean to a man she did not choose, and she had spent three years paying for it.
Now she was trying again. With a different man. A man she had chosen. A man who put bread on her plate and painted flowers on portraits and held her hand while she slept and watched her breathe as though breathing were the most important thing a person could do.
She was terrified. Not of Edward. Not of marriage. But of hoping. Three years of Gordon had taught her that hope was the most dangerous thing a woman could carry.
Hope made you soft. Hope made you reach for things that could be taken away. Hope made you stand at the altar and believe that this time would be different, and if it was not different, the fall would be worse because you had climbed higher.
“You are thinking too loudly,” Mary said, pinning a curl.
“I am thinking a normal amount.”
“You are thinking the way you thought before the auction—with your jaw set and your hands in your lap and your eyes somewhere I cannot reach.” Mary paused. “He is not Gordon, Your Grace.”
“I know he is not Gordon.”
“Then stop bracing for disaster.”
Valeria looked at Mary in the mirror. Three years with this woman. Three years of warm milk and hidden bruises and secrets washed with the household linens.
Mary had dressed her for Gordon’s dinners and had undressed her afterward, careful around the silence. Mary had never once said what she was thinking. She did not need to.
“What if he leaves?” Valeria asked quietly.
The real fear. The one she had not voiced to anyone—not Caroline, not the unsent letters, not the dark.
Mary set down the pins and looked at her in the mirror.
“Then he leaves, and you survive it the way you have survived everything.” She picked up the pins again.
“But he will not leave. That man is wound so tight around you that cutting him free would take a blade and a miracle. And I do not believe in miracles.”
The dress went on. Ivory silk. Gold thread along the neckline.
It fit perfectly because Mary had altered it three times, adjusting the seams as Valeria’s appetite returned and filled out the spaces that Gordon’s rules had hollowed.
The fabric was soft against her skin. Nothing pinched. Nothing itched. She could breathe.
She looked at herself in the mirror. Auburn hair pinned with pearl combs. Her mother’s earrings. The veil Caroline had hemmed with uneven stitches and shaking hands.
She looked like a bride. Not Gordon’s bride, but her own.
Caroline appeared in the doorway wearing a lavender dress, tears streaming down her face. “Oh, Valeria.”
“Do not start. If you start, I will start, and Mary will kill us both.”
“I have already started. It is too late.” Caroline crossed the room and took both of Valeria’s hands in her own, her grip fierce. “You look like Mother.”
Valeria’s throat closed up. She did not trust herself to speak.
“She would be so proud,” Caroline whispered. “So proud.”
“The chapel,” Mary said firmly. “Now. Before you ruin the dress with your tears and I am forced to resign.”
The chapel was full.
White roses covered every surface. Candles were burning. The vicar stood with his Bible and the patient expression of a man who had been told the groom would be here and was choosing to believe it.
Caroline stood behind her, holding a bouquet of roses and lavender, trying not to cry and failing. John hung by the door, watching the drive. Richard stood near the front, looking worried about everything.
Mrs. Grady sat in the third row, dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief that had gravy on the corner. Sir Humphrey hovered in the back with his flask. Mr. Ashworth had a poem in his pocket. Lord Barton had promised to behave.
Valeria stood at the altar and waited.
The chapel was warm. The sunlight filtering through the stained glass painted colors across the stone floor. It smelled of beeswax, roses, and the lavender Mary had tucked into the bouquet.
Everything was different from her first wedding. The light. The warmth. The people. The flowers. Everything except the waiting. The waiting was the same.
She had waited for Gordon, too. Stood at a cold altar in a cold chapel and waited for a man who arrived late and did not apologize and who kissed her forehead the way one sealed a letter. Quick. Dry. Done.
Five minutes passed. Then ten.
Caroline shifted behind her. The baby kicked. Valeria could hear the whispers starting. The rustle of guests turning in their seats. The particular silence that settled over a room when people began to suspect something had gone wrong.
“He said he would come,” she said, voice bitter.
The bitterness surprised her. She had not expected bitterness.
She had expected fear, sadness, or the numb blankness she had perfected during her marriage to Gordon.
Instead, she was angry. Angry and frightened, and standing at an altar in her mother’s pearls, waiting for a man who had promised to come.
John had not moved away from the door since they had arrived. He was watching the drive with the focused attention of a man who understood that the next five minutes would determine whether his sister’s heart would break or hold.
“He will come,” Caroline said firmly from behind her. The voice she used when she was not certain but refused to admit it.
“You do not know that,” Valeria argued.
“I know him.”
“You have known him for a month, Caroline.”
“And I have known men for three decades. This one is coming back.” Caroline reached for Valeria’s hand.
Bridget appeared at her other side, quiet and steady, the way she always was in a crisis. She said nothing. She did not need to. She simply stood there.
Evan went to stand beside John, rigid and proper, jaw tight, already composing the speech he would deliver if the groom did not appear.
Valeria gripped the bouquet. The stems bit into her palms. She thought about the promises Edward had made. In the corridor. In the dark. In the bed where he had held her hand and said, I will always come back. She thought about how easily promises were broken.
Gordon had made promises, too. He had promised to cherish her.
He had promised to protect her. He had promised a great many things in a cold chapel with rain on the windows, and then he locked the windows and counted her meals and taught her that promises were just words men said to keep women still.
“Valeria.” John’s voice came from the door, quiet and careful. “There is a rider on the drive.”
She did not turn. She would not turn. She would not give him the satisfaction of watching her turn. She stood at the altar with her back straight and her jaw set, and she waited.
She could hear it now. Hoofbeats on gravel, coming fast. The sound of a man riding hard and arriving late, and who had better have a very good reason for making her stand at the altar in front of every person she knew and wonder if she had been abandoned again.
The chapel door opened.
She turned.
Edward was a mess. That was the first thing she noticed. Dust covered his coat. His cravat was untied, hanging loose around his neck. His hair was pushed back and damp with sweat. His boots were caked with mud. He had not shaved.
He looked as though he had been in a fight, which, she would learn later, he had.
He walked up the aisle. Every head in the chapel turned. The silence was absolute. Even Caroline stopped crying.
He stopped in front of Valeria, breathing hard. There was something on his knuckles. She looked. It was blood. Not his. She would ask him about it later.
“You are late.”
The same words she had spoken at the masquerade ball. The same tone. The same woman, standing in front of the same man, making the same observation with the same mix of fury and relief.
“I am here.”
The same answer. But his voice was different. Rough. Scraped raw by something she could not see.
“You have blood on your hands.”
“Aye.”
“Are you going to tell me why?”
“Aye. After.”
“Edward.”
He looked at the vicar. At the roses. At the candles and the guests and Caroline’s tear-streaked face and John by the door and the sunlight on the stone floor. He looked at everything in the chapel except her.
“I’m sorry,” he sighed. “I had something I needed to deal with. It is dealt with. I am here, and I will explain everything, but not now. Not in front of everyone.”
He was still not looking at her. His jaw was tight. His hands hung at his sides, fists clenched, knuckles raw. He was holding himself together the way he always did—with effort, control, and the grim certainty of a man who believed that if he let go of one thing, everything else would follow.
She wanted to grab his face and make him look at her. She wanted to demand answers. She wanted to know whose blood was on his hands and why he smelled of hay and horse sweat and why his coat had dust on the shoulders that looked like it came from a wall.
Instead, she said, “Look at me.”
He did not.
“Edward, look at me.”
He raised his eyes, green and raw and full of something she recognized.
Shame. He was ashamed. Not of being late.
Not of the blood. But of whatever he had done in the hours before dawn that had brought him to the altar looking like a man who had just proven everything George Turner said about him was true.
She held his gaze. She did not flinch. She did not look at the blood or the dust or the untied cravat. She looked at his eyes and saw the man who had held her hand while she slept, and painted flowers on Gordon’s portrait, and let a little boy put a beetle in his coat pocket.
“We are getting married,” she said. “Right now. In this chapel. With blood on your hands and hay on your coat and the worst cravat I have ever seen. We are getting married because I chose you and you chose me, and whatever happened this morning does not change that. Do you understand?”
Something flashed across his face. The wall cracked. Not all the way, just enough.
“Aye,” he said. “I understand.”
The vicar looked at his Bible, looked at the blood on the groom’s knuckles, and decided that matters of the flesh were between a man and his God.
The ceremony began.