Chapter 31
Edward heard the carriage leave from his window.
He stood and watched it roll down the drive, through the gate, and onto the road. He watched until it was gone. Then he sat back down at the desk where the correspondence he had not written sat blank and accusing in front of him.
She had left. His wife of one day had packed a bag and left. He had paced half the night, sat in the chair until dawn, and now the morning sun was mocking him through the window.
He understood. He understood because he had spent twelve years being the man who left, and being left felt exactly as terrible as he had always suspected it would.
“This is what you are. A weapon. A Hound.”
George’s voice. Always George’s voice, slithering through the cracks in the wall he was trying to build between the man he had been and the man he was trying to become.
He stood. Sat. Stood again. The chair scraped across the floor. The desk was too small. The room was too small. The house was too small.
Everything was too small for the feeling that was building in his chest, the feeling that had been building since the barn, since he wrapped his hand around George’s throat and felt the old instinct rise like a tide and nearly drowned in it.
He picked up the water glass from the desk. Looked at it. Threw it at the wall.
It shattered. Water ran down the wallpaper. Glass scattered across the floor. The sound was satisfying in the way that breaking things was always satisfying, which was to say not satisfying at all, only loud.
He picked up the inkpot. Raised it. Set it down. He was not an animal. He was not going to destroy his wife’s house because he could not control himself.
That was what George would do. That was what the Hound would do. The Hound, who solved problems with his fists, his rage, and the cold, efficient violence that had served the Crown for twelve years.
But I am the Hound. That is the whole problem.
He sat on the floor with his back against the wall, his knees up, and his head in his hands, and he stayed there.
He did not know how long. Long enough for the water to dry on the wallpaper.
Long enough for the sunlight to move from one side of the room to the other.
Long enough for the anger to settle into something worse—shame.
The particular, specific shame of a man who had been given something precious and had held it at arm’s length because he was afraid his hands would break it.
Valeria had asked him to prove it. He had proved it in the gazebo, in the gallery, in the chair beside her bed.
And then he had disproved it, night after night, morning after morning, by choosing distance when she was offering closeness.
By choosing the Hound when she was offering him something better.
She compared him to Gordon. She had said it to wound him, and it had worked because it was true. Not the cruelty—he would never be cruel to her—but choosing. Deciding without asking her what she could handle.
Gordon had locked her doors. Edward locked his heart. The mechanism was different, but the result was the same: a woman alone in a room she did not choose to be alone in.
A knock sounded at the door. He did not answer. The door opened anyway.
John walked in. Looked at the broken glass. Looked at the water stain on the wallpaper. Looked at Edward sitting on the floor like a man who had lost a war he did not know he was fighting.
“Looks like you need to release some tension,” he suggested.
Edward looked up at him. John’s face was neutral. No judgment. No pity. The face of a man who had seen worse and had opinions about it, but was choosing to keep them to himself until after the punching was done.
“Outside,” John said. “Now.”
They boxed in the garden behind the stables, where the ground was flat and the servants could not see. John stripped down to his shirtsleeves and raised his fists.
Edward could see immediately that he had been trained. Good footwork. Balanced stance. The easy confidence of a man who had spent time in a ring and enjoyed it.
“Rules,” John began. “No blows to the face. Caroline will kill us both if either of us shows up to dinner with a black eye. She is already emotional enough without adding spousal violence to the list.”
“Fair.”
They circled each other. John threw the first punch. Fast, clean, aimed at the ribs. Edward blocked it. Countered. Pulled the strike at the last second because John was his wife’s brother, and hitting him at full force would shatter ribs and end the conversation before it started.
John noticed. “Don’t hold back. I’m not made of glass.”
“Ye don’t want me to stop holding back.”
“Try me.”
Edward hit him. Not with full force. Maybe half. John staggered back two steps, caught his balance, exhaled hard through his nose, grinned, and came back swinging.
They traded blows for ten minutes.
John was good. Edward was better. But John had something Edward did not: the ability to talk while fighting, which he used relentlessly and with devastating precision.
“So,” John said, dodging a jab. “Your wife left this morning.”
“I noticed.”
“You know where she went?”
“The orphanage.”
“And you’re here, breaking glasses and sitting on the floor.” John blocked a cross. “Very productive.”
“Ye talk too much.”
“And you don’t talk enough. That’s the problem.”
John landed a body shot that caught Edward off guard. He took it without flinching, but his ribs protested.
“My sister waited three years for a man who would treat her like a person. She found one. And now he’s sitting on the floor of her house, breaking things instead of holding her.” John threw another combination. “You see the difficulty.”
Edward stopped and dropped his fists. Sweat ran down his back in rivulets, and his knuckles, already raw from the morning, were bleeding through the bandage.
He looked at John and saw not the joking brother, not the comic relief, but the man who had been there when Valeria came home. The man who had watched his sister disappear into a marriage and come out of it diminished and who had quietly sworn to himself that it would not happen again.
“I nearly killed a man yesterday morning,” he admitted.
The words came out flat. Stripped of everything except the truth.
“Before the wedding. George Turner. My partner. My friend. He threatened Valeria, and I had my hand on his throat, and I nearly crushed it. I wanted to. Every muscle in my body wanted to finish it. George said something to me, and he was right.”
“What did he say?”
“That I’m a weapon. That I’ll always be a weapon. That she’s in danger with me.”
John was quiet for a moment. The birds sang in the hedgerows. Somewhere in the house, Caroline was giving instructions to someone about something. Her voice carried in the warm air.
Then John punched Edward in the shoulder. Hard. Hard enough that Edward staggered sideways and had to catch his balance.
“Ow.”
“That’s for being an idiot.” John lowered his fists and wiped the sweat from his forehead with his sleeve.
“You listened to the man who threatened your wife over the wife who chose you. A man who lied to you, who used you, who manipulated you for years. You took his word over hers. Think about that, Edward. Really think about it.”
Edward stood there, breathing hard. His ribs ached. His knuckles were bleeding. The sunlight was warm on his face, and the shame was hot in his chest.
John was right. He was absolutely, devastatingly right.
“You should get yourself together before you lose her for good,” John advised. “She won’t wait forever. She’s waited long enough.”
Caroline appeared around the corner of the stables and took in the scene.
Two men in their shirtsleeves, sweating and breathing hard in the afternoon sun, knuckles bloodied.
She did not look remotely surprised. She looked like a woman who had been expecting this for days and had been wondering what took so long.
“If you are quite finished beating each other,” she called, “I have something to show you, Edward. Come.”
She led him to the drawing room. The same room where he and Valeria had ruined Gordon’s portrait.
Where they had laughed and kissed, and he had touched her for the first time, and she had come apart under his hands and looked at him with wonder, as though she had not known her body could experience such pleasure.
On the easel was a portrait. Caroline’s work. Fresh paint, still drying.
There were two figures. A man and a woman. The woman wore a blue dress, the same one Valeria had worn the first day of the auction, and was standing at the top of the stairs with her chin raised and her eyes bright with something between defiance and hope.
The man stood beside her. Dark coat. Dark hair.
Green eyes that Caroline had mixed from three different pigments until she got them right.
He was not smiling, but his hand was on her waist, protective and certain, and his face was turned toward her with an expression that Caroline had captured with devastating precision.
Not hunger. Not possessiveness. Not the cold assessment of a spy cataloging an asset.
But devotion. The quiet, steady, bone-deep devotion of a man who would stand between this woman and the world and never move.
Edward stared at it. His throat was tight. His hands were shaking. He had not known his hands could shake. Twelve years of holding pistols and blades, and his hands had never shaken. They were shaking now.
“That is what she sees when she looks at you,” Caroline said softly. “Not the Hound. Not the weapon. Not the man George Turner told you you were. But that.” She gestured toward the portrait. “That man.”
“I need to speak with her,” he rasped.
“She went to the orphanage.”
“I know.” He was already moving toward the door.
"Wait. Edward–" Caroline called after him. But he was already gone. He stopped and looked back over his shoulder. For the first time since the barn, he almost smiled.
“I’m her Hound,” he said.
Not the Hound. But her Hound.
He left.
Caroline stood in the gallery and looked at her painting. She pressed both hands to her belly, smiling. Outside, she heard hoofbeats on gravel, fast and certain.
The Hound was running. But this time, he was running toward something.