Chapter 32 #2
He looked at her. She looked back. Steady.
Unflinching. The same woman who had held his gaze at the auction and offered her hand and told him he was welcome to play.
The same woman who had called him cruel in his bedroom and compared him to Gordon and kissed him at the altar with blood on his hands.
She had earned the right to say what she was about to say, and she would say it without flinching.
“I have always tried to be there for you, and you keep pushing me away. Every time I get close, every time I think we are finally past the walls, you build them higher. You built them so high that on our wedding night, you kissed my palm and walked away.”
“I was trying to protect ye.”
“From what?”
“From myself.”
“Edward.” She turned to face him on the bench.
Her voice was firm. “The Hound has many enemies, I imagine. What happens if another one appears? Will I have to wonder if I’ll find you there in the morning or not?
Will I have to wait at another altar, wondering if you’ve come back or if you’ve gone to fight another ghost from your old life?
Because I cannot do that. I have spent three years wondering and waiting, and I am done. ”
He was quiet for a long time. The bird on the fence hopped along the top rail. Inside, Ruth was reading aloud again. Her voice carried through the window, steady and clear, telling a story about a knight and a dragon.
Valeria thought about knights and dragons and the stories that got it wrong, because the bravest thing was never slaying the beast. The bravest thing was putting down the sword.
“I don’t want to be the Hound anymore,” Edward murmured.
The words came out slowly, as though he were pulling them from somewhere deep and dark and closely guarded. As though saying them aloud cost him something he had not expected.
“Ye showed me I don’t have to be. Ye showed me that bread matters more than fists.
The flowers on the portrait. The beetle in my pocket.
The way ye laugh when ye let down yer guard.
” His voice broke. Just slightly. Just enough.
“I don’t want to be the Hound anymore, Valeria.
I want to be the man in Caroline’s painting. ”
She stared at him. “What painting?”
“She painted us together. The way ye looked the first day. The way I looked at ye.” He swallowed. “I didn’t know I looked at ye like that, but she saw it. She saw what I couldn’t.”
Valeria’s eyes stung.
She blinked. She would not cry. She had cried enough in her life. She had cried silently in Gordon’s house, tears into pillows, tears wiped away before anyone could see.
She was done crying from pain. If she cried now, it would be from something else entirely, and she was not ready for that. Not yet.
“You don’t have to be the Hound,” she said softly. “You can be my husband.”
His breath caught. She saw it. The way his chest shuddered, the way his eyes flickered, and the way the wall, the last wall, the one he had built twelve years ago in a dark room in a foreign city, came down.
Not with a crash, but with a sigh. The quiet release of a man who had been holding his breath for a very long time and had finally been given permission to exhale.
He kissed her. His hand found her face, and his thumb traced the line of her jaw.
The kiss was gentle and desperate and tasted like salt, and she kissed him back and felt the last three years dissolve between them like sugar in warm water.
She pulled away just enough. His forehead rested against hers.
“Wait,” she breathed. “I need to tell you something, too.”
He looked at her. Waiting. Patient. The man who waited for her to speak, who never interrupted, who listened as though her words were the most important sound in any room.
“What we agreed upon isn’t enough anymore.” She took a deep breath. “I want to be a mother, Edward. I want to give you a son or a daughter. And I want us to raise them together.”
Something flashed across his face. Not surprise, but recognition. As though he had known this was coming and had been waiting for her to say it the way a man waited for sunrise, knowing it would come, not knowing what the light would look like when it did.
“I’ll give ye everything ye want.” His voice was rough.
Raw. Scraped clean of everything except the truth.
“Because I love ye. I should have said it sooner. I should have said it in the gazebo, or the drawing room, or the night I sat in the chair and watched ye sleep. I should have said it every day since the moment I saw ye standing at the top of those stairs, looking at me as though I were the most dangerous man in England, and ye were not afraid. I love ye, Valeria. And I’m done pretending I don’t. ”
She laughed. The sound surprised both of them. A bright, clear laugh that rang through the garden, startling the bird off the fence and bringing Ruth to the window.
“Took you long enough to admit it,” she teased.
“I didn’t hear ye say it first.”
“But I do.” She put both hands on his face. Thumbs against his jaw. The same way she had held him at the altar. “I love you so much, my husband.”
He closed his eyes.
She watched his face. The way the tension drained from it. The way his shoulders dropped. The way his hands—those scarred, dangerous, gentle hands came up and covered hers.
“Say that again,” he whispered.
“I love you.”
“Again.”
“I love you, Edward Langton. I love you, and I choose you, and I will keep choosing you every morning for the rest of my life. Even when you are difficult. Especially when you are difficult. Which is most of the time.”
He opened his eyes. They were green and bright and full.
They said goodbye to the children. Horace pressed a beetle into Edward’s palm.
Edward put it in his pocket without hesitation, the way he always did, because some rituals were sacred.
Ruth waved from the window. William challenged Edward to a race, and Edward declined on account of his ribs, which John had bruised.
John apparently became William’s favorite person on the spot.
He helped Valeria into the carriage. She had expected him to take the reins. Instead, he climbed in beside her, pulled her close, and held her for the entire ride, his chin resting on the top of her head, his arms wrapped around her, steady and warm and finally, finally still.
“Let’s go home,” he murmured.
“Where?”
“My house. The one Nathaniel secured for me when I received the title.” He paused. “I thought ye might like to see where yer husband lives. When he’s not sleeping in chairs in yer bedroom and breaking glasses in yer guest room.”
She smiled against his chest. “I would like that very much.”
His arm tightened around her.
The carriage turned north. Toward the beginning of everything.