No one answered, though he knew she was in there. Yet, as he pressed his ear to the wood, he could have sworn he heard the breathy shudder of a sob. Stifled, as if Valerie did not want him to hear her pain.
Not a trick?
Doubt gnawed at the back of his mind. Thus far, despite his accusations, she had done nothing to prove that she was a thief or an opportunist. She had abided by his rule, keeping her distance, and though befriending the staff was perhaps a manipulation, he detected no falsehood in that sad, rasping sound that he couldjusthear from the room beyond.
Is she hurt? Has she fallen again?
Shedidseem rather clumsy, and this bedchamber was so far out of the way that no servant would have heard her calling for help. Not at this hour of night, anyway, when most were abed themselves.
With a breath—for this was his castle anyway, wasn’t it?—he turned the handle and strode right in.
His eyes searched the faintly lit room, illuminated only by the glow of a dying fire and a solitary candle that had burned down almost to the wick, he could not see her at first. The bed was empty, as were the armchairs by the fire, the window seat.
He frowned. Was it not Valerie at all that he had heard, but the wind through the casements? Or the ghosts that wandered these halls and haunted these rooms?
Then, he saw her.
A hunched shape beside the bed, legs drawn to her chest, forehead resting on her knees. Trembling, though it was not cold in the room. She did not even look up at his intrusion into her private domain, her arms wrapped tight around her legs, that soft sniffling reaching his ears.
“Are you hurt?” he asked, his voice gentler than he had ever heard it. “Valerie? Are you hurt?”
She slowly raised her head, eyes gleaming in the low light.
Adrian frowned as he saw her face. Had she always been so pale?
“I cannot breathe, Your Grace,” she whispered. “I… cannot breathe.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
The duke—or Adrian, as she had secretly learned from Kate—was the last person that Valerie had expected to see in her chambers. At first, she was not even sure he was real or if he was a figment of her sleepless delirium. His voice, for one thing, was not at all what she had come to anticipate from him; it was soft and concerned, as soothing as a hot bath on a snowy winter’s day.
“You are crushing your lungs, sitting like that,” he chided, though his voice remained gentle.
Before she knew it, he was there in front of her, lifting her up off the floor. He did not sweep her up into his arms as he had done before, but he held her there for a moment, against the solid heat of his chest. His hand cradled the back of her neck, his other arm curved securely around her to keep her upright.
“Have you a fever?” he asked, and promptly placed his palm against her brow. “Notsowarm. Cold, in truth.”
He steered her toward the fireplace and settled her down in the closest armchair, where he slowly sank to his knees before her. A gesture she had never expected to see from him, who clearly thought so little of her.
“Why were you down the side of your bed?” he asked, as he turned to put more logs upon the fire. “Why do you feel you cannot breathe?”
He waited until the wood caught, before turning back to her. Patiently, he kneeled there, saying nothing more.
“The… quiet,” she croaked, her hand on her chest, rubbing circle to try and coax her lungs to do their duty. “This… dreadful quiet.”
His brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”
“I cannot sleep,” she confessed, and hoped that, by speaking her difficulty aloud, it might ease her troubles. “I cannot sleep because it is so… quiet. I have slept perhaps… a few hours since I arrived, and I… feel as if I am going quite mad. Tonight, more than before, I… cannot bear it.”
Her breathing shallowed again, having the opposite effect of what she had hoped for. As if the mere mention of that silence had set her off again, filling her up with that indescribable feeling of utter dread, like there was a monster in the shadows creeping up on her that she could not see. Or a monster within her that was squeezing her heart and lungs, trying to suffocate her.
“I could hear the creaks of the bedside table,” she continued. “That is why I was down there… for the noise.”
Adrian squinted at her as if she were speaking a different language entirely. The look upon his face nearly brought a dry chuckle to her lips; how could he hope to understand her struggle, when he clearlyadoredsilence? There was nothingbutsilence in this castle, and he had savored it for the past decade. Of course, he would think she was peculiar.
“I am not used to it,” she explained a little, the vise-like grip upon her chest easing ever so slightly. “Where I grew up, there was always noise. A manor full of children. Children who, even at night, would sneak into my room and steal half of my bed. I am not used to the quiet or the… loneliness.”
She hesitated, but something compelled her to continue. “The only time that house was ever silent was when my father was imbibing. It was as if the manor and everything in it was holding its breath, waiting for the explosion to come.” She smiled bitterly. “Then, of course, there would be plenty of noise, but not of the good kind: things smashing, furniture breaking, roars of drunken fury, the whispered prayers of my siblings in their fright. So, I am not so fond of silence.”
