Do hurry, Cecelia, she urged, opening her umbrella against the onslaught of rain, which disappeared as quickly as it had assaulted her.
Lightning separated the clouds above, forking down toward the train with a brilliant, chaotic snap.
For a magical breath, all occupants of the station appeared frozen in time, respectfully awaiting the thunder before they resumed their business.
Obligingly, a rumble preceded a boom above so brash, Alexandra was convinced that if the awning didn’t conceal the sky, they’d have all borne witness to a collision of the clouds violent enough to render such a roar.
Now that most of the passengers had disembarked for their destinations, a bevy of soggy merchantmen and their workers broke against the train like a wave at low tide. Boxcar doors were thrown open on rusted rails and uncouth voices shouted orders and curses in time to the dance of lifting and lowering merchandise to the ground below the passenger platform.
A ramp was lifted onto a livestock car, and a cadre of workers coaxed four skittish thoroughbred horses down the incline by their leads and out to an awaiting coach.
One voice rose above the tumult, commanding the same rapt attention from rough-hewn men as the thunder.
Alexandra squinted across the platform admiring the horseflesh and hoping to identify which man belonged to the distinctly masculine voice. There’d been a resonance to it. Something sonorous and commanding. It plucked the same vibrations within her as ancient cathedral bells.
“He’s too unsettled,” the voice called from the cavern of the boxcar as two lead ropes were tossed from the gloom. “You two there—keep the tension on the rope until I can get his blinders on.”
With the gentry gone—other than Alexandra—Smythe slithered between the remaining travelers, darting toward the livestock car as though a mighty wonder was inside.
What commanded such curiosity? The beast, or the man?
Smythe snatched the rope and cautiously tugged until it ran out of slack. His resolution almost made up for his lack of stature as he wrapped the rope several times around his forearm and wrist before locking it in his grip.
Alexandra stood too far off to warn him of his folly, and dearly hoped that someone else might be observant enough to do so.
No such luck.
A sturdy footman bent to grasp the rope on the opposite side of the plank, but before he could secure it, another streak of lightning blinded them all.
An inhuman scream rent the storm before the largest stallion Alexandra had ever seen leaped from inside the car in a graceful arc, clearing the ramp altogether.
The moment his hooves met the earth, he leaped and bucked with alarming grace and speed. Pandemonium erupted as the dark bay reared on his hind legs, striking out at whoever was unlucky enough to be in his path.
Several men went down. It all happened so quickly, she couldn’t tell if they’d fallen, been kicked, or merely dove out of the way.
Another figure appeared in the doorway of the railcar, a towering man to match the thunderous voice commanding everyone to get back.
At the sound of the man’s bellow, the stallion stopped its flailing, and simply bolted. Not toward the trainyard or the road, but toward the still-emptying passenger platform not fifteen strides away. Smythe gave a yelp as he was yanked into the air, and an audible crack might have been his shoulder dislocating.
If he was lucky.
Alexandra glanced behind her to ascertain if any passengers were left, spying an elderly couple frantically helping each other toward the cloakroom. Beyond them, a bleary-eyed mother struggled to heave a carpetbag and push a pram. A girl of perhaps five clutched at her skirts, pointing to the advancing stallion with a screech. The mother turned to admonish the girl, but her words died as she spotted the steed. She froze for a precious, petrified moment before dropping her bag and doing what she could to wrestle both children out of the way.
Turning back, Alexandra gaped at how much closer the stallion had galloped in a matter of seconds.
Poor Smythe! Snagged in the rope he’d wound around his arm, he was dragged like a sack of grain through the mud. His head barely avoided the horse’s churning hooves. He worked vigorously to unwind himself, but she couldn’t tell if he made headway.
Alexandra searched the vicinity for help for one more frantic breath. No man could be found on the platform, conductor, constable, workman, or otherwise.
Why did she bother looking? When had a man ever come to her aid?
The septuagenarian couple had almost shuffled to the relative safety of the cloakroom, but the mother had no chance.
An idea occurred to Alexandra as a crack of thunder spurred the creature on.
Sweat bloomed inside her gloves.
Time slowed as the bay stallion gathered his muscles for the small leap from the ground onto the platform.
The metal of horseshoes clattered like hammers against the planks. He shot past Alexandra and aimed his one-ton body toward the terrified mother and the few panicking passengers beyond.
Alexandra dropped her umbrella and leaped toward one of the long ropes trailing behind the beast.
Seizing it in her gloved hands, she set her feet and leaned her hips back, putting all her weight into yanking the horse’s lead around.
The stallion’s head jerked to the side, and with a recalcitrant neigh, his monstrous body followed.
There was no time to think.
Until the whites disappeared from the stallion’s eyes, she had to keep him off balance. She darted toward him, tucking her body next to his long middle as she tugged his lead forcefully around with her, compelling him to turn in a continuous circle.
Belatedly, she noticed the other lead rope was empty. The stallion’s jump somehow scraped Smythe from his lead.
A quick glance found the young porter in the mud, unmoving.
The beast snorted and tossed his head, but after a few circles, his stamping turned to prancing, which she considered a victory.
It occurred to her with a sense of growing alarm that she hadn’t the slightest idea what to do next. The man with the compelling baritone had mentioned blinders. On the next rotation, she snatched up her open black umbrella, and somehow managed to lower it over both their heads, narrowing their entire scope of the world to that of each other.
Alexandra kept her eyes locked with the breathtaking creature, the vapors of her breath keeping time with the deep pants of his flaring nostrils.
“There you are,” she crooned, maintaining their circles, but slowing the pace. “I’m not fond of thunderstorms either, all told. Or crowds of rowdy men. Is it any great wonder you’ve misbehaved?”
The beast snorted his displeasure.
“I agree. You have every right to be cross,” she commiserated. “You didn’t ask to be dragged here in a cramped and cold train. What you need is a dry paddock, some fresh hay, and warm mash to wait out the storm. Doesn’t that sound lovely?”
As pleasant as her one-sided conversation may have appeared, Alexandra wished someone, anyone, would relieve her of the beast. Now that the mother and children were safe, a sudden weakness in her knees threatened an imminent collapse. If she stopped, she’d surely melt into a puddle of quaking nerves.
Both she and the creature tensed when another flash of lightning blinked around them, but the umbrella kept him steady as they continued their haphazard merry-go-round.
She breathed out a sigh, and resumed murmuring nonsensical pleasantries to the stallion. Dim sounds from outside permeated their odd little universe. The chaos of the men below the platform. The crying of an infant. The intensifying patter of rain against the shingled roof.
Heavy boots taking measured steps up the platform stairs.
“Young miss, can you follow the sound of my voice?”
A shiver of chills danced up her spine that had nothing to do with her soaked garments or the sideways rain. Not fear, exactly. Awareness. Every single hair on her body tuned to the direction of that voice.
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br /> Young miss? She was neither young nor a miss.
Could she follow him? If Saint Patrick had had a voice like that, he’d not have had to drive the snakes from Ireland. They’d have trailed him willingly.
Followed him to their doom.
Because his was certainly not the voice of a saint, nor anything belonging to the heavenly hosts. The cavernous timbre contained too many shadows. But not the eerie, repellent kind.
The kind that enticed. Tempted. The sort of shadows which shielded criminal deeds and concealed desires.
The most dangerous shadows of all.
Ones she’d learned to avoid in the most violent way possible.
She realized she hadn’t answered his question. “I—I can’t.”
“It’s all right. I’ll come to you and take his other lead. But I’ll need you to give me the umbrella.”
He’d assumed her hesitation was caused by the unpredictable horse, and in truth it should be. Were she any other woman, with any other past, two thousand pounds of horseflesh would, indeed, be more petrifying than two hundred pounds of man.
The truth of it was, she’d rather take her chances with an unruly equine beast, than to approach the man who belonged to the fury contained in the depths of that voice.
A fury imperceptible to most anyone, but not her.
She’d never again be caught unawares. For ten years since, she’d trained herself to listen. To find the thread of vibrations beneath societal niceties and appropriate fallacies.
And beneath his gentle direction lurked an unfathomable bleakness … and a banked ferocity that might singe through her soaked clothing and burn the flesh below.
She was about to reply when the train let out one last shrill from its whistle and a simultaneous release of steam from beneath.
The stallion leaped sideways, away from the white clouds billowing up from the mist. His shoulder knocked Alexandra from her feet and into a post.
The weight of the beast lifted immediately as he bucked away, taking her breath with him.
She crumpled into the steam and fog, her mouth open in a silent cry. Her lungs screamed, but her ribs refused to relent as she gulped for air.
She lay on her side, besieged by pain and panic and an encroaching darkness. Wishing, struggling, praying for a breath. She felt lost in the mist, worried that she’d sink beneath it forever and simply disappear.
Black spots danced in her vision. Or was it black boots and dark hooves?
Sweltering curses rose above terrified neighs.
Creature pitted against creature. Beast against beast.
Eventually, the man won. Of course he won.
Man was ever the better beast.
CHAPTER TWO
Alexandra didn’t breathe. Hooves clopped away. Disappeared. Boots stomped their own thunder into the planks beneath her ear.
Faint strings of rapid, angry conversation permeated the fog.
“Find me the sod … secure him in the railcar … painful execution.” That voice.
“Impossible … grace … was back in London…” Another voice. Harried. Afraid.
“What fucking imbecile … whistle in the middle of such a crisis…”
“… the conductor cooling … couldn’t see her … the storm … terrible … grace.”
Impossible grace. Terrible grace? Consciousness threatened to desert Alexandra as she tried to make sense of the broken conversation.
Grace was often both impossible or terrible.
But it wasn’t meant to be, was it?
Grace was salvation. Divine forgiveness. Would she be granted either?
Likely not.
“Someone will hang for this!” the now familiar voice bellowed, much closer than before.
“Y-yes, you’re—”
“Where is she?” Fury scalded every word with brimstone heat.
I’m here on the ground, she thought. Or am I lost?
Better to remain beneath the notice of his fury. Better for everyone. Perhaps if she just gave herself to the mist, if she disappeared, all the scandal and sorrow would follow her into the darkness. It wouldn’t touch her loyal friends, nor would it besmirch what little was left of her family name.
Perhaps this was the solution she’d been searching for.
A heroic death.
As she entertained the terrible thought, black boots appeared from the mist, just before tremendous knees landed beside her.
It was the weight of two strong, careful hands roaming her person that finally sent a full breath screaming into her lungs.
“No!” she shrieked.
Or, rather, croaked inaudibly.
“Don’t move.” Rough palms snagged the shoulders and bodice of her herringbone tweed traveling kit as she helplessly drew greedy breaths into her chest. “Not until I know if anything’s been broken.” He exerted gentle pressure on her ribs and, though it was tender, no pain greeted his touch.
Only terror.
And … something else.
Alexandra couldn’t struggle. Her limbs didn’t seem to understand their purpose.
It was her nightmare come to life.
How many times had she battled the dark? A faceless man holding her down, his hands roving her body as her limbs refused to obey her.
Electric shivers coursed through disobedient nerves, returning her strength as unexpectedly as the lightning. She tried to shrink from him, to roll over, and to lash out all at once. The resulting spasm more resembled a seizure than a retreat.
“Someone get a doctor!” he barked, muttering beneath his breath, “And a bloody undertaker.”
“No need.” Her words came more easily now, lent sound by her slowly returning breath. “I’ll live.”
She jerked her ankle from his grip, but he caught it and pressed it back to the ground. “The undertaker is for the conductor after I murder him—I thought I told you not to move.”
“Nothing’s broken.” She kicked her leg as though his hand were a bug she intended to shake off her skirts. “I don’t need a doctor. Kindly unhand my ankle.”
To her astonishment, he complied, returning to bend over her. Loom over her, more like, a swarthy, sinister shock of a man rising from the mists.
The rain had soaked through his shirtsleeves—which must have been white at one time or another—rendering it iridescent, if not obsolete.
Beneath, he’d the chiseled-marble build of a Greek hero, and the features of a Greek tragedy. Shoulders and arms to impress Atlas. A torso to rival the statue of Ares she’d once admired in Hadrian’s Villa.
And all the unhallowed malice Hades could summon.
Such scars.
It would be easy to imagine the gods, ever unduly punitive to a mortal who dare challenge their strength or beauty, had sent a creature to rake demonic claws across features so flawless.
“Can you breathe normally?” he demanded. “How do you feel?” The questions might have been gentle if they’d hailed from a chest with a less barbaric depth.
“I feel … erm…” How did she feel? What did she feel? “I feel as though I’ve been crushed by a horse.” She wheezed a vague attempt at levity. “But I can breathe fine and am more bruised than broken.”
“You are lucky,” he clipped, grasping her hand. “I think you shaved twenty years off my life in twenty seconds.”
“What do you think you are doing?” She tried to snatch her hand away, but he held fast, relieving her of her traveling gloves.
“Searching for rope burns.” He spread her fingers wide with rough thumbs, examining her upturned palms. “Your gloves were but scraps of nothing.”
“I am unharmed,” she protested, trying to ignore how warm his skin felt against hers, despite the rain. How small and pale her hands appeared when cupped in his rough, square paws.
How fiendishly strong his fingers were. How helpless she’d be against that strength.
She yanked on his grip with unnecessary violence, tightening her hands into fists and hiding them
in her skirts. “As—as I stated before, I’ll live.”
“So it would seem.” A wet chill replaced the warmth his hands had provided, matching the frigid note in his voice.
Alexandra forced herself to look into eyes as electric blue as the lightning, a crystalline clearness almost void of color, and no less sinister for the features into which they’d been set. The scars had something to do with that, certainly.
The shortest of the wounds branched from the dark hairline at his temple and interrupted his eyebrow. Had his dark hair, slicked back by rain, not concealed the wound, she wagered she could follow it high into his scalp. The longest fissure blazed across a sharp cheekbone into a well-kept beard, appearing again as a merciless gash through his lush lips.
Lush? Great Caesar and his glory, had she struck her head?
Alexandra blinked once. And again. Unsuccessfully attempting to tear her gaze from his mouth. Lips so soft simply didn’t belong on a face so brutish as his. The incongruity both perplexed and compelled her.
“Are you able to stand?” His tone turned as wintry as the storm.
He’d caught her staring.
Alexandra snapped her eyes shut in mortification. He probably assumed she’d been gawking rather than admiring.
Not that she had been admiring.
She hadn’t—wasn’t—wouldn’t dream of—
His hands manacled her arms, but before she could draw a breath of protest they were both on their feet. He released her the moment they were upright.
Alexandra reeled, her world pitching as much from the brief physical contact as the abrupt change of posture. She reached for the post to steady herself, and instead found a disc of hot muscle stretched beneath cool, wet linen. His chest twitched beneath her palm, as if the touch had surprised him as mightily as it did her.
She snatched her hand back into the cradle of her own chest. The warmth of his flesh again lingered, she noted with no little alarm.
“F-forgive me, I’m a little unsteady.”
“Are you certain you don’t need a doctor?” He stepped forward, concern etching his scars deeper as his arms reached out to provide a buffer should she fall.
How to Love a Duke in Ten Days Page 4