It was the last thing she ever wanted to discuss. “Not much to tell, really. Between a lady’s useless curriculum and regimen, we mostly romped about the lake and read books we weren’t supposed to, thinking it made us proper heathens.”
And buried the odd murder victim.
“I’m familiar with the place,” he remarked. “A mill for eligible young noblewomen to launch into the marriage market. How extraordinary, that none of you wedded until now.”
“We promised not to.”
“Why?”
She detected no censure in his voice. Only curiosity.
Because I was raped. Because Cecelia’s father was cruel and Francesca watched men in masks slaughter everyone she loved. What draw had the opposite sex after all that? Besides, were they to marry, their lives, their dreams, and their money would no longer be their own. Because—until now—no one was willing to pay the price for the protection a husband could provide.
None of them had needed to.
“For reasons, innumerable,” she muttered.
He made a droll sound. “No doubt. Well, I’m not ignorant of the fact that the countess would rather kiss a toad every night than my malformed lips. I suppose she’ll have to let the duchess stipend and subsequent heir bonuses ease the misery of being a casualty of my vengeance.”
“Duchess stipend?” Alexandra lowered her whisky glass to rest on the marble ledge of the veranda.
“It’s an antiquated practice, I know, but her indulgent father insisted upon it.” He smirked. “A lurid sum of money, even by my standards.”
Alexandra clutched the railing. He must have known he was being terribly uncouth to speak of it. And yet, none of their interactions had resembled anything close to propriety.
Why start now?
A duchess stipend … A lurid amount of money.
A soft thud and a strange click from the direction of the duchess’s rooms drew both their notice, and Alexandra had to make a desperate move to keep him from investigating.
Panicking, she spouted the first thing that had come to mind. “What happened to your face?”
To her relief and chagrin, it worked. He turned back to level her with the kind of examination one tended to save for whatever was being crushed beneath a microscope.
“Oh, I’ve offended you, haven’t I?” Why was she forever doing that? Blurting out the most ridiculous things.
The duke reached up and slid his mask away, revealing his scars. “You mean you don’t believe I’m a werewolf?” he asked, his eyes glinting a dark azure challenge in the night. “Or a demon?”
She could believe both of those things.
God’s bones but there was something … inhuman about him. Something at once bestial and ethereal. Primal and preternatural. Elegant and enigmatic.
How could such a paradox of a man exist?
And why did he bedevil her so?
“I don’t believe in curses or demons,” she reiterated. “Are not men monstrous enough?”
For a moment he said nothing, and then, “A jaguar came upon our company in the night whilst on a hunt in Peru. It swiped at me, I shot at it. We wounded each other. Not a very exciting story.”
Alexandra took a drink, trying to imagine the pain of such a predator’s claws flaying open one’s face. He was lucky to have kept both eyes.
He was lucky to be alive.
“The wounds refused to heal,” he continued. “And then I came down with such a terrible fever, no one expected me to survive. I even sent a good-bye letter to my fiancée.”
“To Francesca?”
“No, no, I’d forgotten Francesca existed. For the first ten years after her family’s death, it was barely agreed upon that she’d survived that fire. And once her survival had been established, our fathers were both dead, and she was naught but a girl I’d never met on a faraway shore. No, until very recently, I’d fancied myself in love with another.” He drank deeply, finishing his whisky in two swallows. “I thought to spare both Francesca and myself from an unhappy match by declaring the silly contract void years ago. Your friend seemed eager enough to do the same.”
“What changed your mind?”
“I returned three months to the day after I’d written the farewell letter, to find my fiancée married to my cousin, the next in line to the Redmayne duchy.” He stared at the bottom of his glass, as though lamenting its emptiness.
“That’s … why you resurrected the contract with Francesca?” The pieces of the puzzle began to fit neatly together. Francesca’s summons truly had nothing to do with her past, and everything to do with his.
Redmayne nodded, guilt playing a thief with his gaze. “Your friend overcame the reputation of death as miraculously as I did. Noble marriages have been built on less. To be honest, any lady of lineage would do. I don’t want a particular woman. I want what only a woman—a wife—can provide me.”
“An heir,” Alexandra whispered.
“Two or three, if possible. Just to make certain that devious bitch never becomes a duchess.”
Alexandra frowned. “Seems like a rather spiteful reason to sire a child.”
“Spite is the only reason I have left.” He sent a heart-stopping glance toward his mother’s chamber door. Alexandra only breathed again when she verified that it remained closed and the shadows still. “My legacy has been built on spite and violence. Why not honor my savage Viking lineage, as well?”
The spark of an idea began to itch at Alexandra’s mind. One that both enticed and terrified her.
“Did you kill him?” she asked.
“No, if he wants such a faithless woman as Rose, he can have her.”
It took her a foggy moment to realize he’d mistaken her meaning. “I meant the jaguar, not your cousin. After you recovered, did you hunt him?”
A muscle bunched next to his jaw. “Oh, yes. It took me a deuced eternity to find him. But find him, I did.”
“Did you kill him?” she repeated, feeling as though a cataclysmic decision hung upon his answer.
“No.” He answered upon a long sigh. “I had him in my sights. Up in a tree. He was thin and mangy; due to his wound, he’d probably not been able to hunt for a while. But he’d blood on his mouth from a fresh kill and recent meal. We stared at each other for ages. Neither of us moving. My finger lingered over the trigger.” He caressed an imaginary gun as he stared out to the sea. Alexandra imagined he was not here in Devonshire at all, but back in that jungle in Peru. He blinked and the spell was broken.
“I found I’d lost all taste for the hunt. I no longer wanted to pit myself against predators. Not of the animal variety, anyhow.”
“You let him live,” she marveled.
“And he let me leave. I suspect we’d both had enough of the entire business.”
“That wasn’t spiteful, it was compassionate,” she said, her decision made. “And he was the one who condemned you to be the Terror of Torcliff.”
He turned to her, looming closer. Larger. “Don’t,” he whispered.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t try to make me a good man.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it, Your Grace.” When she should have retreated, she didn’t. Instead, she finished her whisky as well, enjoying the warm languor spreading from her middle to her blood.
“Good.” He became very still, watching as she licked the last of the honeyed liquor from her lips. The cool of the night suddenly disappeared, the air turned heavy with salt, and moisture, and … something more illicit. Possibly dangerous. “Have you ever really been kissed, Alexandra Lane?”
She blinked. And froze. However, the usual paralyzing terror that would have cinched around her bones at such a predicament … didn’t. Fear was more of a faint shimmer through veins made sluggish with whisky.
It was accompanied by another, more curious emotion. Not excitement, but something adjacent to it.
Why did he want to know? What did he hope her answer would be? Indeed, what should she say?
> The truth, of course. A lie would not serve her here, and besides, she’d too many of those on her conscience to bother with a flippant fib in the dark.
“N-no.” She wished her voice were stronger. That she’d had a different, more worldly experience to share. But alas, she’d never allowed a man close enough to kiss her. As far as she was concerned, men had long ago ceased wanting to.
“I thought not,” he murmured, setting his glass next to hers on the banister.
Alexandra forced another swallow. “How—I mean—why thought you not?”
And why was she suddenly speaking nonsense?
A faint hint of arrogance brushed at his lips. “Men like me can just tell.”
Her heart kicked against her lungs, evoking shorter, shallower breaths. “Men like you?”
“Hunters.” The vibration of the word spread down her spine and unfurled in the most alarming places. “Your lips, innocent as they are, beg to be kissed whenever I am near. Your tongue moistens them. Your teeth worry at them. And when I stare, as I am doing now, they soften and part, like an invitation…”
Stunned, Alexandra curled her lips around her teeth as if to hide them from him. Had he really gleaned all that from her mouth? Had her lips truly betrayed her so?
He paused, glancing up. “Your eyes are always afraid, though. I think it’s because you can sense I want to kiss you, too.”
“Y-you do?”
He nodded, his own lips melting into a soft smile at the abject astonishment in her question. “Since the moment we met on the train platform, I’ve dreamt of kissing you in more than a dozen ways.”
The sound she emitted was somewhere between a cough and a gasp. Were there more than a dozen ways to kiss? How many more?
“We … we shouldn’t be speaking of such things, Your Grace.” She turned away from him, suddenly trembling at the edge of an abyss, ready to leap into madness.
He drew close, never once touching her. But the heat and strength of him stretched beyond his physical being, threading through the night toward her, endangering her composure. Her resolve.
“It’s wrong, I know it,” he murmured, his voice containing an agony that tugged at her racing heart. “I’m to announce my engagement to your friend this very night, and all I can think of is what you’d taste like. I’m more of a monster than any scars or scandals I claim. But I’ve not kissed a woman since before the jaguar. I’ve not particularly wanted to until your lips drove me to distraction.”
Unable to hear any more, she whirled around. “Would you marry me?”
The idea had sparked like a fever, an idea that could fix everything. An idea that would release them all from the clutches of their sins.
All it would cost was her soul.
“What?” The question drove him backward.
A strangled sound emitted from the room containing her friends, but he didn’t seem to notice it.
Maybe it was the moon, the whisky, or the chance for redemption that steadied her. That gave her a voice through the throes of torturous tremors threatening to steal her knees from beneath her. But she was somehow able to repeat the question with much more conviction the second time.
“If I let you kiss me, Your Grace, would you accept me as your willing bride, rather than Francesca?”
His mouth fell open, deepening the crease of the scar there. “What are you on about, woman?”
This time, it was she who advanced upon his retreat. “You said it yourself. You don’t much care for Francesca. Nor she for you. You’ve admitted to wanting to kiss me, and so it stands to reason you might want to do more. To do … everything.”
“It … stands to reason?” he echoed.
Surrendering what was left of her pride, she said, “I find that I’m in need of a wealthy husband, as my family is bankrupt and at the mercy of their debtors. My father is … he’s not well. And so I hope you will consider my offer, as the daughter of an earl, an alternative to your present course of action.”
He turned away from her, but not before she caught the compress of his lips into a tight line. “It was the duchess stipend, then, that enticed you to make this most generous offer?” A hint of derision threaded into his words.
Alexandra had to clear nerves from her throat to answer. “I’ll not lie to you, sir, it was.”
Wasn’t it?
“Nothing else?” he pressed darkly.
“Nothing else, I assure you.” She hurried to put him at ease. “I’m not after the title of duchess, the prestige, nor do I have any false expectations of love or affection. This would purely be a business arrangement, much like you had with Francesca’s father. Funds in exchange for heirs. My family is notably fertile, and—”
“What about Francesca?” His hands tightened into fists as he pressed them into the banister, leaning all his weight out toward the darkness, as though prepared to jump. “You would do this to your friend?”
“I do this for her.” Alexandra took one more step forward. “You admitted yesterday morning that you don’t like her. And you only just mentioned that she’d rather kiss a toad than marry you. What kind of future is that for either of you?”
His chin touched his shoulder. “Has she said this to you?”
Alexandra flinched at his hard monotone. What if she’d read this entire situation all wrong? What if he had wanted Francesca more than he’d let on? “Not exactly in those words…”
Tension threaded into the muscles beneath his suit coat, further straining the seams. “What words did she use, exactly?”
“Well, I don’t want to be rude…” she hedged.
“I think we’re beyond propriety.”
She had to admit he’d a salient point.
“Francesca mentioned the rack as a favorable alternative to marriage.” At his gruff sound she hurried to amend. “Though I’m certain that would apply to any marriage. Not to you, specifically.”
He crossed his arms over his impressive chest, turning to lean a hip against the banister as he regarded her with eyes the color of the frigid winter sky. The very night held its breath alongside her. The breeze died, the curtains fell still, and her racing heart seized within her chest.
Finally, he spoke in tones only amplified by moonlight. “My lady, you’ve managed to transfix and trouble me all at once.”
“I’m sorry.” It was the first thing she could think of to say, and she was surprised that it touched his mouth with amusement.
“I’m inclined—no—I’m utterly tempted to accept your proposal. But I hope I do not offend you by saying I do not know enough of your character to take you by your word.”
“No offense taken,” she answered honestly. “Neither of us has a good measure of the other to assume any trust.”
“Then let me suggest an amendment to your proposition.”
“An amendment?” For the first time since they’d met, he truly sounded like a duke. All airs and graces.
“I will be at the top of the stairs in the grand ballroom at midnight, as per the original design. I will call everyone to attention and invite my future fiancée to join me for our inaugural dance.” He pushed away from the banister and closed the distance between them in languorous strides. “You will be standing next to Francesca at the foot of the stairs, and whichever one of you ascends to take my hand, she shall have it in marriage. I will then know that the other gives her blessing.”
It pleased her that, despite his desire, he did not wish to take what Francesca might not wish to forfeit. Despite his protestations to the contrary, it was easy, in that moment, to fashion him a good man.
“That is more than passing fair.” She stuck out her hand, exactly as she’d done at the train station. “I believe we’ve struck a bargain.”
This time, he didn’t hesitate to take her hand, but instead of shaking it, he drew her toward him.
She resisted. “What are you doing?”
“Why, I’m collecting my kiss.” He leaned lower, his eyes fixed upon her lips.
<
br /> She pressed her trembling hand against his chest. “But you do not yet know if we are engaged to be married.”
“Kiss me, Dr. Lane. As my future bride, or with a last touch of grace before I pledge myself to another, give me this kiss to remember you by?” The bulk of him hovered above her hand. Giving no quarter, but gaining no ground.
He could have. So easily. It would have been nothing for him to thrust her arm aside and invade her space. Her mouth.
Her body.
But he didn’t. He remained where he was, a tide of seductive grace and masculine desire controlled only by the feeble blockade of her quaking palm.
“If I decline?” she whispered.
He looked down at her hand, covering it with his own before he lifted it to his lips, pressing the ghost of a kiss to her knuckles. “You’d send me away a bleak and forlorn man.”
His back was to the moon, casting his features in shadow. She yearned to ascertain if his gaze was as playful as his voice had been. “If I sent you away … you’d go?”
She sensed rather than saw his frown. “If that is your wish, I will trouble you no more.”
“One kiss. Nothing more?”
“One kiss.” His head tilted, and the moon shone on his wound. His tongue touched the ridge of the scar, as though he hoped it might have disappeared. “One taste. That’s all I ask…”
“Ask?” He was asking for a kiss? Which meant she could deny him.
She readily understood that in order to grant him the heirs she’d promised, she’d have to do a great deal more than kiss him. Her head swam, as if a fog had rolled in from the sea. Thinking beyond the powerful shadow in front of her became as difficult as swimming against the tide.
She couldn’t think of that now, or she’d do something ridiculous.
Like run.
“All right.” She couldn’t decide where to put her hand, so she gently rested it on his shoulder. “Just one k—”
His mouth was upon hers before she could think, before she could react, or respond, or change her mind.
She’d expected to tolerate his kiss like a maiden subjected to an acute torture. She squeezed her eyes shut, drawing her lips tight against her teeth.
How to Love a Duke in Ten Days Page 12