Someone had turned her beauty into her tragedy. Despite her simple attire and her serviceable style, she was possessed of a poise and proportions that were eminently desirable.
To look at her was to appreciate something rare and irrevocably flawless. A brilliant, mercurial woman with a smile full of secrets. More of a masterpiece than the Mona Lisa.
Lovelier. More seductive.
What made a man think that he could do aught but appreciate such a work of art? What sort of fiend would help himself to her innocence without her consent?
When her pleasure was so radiant, how could anyone stand to cause her pain?
Even though two identical rivers of tears unceasingly flowed down her cheeks, her voice remained steady when she spoke. “I owe you an explanation.”
“Alexandra.” He took a step toward her, and shriveled a little inside when she retreated a step away. “I know.”
The preparatory breath she took shuddered through her entire body. “Let … let me start by apologizing … for—”
“Don’t you dare.” This time he advanced, but curled his fists firmly at his sides to keep from holding her. The effort took more restraint than he credited himself with.
“I know,” he repeated. “I know your secret. The one you’ve desperately been trying to hide from me all this time.”
Her breath hitched as she went from pale to gray, then stopped breathing altogether.
“Someone … raped you, didn’t he?”
He said it.
The word he’d been avoiding for what felt like hours. It scraped his throat like shards of glass, leaving his tongue with an acid taste of disgust and regret. But it had to be uttered. To be aired, this secret they had between them.
Her face crumpled first, followed by her body.
She folded over, curling around herself as her legs completely failed her and she sank to the floor in a pool of ivory skirts. Her arms locked around her middle, as though doing so could somehow keep her together. She rocked back and forth as a low, awful sound burst from her mouth. Followed by another, forcing its way through her clenched teeth.
Sobs, he realized, terrible reverberations of anguish. She fought a losing battle against them, doing her best to bite them down. To swallow them. Going so far as to clamp both her hands over her mouth.
But they rose. Like demons they rose, ripping their way out of her and into the night.
Piers dropped along with her, hitting his knees. Reaching, but not touching. Aching, but not speaking. Because language hadn’t yet invented words for this sort of pain, and therefore neither had it words far comfort.
Despite this, or because of it, a miracle happened.
She surged forward, falling into his arms in a storm of tears and pain and a mass of mahogany hair.
He gathered her to him, settling her in his lap right there on the floor, folding over her as she wept and shuddered, sobbed and clung. Her face buried itself against his heart as it broke alongside hers, drenching it with her tears.
He cupped her head to him, not wanting her to see the wells of his own emotion. His tear didn’t take the track it should down his cheek, but was interrupted by the grooves of his scar, diverted somewhere into his beard.
He’d trade his castle just to erase her memory of the deed. He’d offer his name, his title, his fortune to turn back the sands of time, to prevent it from ever happening. Nay, he’d give his life for it.
For her.
Christ, how brave she’d been. Selling herself to the Terror of Torcliff, trading her ill-treated body to a monster in order to save her family’s honor.
She’d built a life before him, filled it with unique and singular accomplishments.
There was no one like her, and she’d asked him to be hers.
He’d not seen the offer as the gift it was, not at the time.
What an undeserving fool he was. An utter, unmitigated ass. Why had he been so worried about his legacy in the first place? What small and ridiculous thing would his revenge against his cousin accomplish? Come to think of it, what had he ever accomplished? He’d done little more than be born to please himself. His birthright was nothing more than an unbroken line of barbarians who’d once killed enough people to indebt a king to them.
He may be a duke, but she was the prize. A doctor, a linguist, and a lady. Someone with purpose and meaning.
As her tempest of grief and rage fizzled down to a misting, hiccupping cry, he crooned softly to her, humbled in a way he’d never before imagined.
She was his.
Beyond that, he was hers. And, if she wanted, he would remain so, no matter what.
For he’d blessed few virtues, but faithfulness was one of them.
“I’ll never touch you like that again,” he vowed, lifting her chin with the crook of his finger, thumbing away a stray tear. “Alexandra, you’ll never have to fear me. I’ll be your husband in all ways, but I’ll never require you to share my bed.”
She gave a watery sniff as more tears leaked into her hair and it took her several shuddering breaths to speak. “Wh-what about … your title?” she whispered. “Your heirs?”
“Let Patrick have the whole bleeding thing,” he murmured. “I care not anymore. These past few days with you have showed me what really matters, and my legacy, such as it is, is of little consequence.”
“R-really?” She dashed away some of the moisture on her cheeks, moisture he longed to kiss and taste and soothe with his lips and body. For that, unfortunately, was how he communicated, what he understood. Things that were unspoken. Conveyed with touch and looks and gestures.
This would be a sacrifice. One he gladly made for her.
“I know the past is important to you, and the future was just as much an obsession of mine. But after today, I’ve come to realize that it’s right now that matters.” He searched her dear face, daring to brush at her cheeks with his knuckles.
“The man in that tomb, my ancestor, he never saw the glory his son brought his name. And the strangers who buried him cared not for his traditions, they simply walled him away on unholy ground. And all I can think is … does it even matter? What will I care for my castle and my title when I am gone? Why live only to make my holdings greater when I die? Why not, instead, spend my life, my fortune, giving you the life you want? The experiences you deserve.”
Some of the warmth of epiphany left him as his dark thoughts turned to the reason they were sprawled on the floor thusly. “Right after I reap a very Viking form of justice on the man who—”
“I can’t—I can’t talk about that just now.” Her voice broke, and Piers swallowed a surge of a temper he thought he’d exhausted.
“I’m sorry.”
“Piers?” she whispered, her voice hoarse with emotion. “I—I don’t want you to stop touching me. I liked it. I needed it. I didn’t know that about myself before. But you were so gentle—and skilled…” She ducked her head low again, hiding her features from him. “You made me feel beautiful,” she said against his chest. “You made me forget.”
Her words ignited a spark of hope not only in his heart, but in his body. One he quelled with brutal will.
“I frightened you today … and I know I have been pitiless with you before. I accused you of lying, when you were only protecting a painful secret. All I could see were the reasons I had to mistrust you. I never considered your reasons not to trust me might have been even more powerful. And for that, I am more sorry than you know.”
She gave a shaky sigh, expelling the exhaustion of a good cry and, he liked to think, the relief of an unburdened conscience. “I don’t want to have a secret. Any secret. But for so long, I’ve felt much like an open book with a page torn out. I appear completely ordinary. But if you try to read me, to know me, it’s impossible, because there’s something missing. Something lost.”
Pressing his lips to her damp hairline, Piers savored the fragrance of her. “You, my wife, are anything but ordinary. You’re perfect.”
&nbs
p; She pulled back a little, gazing up at him with those dark, assessing eyes. He wondered what she could see in the gathering shadows. Probably more than most could at noonday.
She swallowed twice before she could bring herself to speak. “I’d like to hope nothing much has changed between us. I still want a family. Children. Your children, I mean. I want to … to make love to you. I just don’t … I don’t know how.”
He let out a long, strained breath, both elated and humbled. “Alexandra…”
She tensed. “I understand if … if this alters your desires. I’m not a virgin. I’m an entire mess, and if you no longer want—”
“Dear God, no!” He trailed his lips over her forehead, down her temples. Pressing little chaste, worshipping kisses to her cheekbones, her nose, the corners of her lips.
She turned her face to him, pressing her still-wobbling mouth against his own.
He let her, soaking in the kiss until she broke it with a great sniff.
He’d give his soul for a handkerchief.
“I feel better now.” She sighed. “I think … I think I can try…”
He lifted her, carrying her to the bed and settling her upon it. He stretched out next to her, behind her, tucking her body gently against his, and scooping out a protective cocoon for her.
“Tomorrow,” he said.
“What?” She lifted her head, but he guided it back to rest on his arm.
“Tomorrow.” He traced little symbols of comfort over her arms. “Or the next day. Or whatever day you are ready. Once the tears have dried and the fear is departed…”
And he felt a little less like murdering someone.
Once someone had ceased trying to murder him.
Relaxing, she nodded, her lithe form shuddering a few more times.
“Tomorrow,” she whispered around fresh tears. “Piers?”
“Yes, darling.”
“What do I do now?”
“Now,” he rumbled, doing his best to match his breath with hers, touching her with comfort rather than need. “Now you allow me to hold you. To watch over you as you sleep in my arms.”
She nodded, leaning deeper into his embrace.
Piers held her the entire night, searching the darkness for answers he knew were not there. He wouldn’t rip information from her she wasn’t ready to give. He wouldn’t touch her unless she asked him to.
He would search out his enemies and put them in the ground, for they posed a threat to her as well. Then, when she was safe, he’d tear the world apart until he found the man who’d done this.
And avenge her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Alexandra had expected to suffer through the following day, to spend each moment dreading her midnight reckoning. Likewise, she’d feared a heavy and melancholy change in the dynamic between her and her husband after the overwrought, if emotionally intimate, night they’d spent in each other’s arms.
However, as she and Redmayne trundled along the scenic cliff road from Le Havre to Seasons-sur-Mer in a coach burdened by a veritable treasure trove, she felt lighter than she had in years.
A smile broke over her as she enjoyed the brilliant sunset and laughed at her husband’s own brand of wry humor. Was this what joy felt like? A cluster of hours nearly free of care, every moment filled to the brim with delight, each one a distinct flavor and all of them sweet.
Their first stop in Le Havre had been the bank, where Redmayne withdrew a mind-boggling amount of money and relinquished it to her as though he’d given her a mere trinket.
On the subject of trinkets, she’d never realized that a man could have the emotional and financial fortitude to shop like a Redmayne. Pillaging coastal villages and such was a trait handed down to him by his ancestors, and evidently, her husband awoke hell-bent on honoring his lineage to the fullest. The notable difference being, of course, he paid rather than plundered.
Paid handsomely, in fact.
Never mind hacking through foreign jungles and forging lethal rivers. Redmayne conquered the entire market street and beyond with a singular focus, spoiling her as though it was a mission given him by the queen.
He plied her with costly gifts, insisting on a garnet set of jewelry he claimed matched her hair and eyes. The earrings, brooch, bracelet, and watch cost more than she thought it should, but he’d not even bothered to barter with the jeweler.
After a few disconcerting extravagances, Alexandra had begun to contain her appreciation of anything, worried they’d end up going home with it. If she exclaimed over an intricate telescope, he bought it and the matching sextant and compass. If a scarf caught her eye, he commissioned it in every color. He didn’t restrain his purchases to those she admired, but procured her French and foreign things he thought she might like, such as a jewel-encrusted Moroccan lantern, or a book written by Sir Grégoire-Pierre Leveaux, the famous sixteenth-century explorer. It charmed and delighted her how easily he matched her tastes without needing to ask.
He insisted she pick several ready-made skirts and blouses from a shop window, and he obtained a few new articles of clothing, himself, mentioning something vague about an incident in the laundry room.
It embarrassed her a little, how many times he vowed to take her to the dress shop in Rouen Julia went on and on about.
“These will do just fine,” she said, hoping the shopkeeper didn’t speak English, for fear he’d offended her. “I have no need for Rouen.”
Alexandra had never considered herself a materialistic woman, as a frequent traveler must select her things with economy, but she couldn’t say she didn’t enjoy herself immensely.
She could barely contain her gratitude when he recommended she select a gift or two for Cecelia and Francesca. She found a vastly expensive decorative abacus for Cecil, and agonized over Frank until he suggested a new riding crop with a lovely and intricate but eminently practical handle.
He whipped his own thigh with it, testing its merit.
Alexandra knew she’d forever keep that moment locked in her memory, the most precious acquisition of the entire day. The Terror of Torcliff, a bearded menace with the reputation of a demon, lost in a distracted, boyish fantasy, swiping at the air with a riding crop as though it were a fencing sword.
“I’ll thank you to school the ridicule from your regard, Doctor,” he bade with a lopsided smile upon noticing her intent gaze. “I was merely conducting a thorough scientific analysis.”
“And what has your analysis concluded?” she inquired, suspecting she was unable to school much of anything from her features, not even the strange, aching profusion of luminescence in her heart.
He held the crop before him with as much fanfare as Arthur’s Excalibur. “I proclaim this item an excellent offering for even the most discerning outdoorsman, or outdoorswoman, as is the case.”
She plucked it from his hand, tapping him on the arm with it. “We scientists do not proclaim, we deduce.”
He merely laughed. “Now that you’re a duchess, you should indulge in the odd proclamation. Much less work than a deduction, and yet often just as startingly effective.”
She wondered if the world would ever recognize that the Terror of Torcliff had never been a terror at all. But a man. A man possessed of so much wit, skill, charm, intellect, and humor, he was forever surprising her. Often delighting her.
Enchanting her, even.
If she did anything for her husband, she vowed, it would be to make certain everyone else accepted that, as well.
Finally exhausted after hours of shopping, they strolled along the waterfront, where he’d drawn her into idle conversation about her family. They’d wandered into a café offering the most delectable pastries filled with delicacies both savory and sweet. As their nibble became a gorge, they spoke of her antics with the Red Rogues as an impetuous girl.
For once, her girlhood memories weren’t tainted with what came after. She could look at the joy and the innocence she’d shared with her dearest friends and appreciate it for the
treasure the relationships had been.
That they still were.
He’d been appropriately charmed and chagrined at her account of the time Cecelia had been caught reading a lurid novel in a deportment class. The mistress had forced her to read a passage aloud, and then almost expired from the vapors as poor Cecelia read a particularly salacious scene between two star-crossed lovers.
They’d savored sumptuous custards as they spoke of Francesca’s dark wit, inflexible will, and impetuous temper, painting horrific alternate futures wherein he’d actually married her.
He’d wiped tears of laughter from his eyes, and held patiently still as she picked a spot of cream from his beard with her handkerchief.
It was almost as though they had no secrets from each other.
And they almost didn’t.
On the carriage ride home, the currency in her purse was heavy at her side as she tucked her arm into Redmayne’s and rested her temple against his shoulder.
He pressed a short, temperate kiss to her forehead and patted her gloved hand indulgently.
It was the first time he’d touched her all day.
The thought drew the corners of Alexandra’s mouth into a pensive frown. He treated her as though she was a precious antique, already chipped and on the verge of breaking. Though she enjoyed his more relaxed and charming company, and was grateful for his tender care of her, she wasn’t certain she liked this new dynamic between them.
The restrained, almost virtuous edge to his need.
It very much resembled distance.
She missed the Terror of Torcliff. Rougish, wicked, assertive barbarian that he was.
They required a veritable train of porters as they swept into the hotel, and the concierge met them at the bottom of the stairs with a message.
The laborers had tirelessly dug out the entry of the catacombs, enough for the engineer to safely go in and investigate it in the daylight on the morrow if Redmayne desired to be present.
How to Love a Duke in Ten Days Page 32