How to Love a Duke in Ten Days Page 14

  What had transpired between them upstairs?

  What had they been doing in his mother’s rooms? He’d initially guessed they’d been idly exploring the future duchess’s new holdings.

  Had they been about something more deceptive? Something more deserving of her guilty behavior above stairs?

  In the end, did it matter? Not really. In a month he’d have a bride, and she a fortune, and each of them would be satisfied.

  No, he realized. No, he’d not be satisfied until he’d taken her to bed. He’d not be contented until he’d unwrapped the layers and uncovered the enigma that was Alexandra Lane. He’d determine if the sweetness he sampled from her mouth was amplified within the other recesses of her body. He’d thoroughly explore each uncharted curve of her, discover every freckle, every sensitive, secret place with his profane mouth.

  He’d learn the exotic flavors belonging only to her.

  And then, when he’d taught her what it meant to be an endeavor of his, and she was left spent and sweat slicked with the pleasure of it …

  Only then would he claim her.

  Then would he plant his flag, so to speak.

  Suddenly a month felt like an eternity.

  Piers didn’t miss the way she stiffened as he pulled her toward him, sliding his hand around her ribs to prepare for their dance.

  She quickly dispelled his worry that she might have forgotten how as, the moment he’d given her the cue, she followed his lead with practiced elegance.

  As he suspected, their synchronization was flawless. Precise. Piers had never been fond of dancing, but he’d taken to it as easily as he’d taken to all things physical. In fact, he’d often picked his lovers directly from his dance card.

  He’d noticed early in life that if one found an easy rhythm with a woman whilst dancing, the same was almost always true for fucking.

  At the thought of that particular pastime, he looked down at the woman who felt as though she were made to fit within the circle of his arms.

  As was appropriate, she kept her head tilted away, her gaze fixed elsewhere.

  Actually, her eyes seemed unable to focus on anything as he twirled her about the ballroom in flawless cadence to the orchestra.

  He spotted familiar faces in the crowd as they coiled past. A few Cambridge mates. An adventurer or two, most of whom had ceased to brave the wilds with him when he’d insisted on exploring deeper than caravans, comforts, and servants would dare to venture.

  Those men, those so-called friends never once called upon him during his year of recovery.

  His brother, Lord Ramsay, as always a stone-faced pillar of respectable contempt.

  His cousin, Lord Patrick Atherton, Viscount Carlisle, and the raven-haired Rose beside him, narrow-eyed beneath a delicate ebony mask.

  How strange that Rose wore the colors of mourning.

  Piers lowered his head, his lips grazing the warm shell of his intended’s ear. “Are you enjoying this, my lady?”

  Because, to his continual astonishment, he was.

  She turned her head sharply toward him at the touch, discovering too late that the motion brought their faces dangerously close. “I—er—which part?” she breathed, her tremulous whisper barely audible over the music.

  He nudged his chin toward the extravagant ballroom as couples began to join them, though many merely watched, enthralled. “The part where you’re alternately the most envied woman in the room, and the most pitied.”

  At that, she tilted her head to look up at him, a puzzled frown tilting her lush mouth. “Pitied?”

  “While I am an obscenely wealthy duke, let us not forget what I look like beneath this,” he mocked. “You’re marrying a monster.”

  Her lashes fluttered beneath her own mask, which concealed nothing but flawless skin kissed by the sun with adorable freckles. “You are mistaken, Your Grace, I could never bring myself to marry a monster.” She said this with such solemnity, such conviction, that a curious obstruction lodged in his throat. He had to clear it before replying.

  “Either way, they’re all looking at you.”

  “Don’t say that!” She would have faltered if he’d not caught her and smoothed the ruffle with an extra twirl. Piers found the misstep more than passing curious as he stared down at the soft curve of her cheek just barely visible beneath white feathers.

  “Why ever not? Don’t ladies always take a rather mercenary pleasure in the jealousy of others? Don’t you yearn to be the object of admiration?”

  “Not this lady,” she muttered. “I prefer isolation to admiration, truth be told.”

  “Because … you are shy?”

  His question caught her off guard, and she took more than a passing moment to reply. “Am I shy?” She must have been addressing the inquiry to herself, because she provided the answer. “I suppose I am. But even if I weren’t, I’d not care for this…” She nodded to the grandeur of the ballroom. “Because it’s all empty, isn’t it?”

  “Empty?” he scoffed. “I find it rather overcrowded.”

  “Your castle may be full of people, Your Grace, but it’s empty of authenticity.”

  Without meaning to, Piers clutched her closer. Could she be real? Did he hold in his arms the rarest of creatures? A woman of substance. Of integrity? One who tended more carefully to the capacity of her heart than to her coiffure? One who thrived on intellect and honor and genuine interaction rather than the empty endorsements of her peers?

  He’d begun to despair that such a person ever truly existed.

  Her beauty certainly appeared effortless. Her blushes authentic. Her grace artless.

  Her kisses … innocent. Untried and unpracticed.

  Was it truly possible that he’d found his heart’s desire on a train platform, covered in tweed and mud?

  “I wish they’d stop staring.” A fretful note touched her voice, making it almost childlike. “When is this dance going to be over?”

  A protective instinct he’d not known he possessed encouraged him to press her closer into the defensive shell of his body. “Relax against me,” he urged upon sensing her hesitation.

  “I don’t think I know how.” Her breath was quickening again, the pulse in her neck visibly rapid.

  “Do try.” He gazed down at her, the picture of the adoring groom. Indeed, his fond smile was more genuine than he could remember in a long time as he did what he could to soothe her.

  “Don’t let them see your fear,” he cautioned. “They’re like hyenas in the wild. They’ll surround you and laugh whilst they rip you apart, all the while fighting over the shreds of what’s left of you.”

  At this, she quivered but relented, drawing tighter against him, deciding for the moment that he was the lesser of two evils. “I—I don’t think I’ll make a very good duchess.” She gave a forlorn sigh. “Perhaps you’ll want to change your mind.”

  Never, he thought with more conviction than he’d expected.

  He released her from his grip to hold his arm above her head, twirling her beneath it until their arms were stretched as far away from each other as they could.

  Her eyes widened, as she realized that if he let her go, her momentum would tip her over.

  Unworried, Piers enjoyed her skirt as it twirled and swayed against the floor like a fountain of liquid silver.

  He demonstrated his strength, his control, as he tugged her back to fit scandalously against him, without missing one step.

  Once again, the room erupted into enthusiastic applause.

  He might have noticed it, if he’d not been so enthralled by the press of her body against his own. Gods but did he intend on enjoying every single one of her curves.

  “I won’t let them have you,” he whispered against her ear. “You belong only to me.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Alexandra squinted down at her notepaper, trying to ignore the fact that she stood in a duke’s bedroom about to make one of the most ludicrous decisions of her life.

  Perhaps she’d bro
ught entirely too many notes for a proper seduction.

  She worried at her lip as she stared down at the rows of her neat, precise scrawl, the product of painstaking research from hundreds of texts. Resources ranging from epistolic to medical, scientific to fiction.

  Alongside her academic pursuits, she’d devoured all writing she could find on anatomy, physiology, biology, mating habits of ancient and contemporary cultures, ritual, conception, childbearing, and the odd romantic novel. The most pertinent ones she’d read over and over in her desperate search to understand men. Or herself. Or the act.

  To understand what had happened to her.

  Now that she’d completed the research theory phase, she needed to move to the next step.

  And quickly. Before she lost her nerve.

  At the ball, once the initial fervor after Redmayne’s declaration had died down, Alexandra had accepted felicitations from what had seemed to her every person in attendance.

  But one. His former fiancée, Lady Rose Atherton, Viscountess Carlisle. The petulant woman had disappeared, and Alexandra couldn’t say that she was sorry.

  There’d been toasts, another dance, and not a little hovering from Frank and Cecil.

  Alexandra had detected the entire scope of artifice in her interactions with the ton, from gentle curiosity to outright hostility. Who was she to become the next Duchess of Redmayne? A spinster and a bluestocking? Where were her parents? What was her pedigree? How had she and Redmayne courted?

  Redmayne had been her bulwark. His arm, corded with strength beneath his fine suit, remained firmly attached to hers, sometimes quite literally holding her up as she stuttered and stumbled through social dictates she’d taken for granted as a young and well-adjusted girl of noble birth.

  She’d been among scholars and skeletons for too long.

  He had been the perfect paradox of charm and menace, his interactions ending either with delighted pleasantries or a victim struggling to recover from his caustic rejoinders.

  He’d been quick to jump to her defense when necessary, and Alexandra couldn’t have been more grateful.

  Just as soon as she could politely do so, she’d escaped to her rooms, snatching her notebook as another idea had taken her hostage.

  Their wedding would take place in a month’s time. Which gave her thirty nights to lie awake and dread the wedding night, building nightmarish scenarios in her mind until it drove her mad and she leaped from the tower rather than go through with it.

  Most distasteful duties, she’d discovered, were worse in the anticipation than the application. Also, if she could control the … the situation as much as possible, perhaps she could endure it more readily. If the worst of it was behind her, she could maybe stop obsessing about it.

  With this in mind, she’d slipped through the dark back to the east wing and let herself into Redmayne’s chamber. And here she sat, awaiting him like an executioner at dawn.

  She had used her tiptoes to perch on the tall, cavernous bed situated on a raised stone dais in the center of the room. It was odd, surely, not to have a headboard against a wall. But the duke’s chambers were situated in a round, grand tower at the top of resplendent spiral stairs. Besides, the proximity to the fireplace was lovely during winters or sea storms, and the two enormous windows afforded a breathtaking view of the sea beyond Maynemouth Moor.

  From here, one could use the moonlight to spot the very tip of the fortress ruins peeking over the crest of Tormund’s Bluff.

  Alexandra contemplated the view as she idly picked at the tassels of the cord restraining the cobalt velvet curtains to the bedposts. She was a Red Rogue in a blue room. Blue, like his eyes. Like the blood in their veins that made this marriage feasible.

  She clutched her list, stamping down the instinct to flee.

  Her thoughts were doing the thing again. Where they became too loud, too fast, and disjointed. Where every shadow hid a dragon and every sound contained unseen dangers.

  Her heart paused every third beat, then kicked against her ribs most disconcertingly. Her stomach rolled and her limbs were as steady as a moored dinghy in a hurricane.

  But she could do this. She must do this.

  She simply needed to focus. To think through the entire act so she could shed this unholy trepidation and finally sleep.

  He’d kissed her and it had been … almost entirely lovely. Until his tongue had attempted to invade her mouth, and the soft bloom of warmth his kiss cultivated had been doused by the icy shards of her memory.

  Should they avoid that again, it might be all right.

  And if not …

  Well, there was plenty here to keep her mind occupied while he … did the deed. She could … date the tapestries on the walls by inspecting their weft and weave. Or she could categorize any one of a dozen artifacts artfully strewn about tables, the fireplace mantel, bookcases, or the escritoire.

  If all else failed, she could close her eyes and think of England.

  Alexandra did her level best to find a seductive position. Perhaps one she’d seen in the Venus of Urbino, a woman reclining on her side, her knee bent to accentuate the curve of her hip.

  Or maybe standing against the bedpost, hands behind her? She discarded that one immediately as a supplicant pose.

  She flopped to her back, maybe if she—

  Footsteps approached from the hall, and her throat seized on a gasp as she sat up.

  When the latch turned and Redmayne’s wide shoulders filled the arch of his doorway, Alexandra exploded into a series of loud, uncontrollable coughs.

  He was at her side in a few long strides, his scars pinching as his brow wrinkled with concern, then alarm. “What’s happened?” he demanded. “Did you ingest anything?”

  Alexandra attempted to speak through the spasms, which only served to make it worse. She seized his wrist as he made a frantic search of her vicinity and pulled him back toward the bed.

  Her coughing resolved itself with a mighty sneeze.

  He stared at her as though she’d just exorcised the devil. “What the hell is going on?”

  Blinking up at him from watery eyes, she croaked, “No need to worry. I was choking.”

  “On what, in God’s name?”

  On her own fear. “On … myself. You startled me.”

  “I startled you?”

  His brows fell impossibly lower, and only then did Alexandra notice that he’d not only relieved himself of his mask, but of his cravat, tiepin, and jacket as well. His shirt fell open to the divot in his neck. She remembered what he’d been like in the storm. Wild and wet, the dark whirls of hair covering the swells of muscle on his chest visible beneath the shirt the rain had plastered to his torso.

  “Alexandra.” His voice lowered in pitch. “What are you doing here?”

  She stood on the round dais next to the bed still clutching him, finding that her fingers couldn’t even encircle his dense wrist. Though he stood a step beneath her on the dais, she still had to drag her eyes upward to meet his. What she found in those azure depths made her swallow hard and release him.

  Her mission, she observed, shouldn’t at all be difficult to achieve if his gaze already contained such things.

  “I’ve come to seduce you,” she announced.

  His furrowed brows climbed toward his hairline in surprise. “Seduce me?”

  It was her turn to frown. “You’re making a habit of repeating what I say as though it’s extraordinary or astonishing.”

  “You’re making a habit of saying extraordinarily astonishing things,” he volleyed back. “I’m often uncertain I’ve heard you correctly.”

  “Oh, well, you have.”

  “Excellent.” Looking exceedingly pleased, he tugged his shirt from his trousers.

  “Wait!” She held out a hand to stop him. “Don’t you want to know why I’ve decided to seduce you?”

  He paused, eyeing her like Cecelia did the pastries she never denied herself. “Is it too much to hope that you were so overcome by
my masculine appeal and erotic prowess that you couldn’t stand to live another moment without the pleasure of my touch?”

  Alexandra gaped at him, rendered momentarily speechless.

  His lips twisted wryly. “You’re worried you won’t like the marriage bed; no doubt you’ve heard horror stories, and, being ignorant of the act, you’re here to conduct some sort of scientific assessment of our physical compatibility before we take our vows.”

  Just as she’d recovered, this second observation had precisely the same effect upon her.

  Because his guess was closer to the truth than she could bear.

  “Well,” she breathed. “Well, I—I’m not ignorant of the act, you see. I’ve read several anatomical texts and have done multitudinous research.”

  “Multitudinous, you say?”

  There he went, echoing her again. “My research indicates that females do—might—enjoy the act of congress. If it’s performed correctly. Under the right variables, I mean.”

  He stepped on to the dais, crowding her backward toward the bed. “My research has indicated that as well,” he murmured.

  “What research?” She took one look at his self-satisfied smirk and frowned. “Oh.” Alexandra couldn’t tell if it relieved her or bothered her that he’d pleasured a woman before. Some stomach-curling amalgamation of both.

  It was probably a good thing. He seemed as though he knew what to do.

  He leaned in, reminding her of the substantial width and breadth of him. Their proximity to the bed forced her to inhale a deep, calming breath.

  She could do this.

  His nearness both overwhelmed and enthralled her. Here stood a dangerous man, an untamed creature, made more so by his wounds and his size and the ever-present wary tension in his wide shoulders.

  He surveyed the world with disdain. With distaste. She’d noted it at the ball as she’d watched him on his platform, looking down at those below him like a king.

  Like a god.

  But when he gazed at her, as he did now, a warmth ignited in his eyes, turning them from winter skies to summer heat. The hard brackets beside his mouth softened.