How to Love a Duke in Ten Days Read online

If only he could slay her dragons. He’d stand over her like a lupine sentinel, snarling at whoever might approach. He’d sear the secrets from her eyes,

  Who could want to hurt someone like her? What could she possibly have done to warrant such violence?

  Because, whatever had happened in that catacomb hadn’t been an accident.

  And the results were supposed to have been deadly.

  “I won’t be but a moment.” He wouldn’t dare be away from her that long. Not when he must keep her safe. Keep her alive.

  If Ramsay had sent him an urgent message on his honeymoon, it could only mean that he’d found information regarding the assassins from Castle Redmayne. It could mean a clue to unlocking the mystery as to who was behind all of this and bring him one step closer to ensuring the safety of his wife.

  Stalking to the desk, he snatched the telegram from the clerk and unfolded it.

  If he’d been any less filthy, they’d have watched his skin blanch from swarthy to white. They’d have understood why he turned on his heel and stormed back outside the hotel.

  They’d have been less mystified as to why the contents of the telegram caused him to abandon his wife.

  I consulted my contact in Scotland. Stop.

  Falt Ruadh doesn’t always refer to red hair. Stop.

  It can also denote RED MANE. Stop.

  It’s you, brother. Redmayne. They’re after you. Stop.

  Piers walked toward the sea, fuming. Furious.

  The unbound stallion on the train, whipped into a frenzy. The gunmen at the ruins. The accident on the ship. And now the cave-in at the catacombs.

  Somehow Alexandra had always been in the way. In danger. And somehow, in his hubris, he’d assumed she’d acquired an enemy along her adventurous and uniquely singular path in life.

  How could he have been so blind?

  He was the Terror of Torcliff. The Duke of Redmayne. His list of enemies and enmities far surpassed anything Alexandra could even dream of. At the very top were a cousin and a former lover who vastly benefited from his death, and the long inventory only rolled on from there.

  She was innocent in all of this. Of course she was.

  He’d been the intended victim all along.

  And until he wrapped his fingers around the throats of those responsible, the safest place for his wife was as far away from him as she could get.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Alexandra set out to find her missing husband as the sparkling horizon split the late-afternoon sun in half. She’d had enough with feeling more like a mistress than a wife, waiting patiently in her bedroom until he deigned to come for her.

  With Constance’s help, she’d bathed away the events of the day, expecting Redmayne to burst into her room at any moment. At first, she wasn’t certain she was entirely prepared to meet the erotic masculine promise that’d emanated from every pore of his body since the moment he’d dug his way from the rubble.

  After a time, she’d begun to wonder what kept him. She’d wanted him nearby, if at least to bask in the comfort and security his fiendish presence afforded her.

  He’d survived. His body was still warm and vibrant.

  He was still her husband. Hers. The possessiveness of the pronoun felt more significant than ever.

  He belonged to her. With her. And she needed him.

  Dressed in a simple ivory frock, she perched on the bed for as long as her discontent would allow.

  When it became apparent a visit from him wasn’t forthcoming, she grudgingly admitted a thirst had awakened within her. One not easily slaked by water or wine. She needed to drink in the unparalleled sight of him, to absorb the scent and heat of him.

  To remind herself she was alive, that he was well. Because, somehow, he’d become necessary to her.

  Her riotous emotions had swung like the pendulum of a great clock. And with each passing minute she spent alone, she’d felt less in control. Of anything.

  Her feelings.

  Her destiny.

  Her very existence.

  She’d inquired of the desk clerk as to Redmayne’s whereabouts, and he directed her outside, where the porter pointed her toward the sea.

  Breezes toyed with her hair like playful fingers, tossing it with soft but unruly chaos as she descended the switchback stairs to the beaches below.

  Only to find the evening beaches mostly deserted.

  Concerned, she begged the pardon of an elderly gentleman walking a white dog who resembled a puff of cotton. “Perhaps you can help me, monsieur, I’m looking for an extraordinarily tall bearded man. He’s…” She trailed off. How did one describe the Duke of Redmayne to a stranger? Especially today. Was he still attired as he’d been at the catacombs?

  “There was just such a man, madame.” The kindly gentleman tipped his hat. “Swimming in the du Val cove tucked back next to Corbeau Noir Cliff behind the dunes.” He pointed to where the cliffs cut in sharply, the water disappearing behind shallow crests of sand waving with haphazard tufts of sea grasses. “I thought this man might be touched in the head to swim at such an hour, as the sun will soon be gone, and the wind grows chilly.”

  “Merci!” she called, cursing the sand falling away from beneath her slippers as she lifted her skirts and hurried toward the cove.

  Once she crested the dunes, she hurried across a gentle path through vibrant beach grasses, holding her hands out so the muted breezes encouraged the reeds to paint gentle things on her palms.

  The small knoll crested next to the golden face of the cliff, and she found that the other side of the dune crawled down toward the high tide.

  Alexandra froze, struggling to fully comprehend the visual cornucopia before her.

  The sun’s final crescent barely peeked above the curvature of the sea, setting a multihued fire to the various striations of clouds batted around by a gathering evening wind. The summer air blew thick with an approaching storm, heavy and hostile with both heat and moisture.

  Venerated by this crimson firmament, Redmayne rose like Neptune from the waves, slicking his wild hair to his scalp with a smooth lift of his chiseled arms.

  The consequences of staring at the sun for too long were well documented. Even a glance was inadvisable.

  One might go blind.

  And yet she stared, unblinking, at a sight arguably more brilliant than that of the disappearing orb. What devastation might befall her, she wondered, if she gaped at him for too long?

  The starch abandoned Alexandra’s knees and she stumbled to the side, reaching for the nearby cliff face to steady her.

  She’d seen naked men before.

  In anatomy books, granted, and paintings, and the plethora of sculptures she’d been unable to avoid studying at the Sorbonne.

  But nothing could have prepared her for this … for him.

  He hadn’t seen her yet, lurking as she was in the shadow of the cliff.

  He’d paused for a moment in a waist-high tide, running his hands down his beard, removing the water.

  As though answering an unspoken command, the sea ebbed from him, revealing his nude form with wet, glistening exactitude.

  The rounded muscles of his chest, dusted with a fine fleece of ebony hair, flared into immense shoulders which ebbed and crested into long, thick arms. His frame could have been carved from marble before a pour of molten bronze was layered over it.

  Another light trail of hair crawled between the obdurate ripples of muscle that made up his torso all the way down to his—

  She only caught a glimpse, before he turned in such a way that he was backlit by the sun, casting a shadow over his … particulars.

  She’d seen enough, though. His lean, tapered hips framed his sex, giving way to long legs carved with a wealth of crests and grooves that shaped and changed as he moved.

  She frowned when she noted the bandage on his left thigh had been abandoned, and a small stitched seam marred the muscle there. The wound didn’t seem to bother him at all as he fought the receding water
toward the shore.

  The shadow on his body shifted, offering her another unfiltered view of him. His entire form was like some magnificent sort of machinery, each tendon, muscle, and joint flexing and fluid with both refined movement and unthinkable power.

  Pulse fluttering, Alexandra tried not to look. She really did. She endeavored to afford him the same respect and modesty she’d desire.

  But then, she’d never bathed nude in the sea with nothing but a small cliff wall and a shallow sand dune for privacy. Modesty seemed to be the least of his concerns as he conquered the stretch of beach and veered toward the cliff.

  Toward her.

  Or, rather, toward the basket she’d just barely noticed, full of pressed clothing and boots his valet had no doubt left resting against the cliff wall for him.

  When he saw her, he scowled. “What the bloody hell are you doing out here on your own?” he barked.

  Drat. He’d caught her spying. Wincing, Alexandra met the censure sharpening his blunt features with a pretense of calm.

  “I—I came to find you,” she explained, inching toward the basket of his clothing and bending to fetch him a towel. “When you didn’t return, I worried—”

  “You should be at the hotel resting,” he clipped, prowling closer with his singular dark grace.

  “I don’t want to rest.” Not when there was so much to say. Not when she’d a million questions perched on her tongue, the first of which being …

  Why had he left her alone?

  He snatched the towel from her, securing it around his hips.

  Stung, Alexandra retreated a step, and then another. Realizing she was as unused to his irritation as she was his unabashed nudity. She watched water sluice distracting trails down the grooves of his neck to his shoulders and chest, disappearing into the towel.

  “It’s not safe here.” His veins rolled and flexed above his muscles, larger than before, pulsing with something she didn’t quite understand. He seemed impossibly more titanic. His scars, the ones she barely even noticed anymore, stood out in stark relief from features hardened with that well-contained rage she’d always sensed just below the surface.

  The girl in her screamed at her to turn. To run. To hide from his displeasure and his strength and the heat he was throwing off in waves, regardless of the chilly swim he’d taken.

  The woman in her propelled her feet forward, daring to approach the surly beast. “I know there is danger,” she ventured. “It’s why I came…” Her lashes fluttered low, unable to meet his tiger-sharp glare as she confessed, “Lately, I only feel safe when I’m with you.”

  “Alexandra.” Her name escaped him as a pleading groan before he wet his full lower lip with his tongue. “You could have been hurt today, or worse. It never occurred to me this might be the life we shared. That by making you a duchess, I also marked you for days like this. I don’t stay still for long, and I don’t always travel the safe roads. I’ve enemies, and if you remain married to me, they’ll become yours as well.”

  “We both have enem—” She cut off, her puzzlement giving way to astonishment as she digested what he’d just said. “What do you mean, if I remain married to you?”

  “We’ve not yet consummated our union.” He bit out the words as though they offended him. “You … have a choice.”

  Was he referring to annulment? “You want me to leave you?” she gasped.

  “Tell me, wife, is all this worth a life bound to me? The filth, the adversaries, the notoriety. I’m the reason toda—”

  “It is worth it,” she rushed. “I—I know it hasn’t been long, but I’ve felt more alive in the last nine days I’ve known you than I have in the past nine years. This life is what I love, what I’ve always wanted, don’t you understand that? Dig sites and dirt and the dead. I crave travel, knowledge, and adventure, like you. I think we can both find that together, can’t we? Granted, fewer attempts on our lives would be preferable. But that’s all my…” She pressed her lips together just in time.

  My fault.

  Stunned, she blinked up at him. He still didn’t know. He didn’t know that every time he’d saved her from a threat, it was one her own past had wrought upon them both. Today, her friends and her husband might have been crushed in the tunnels.

  Unless one of them had perpetrated the incident.

  My fault.

  The familiar verdict ripped through her with the strength of a tidal wave.

  What could she confess? What should she withhold? He could have been killed. He deserved to know … something.

  If not everything.

  But it wasn’t only her secret to tell. Jean-Yves was on his own native soil for the first time in years. They could arrest him right away should his part in de Marchand’s death be revealed. Francesca and Cecelia were who-knew-where, and she didn’t know how to get word to them should things go awry.

  If she told now … Redmayne could protect her. He might know what to do.

  If she told him now … he could react like any number of men would. He’d take control from her. He’d stampede over a situation she’d balanced so carefully and tear it wide open, dooming her friends and damning himself in the process.

  And the worst scenario of all …

  If she told him now … he could condemn her. Turn her in to the authorities and be done with her. Pick another wife, a virgin one, and get as many heirs as he needed upon someone else.

  Alexandra searched his face, watching a storm build in his eyes as similar clouds gathered in the north sky.

  Surely he wouldn’t. Not after the vows he’d made, after the intimacies they’d shared.

  She couldn’t deny the bond threading through the space between them. She wanted to trust that he wouldn’t turn on her.

  They were going into Le Havre tomorrow to get her money. Hopefully she could negotiate new terms with her tormentor. She could find out what her blackmailer ultimately wanted from her.

  If it came down to it, she’d sacrifice herself for them. For him.

  They always spoke of trust, didn’t they? Perhaps she could show him a little.

  Seized by an agony of indecision, she chewed on the inside of her lip. “I—I wanted to speak with you about the dig…”

  “I’m not simply referring to the dig, Alexandra,” he growled, throwing his arms wide to present her with his magnificent form. “I’m asking you. Demanding of you, an honest answer!”

  “I’m trying to tell you—”

  “Would you have me like this?” He gestured to his features. “With nothing? Would you be my wife, even if you were not a duchess? Would you still dig for me with your bare hands if you didn’t need my heir in order to spend my fortune? Can you remain with me even if it means those who want what’s mine might try to take it by any means? Because if you’re hurt, I don’t think I can—”

  “Yes, dammit,” she hissed, realizing they were both having a different conversation, but his needed to be addressed so he could calm himself enough to hear her. If he wanted some truths, these she could give. “You’re big and arrogant, wicked and bad-tempered, and I … I can’t help but want to spend every single moment by your side. So, stop being so bloody overbearing and listen to me for just one—”

  Redmayne seized her, compelling her silence with his descending lips. His kiss was an erotic demand and possessive embrace as he propelled them both toward the cliff wall without breaking their intimate contact. He devoured her, ravished her mouth, drawing her lips open with his thumb and thrusting his tongue inside.

  His big body drove her against the cliff, his arms plunging beneath her arms to cup the back of her head and shoulders, protecting her from the earth.

  He was like a human incinerator, immolating her with his carnal heat.

  Alexandra felt light-headed, not only disoriented by the swiftness of his kiss, but by the change in him. This was no patient, roguish seduction. This man grinding her against his very powerful, very naked body heeded no rules and brokered no patience.


  He’d become a creature of raw, animalian need.

  It wasn’t until he leaned his hips against her that Alexandra realized his towel no longer remained around his hips. He rotated his pelvis in slow, erotic circles, the ridge of his erection much larger now than when he’d emerged from the sea.

  Terrifyingly so.

  He broke their kiss to drag his lips down her jaw. “My God, wife,” he moaned. “I can’t take another moment of this. Of wanting.” His hands tangled in her hair as he abraded her sensitive skin with his beard before soothing it with his lips. “The idea that I could have died without making love to you is untenable. Impossible.”

  Oversensitized and overwhelmed, Alexandra placed her hands on his biceps, hoping to anchor herself into this moment. Trying to keep time from falling away beneath her, merging this moment and another.

  The past didn’t belong here. Not in his embrace.

  She did everything she could to rein in her galloping heart. To gulp air into her lungs. He was her husband. He was kind and considerate and … she had nothing to fear.

  She did not … fear … him.

  “We can wait,” she whispered against his ear, smoothing a hand down the iron cords of his back. “Three more days. I don’t want you to regret—”

  “I don’t fucking care about that anymore, I just need to be inside you. Now.” The hand in her hair curled into a fist, tugging her chin higher, exposing her throat to him so he could stroke and lave at the delicate skin there, nipping at it with his teeth.

  His other arm lifted her against him, parting her legs so he could settle his hips between them.

  Pinning her.

  Pinning her down.

  Pulling up her skirts.

  Cold shards of sharp ice extinguished what heat had built in her womb, dousing it with a terror so pure and absolute, it seized every part of her until even her skin felt scoured raw by it.

  She couldn’t speak.

  Couldn’t scream.

  Couldn’t breathe.

  Feebly, she tugged at his arms to no avail. Panic stole the strength from her limbs just as brutally as it had seized her throat.

  Her fingers curled into talons, nails biting into the flesh of his arms. He hissed, but the pain only served to inflame him further, causing him to press more insistently against her.