How to Love a Duke in Ten Days Read online

  “I killed him.” They both stopped to stare at her. Julia’s expression was rapt with triumph and Redmayne …

  Alexandra swallowed, drawing the courage to look at him from wells she hadn’t known she possessed. She couldn’t identify his reaction, not exactly. Horror, maybe. Anger, surely.

  Condemnation?

  “I—I murdered de Marchand when he—as he—” She couldn’t say it, she couldn’t admit that her seventeen-year-old self hadn’t been able to stand the idea of him finishing inside of her. “He—he’d a razor on his desk and … I took it. I turned. And I slit his throat.”

  Neither of them moved as Julia crowed from behind her. “Tell him! Tell him all of it. How you gathered your clique of snobbish wretches, and the bastard gardener, and you all buried him in the garden like so much fertilizer.”

  Her husband stood abnormally erect, his fists clenched at his sides. “That’s your secret. She’s why you requested the money today.”

  His voice was so remote, so utterly devoid of emotion, she couldn’t delineate a statement or a question, but she nodded anyway.

  “That’s the whole of it.”

  “She’s a murderer!” Julia screeched. “She took the man I loved from me, and I will pay her in kind!”

  The very idea bled what life she’d left out of her.

  Redmayne lifted his eyes to Julia, speared her with the full effect of his cold, monstrous regard. “I wish she’d not have killed him, Lady Julia, only because I’ve been denied the chance to butcher him, myself.”

  “What?” Julia gasped.

  “What?” Alexandra echoed.

  “Consider yourself, and your lover, fortunate that he died so quickly.”

  Alexandra found herself locked in his arms with such fierce tenderness, she collapsed against him, grateful sobs welling in her throat.

  “My God. My wife…” He clutched her tighter, shaking with a barely leashed rage. “To think what you’ve suffered. I can’t—”

  “The world will know.” Julia’s voice climbed to a manic, hysterical pitch. “I can prove it! You’ll both be ruined.”

  “What evidence do you have?” Redmayne demanded.

  Julia addressed Alexandra. “The three of you Red Rogues considered yourselves so perfect. So much more brilliant than everyone else.” She laughed as though no one had stated a more ridiculous notion in her life.

  “I had naught but the razor and my word, at first,” she admitted victoriously. “Which would have been little in the way of proof … until you started wiring me money. Now I have a paper trail. Letters from you as a girl, begging me not to tell. It’s all as damning as a confession.” She turned on Redmayne. “One that will be sent to the authorities by my solicitor should anything happen to me, condemning both you and your ridiculous Rogues.”

  “You forget, Lady Julia, that my brother owns the authorities.” His voice was laced with a similar black victory. “I’m the bloody Duke of Redmayne, my line and my name is older and more unbroken than that of the queen. Against mine, your word will hold as much weight as a whisper in a whirlwind. And if you breathe a word against my wife, you’ll never see the outside of an asylum. Now get. The fuck. Out of my sight.”

  Suddenly—blessedly—speechless, Julia pushed away from the dais, skirting the edge of the room. “I’ll find a way…” she said tightly.

  “Not if you know what’s good for you,” her husband warned. “Or I’ll have you arrested for the attempts on my life. You’ll hang if that’s what it takes.”

  Alexandra lifted her head from where she’d buried it in her husband’s chest, a question burning through her.

  “How did you do it, Julia?” she asked, stopping the woman from slinking away. “How did you orchestrate all the mayhem? Did you really want to hurt me so much that you’d threaten innocent lives?”

  The glint of a shotgun barrel preceded another set of wide shoulders into the chamber. Julia stumbled backward on her bejeweled, heeled slippers, staggering toward Alexandra.

  “Do you think this simple cunt could pull off such clever machinations as that?” Thomas Forsythe raked Julia with a withering, dismissive glance that reduced her to tears. “She couldn’t even manage a passable fuck.”

  Alexandra lifted her pistol, feeling her husband turn from warm muscle to cold steel at her back as his arms tightened around her.

  “Thomas!” She gaped at the man she’d considered her friend. He’d deserted all sense of affability, adopting a stark and hard mask.

  “Put that ridiculous weapon away, Dr. Lane.” He sighed with a note of feigned boredom. “And kick it over here.”

  “I will not!”

  “Do it,” Redmayne asserted from behind her.

  Stunned at his capitulation, Alexandra gaped. “But—but.”

  “Your husband is wise.” Forsythe stepped deeper into the crypt, circling for three paces until he was in between the door and the dais. “He recognizes an L. H. Parker field grade shotgun. This ingenious piece of handmade machinery is able to drop an elk at fifty paces, and has been rumored to stop a charging bear. If I were to pull the trigger now, not one of you would escape being wounded.” He adjusted the weapon on his shoulder.

  “But you, dear Doctor, would be blown to shreds.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  If Piers ever had a nightmare scenario, this was it. His wife between him and his enemy, a delicate shield. His own pistol tucked in his jacket.

  If he were to reach for it now, Forsythe would fire. The blackguard wanted to. The desire for blood was written all over him.

  Unused to feeling helpless, Piers glared at him over his wife’s head, silently promising a slow and painful death. Vowing retribution. This man had awoken this morning, unaware that it was his last.

  But before he could kill the fucking blighter, Piers needed to get Alexandra out of range.

  Because even if the bastard doctor put a hole the size of Blighty in Piers’s middle, he’d take Forsythe to hell with him before he gave up the ghost.

  “Piers?” Alexandra whimpered, her pistol still trained forward.

  “Drop it, Doctor.” Forsythe took a threatening step forward, stopping five paces away. “Or I drop you. You know I don’t want to do that, Alexandra. But I think you know that I will.”

  Leaning down, Redmayne whispered into Alexandra’s ear, as Julia’s shrill voice fractured against the dome of the crypt, shouting, “How could you say such awful things after what I did for you last night? You weren’t moaning words like ‘passable’ as I was swallowing your disgusting—”

  “Shut up for once in your life, you ignorant slut!” Forsythe inched the barrel of his weapon in her direction, only an arm’s reach to Alexandra’s left.

  Alexandra bent her knees, lowering to the ground as she placed her small pistol in the dirt. “You don’t want to shoot that in here,” she warned. “We’re not certain it wouldn’t cause another cave-in. We’d all be crushed into the dust.”

  “Push it toward me,” Forsythe ordered, ignoring her.

  Alexandra did, and in her panic, she fell. Scrambling backward on the ground, she didn’t stop retreating until she ran into Piers’s legs.

  Julia made a desperate, humiliated sound. “How dare you insult me like this! Was it her you wanted all along? Tell me, you craven bastard! Did you use me to get to her?”

  Piers bent down, helping his wife to her feet, accepting the hilt of what she’d surreptitiously pulled from his boot.

  “There’s no need for jealousy.” Forsythe sneered at Julia. “My tastes never tended toward boring little bluestockings always prattling on. Correcting me, condescending to me.” Forsythe’s lip curled into a sneer of disdain. “What man wants to fuck a woman who thinks she’s smarter than he is? Though, now that I know you have blood on your hands … I have to admit you’re much more interesting.”

  “What do you want, Forsythe?” Piers demanded, his hands itching to close around the man’s throat. To watch the life drain from hi
s eyes as he strangled an apology from the smarmy bastard for disrespecting his wife.

  “My passion for history pays little, I’m afraid,” Forsythe admitted blithely, eyeing Alexandra’s purse. “And so one does what one must…”

  “Here,” she said, tossing it at his feet. “Take it and begone.”

  He didn’t even glance down. “I’ve been promised so much more than that…” He lifted the shotgun higher, drawing a bead and closing one eye. “To kill the Duke of Redmayne and make it look like an accident.”

  Piers didn’t have to ask by whom. He already knew.

  The only people who would profit from his death. Patrick and Rose Atherton.

  “A gunshot wound is impossible to pose as an accident,” Piers said drolly.

  “These catacombs are secure enough to withstand the noise, you saw to that yourself, didn’t you?” Forsythe reminded him. “It took more finesse with the gunpowder than I expected to even create the first disaster. I can do it again. Except now, by the time they dig you out, I’ll be long gone.”

  It was never going to get that far. “What would it take to let the women go?” Piers demanded.

  Then it would just be him and Forsythe.

  Then he could go to work. Because as devastating and severe as the gun in Forsythe’s hands was, Piers could be spectacularly more lethal.

  This crypt was close quarters, and a rifle of any kind had very distinct disadvantages in such a place.

  But he couldn’t act, couldn’t think, couldn’t relax enough to perform the dangerous maneuvers he needed to, if his wife was in the least bit at risk.

  “I’m sorry.” Forsythe’s finger grazed the trigger. “But the duchess is now a part of the job I was hired to do.”

  Patrick Atherton glided into the room dressed in a finely woven gray suit, a six-barreled pistol pointed at them both. “A job you’ve failed at, enormously.”

  He turned to Piers, the spite glittering in eyes a pale reflection of his own. “How does the cliché go, cousin? If you want something done right…”

  Patrick had always been a little bit less. Less tall. Less handsome, young, or vigorous. Less powerful both in title and in stature.

  Which is why he’d hired a mercenary. The nancy fucker had never liked to get his hands dirty.

  “You two followed me here,” Piers deduced. Patrick had been the void in the night. The prickle at his back. But Piers had been too intent upon his wife to pay the instinct the heed he should have.

  She was his weakness, and now his cousin knew it.

  “When I received word the cave-in had failed, I caught the next ferry to Normandy,” Patrick explained with a droll sigh. “Since you seem to have more lives than a cat, I figured it might take more than one of us to finish the job.”

  Piers jeered at his cousin, hatred boiling to the surface. “Christ. Is Rose out there, also? She might as well join us.”

  Patrick’s gaze sharpened. He’d hit a nerve. “Of course not. Rose wouldn’t let me kill you, not when she’s still madly in love with you. She hasn’t touched me since you’ve returned from the dead.”

  “It’s because you’re weak,” Piers snarled. “You haven’t the bollocks to kill me yourself. You had to hire this incompetent to do it.”

  “I’ll show you incompetent!” Forsythe bellowed, his trigger finger twitching.

  Piers had known Patrick his entire life, had counted on the fact that his jibe would rankle his cousin, who pushed the barrel of Forsythe’s gun to the side. “Lose your composure, and you’ll lose your payment, Forsythe.”

  The doctor’s mouth tilted into a mulish frown, but he pressed his lips closed.

  Patrick’s pistol glinted in the lantern light, less dangerous than the shotgun, but still lethal. “You’re right, of course, this should have always come down to you and me. It’s rather poetic, is it not? That I prove myself worthy of the savage Redmayne title here in our ancestor’s tomb?”

  “You’ll never be worthy of the Redmayne title,” Piers taunted. “You’re too pathetic.”

  “Not so pathetic as your father.”

  Redmayne stilled, his lips pulling back from his teeth in a silent snarl of warning.

  “He granted me access to this project years ago, you know, back when you were a boy and I a young man. It’s been a great venture for the glory of the family. One I resurrected when I thought I was to become duke. When you were supposed to die in that jungle.”

  Patrick inspected the tomb. “Your poor father, always seeking solace in his idiotic schemes, forever leaving them unfinished. This was one of the few I encouraged. I stood beside him while you and Ramsay were off getting your education, while your mother fucked her way across Europe. I helped him manage both his funds and his grief. Helped him tie the knot in the rope from which he hung himself.”

  Lanced with a lightning bolt of rage, it was everything Piers could do not to vault over his wife and tear the man apart.

  “Send the women away and we’ll have it out right here,” he demanded. “Man to man. One of us will be laid to rest in the Redmayne crypt for good.”

  “Piers!” Alexandra protested.

  “I’m not an idiot,” Patrick remonstrated. “I know I’d not best you in hand-to-hand combat. It’s one of the reasons I know I’d be a better aristocrat. A duke shouldn’t have to go into battle. Other men do it for him.” Patrick shook his head slowly, true sorrow tightening the Redmayne features he didn’t deserve to display.

  “There’s no saving the duchess this time, I’m afraid. There’s a chance she carries your progeny.” He leveled his pistol right at Alexandra’s stomach. “And that just won’t do.”

  Piers had never known true fear, not before that moment. Time became a construct, slow and disjointed.

  He switched the knife Alexandra had taken from his boot to his left hand, reaching across his body to shove her toward the dais. The moment his wife was out of the way, he drew the pistol from beneath his jacket, levered his arm up, and squeezed the trigger three consecutive times.

  Patrick’s shot went wide, and he never had the chance to attempt another, as two of Piers’s bullets found their mark in his heart. He crumpled to the ground, landing on his face with a sickening crunch.

  Alexandra would have tripped over Julia, had the woman not dived for the pistol on the ground, snatching it and taking aim at Forsythe.

  Forsythe, who’d leveled his shotgun at Alexandra, noticed Julia’s intentions in time, and a great, concussive boom deafened them all as he pulled the trigger.

  Diamonds glittered as they disseminated in a truly awe-inspiring radius, along with gore that didn’t bear consideration. By the time they fell to the floor, Alexandra had taken cover behind the three-foot-tall mound of earth and stone, her head down, hands covering her ears.

  Piers pivoted, squeezing the trigger thrice more, narrowly missing Forsythe as he dove behind the opposite side of the burial platform.

  Forsythe immediately began to reload, stalking Alexandra around the other side of the dais. She saw him in time, and dove away from the cover of the dais, scrambling for the pistol still clutched in Patrick’s hand.

  Apparently adept at counting bullets, Forsythe stood, pumping the now-loaded shotgun, sliding the shell into place.

  Piers abandoned his empty pistol as he took a running leap and vaulted over the earth to land between the gun and his wife.

  No one heard Forsythe’s last words as Piers gripped the barrel, wrenched it out of his hands, and shoved his dagger through the man’s throat, gorging on the primal elation of dispatching the villain up close.

  Of watching the life drain out of his eyes.

  When he turned around, Alexandra had retrieved his pistol, and stood in the middle of the crypt slowly turning in a bewildered circle. Her unfocused eyes shifted restlessly as she pointed the gun at Patrick’s facedown corpse, then to what little was left of Julia, before landing on Forsythe, whose blood still gurgled from his neck.

  Piers dropped
him like the sack of refuse he was, a grateful euphoria weakening his knees at the sight of her. God, but she was precious. She was alive.

  She was his.

  And she loved him.

  He put his hand up, reaching for her. “You’re safe,” he said, rounding the dais and approaching her cautiously.

  She gripped the gun, staring at him as though his presence startled her. As though she’d only just awoken from a nightmare to find herself surrounded by this chaos.

  “Piers?” she mouthed, then winced, putting a hand to her ear.

  He went to her, the ringing in his own ears only abating slightly as he slid his hand down her arm and relieved her of the pistol before abandoning it to the platform. “Can you hear me?” he asked gently. “Are you hurt?”

  “I can hear you … barely.” Her body trembled like she’d spent the night in a snowdrift, and her pallor began to worry him. “What a mess,” she exclaimed, her voice breaking as she truly took in the aftermath of the horror.

  “Don’t look,” he admonished her, reaching out once again.

  She flinched away, staggering a little.

  “What a disaster,” she murmured, a crimp appearing between her brows. “A tragedy. I’m sorry they wanted to hurt you, Piers. I’m sorry. I should … I should help clean it up. I am used to the dead. But I think I might be sick if I tried. My stomach couldn’t take it … it’s so unsteady. It hurts so much.”

  Piers paused, disconcerted by her nonsensical torrent of words.

  Tears streaked down her face when she looked back up at him, and he could stand it no longer. “I’m going to hold you, Alexandra.” he warned. “Probably tighter than is comfortable. And you are going to let me.”

  “It’s all right,” she said in a voice belonging to a girl much younger. “I don’t need…”

  “I do! Dammit,” he all but roared. “Now be still.”

  He dragged her against him, cloak and all, not realizing until she was safe in his arms that he trembled just as mightily as she did.

  She leaned into him, slightly at first, and then heavier, burrowing her arms into his jacket.