Piers had never been violent with a woman. Had never before been so utterly tempted. The inferno in his blood, ignited by the innocent ardor of his lovely intended, flared to a volcanic temper at the appearance of his former betrothed.
How dare she? How dare she invoke the pall of suspicion into Alexandra’s eyes. How dare she make use of the passages he’d made available to her when their relationship had been definite and their passion had been new.
Containing the rage seething beneath his skin, Piers slid Alexandra’s bodice back in place and pulled her in against him to reach around and adjust the laces he’d loosened.
Alexandra’s breaths lifted her shoulders against his chest in small, rapid bursts, as she fought a valiant battle to retain her poise. He’d thought he hated Rose before, but now the bitter emotion that welled within him was amplified a thousandfold.
Damn her scheming hide.
“I need you to go,” he managed through clenched teeth.
A grim determination compressed Alexandra’s soft mouth into a hard line as she seemed to gather courage from him. “Yes, it’s best you leave,” she addressed Rose stiffly.
Piers was proud of her, shy little bird that she was, but she’d mistaken his meaning.
He cupped her face in both his palms, her skin hot with mortification. “No, darling, I need you to go.”
Her neck tensed, and her amber gaze sharpened. “Me?”
“Yes.” He kissed lips now stiff with distress before he could bring himself to look at Rose, who glared at them with raptorlike interest. “I don’t want you to have to see this.”
Her chin moved against his hand in a short nod, and when he looked at her, the uncertainty in her eyes nearly broke his heart. Christ, but she was beautiful, her peach lips glowing red from his kisses, the skin around her mouth lightly abraded by his beard.
Her lashes swept down, and she worried her lip, as appeared to be her habit when she had a question she didn’t want to ask.
“I’ll come find you, once my business here is finished,” he promised, pressing his lips against her forehead.
Mutely, she nodded, trailing her skirt of moonbeams as she glided out of his chamber with her spine held perfectly erect.
“Alexandra Lane?” the viscountess scoffed, relieving herself of her black gloves by pulling at her fingers one by one. “Really, Piers, how utterly you’ve shocked us all. If you’re marrying to make me jealous, you might have picked someone younger. Or at least wealthier.”
Piers’s fury struck him momentarily speechless. Were she a man, he’d have thrashed her soundly and thrown her out. “You will keep her name off your venomous tongue. Do I make myself clear?”
He took distinct relish when she hesitated, a spark of fear igniting at the bite in his words. She masked it instantly, wandering into his chamber.
Revulsion slithered through him. How had he ever thought her beautiful? The most desirable woman the ton had to offer? Her dark, exotic almond eyes had held him in their thrall. She’d enticed him with long, insolent gazes and silent, sensual promises.
She’d a fine-tipped elfin prettiness, coy and mysterious, all bashful lashes and sharp features.
Now, all he could find were her flaws. Her imperfect teeth. The beauty mark below her eye that would become an unsightly mole with age.
Her faithless soul.
She had the temerity to perch on the edge of one of the chairs across from the fireplace, her every motion posed and calculated.
She wanted to remind him that he’d fucked her on that chair.
He wished to God he hadn’t.
She’d always loved to goad him. To push him beyond his limits of patience and control. To find his dark places and banked fires and fuel them with her subtle manipulations. Oh, he remembered how she liked him feral. Like an animal. She wanted bruises and marks, and fast, hard fucking.
She wanted him angry.
The purple skin stretched tight over his bruised knuckles as he reined in his temper and addressed her with a chilly calm belying the inferno raging within him. “I’d be tempted to brick over that passage,” he said casually. “But since you’ll not receive further invitations to Castle Redmayne, such action won’t be deemed necessary.”
“I’ve come to make peace, Piers,” she said as though he’d not spoken.
He silenced her with a sharp gesture. “You will address me as Your Grace, or not at all.”
The jut of her chin was the only indication his imperious command had affected her.
What a perfect little actress she still was.
“Surely what the peasants and patricians in this part of the world have taken to whispering about you isn’t true.” She smoothed her hands down her skirts, molding them to her thin legs as she flicked a glance at the door Alexandra had vacated. “That you’ve developed a taste for virgins?”
“I’ve a taste for the woman I’d make my duchess.”
Another hit. She’d been unable to conceal her wince.
“It’s almost cruel to thrust that mantle upon her. That woman is a mouse. She may be the daughter of an earl, but it was plain tonight that she’d neither the wish nor the proficiency to fill such a responsibility.”
“And that is one of the many things my intended and I have in common.” Somehow, discussing Alexandra with Rose already felt like a betrayal.
Standing, Rose swayed toward him with careful, measured steps. Her pale shoulders thrust back, her breasts clad in barely there black proudly displayed. “I know you’re angry with me, but I’ve never had the chance to defend myself. Don’t you think I’m owed that? Don’t you wonder why I did what I did?”
“You married the heir to my title little more than a month after you received my letter informing you I would likely die,” he said drolly. “Your reasons would be obvious to a blind man.”
“That isn’t fair.” She pouted. “Patrick and I both loved you—love you—it was our grief that drove us into each other’s arms.”
He speared her with his most imperious glare. “A shame it didn’t keep you there.”
“You’ve always been beastly.” She lifted her hand to shape it to his scarred jaw, but he jerked his neck away, capturing her wrist. “And now you look like one.” Her tone became acerbic. “You’re many things, Your Grace, but you’re not stupid. Everyone knows the Lane family is destitute. She’s marrying your fortune. How does that make her any different than what you accuse me of being?”
He flung her hand away, hating the truth. Detesting that she knew it.
Rose’s eyes narrowed, her fingers turned to claws. “Has she convinced you that she wants you? That timid wench? Do you really think she can look past what you’ve become and desire who you are? You didn’t see her face, as you kissed her shoulders. You didn’t mark the revulsion. The fear. She doesn’t want you, she’ll suffer beneath you so she can spend your money.”
In desperation, she threw her arms about him, pressing her body against his as she breathed a husky whisper into his ear. “I’ve never stopped loving you. Desiring you. Your scars make me want you more. They show what you’ve always been to me. A magnificent beast. You’re the Terror of Torcliff, you deserve a lover who can slake every monstrous desire.”
She was all prickly jewels and tight, corseted posture, and as she crushed her curves to his body, the last of the heat Alexandra had ignited was doused by ice.
His hands had long forgotten the shape of her.
And now longed for the shape of another.
Was there any truth to what Rose claimed? Was Alexandra’s reticence less timidity and more revulsion? Were her ridiculous conditions so she could stand to be touched by him?
“You’re here to seduce me, Rose?” He said her name like it was a curse. “Is it my monstrous body you want?”
Her eyes watered. “I’m here because I saw you tonight and I died from wanting. I’m here because all I ever wanted was to stand on the tiered balustrade with you. My place was beside you. Is beside you. That is what you promised me, don’t you remember?”
His lip curled into a sneer, his face tightening into something he was certain was as ugly as the feelings she evoked. “I promised you my heart, you fell in love with the rest.”
“Your promise was empty!” she cried. “Your mother made certain your heart was as cold as hers. You chased me like one of your animals. And once ensnared, I became another pretty thing to mount on your wall. You pledged your love to me but fled your duty again and again. For two years, I waited for you to return from every corner of the earth, happy with your trinkets and your passion. But don’t ever think for one second I caught a glimpse of your heart, because you never let me see it. I’m not convinced you have one.”
Piers thrust her away. “Had you loved me, you’d have mourned me. Had you mourned me, I’d have returned to you. I’d have been your beast. Your animal. I thank that jaguar every night for the monster he made me, because it revealed what a monster you are.”
“You can’t mean that.” She stumbled back, her hands out in supplication. “We’re family now, Piers, at least let us—”
“Get. Out.” She’d drained what little he’d left of his self-possession.
Reluctantly, she turned to leave, her ebony train dragging like an inky trail behind her. She paused at the bookcase, looked back at him. “You’ll tire of her,” she predicted. “And when you do, I’ll welcome back the beast.”
The bookcase slid shut behind her, and Piers wrenched at the lever, rendering it useless.
He never intended to have a clandestine lover.
He was not his mother. He was not like Rose.
Once he’d married, he’d never stray.
Alexandra Lane would be his one and only lover.
He was her beast now.
May God have mercy on her soul.
It had taken no little doing to calm Francesca and Cecelia down. They’d returned from the ball to find Alexandra missing and had worked themselves into a frenzy of worry by the time she’d slipped through the door.
She should have thought to leave them a note, but in her hurry, she’d taken her pad with her and quite forgot.
Three fingers of whisky had eased Alexandra’s shaking hands and released the coil of tension from her chest enough to recount the evening’s events. As she did so, her friends’ eyes widened in identical, almost comical increments until they resembled two redheaded owls staring at her in disbelief.
“You’re so brave.” Cecelia sighed rather dreamily. She had divested herself of her gown and corset the moment Alexandra had been confirmed safe and stood in the middle of her discarded attire donning her nightgown. “I would have been terrified of him.”
Alexandra frowned at the defensive knot in her stomach. “Why would you have been?”
“He’s just so big, isn’t he? And ever so fearsome.” She paused, her brows knitted with concern. “What was kissing him like? Was he … gentle with you? Considerate?”
Alexandra had trouble conjuring the word for what she and Redmayne had shared. “He was … pleasant.” She realized the inadequacy of the word the moment she’d said it.
Kissing Redmayne had been pleasant, surely, but it was too tame a word. What could she use, instead?
Agreeable? Enjoyable?
Pleasurable.
That was it. Kissing Redmayne had been a pleasure. She could have kissed him all night. She could have kissed him forever.
“He put me well at ease,” Alexandra explained. “I don’t believe we should have stopped if Rose hadn’t interrupted us.”
“Rose Brightwell has always been a horrid bitch,” Francesca swore as she yanked ruby pins from her coiffure. “Remember when I roomed with her at de Chardonne in the early days? She made everyone so miserable. What Redmayne saw in her I couldn’t begin to imagine.”
“She’s Rose Atherton now.” Alexandra draped herself on the chaise, too exhausted by the entire ordeal to even disrobe. “And she’s really quite beautiful.” If one liked perfect, exotic women with elegant features and a figure straight from a lady’s catalogue.
A sick suspicion curled within her. As she and Redmayne had kissed, as their intimacy progressed, he’d pulled her against him, and she’d felt his … his lust. His sex. Turgid and hard against her belly.
He’d been about to peel away her dress. She’d been about to explore his topography. Minutes later they might have been on the bed.
And then Rose had driven her away. No, Redmayne had sent her away.
What were they doing now? Alexandra wondered. Were they fighting? Was Rose apologizing? Or …
“Do you think lust is transferable?” As she was wont to do, Alexandra gave the thought voice before it had fully formed.
Cecelia froze in the middle of cinching her robe. “You’re not wondering if Redmayne and Rose are—”
“That’s exactly what I’m wondering.” Alexandra sighed miserably. “We’d … progressed in our intimacies enough for him to … respond physically. Now that he has another beautiful woman in his room, do you think that they might be…?” She covered her eyes with her fingers, wishing she could blind her imagination as well.
“I don’t think that’s how it works, dear.” The cushion next to her depressed as Cecelia joined her on the couch, placing a hand on her arm to pull her hands away from her eyes. “Besides, Redmayne has made it obvious he’s furious with his cousin and Rose. I daresay he detests them.”
“Certainly, but isn’t there a fine line between love and hate?” Alexandra gave voice to the devil’s advocate whispering in her ear.
Francesca leaned forward intently. “The real question is, why does it matter so much to you?”
Alexandra hesitated, pressing her fingertips to lips still tingling with sensation from his vital, gentle kisses. Why did it matter? She wasn’t jealous, was she? Of a woman she loathed and a man she didn’t love? Lord, she’d only known him two days. Only encountered him a handful of times.
And now they were to be married. He would be her husband.
Given her circumstances, her past, any woman might welcome a mistress into their situation to avoid a distasteful act.
And yet …
“I wouldn’t surrender a shawl I was passing fond of to Rose,” she muttered bitterly. “Let alone a husband.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Francesca agreed.
Cecelia lifted her glass. “Hear. Hear.”
A sharp knock surprised Alexandra into gulping her whisky rather than sipping it. She set the glass down on the table, her eyes watering at the burn.
I’ll come find you.
“It’s for me.” She stood, making certain her friends were out of sight of the door before she went to it. She pressed her hand to her belly as though to contain the riot of moths within.
He’d come. And it had only been minutes.
But, as she was well aware, the act could only take minutes, and one needn’t disrobe.
Gathering her courage, she opened the door.
Redmayne’s eyes touched her everywhere, absorbing her features from the dimly lit alcove.
He’d donned his waistcoat and tamed his hair but left his necktie off. There was no way to tell whether or not he’d only just finished an interlude of a physical nature.
“You are not alone.” His voice pulsed with the familiar fury.
Perhaps she’d also identified its source. Rose.
“I’m not alone,” she confirmed.
“Might I speak to you?” He gestured to the empty bartizan alcove. It would afford them a modicum of privacy, at least.
“Of course.”
He didn’t step back to make room for her, and the moment the door closed behind her, Alexandra found herself enfolded against a solid wall of heated steel.
Once, she might have panicked. Or struggled. He didn’t warn her, and she’d not prepared herself for the physical contact.
But as he gathered her against him, one of his large hands pressing against her back and the other cupping her head, she found that her limbs didn’t seize with the familiar instinct to thrash or flee.
A strong, rhythmic thump against her cheek held her in thrall. His heart raced, pounded, and the sound of it hypnotized her, lulled her into a sense of contentment
He held her closer than he had before. With less deference and more desperation, as though he’d been half afraid he’d find her gone.
Breathing deeply, Alexandra searched for a foreign or female scent but found nothing but his distinctive, alluring essence.
She smiled at this. Rose had been drenched in a floral French perfume. Surely if they’d embraced—if they’d been intimate—he’d reek of her.
Indulging in a sigh of relief, Alexandra relaxed against him. She even slid her hands around his ribs to his back, attempting to encircle the great, big whole of him and found it almost impossible.
She burned to know what had happened, but she sensed he needed this. Needed her for another silent moment.
Silence she could give him. Silence she had in spades.
What a thing it was to be held. An odd and oddly ubiquitous, intrinsically human thing. A thing, she realized, she’d not experienced for ten years. And never by a man.
Until now. Until him.
She’d uncovered a grave in Pompeii where the bones of a man and a woman had been intertwined in just such an embrace. Alexandra had stared at them for incalculable hours, bereft at the idea of separating them. Wondering at what had driven them together like this, and if they’d clung to each other in life as they had in death.
And why.
This, she thought once more. This was why. A body, a heart, needed another nearby. An embrace fed an elemental physical need she’d never known she’d lacked until an abundance had been available.
And here was the physiological proof. His heart slowed against her ear, adopting a more reasonable rhythm. Incrementally, his muscles melted from steel to iron, his arms relaxing until his hands idly explored the length of her spine.
“Do you fear me, Alexandra Lane?” She heard the words as a resonant vibration in his chest.
His perceptivity was beginning to be problematic. “I do. I have,” she admitted carefully.
He hesitated, his chest hitching on a breath. “Does it frighten you to have to—look at me?”
“No,” she assured him. “No more than it frightens you to look in the mirror.”
“I don’t look in the mirror,” he rumbled.
Alexandra leaned back to see him, though his arms tightened at her waist as if he wasn’t ready to let her go.
“Why?” she asked gently. “Is it difficult to face who you are?”
He gazed down at her, his features stony and tense. The left side of his aspect turned slightly to her, as though daring her to face the parts of him she should fear. “I don’t always see the man I am, I see the man I could have become. He is difficult to look at.”
Despite herself, she reached up and shaped her palms to his jaw. “You’re going to think me silly, but when we met I fancied that ancient gods had done this to you out of jealousy for your mortal perfection.” She grazed shy fingers through his beard, tracing the angry marks.
He tensed. Twitched, but he didn’t move.
“I’m sorry for your pain,” she continued earnestly. “But these are a part of you now, and this encounter altered you for the better.” She lifted onto her tiptoes, and nudged his head down, pressing her lips to the fissure on his cheek. “Both inside and out,” she amended. “I think you’re quite handsome. And, beyond that, I think you are good.”
Something lit in his eyes that sparked an answering ache in her heart. Half disbelief, half yearning. “Then why fear me?” he puzzled. “Because of what happened at the ruins? Because I killed a man?”
Alexandra didn’t say a word as her lashes swept down to cover her expression. She was the last person who could condemn him for that.
“Was that the first … person you’ve ever killed?” she queried, wishing she could tell him that they shared this kinship. Wondering if his hands were stained with the blood of others.
The length of his breath answered her before his words ever did. “No. I’ve been attacked before. In Argentina we hunted too closely to an American company’s gold mine. We’d a brutal encounter, I couldn’t tell you the body count. And, there have been other times, but I can promise you I’ve never taken a life that hasn’t been in defense of my own. Or that of another.”
They were silent in the dark for a few breaths before he pressed, “Can you forgive me that?”
“There’s nothing to forgive.” She ventured a look at him. “I know there are reasons to kill.”
Redmayne pulled her back into him, relief and regret lowering the timbre of his voice to a soothing depth. “Even so, I’m sorry you witnessed the savagery of which I am capable. I want you to know I’ve never in my life used my strength against a woman.”
Alexandra relaxed into the dark, pleasant circle of his arms, groping for words. “What did—how did Rose—?”
“Marry me.”
Puzzled, she pulled back enough to look up at him. “I thought our engagement had already been established.”
The smile he gave her was full of infinite tenderness before he dropped his head to trail his lips against her temple. Her cheekbone. The corner of her mouth. His lips didn’t take hers, instead they indolently explored the soft, sensitive place where her neck met her jaw, his hands brushing her hair over her shoulders to give him better access.
“Tomorrow,” he whispered against her ear. “Not in a month’s time in some stuffy cathedral in London. Tomorrow in the old rectory.”
Alexandra’s heart assumed the frantic pace his had only just abandoned as she stepped away from his embrace. She needed to think, and she couldn’t while his mouth was doing … that to her ear.
“Why tomorrow?” she asked.
His eyes were two shards of ice in his swarthy face. “There is a ship that sails for Normandy tomorrow evening. We could spend our wedding night at sea and wake up away from these people. From this castle. From the men who attacked yesterday. Away from a bedroom where I—” He broke off, but Alexandra knew the end of that sentence.
Where he’d been with Rose.
“A French university has been unearthing ruins in Normandy for the last several months; my father used to fund them years ago, trying to verify Magnus Redmayne’s connection with William the Conqueror. Patrick revived the project when he thought he’d become a duke.”
He let out an intemperate breath at the mention of his cousin. “Even upon my return, I didn’t have the heart to shut the operation down, and I recently received word that the archeology students might have discovered where Magnus Redmayne’s father is thought to be interred. They’re calling in an expert to assist with the final excavation.”
As he caught a tendril of hair at her nape, his features tightened with a yearning for something she identified instantly.
Escape.
“I don’t share my father’s obsession with the past,” he continued. “But I would hazard that you do, Dr. Lane. Would you like to see the place for our honeymoon? Poke about the dig sites?”
His enthusiasm to abscond was infectious, and Alexandra found herself on the edge of convinced. She’d rather swim the length of the Channel than walk down the aisle at Westminster Abbey or wherever one would marry a duke of his standing. And it moved her that he’d select a honeymoon spot tailored to her interests.
“What about the licenses, the banns, and the priest? My family hasn’t even been notified.”
“Would they be terribly upset if you eloped?” He touched his nose to hers in an affectionate gesture.
She gave that a good deal of thought. “Not with a duke,” she concluded.
His smile was at once wry and bitter, an admittedly unsettling sight on features as satyrlike as his. “In that case, I happen to be a duke, and related to a very influential politician.” He released her. “Leave the details to me.”
Feeling more than a little dazed, Alexandra nodded. “Do you want to … resume what we were about before Rose—erm.”
He took her face in his hands once again and pressed a searing, searching kiss to her lips. “More than anything. But I want to have you as my wife. Away from here. Away from her.”
Alexandra found she vehemently agreed. “Tomorrow then,” she mumbled in disbelief.
“To think, I found a treasure like you on a train platform.” He kissed her swiftly and released her. “Be ready in the morning.”
She watched him go until he was nothing but a hulking shadow in the distance before turning back to her room and facing the two women pretending they hadn’t been eavesdropping.
“Tomorrow, then,” she echoed, unable to shake herself from a daze. “I’m getting married tomorrow.”