It occurred to Piers that he should stay at the dig site. That he should investigate. Especially since no one seemed to be that suspicious. Old caves collapsed all the time; the men shrugged. Perhaps the fortifications hadn’t been as sound as everyone had thought.
What utter. Fucking. Horseshit.
He’d seen to the fortifications, himself. Thousand-year-old cathedrals had less structural integrity.
No. Something had happened. He’d heard it, right before the ceiling had caved in, a different sound had warned him to jump away just in time. Some sort of hiss, and crackle, preceded a pop before the rocks had begun to fall.
Not an explosion, but he suspected gunpowder or a similar agent.
The structural engineer wouldn’t return from Le Havre until tomorrow, and it would be folly to attempt to return inside the catacombs without him.
Besides, it would take a miracle to peel him from Alexandra’s side.
Now that she might be in danger.
Now that the dynamic had shifted between them. Their bonds strengthened.
“Your wife, she loves you.” A medic named Giuseppe had clapped him on the back after washing, stitching, and bandaging his wound. Which hadn’t been as shallow as he’d thought, nor as deep as she’d feared.
Piers hadn’t wanted to argue with the man.
His wife didn’t love him. She couldn’t. Not only after a few short days.
But she cared. She cared more than he’d expected her to.
It had taken some doing to intimidate her into submitting to an examination in the next tent over. Her hands had been abraded, but what other injuries could she have sustained?
Trying to rescue him.
“What makes you think that?” he asked of Giuseppe.
“Do you not speak of love?” The elder man’s impertinence rankled him, and he cast him a warning glare. He didn’t dare speak, as his blood ran hot. His temper high. And a thousand foul words sprang to his tongue.
The medic wisely moved on. “It’s quite apparent she is utterly besotted with you.”
“Because she tried to save my life?”
The older man had eyed him as though he’d never met a man so dense. “If she didn’t love you, she would not have slapped you twice.”
Piers had looked away then, so the observant man wouldn’t see his heart glowing through his eyes.
The medic wasn’t privy to the extraordinary circumstances of their marriage. Nor the extent of their denied passion. Nor the unfeasibility of trust between them.
However, he’d been right about one thing.
She’d slapped him twice.
Because she cared.
The sting of her palm still lingered on his cheek. And every time he marked it, an absurd smile threatened to engulf his entire face.
He’d fought it the entire way back to the hotel, unwilling to allow her to see it. She’d be unable to interpret the expression, and he wasn’t ready or willing to discuss it.
In fact, they didn’t speak much in the carriage, but her hands, more scraped than wounded and thus not warranting bandages, remained firmly tucked within his own.
When he found the culprit, the bastard would pay in five times the blood for every single scratch on her perfect skin.
They sat hip to hip, her head resting on his shoulder. It was as though some polymer or adhesive had grown between them, resisting any separation.
He barely felt a twinge in his leg as he swept her down from the carriage and mounted the steps into the grand lobby.
“Your Grace.” The desk clerk called as they passed him, holding out a slim piece of paper. “You’ve a telegram.”
“Later,” he barked, mounting the first stair.
He was alive. She was alive. That fact, so often taken for granted, scorched a fire through his veins that he meant to quench with her body.
Ten days be damned.
What mattered other than that she cared? That he yearned?
He’d spend an indecent number of hours bathing her. Bathing with her. All her creamy, sweet skin slick with soap beneath his hands. He could only imagine her slipping her lithe body against, over, and around his. He’d wash every soft and feminine crevice, conducting a thorough examination with his hands, and then his mouth.
Would she do the same? Would she discover him as she scrubbed the grit from his body? His cock reacted with such violence to the thought, he suppressed a groan and quickened his pace.
He wanted—no—needed her hands on him. Small, elegant hands. So efficient and competent, used to intricate work and detailed exertion.
He needed her spread open on the bed beneath him. Wide and bare and without restraint.
Tonight, he was going to—
“But—the telegram, it’s from your, Sir Cassius Ramsay,” the desk clerk sheepishly persisted. “Marked urgent. Excessively urgent.”
Piers gritted his teeth so hard he feared one might have cracked. But he released his wife with a kiss to her grime-streaked forehead. “I’ve sent ahead for a bath to be drawn, and for Constance to undress you.” A privilege he’d burned to claim for himself.
After her outburst, all the fight had drained out of her. She replied with a docile nod.
Piers tried not to think of how young she looked. How much like prey she seemed now with her big gentle doe eyes and vulnerable chin that was wont to wobble.
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.