“Yes. But Anubis somehow looked like the statues of him … and acted like a dog.”
“How so?”
A twitch at the corner of her tight mouth compromised her frown. “She’d pounce on them, seizing the snakes behind their head and shaking the stuffing out of them. I know cats are predators. But I swear I’ve never seen the like.”
“She?” Piers echoed. “Where is this wondrous cat now? I should like to take a holiday to visit her.”
A fond half-smile softened her lips, though her voice contained a melancholy note when she said, “I left her with a little orphan girl named Akasha in Egypt.”
“What for? We’ve plenty of snakes in England she could happily slaughter.”
“I thought Anubis would get rather cold here.”
Piers gestured to the lazy summer grasses and the warmth of the afternoon tempered by sea breezes. “Plenty of felines seem to do well despite our climate.”
“Well, certainly, but they’re English cats, aren’t they? Anubis didn’t have any fur.”
Piers gave a melodramatic gasp. “A naked cat? I’ve never heard of such a thing.” He had, of course, but he’d begun to pull her away from the cavern of fear she’d been edging on only a moment ago.
“They’re called sphinx cats,” she said in the voice of a professor at a lectern. “They’re incredibly rare and are considered to be most holy.”
He clicked his tongue and chuffed. “You’re putting me on.”
“I’d never dream of it, Your Grace.” She finally brought herself to blink up at him, offering a shy, if shaky smile.
Somehow the sun shone brighter on the surface of the sea, and the wind caressed skin becoming more sensitive and heated by the moment.
Could one smile do such a thing?
“You misrepresented yourself at the train station.” Her tone was too mild for a reproach, and Piers wondered if she required conversation to divert herself from the fact that she was accompanied by a bloodstained duke and an assassin.
“Did I, Doctor Lane?” He injected uncharacteristic levity into his reply.
“But I am a doctor.”
“And also, it would seem, the daughter of an earl.”
She made an unrepentant gesture. “I didn’t want to dangle my nobility in front of a lowly stable hand, especially when he’d come to my rescue.”
“And I gather that Miss Cecelia Teague was your dashing escort Cecil?”
Something in the chagrin painted over her features informed him that she’d taken his point. “I was a woman traveling without a chaperone, who didn’t wish to give her information to a strange man. What’s your excuse for your uncourtly behavior?”
What he didn’t say was that he’d not wanted her to treat him like a duke. He’d enjoyed their banter. He’d been impressed by her uncommon—well—commonness.
He’d appreciated that she’d treated him, a scarred stablemaster, with more deference than she did now that she knew he was a man of power, wealth, and influence.
Piers said none of that, he merely lifted a shoulder. “At first, I thought you knew.”
“How could I possibly?”
“Everyone in the empire has heard of the Terror of Torcliff.”
“Yes … Yes, I heard them call you that.” She stiffened. “Why ever would they?”
“It’s a recent moniker, all told.” He gestured to the scar interrupting his lip. “According to local lore, I’ve been scratched by a werebeast—or a demon depending on whom you’re asking—and I’ve become the monstrous scarred duke who haunts the halls of the accursed Castle Redmayne, eating small children for lunch and virgins for dinner. I’m rather famous.”
He’d meant to be comical, but she stepped even farther away, her smile disappearing and taking the sunshine with it. “Perhaps you’re not as well-known as you think. I’d never heard of you before yesterday.”
“To be fair, it sounds as though you’ve spent a great deal of time out of the country and away from the ton.”
“True.” She acquiesced his point with a nod, and bent to pluck a tall blade of foxtail grass, worrying it with the fingers of one hand. “I’ve never been much for ton gossip.”
No, she wouldn’t be, would she? Piers gazed down at her for longer than was appropriate, able to do so because she’d become unduly absorbed with tying one-handed knots into the blade of grass.
As educated and well traveled as she was, she harbored an unspoiled air of innocent naïveté not often found in a woman of her age. Her eyes were the color of dark honey and shy as a fawn’s. Her shoulders curled forward slightly, not in an unladylike slouch, but enough to protect a tender heart.
The rest of her … well, her limbs were wound tight as a hare’s, ready to spring into the safety of the closest hedge should the need arise.
How had such a helpless lamb survived the perils of Cairo or Alexandria?
“Do you?”
It took him a moment to register that she addressed him, and not the blade of grass. “Do I what?”
“Do you eat virgins for dinner?”
He made a rude noise. “Good God, no, virgins are terrible fare at the supper table … Though mayhap I’ve indulged in a nibble of one or two for dessert. The villagers keep throwing them at me, and it does one good to treat oneself now and again.”
He directed his most winsome smile at her, ready to bask in her enjoyment of his levity.
She actually grimaced, turning her neck to stare uncomfortably out at the sea.
His grin died a slow and painful death. “It might surprise you to learn women once found me charming.”
At this, her head made another owlish swivel to meet his rueful gaze.
“That was, of course, before I became an unholy terror.” He motioned to his ruined features. “Perhaps I was just so devastatingly handsome they thought to humor me. Lord save us all now that I have to rely on my underdeveloped sense of humor and apparently nonexistent wit.”
“Oh!” She reached out to him, her face soft with guilt, dropping the knotted grass.
He readied himself for the pleasure of her touch, but her hand paused just before they made any contact.
“Oh no, Your Grace, no, please. Please don’t think my lack of … response has anything to do with … with your.” She gestured toward his beard. “I just … I’m not … erm…” Her words appeared to block her throat as she searched for a way to soothe his offense
“You’re not easily amused. I understand.” He overacted a magnanimous stature as he fought a smile. “Your high standards do you credit, my lady.”
He enjoyed the swift return of her color, as mortification replaced mortal fear. “That’s not it at all, Your Grace, I am quite easily amused … I promise…”
“More fool I, then, if it is so easily done, and I failed so utterly.”
She stepped closer, visibly vexed. “Please. It isn’t you at all. And I vow that your scars are not terrible, or terrifying. They’re rather dashing—charming. You’re charming, I meant to say—I—I’m just not…”
“You’re not yourself.” Something told him he’d gone too far, and her discomfiture was circling back to uneasiness and fear. “You’ve had a fright, Lady Alexandra. I only meant to tease you away from it.”