Alexandra clutched the railing. He must have known he was being terribly uncouth to speak of it. And yet, none of their interactions had resembled anything close to propriety.
Why start now?
A duchess stipend … A lurid amount of money.
A soft thud and a strange click from the direction of the duchess’s rooms drew both their notice, and Alexandra had to make a desperate move to keep him from investigating.
Panicking, she spouted the first thing that had come to mind. “What happened to your face?”
To her relief and chagrin, it worked. He turned back to level her with the kind of examination one tended to save for whatever was being crushed beneath a microscope.
“Oh, I’ve offended you, haven’t I?” Why was she forever doing that? Blurting out the most ridiculous things.
The duke reached up and slid his mask away, revealing his scars. “You mean you don’t believe I’m a werewolf?” he asked, his eyes glinting a dark azure challenge in the night. “Or a demon?”
She could believe both of those things.
God’s bones but there was something … inhuman about him. Something at once bestial and ethereal. Primal and preternatural. Elegant and enigmatic.
How could such a paradox of a man exist?
And why did he bedevil her so?
“I don’t believe in curses or demons,” she reiterated. “Are not men monstrous enough?”
For a moment he said nothing, and then, “A jaguar came upon our company in the night whilst on a hunt in Peru. It swiped at me, I shot at it. We wounded each other. Not a very exciting story.”
Alexandra took a drink, trying to imagine the pain of such a predator’s claws flaying open one’s face. He was lucky to have kept both eyes.
He was lucky to be alive.
“The wounds refused to heal,” he continued. “And then I came down with such a terrible fever, no one expected me to survive. I even sent a good-bye letter to my fiancée.”
“To Francesca?”
“No, no, I’d forgotten Francesca existed. For the first ten years after her family’s death, it was barely agreed upon that she’d survived that fire. And once her survival had been established, our fathers were both dead, and she was naught but a girl I’d never met on a faraway shore. No, until very recently, I’d fancied myself in love with another.” He drank deeply, finishing his whisky in two swallows. “I thought to spare both Francesca and myself from an unhappy match by declaring the silly contract void years ago. Your friend seemed eager enough to do the same.”
“What changed your mind?”
“I returned three months to the day after I’d written the farewell letter, to find my fiancée married to my cousin, the next in line to the Redmayne duchy.” He stared at the bottom of his glass, as though lamenting its emptiness.
“That’s … why you resurrected the contract with Francesca?” The pieces of the puzzle began to fit neatly together. Francesca’s summons truly had nothing to do with her past, and everything to do with his.
Redmayne nodded, guilt playing a thief with his gaze. “Your friend overcame the reputation of death as miraculously as I did. Noble marriages have been built on less. To be honest, any lady of lineage would do. I don’t want a particular woman. I want what only a woman—a wife—can provide me.”
“An heir,” Alexandra whispered.
“Two or three, if possible. Just to make certain that devious bitch never becomes a duchess.”
Alexandra frowned. “Seems like a rather spiteful reason to sire a child.”
“Spite is the only reason I have left.” He sent a heart-stopping glance toward his mother’s chamber door. Alexandra only breathed again when she verified that it remained closed and the shadows still. “My legacy has been built on spite and violence. Why not honor my savage Viking lineage, as well?”
The spark of an idea began to itch at Alexandra’s mind. One that both enticed and terrified her.
“Did you kill him?” she asked.
“No, if he wants such a faithless woman as Rose, he can have her.”
It took her a foggy moment to realize he’d mistaken her meaning. “I meant the jaguar, not your cousin. After you recovered, did you hunt him?”
A muscle bunched next to his jaw. “Oh, yes. It took me a deuced eternity to find him. But find him, I did.”
“Did you kill him?” she repeated, feeling as though a cataclysmic decision hung upon his answer.
“No.” He answered upon a long sigh. “I had him in my sights. Up in a tree. He was thin and mangy; due to his wound, he’d probably not been able to hunt for a while. But he’d blood on his mouth from a fresh kill and recent meal. We stared at each other for ages. Neither of us moving. My finger lingered over the trigger.” He caressed an imaginary gun as he stared out to the sea. Alexandra imagined he was not here in Devonshire at all, but back in that jungle in Peru. He blinked and the spell was broken.
“I found I’d lost all taste for the hunt. I no longer wanted to pit myself against predators. Not of the animal variety, anyhow.”
“You let him live,” she marveled.
“And he let me leave. I suspect we’d both had enough of the entire business.”
“That wasn’t spiteful, it was compassionate,” she said, her decision made. “And he was the one who condemned you to be the Terror of Torcliff.”
He turned to her, looming closer. Larger. “Don’t,” he whispered.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t try to make me a good man.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it, Your Grace.” When she should have retreated, she didn’t. Instead, she finished her whisky as well, enjoying the warm languor spreading from her middle to her blood.
“Good.” He became very still, watching as she licked the last of the honeyed liquor from her lips. The cool of the night suddenly disappeared, the air turned heavy with salt, and moisture, and … something more illicit. Possibly dangerous. “Have you ever really been kissed, Alexandra Lane?”
She blinked. And froze. However, the usual paralyzing terror that would have cinched around her bones at such a predicament … didn’t. Fear was more of a faint shimmer through veins made sluggish with whisky.
It was accompanied by another, more curious emotion. Not excitement, but something adjacent to it.
Why did he want to know? What did he hope her answer would be? Indeed, what should she say?
The truth, of course. A lie would not serve her here, and besides, she’d too many of those on her conscience to bother with a flippant fib in the dark.
“N-no.” She wished her voice were stronger. That she’d had a different, more worldly experience to share. But alas, she’d never allowed a man close enough to kiss her. As far as she was concerned, men had long ago ceased wanting to.
“I thought not,” he murmured, setting his glass next to hers on the banister.
Alexandra forced another swallow. “How—I mean—why thought you not?”
And why was she suddenly speaking nonsense?
A faint hint of arrogance brushed at his lips. “Men like me can just tell.”
Her heart kicked against her lungs, evoking shorter, shallower breaths. “Men like you?”