At the thought of that particular pastime, he looked down at the woman who felt as though she were made to fit within the circle of his arms.
As was appropriate, she kept her head tilted away, her gaze fixed elsewhere.
Actually, her eyes seemed unable to focus on anything as he twirled her about the ballroom in flawless cadence to the orchestra.
He spotted familiar faces in the crowd as they coiled past. A few Cambridge mates. An adventurer or two, most of whom had ceased to brave the wilds with him when he’d insisted on exploring deeper than caravans, comforts, and servants would dare to venture.
Those men, those so-called friends never once called upon him during his year of recovery.
His brother, Lord Ramsay, as always a stone-faced pillar of respectable contempt.
His cousin, Lord Patrick Atherton, Viscount Carlisle, and the raven-haired Rose beside him, narrow-eyed beneath a delicate ebony mask.
How strange that Rose wore the colors of mourning.
Piers lowered his head, his lips grazing the warm shell of his intended’s ear. “Are you enjoying this, my lady?”
Because, to his continual astonishment, he was.
She turned her head sharply toward him at the touch, discovering too late that the motion brought their faces dangerously close. “I—er—which part?” she breathed, her tremulous whisper barely audible over the music.
He nudged his chin toward the extravagant ballroom as couples began to join them, though many merely watched, enthralled. “The part where you’re alternately the most envied woman in the room, and the most pitied.”
At that, she tilted her head to look up at him, a puzzled frown tilting her lush mouth. “Pitied?”
“While I am an obscenely wealthy duke, let us not forget what I look like beneath this,” he mocked. “You’re marrying a monster.”
Her lashes fluttered beneath her own mask, which concealed nothing but flawless skin kissed by the sun with adorable freckles. “You are mistaken, Your Grace, I could never bring myself to marry a monster.” She said this with such solemnity, such conviction, that a curious obstruction lodged in his throat. He had to clear it before replying.
“Either way, they’re all looking at you.”
“Don’t say that!” She would have faltered if he’d not caught her and smoothed the ruffle with an extra twirl. Piers found the misstep more than passing curious as he stared down at the soft curve of her cheek just barely visible beneath white feathers.
“Why ever not? Don’t ladies always take a rather mercenary pleasure in the jealousy of others? Don’t you yearn to be the object of admiration?”
“Not this lady,” she muttered. “I prefer isolation to admiration, truth be told.”
“Because … you are shy?”
His question caught her off guard, and she took more than a passing moment to reply. “Am I shy?” She must have been addressing the inquiry to herself, because she provided the answer. “I suppose I am. But even if I weren’t, I’d not care for this…” She nodded to the grandeur of the ballroom. “Because it’s all empty, isn’t it?”
“Empty?” he scoffed. “I find it rather overcrowded.”
“Your castle may be full of people, Your Grace, but it’s empty of authenticity.”
Without meaning to, Piers clutched her closer. Could she be real? Did he hold in his arms the rarest of creatures? A woman of substance. Of integrity? One who tended more carefully to the capacity of her heart than to her coiffure? One who thrived on intellect and honor and genuine interaction rather than the empty endorsements of her peers?
He’d begun to despair that such a person ever truly existed.
Her beauty certainly appeared effortless. Her blushes authentic. Her grace artless.
Her kisses … innocent. Untried and unpracticed.
Was it truly possible that he’d found his heart’s desire on a train platform, covered in tweed and mud?
“I wish they’d stop staring.” A fretful note touched her voice, making it almost childlike. “When is this dance going to be over?”
A protective instinct he’d not known he possessed encouraged him to press her closer into the defensive shell of his body. “Relax against me,” he urged upon sensing her hesitation.
“I don’t think I know how.” Her breath was quickening again, the pulse in her neck visibly rapid.
“Do try.” He gazed down at her, the picture of the adoring groom. Indeed, his fond smile was more genuine than he could remember in a long time as he did what he could to soothe her.
“Don’t let them see your fear,” he cautioned. “They’re like hyenas in the wild. They’ll surround you and laugh whilst they rip you apart, all the while fighting over the shreds of what’s left of you.”
At this, she quivered but relented, drawing tighter against him, deciding for the moment that he was the lesser of two evils. “I—I don’t think I’ll make a very good duchess.” She gave a forlorn sigh. “Perhaps you’ll want to change your mind.”
Never, he thought with more conviction than he’d expected.
He released her from his grip to hold his arm above her head, twirling her beneath it until their arms were stretched as far away from each other as they could.
Her eyes widened, as she realized that if he let her go, her momentum would tip her over.
Unworried, Piers enjoyed her skirt as it twirled and swayed against the floor like a fountain of liquid silver.
He demonstrated his strength, his control, as he tugged her back to fit scandalously against him, without missing one step.
Once again, the room erupted into enthusiastic applause.
He might have noticed it, if he’d not been so enthralled by the press of her body against his own. Gods but did he intend on enjoying every single one of her curves.
“I won’t let them have you,” he whispered against her ear. “You belong only to me.”
CHAPTER TEN
Alexandra squinted down at her notepaper, trying to ignore the fact that she stood in a duke’s bedroom about to make one of the most ludicrous decisions of her life.
Perhaps she’d brought entirely too many notes for a proper seduction.
She worried at her lip as she stared down at the rows of her neat, precise scrawl, the product of painstaking research from hundreds of texts. Resources ranging from epistolic to medical, scientific to fiction.
Alongside her academic pursuits, she’d devoured all writing she could find on anatomy, physiology, biology, mating habits of ancient and contemporary cultures, ritual, conception, childbearing, and the odd romantic novel. The most pertinent ones she’d read over and over in her desperate search to understand men. Or herself. Or the act.
To understand what had happened to her.
Now that she’d completed the research theory phase, she needed to move to the next step.
And quickly. Before she lost her nerve.
At the ball, once the initial fervor after Redmayne’s declaration had died down, Alexandra had accepted felicitations from what had seemed to her every person in attendance.
But one. His former fiancée, Lady Rose Atherton, Viscountess Carlisle. The petulant woman had disappeared, and Alexandra couldn’t say that she was sorry.