There’d been toasts, another dance, and not a little hovering from Frank and Cecil.
Alexandra had detected the entire scope of artifice in her interactions with the ton, from gentle curiosity to outright hostility. Who was she to become the next Duchess of Redmayne? A spinster and a bluestocking? Where were her parents? What was her pedigree? How had she and Redmayne courted?
Redmayne had been her bulwark. His arm, corded with strength beneath his fine suit, remained firmly attached to hers, sometimes quite literally holding her up as she stuttered and stumbled through social dictates she’d taken for granted as a young and well-adjusted girl of noble birth.
She’d been among scholars and skeletons for too long.
He had been the perfect paradox of charm and menace, his interactions ending either with delighted pleasantries or a victim struggling to recover from his caustic rejoinders.
He’d been quick to jump to her defense when necessary, and Alexandra couldn’t have been more grateful.
Just as soon as she could politely do so, she’d escaped to her rooms, snatching her notebook as another idea had taken her hostage.
Their wedding would take place in a month’s time. Which gave her thirty nights to lie awake and dread the wedding night, building nightmarish scenarios in her mind until it drove her mad and she leaped from the tower rather than go through with it.
Most distasteful duties, she’d discovered, were worse in the anticipation than the application. Also, if she could control the … the situation as much as possible, perhaps she could endure it more readily. If the worst of it was behind her, she could maybe stop obsessing about it.
With this in mind, she’d slipped through the dark back to the east wing and let herself into Redmayne’s chamber. And here she sat, awaiting him like an executioner at dawn.
She had used her tiptoes to perch on the tall, cavernous bed situated on a raised stone dais in the center of the room. It was odd, surely, not to have a headboard against a wall. But the duke’s chambers were situated in a round, grand tower at the top of resplendent spiral stairs. Besides, the proximity to the fireplace was lovely during winters or sea storms, and the two enormous windows afforded a breathtaking view of the sea beyond Maynemouth Moor.
From here, one could use the moonlight to spot the very tip of the fortress ruins peeking over the crest of Tormund’s Bluff.
Alexandra contemplated the view as she idly picked at the tassels of the cord restraining the cobalt velvet curtains to the bedposts. She was a Red Rogue in a blue room. Blue, like his eyes. Like the blood in their veins that made this marriage feasible.
She clutched her list, stamping down the instinct to flee.
Her thoughts were doing the thing again. Where they became too loud, too fast, and disjointed. Where every shadow hid a dragon and every sound contained unseen dangers.
Her heart paused every third beat, then kicked against her ribs most disconcertingly. Her stomach rolled and her limbs were as steady as a moored dinghy in a hurricane.
But she could do this. She must do this.
She simply needed to focus. To think through the entire act so she could shed this unholy trepidation and finally sleep.
He’d kissed her and it had been … almost entirely lovely. Until his tongue had attempted to invade her mouth, and the soft bloom of warmth his kiss cultivated had been doused by the icy shards of her memory.
Should they avoid that again, it might be all right.
And if not …
Well, there was plenty here to keep her mind occupied while he … did the deed. She could … date the tapestries on the walls by inspecting their weft and weave. Or she could categorize any one of a dozen artifacts artfully strewn about tables, the fireplace mantel, bookcases, or the escritoire.
If all else failed, she could close her eyes and think of England.
Alexandra did her level best to find a seductive position. Perhaps one she’d seen in the Venus of Urbino, a woman reclining on her side, her knee bent to accentuate the curve of her hip.
Or maybe standing against the bedpost, hands behind her? She discarded that one immediately as a supplicant pose.
She flopped to her back, maybe if she—
Footsteps approached from the hall, and her throat seized on a gasp as she sat up.
When the latch turned and Redmayne’s wide shoulders filled the arch of his doorway, Alexandra exploded into a series of loud, uncontrollable coughs.
He was at her side in a few long strides, his scars pinching as his brow wrinkled with concern, then alarm. “What’s happened?” he demanded. “Did you ingest anything?”
Alexandra attempted to speak through the spasms, which only served to make it worse. She seized his wrist as he made a frantic search of her vicinity and pulled him back toward the bed.
Her coughing resolved itself with a mighty sneeze.
He stared at her as though she’d just exorcised the devil. “What the hell is going on?”
Blinking up at him from watery eyes, she croaked, “No need to worry. I was choking.”
“On what, in God’s name?”
On her own fear. “On … myself. You startled me.”
“I startled you?”
His brows fell impossibly lower, and only then did Alexandra notice that he’d not only relieved himself of his mask, but of his cravat, tiepin, and jacket as well. His shirt fell open to the divot in his neck. She remembered what he’d been like in the storm. Wild and wet, the dark whirls of hair covering the swells of muscle on his chest visible beneath the shirt the rain had plastered to his torso.
“Alexandra.” His voice lowered in pitch. “What are you doing here?”
She stood on the round dais next to the bed still clutching him, finding that her fingers couldn’t even encircle his dense wrist. Though he stood a step beneath her on the dais, she still had to drag her eyes upward to meet his. What she found in those azure depths made her swallow hard and release him.
Her mission, she observed, shouldn’t at all be difficult to achieve if his gaze already contained such things.
“I’ve come to seduce you,” she announced.
His furrowed brows climbed toward his hairline in surprise. “Seduce me?”
It was her turn to frown. “You’re making a habit of repeating what I say as though it’s extraordinary or astonishing.”
“You’re making a habit of saying extraordinarily astonishing things,” he volleyed back. “I’m often uncertain I’ve heard you correctly.”
“Oh, well, you have.”
“Excellent.” Looking exceedingly pleased, he tugged his shirt from his trousers.
“Wait!” She held out a hand to stop him. “Don’t you want to know why I’ve decided to seduce you?”
He paused, eyeing her like Cecelia did the pastries she never denied herself. “Is it too much to hope that you were so overcome by my masculine appeal and erotic prowess that you couldn’t stand to live another moment without the pleasure of my touch?”
Alexandra gaped at him, rendered momentarily speechless.
His lips twisted wryly. “You’re worried you won’t like the marriage bed; no doubt you’ve heard horror stories, and, being ignorant of the act, you’re here to conduct some sort of scientific assessment of our physical compatibility before we take our vows.”
Just as she’d recovered, this second observation had precisely the same effect upon her.