I’m a rather mercenary sort of fellow.
Spite is the only reason I have left.
Don’t try to make me a good man.
Swallowing a surge of nerves, she managed to reply. “T-tell His Grace that I appreciate his thoughtfulness. I’m sorry that you’ve taken the trouble, Lord Carlisle, but I have an old family friend in attendance who will be performing that service. I thank you for your pains.” She closed the door on his bewilderment without awaiting a response.
Something about the interaction, about the entire situation, set her teeth on edge and left an oily feeling in her belly, as though she’d swallowed a bad scallop.
The feeling persisted as Lord Bevelstoke, eager to regain the acquaintance of her family now that she was to become a duchess, conducted her down the aisle of the overcrowded rectory.
The ceremony had been quick, or eternal; she couldn’t really recall anything but the stifling heat and how out of place her fiancé—husband—appeared in a church with his pagan beauty contained in an obscenely expensive suit.
All eyes were on him.
There’d been a chaste kiss. Nothing like the ones he’d bestowed on her the evening before. Bells tolled as Redmayne hurried her back down the aisle. Flower petals were thrown when they burst from the rectory. She’d eaten none of the celebratory food, and couldn’t have named a quarter of the people who wished her well. She clung to each of her friends as they left, receiving encouragements she couldn’t hear before she was whisked into the most luxurious coach imaginable.
When they reached the docks, Redmayne had evacuated the coach before the wheels had even stilled, explaining that he’d last-minute arrangements to look after.
Alexandra had sat in a dreamlike daze as frenzied porters had unloaded their trunks, and then her, from the coach.
Somehow, she’d made it to their lavish stateroom. Staterooms, she’d corrected, as she wandered through the luxuriously appointed sitting room to the bedroom, her fingers tracing over a plethora of velvets, mahogany, and leather. She appreciated the open windows through which a briny summer breeze swirled about their cabin, tinkling the crystal on the lamps.
Constance, a shy and efficient lady’s maid, had been selected for her from Redmayne’s staff. However, after Alexandra had been dressed in one of her well-worn nightgowns with an anemic froth of white lace at the sleeves, she had sent the maid away, preferring to brush out her hair on her own.
She’d been brushing for a long time, now. Too long. Long enough for the sun to have completely disappeared. Long enough for her hair to have spun into a vibrant mahogany mass, gleaming and soft, and her fingers to ache from how tightly she gripped the handle.
Apprehension warred with anticipation in a tumultuous tumble of emotion. Did every bride feel some variation of this?
Even the innocent ones?
How was she going to endure tonight? Perhaps she could do what she’d done before and step outside of her body. Stand at the window and wait for it all to be over.
At least the act didn’t take long, she recalled. They could get to it as quickly as possible, and then it would be over. Done.
She violently wished for the hundredth time that they’d not been interrupted the previous night. When she’d had more courage. When she’d been less exhausted and more fortified with whisky.
A drink. Now there was a capital idea.
She stood and left the bedroom in search of a decanter or a bell pull when the key turned in the lock, rooting both her feet to the middle of the floor.
The door revealed Redmayne with a creak of hinges.
A delicate thrill followed the pang of dread. His black wedding suit was still immaculate, but the sea wind had disheveled his consistently unruly hair. A sable forelock hung over his scar, and Alexandra’s fingers suddenly ached to smooth it away.
He closed the door to the stateroom and locked it, turning to allow his gaze to wander over her with an indolent appreciation.
“I sometimes forget…” he murmured as though to himself.
Alexandra swallowed layers of nerves before she could speak. “Forget what?”
“How beautiful you are.” He undid his cravat as he traveled the length of the sitting room. “Then I see you and realize that memory cannot compare to reality. I’m left as breathless as the first time we met.”
Alexandra’s breath abandoned her, as well. Stolen by his proximity. By the potency of his masculinity and the possibilities of what the next hours might hold.
By his lovely words.
She turned from him, retreating with measured steps back toward the bedroom. “The first time you saw me?” She gasped out what was supposed to be a casual laugh that wouldn’t have fooled a deaf man. “Covered in tweed and mud?”
In three strides he was behind her. His fingers smoothing through the gleaming mass of her unbound hair, following its length to the small of her back. “You are more beautiful covered in tweed and mud than any woman swathed in silk and diamonds.”
Alexandra withdrew once more, belatedly realizing that the farther away she drifted from the man, the closer she came to the bed.
Neither option seemed safe. And yet, both were inevitable.
“You don’t have to say those things to me,” she breathed. “I needn’t be wooed. Perhaps we could just begin—”
“Oh come, Doctor, you’re a woman of science. Surely you can appreciate a statement of empirical fact.” He followed her, drew up behind her once again, and slid his arms around her middle.
Beneath that fitted, cultured attire, a torso rippled with unthinkable strength. Muscle corrugated his entire frame with unmitigated power.
And all that power was behind her. Behind her. Securing his arms beneath her breasts and pulling her against his body. Any time he wanted he could push her toward the bed. Bend her over and—
“I am not flattering you,” he murmured into her ear. “Your beauty is undeniable, and evidenced by my pervasive desire for you.”
He brought their bodies flush, his ribs against her shoulder blades and the hard, pulsing intimate length of him pressing against her back—
Alexandra twisted and leaped out of his grasp. Air. She needed air. She raced over to the bedroom window and threw it open, gulping in large breaths of the cool summer breeze.
He’d let her go, she told herself, trying to rein in her runaway pulse. She’d pulled away and he’d let her go. This was significant, something she could clutch onto during the ordeal that was to be her wedding night.
He didn’t know. How could he realize what agony he’d created by approaching her from behind?
He couldn’t know. And she couldn’t tell him.
God, what he must think of her.
Drawing in one last, trembling breath, Alexandra whirled to face him. She blinked around the golden stateroom, bedecked with beveled crystal and mahogany, polished to an impossible gleaming finish.
And empty of the mystified duke she’d expected to find.
“I thought you might be in need of this.” His voice rumbled from the doorway to the main quarters. Redmayne strode toward her, lips tilted faintly, a healthy dose of caramel liquid glinting from a glass in each hand.
Alexandra could have cried as she took the whisky from him, the little points of cut crystal a welcome abrasion against her trembling palm.
She finished the entire thing in three desperate swallows, releasing a few breaths of fire before attempting an explanation. “Forgive me … I…”