The Bevelstokes fell over themselves with solicitous exclamations as Julia led Alexandra across the wide deck and past large and lovely windows toward the aft.
“If you’re going to dig in Seasons-sur-Mer, then you must know Dr. Thomas Forsythe,” Julia exclaimed. “He’s in second class somewhere, headed to the selfsame dig to excavate some godawful thing.”
The name distracted Alexandra momentarily from her distress. “I do know Dr. Forsythe from Cairo.” They’d been friendly some years ago.
“I spied him at the hotel in Maynemouth only yesterday.” Julia leaned in conspiratorially. “He’s a perfect specimen, isn’t he? I’ve always had a weakness for those vital, poetic intellectuals. I’m intent upon making him my lover just as soon as we’re introduced.”
“Julia!” Aghast, Alexandra blinked around, worried someone had overheard.
“Oh, don’t be a prude!” Julia admonished, shaking her arm before directing them to the steps leading toward the lower decks. “What happened to the Alexandra I went to school with? Always reading forbidden novels, drinking spirits, and attending clandestine meetings with Francesca and Cecelia in the middle of the night in trousers. We’re married women now, we can have such conversations.”
Once they’d emerged from the stairs to the shelter deck, an elegant couple bowed to Alexandra and offered their felicitations. She’d couldn’t for the life of her recollect their names or rank, but she did the best she could to be gracious.
She really was going to make a terrible duchess.
Julia lowered her voice as the couple moved on. “Speaking of matrimony, how fared your wedding night?” She made a sound of pure rapture. “Bedded by the Terror of Torcliff? You should hear the talk among the ton. Was that the first time, or have you been lovers for ages?”
Stunned, Alexandra gaped at her. “It was … I … What talk?”
Julia slid her a glance full of mischief. “Oh, you must know that before his—um—disfigurement Redmayne was quite the rogue. Bedded every pretty thing with a title above a baroness until he met Rose. Every available pretty thing, I should say, as he never took married ladies as lovers. More’s the pity.” Her face twisted as though she’d licked a thousand lemons. “What a misfortune you have Rose as a nemesis now, and a relation. She was such a beast at school.
“Anyway.” She moved back to more salacious subjects. “Everyone’s been speculating as to why Redmayne has been living as an absolute monk since he’s been home. And now we know, don’t we? He’s been in love all this time. We all thought it was his vanity, I mean his scars are so ghastly. Don’t they frighten you, or do you merely turn off the lights when he’s—you know?” She lifted her eyebrows.
Dumbfounded and distressed, Alexandra groped for an answer. For a lie. She’d asked him to douse the lights … but it had nothing to do with his scars.
And everything to do with hers.
Tired of waiting for an answer, Julia stopped and jerked her to a halt so abruptly, Alexandra felt her bones clack together. “You’re not … in a family way, are you? You can tell me, I’ll keep your confidence. But I’ll warn you that is the speculation around the ton, that the reason for the astoundingly odd and accelerated circumstances for the wedding was because of a little future duke or lady on the way.”
Alexandra’s lips pressed together, acknowledging that anything she said to this woman had absolutely no chance of remaining a confidence. She was likewise forced to admit she didn’t know what to expect with this marriage, but it certainly hadn’t been that everyone would assume she was pregnant.
“I assure you, I am not in the family way.”
“Oh, look! There is His Grace now, and he’s chatting with Dr. Forsythe, what an excellent coincidence. Come, come!” Julia yanked her toward the portside railing, where Alexandra noted the two men stood, broad backs to the commotion.
The beaches drew nearer, as did long wharves stretching from the lovely port city of Le Havre to accommodate the incoming ships. The men leaned indolently on the rail, watching the cliffs loom in the distance, their rumbled masculine conversation interrupted only by careful sips from their hot tin cups of coffee.
Though every line of his body and deportment bespoke innate power, Redmayne’s attire showed little of his breeding. He’d donned a midnight-blue suit that brought out the brilliant darkness of his hair and the cobalt sheen in the unruly layers imparted by the relentless summer sun reflecting from the sea.
As Redmayne conversed with Forsythe, his manner was polite, engaged, but a hard glint never smoothed out of his gaze. An ever-present alert tension kept the bulk of his shoulders rigid. It was as though he always prepared to spring into action, toward or away from danger.
He never seemed quite civilized, did he? Not even in his wedding suit, come to think of it. He’d the large-boned, barbaric build of the marauding ancestors they were about to examine, and something about that innate savagery caused a strange, not altogether unpleasant flutter under Alexandra’s ribs.
The world beneath her feet felt as though it would give way at any moment, and not because the engines chugged to a halt as the ship prepared to drop anchor.
It was her husband who threatened to tip her world over. The sight of him. The proximity to him.
Memories of the previous night flooded her with an indecent awareness. She ogled as though truly seeing him for the first time, dissecting the parts of him she’d never noticed before.
His lips. Well, she had noticed them, hadn’t she? All along they’d held a particular allure. Capable of imparting the harshest, cruelest words as well as the most delirious, dizzying kisses and heart-melting sentiments. She suddenly longed for them to curl with amusement the way they did when he fought a smile.
His hands. His strong, clever hands were roughened unlike any other aristocrat she’d known. His calluses had abraded her skin with delicate rasps, eliciting goose pimples and shivers of pleasure.
Pleasure. Those hands had taught her the truest meaning of the word. As promised, he’d become her erudite instructor in the ways of her own carnal delight. Her sex had always been a challenge for her. Something to ignore, to avoid. Somehow, he’d layered an astonishing bliss over the memory of pain that had owned that area of her person for so long.
And she knew he’d so much more to teach her, so much more she could learn from him.
She absurdly wanted to thank him.
If he’d ever deign to speak with her again.
“Look who I’ve found, Your Grace,” Julia announced boldly, presenting her to her husband.
Redmayne spared Alexandra a wintry glance. “You cannot find what was not missing,”
All the words spoken and unspoken between them hovered in the sea air until they fell at their feet like shards of shattered glass.
Among the mess, Alexandra’s confidence might have been found. Along with her heart.
“Gads, can that be young Dr. Alexandra Lane?” A handsome and robust man kicked his hip away from the railing, abandoning his coffee to offer the approaching ladies a proper greeting. His cream linen suit coat flapped out behind him as he lifted his hand to wave before shielding his eyes against the eastern sun.
“Dr. Forsythe! What an absolute pleasure.” Alexandra couldn’t fight a smile of genuine delight at the sight of his sandy curls and self-effacing smile. She’d only known him a short while in Cairo, but he’d never treated her like a woman. Only an intellectual equal. She’d always appreciated that more than she could express.