“I wouldn’t resent forestalling our intimacies to ease your mind,” she said carefully.
“Of course you wouldn’t.” He swiped up his coffee cup and stared into the grounds at the bottom, as though wishing to divine the future in their depths.
“I confess to being confused by your logic,” she admitted.
He slid her a level glance. “How so?”
“Well, if we avoid the marriage bed for now, it’ll be proven that I am not with another man’s child at this time,” she began. “But when I conceive in the future, how can you—or any man, for that matter—be certain that a child belongs to him. There’s no way to tell.”
“I’d know,” he growled.
“You couldn’t possibly.” Her brow puckered. “It’s something that, as a scientist, I’ve always found odd about our society compared to many of the ancients. A name follows that of the male line, however, one only has categorical proof that a child is the product of a woman’s body. No man can be absolutely certain a child is of his line, that his wife hasn’t taken a lover, unless he’s with her every moment of every—”
With a furious burst of strength, Redmayne hurled his cup overboard. It sailed through the air, reflecting the sunlight with every rotation until it splashed into the water and disappeared.
Alexandra stared at the place it sank, not daring to meet the dangerously glinting eyes now boring a hole into the side of her head even as he bent to grit into her ear, “I’d. Know.”
She turned her face, her cheek meeting his, grazing the grains of his beard. She expected him to pull away, but he didn’t. The absurd notion to rub against him like a cat rose within her, and she drew her cheek across his.
“I wouldn’t,” she whispered against him. To any onlooker, they’d appear to be the besotted newlyweds, nuzzling each other beneath the French sun. “Take a lover, that is. I don’t betray my vows. I hope you can trust that.”
His cynical grunt was hot against her neck, as he rooted into the hollow behind her ear, inhaling against her hair. “There’s no reason to trust you,” he lamented, his fingers curling around her arms to draw her closer. “And I probably never will.”
“Why?” she asked, breathing him in, as well. His exotic scent mixed with the brine of the sea, intoxicating her. What a strange conversation to be having with their mouths, when their bodies reacted to each other’s proximity in such a conflicting way. “Why do you doubt I am in earnest?”
“Do you trust my word?” he challenged, his mustache tickling at her neck before his lips pressed there. “When you know next to nothing about me?”
She hesitated. He was right. What did she know of him? She’d no idea if he was truly a man to be trusted. Not with her body. Her past. Her secrets.
Her life.
She knew the smell of his sweat was anything but repellent. That she liked to sink her hands beneath the lapels of his jacket just so she could shape her fingers over the breadth of his chest. That for such a big man, he had yet to use his strength against her. Even in anger. And that horses allowed him to be their master. That an extra sense of such beasts could often pick up the measure of a man.
Jean-Yves had a dog whose ears would flatten, and lips would curl, at the presence of Headmaster de Marchand.
It should have been a warning.
But the horses and hounds at Castle Redmayne, they responded to Piers’s firm lead because of his alternate gentility with them.
The beasts trusted him.
Shouldn’t that count for something?
“Perhaps, my lord, rather than avoiding each other for ten days, we could spend our honeymoon in each other’s company?” she suggested.
He stiffened and pulled away.
She missed him instantly.
“That really isn’t necessary. What would be the point?”
“Well, if we are to be Duke and Duchess of Redmayne. If we are to raise a child—children—together it might be easier if we are better acquainted. Friendly, even.”
He tossed his head in an almost equine manner. “Dukes don’t generally have much of a hand in raising their own children.”
“No…” she acquiesced. “But Redmayne, while very grand, isn’t like modern vast estates so it’s unlikely you’ll be able to avoid them. Or me.”
“Not if I install you somewhere else,” he muttered.
She decided now wasn’t the time to mention that she’d never remain installed anywhere. She would go where she pleased. “Is that your design? How will I bear you a bevy of heirs if I’m not accessible to you?”
He paused, his frown deepening to a scowl, as though she’d made a point he’d not considered. “What are you proposing, exactly?”
“Merely an appointed time every day where we share each other’s company,” she suggested. “A dinner, perhaps. Or a walk of some kind, like the one we took the other afternoon along the cliffs. Minus the assassin, of course.”
“You mean the walk when you threatened to shoot me?”
Alexandra bit her lips to suppress a grimace, or a smile. Perhaps both. “I only threatened to shoot you because you were on top of me.”
“I’d just saved your life, if you remember.”
She did remember being on the precipice of a cliff, in more ways than one.
“It wouldn’t do to spend our honeymoon apart,” she said, turning from him. “But if that is your wish—”
He seized her arm, pulling her back into their intimate posture, his breath hot against her ear as his body melded to hers. “Do you have any idea, wife, what ten minutes in your company does to me?” His whisper was almost like a snarl in its animalistic intensity. “Do you really think I can smell your scent, that I can watch you knowing what lies beneath your shapeless dresses, and keep myself from tasting what is mine?”
Alexandra surreptitiously glanced at the workmen on the deck, all of them doing their utmost to not notice them and succeeding superbly.
Too well, in her opinion.
“Now that I’ve explored your curves, tasted your breasts, and experienced your pleasure, I’ll think about nothing else until I have you naked once again, do you understand me? Our time together now is an agony, in more ways than one.”
Three days ago, his words would have frightened her beyond imagining.
Three days ago she’d not known what it was like to experience the ruthless patience of his passions. To be the object of his desire and to find that desire ignited in her own dormant soul.
“I don’t see why … we couldn’t make some sort of arrangement,” she offered breathlessly.
“Arrangement?” The word sounded indecent from his voice.
“We could … trade favors. Without intercourse. It could … help us to further our acquaintanceship.”
And, if they were lucky, they could teach each other a little about trust.
“I have one condition,” he murmured into her ear.
“What’s that?”
“You let me use my tongue.”
Alexandra’s reply was lost in a raucous crack from above. Men shouted. The grind of metal and splinter of wood was deafening.
Redmayne’s entire bulk moved in synchronous slow motion, as he seized her, effortlessly lifted her, and surged across the deck with his head ducked over hers.