“An impressive ancestor, indeed.” He nodded, duly impressed. “I’m fortunate for his bloodline.”
“He would have been an excessively strong man,” she said with unmistakable meaning. “A leader of men. It would have been unfair of him to expect any man to keep up. As to do so would be impossible.”
“I understand.” He smirked at her just as evocatively, eyes flicking to Forsythe. “I imagine other men were intelligent enough not to challenge him. And if they did, he broke not just their bodies, but their will.” He wiped at a smudge of dirt on her cheek, likely making it worse. “Be grateful, wife, that you’re married to a duke and not a barbarian, who, for the time being, is only intent upon breaking one and not the other.” He leaned in and gathered her lips for a loud, showy kiss that left her speechless before relieving her of Ivar’s femur, and carefully setting it in its place within the cushioned crate bound for the examination tent.
“Which one?” she asked, just to make certain she didn’t mistake his meaning.
“His body is still intact, is it not?”
Alexandra gaped at him, trying to decide if she were furious or flummoxed as he used his fist rather than the hammer to pound the crate’s lid securely tight.
Her first kiss in four days and he’d done it not for her benefit, or even his, but for that of a purely inconsequential man that only he considered a rival.
The nerve of him. The unmitigated gall.
“I’m taking tea with Julia,” she huffed. “Do be careful with your ancestor, though I recently learned bones are of negligible heft.”
She picked up her skirts and gathered Julia away from an exhausted Forsythe, who seemed content to saunter beside them, leaving her husband to haul the final crate.
Redmayne’s chuckle followed them down the long tunnel before a deep grunt told her he’d shouldered the blasted thing and ambled after them.
If he wanted the burden, he could take it.
Alexandra took a few deep breaths as she navigated the catacombs, calming her blood. It wasn’t that she was angry at him, per se. How could she be? He’d been nothing but indulgent of her. Especially this morning, capitulating to her financial suggestions.
No, she wasn’t angry. Simply … frustrated. Not even at him, exactly. Just at everything. The entire world. She’d spent the whole day railing at the past, dreading the future, and suspecting everyone in her vicinity of being or becoming an enemy.
It wore her down until her bones felt as though they belonged in the dank and dust of this place.
She’d make amends for being so surly at dinner this evening, she decided as she lifted her skirts to climb the handful of steps out of the catacombs and into the sunshine. Perhaps she’d even attempt another intimate overture. She could tell his tether was remarkably close to breaking. It was apparent in his scalding looks. In the whisky-soft depth of his conversations, his voice as silken as his tongue had been upon her.
She climbed past the entrance buttressed by incomprehensibly large beams of wood, squinting as the afternoon sun gleamed off the water below the cliffs of Normandy.
Redmayne had assisted with the installation of those beams not two days prior, after expressing his dissatisfaction with the previous fortifications.
It pleased her that he worried after the workers and their safety.
Every part of her could feel him behind her, and it took a herculean effort, and more than a dose of her feminine pride, not to turn and—
An echo of faint pops and a familiar hiss preceded a deafening splinter of wood and stone.
What the devil—?
“Run!” Forsythe shoved both Alexandra and Julia forward just as the thunderous sound of falling stones drowned out the dismayed cries and calls of the workmen taking their afternoon tea in a tent above.
An explosion of ghostly dust engulfed them all, and the momentum of it pushed Alexandra to her hands and knees as she fought for breath, her chest spasming with bone-rattling coughs.
Chaos overwhelmed her at once. Hands dragged her farther from the tunnel entrance as students, archeologists, and workmen shouted orders at each other.
The chalky sounds of smaller rocks settling between the boulders filled her with such dread, she surged away from whoever was attempting to help her from the wreckage.
What section of the catacombs had caved in? Had everyone made it out?
Had anyone made it out?
Where was Redmayne? He’d been right behind her, and she’d been a good several paces out of the tunnel. Surely he’d crossed the threshold before—
Julia stumbled toward her, her entire yellow day dress now an ethereal shade of white. She collapsed into Alexandra’s arms shuddering with irrepressible sobs.
“Are you hurt?” Alexandra demanded, searching her for injures with unsteady hands.
“He saved me,” Julia wailed. “Forsythe saved me, and now I cannot find him. Is he dead?”
Alexandra handed Julia off to an awaiting student. Swamped with a grave sense of foreboding, she tripped back toward the catacombs’ entrance.
Now an impenetrable wall of stone.
Men were already digging at the rocks, yelling and creating a line to pull the earth away from the blocked archway.
Which meant …
“No.” She lurched faster, attempting to run on legs as steady as a newborn fawn’s.
Redmayne. He’d have been the last one out. Where was her husband?
She expected his wide shoulders to melt out of the cloud of settling dust, white as an archangel and just as merciless. He was the Terror of Torcliff. The Amazon hadn’t conquered him, nor had the Nile. He’d tamed jungles and forged across pitiless deserts.
A simple cave couldn’t possibly defeat him.
The very thought was categorically impossible.
Now that the air had become less choked with stone and dirt, Alexandra found Forsythe as he dragged himself out of the rubble looking dazed. The pallid substance caked in his sweat darkened to take on the appearance of dried blood.
Alexandra helped him to his feet only to shake him. “Where is Redmayne?” she cried, not caring that she sounded just as hysterical as Julia. “Where is my husband?”
Slowly, as though he had trouble understanding her, Forsythe looked to the man-sized pile of stones at his back. “He … was right behind us. Wasn’t he?”
“No,” she whispered. Or screamed. “No, no, no. No!”
Forsythe caught her as she shot past him, gripping at her arms. “Alexandra, don’t. It’s too dangerous.”
She struggled against his grip. “He is still in there. I have to get him out.”
Forsythe held fast. “If I know Redmayne, I know he wouldn’t want you to put yourself in harm’s way, not on his account.”
“You don’t know him. I do. He’s my husband!” She wrenched away from him. “Either get a shovel and help, or get out of my way!”
She joined the men, grabbing and shoving at a rock she had no hope of budging.
A gentle hand landed on her shoulder, and she turned with her teeth bared, ready to do battle with anyone who might drag her away from the catacombs.
Jean-Yves’s concerned gaze didn’t hold the comfort it might once have, but she didn’t have time to dwell on her suspicions about him.
“I must find him,” she panted, unsure of why her lungs still felt tight, or why her heart might burst open. “I must. He’s my husband. He’s my … husband.”