“But—the telegram, it’s from your, Sir Cassius Ramsay,” the desk clerk sheepishly persisted. “Marked urgent. Excessively urgent.”
Piers gritted his teeth so hard he feared one might have cracked. But he released his wife with a kiss to her grime-streaked forehead. “I’ve sent ahead for a bath to be drawn, and for Constance to undress you.” A privilege he’d burned to claim for himself.
After her outburst, all the fight had drained out of her. She replied with a docile nod.
Piers tried not to think of how young she looked. How much like prey she seemed now with her big gentle doe eyes and vulnerable chin that was wont to wobble.
If only he could slay her dragons. He’d stand over her like a lupine sentinel, snarling at whoever might approach. He’d sear the secrets from her eyes,
Who could want to hurt someone like her? What could she possibly have done to warrant such violence?
Because, whatever had happened in that catacomb hadn’t been an accident.
And the results were supposed to have been deadly.
“I won’t be but a moment.” He wouldn’t dare be away from her that long. Not when he must keep her safe. Keep her alive.
If Ramsay had sent him an urgent message on his honeymoon, it could only mean that he’d found information regarding the assassins from Castle Redmayne. It could mean a clue to unlocking the mystery as to who was behind all of this and bring him one step closer to ensuring the safety of his wife.
Stalking to the desk, he snatched the telegram from the clerk and unfolded it.
If he’d been any less filthy, they’d have watched his skin blanch from swarthy to white. They’d have understood why he turned on his heel and stormed back outside the hotel.
They’d have been less mystified as to why the contents of the telegram caused him to abandon his wife.
I consulted my contact in Scotland. Stop.
Falt Ruadh doesn’t always refer to red hair. Stop.
It can also denote RED MANE. Stop.
It’s you, brother. Redmayne. They’re after you. Stop.
Piers walked toward the sea, fuming. Furious.
The unbound stallion on the train, whipped into a frenzy. The gunmen at the ruins. The accident on the ship. And now the cave-in at the catacombs.
Somehow Alexandra had always been in the way. In danger. And somehow, in his hubris, he’d assumed she’d acquired an enemy along her adventurous and uniquely singular path in life.
How could he have been so blind?
He was the Terror of Torcliff. The Duke of Redmayne. His list of enemies and enmities far surpassed anything Alexandra could even dream of. At the very top were a cousin and a former lover who vastly benefited from his death, and the long inventory only rolled on from there.
She was innocent in all of this. Of course she was.
He’d been the intended victim all along.
And until he wrapped his fingers around the throats of those responsible, the safest place for his wife was as far away from him as she could get.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Alexandra set out to find her missing husband as the sparkling horizon split the late-afternoon sun in half. She’d had enough with feeling more like a mistress than a wife, waiting patiently in her bedroom until he deigned to come for her.
With Constance’s help, she’d bathed away the events of the day, expecting Redmayne to burst into her room at any moment. At first, she wasn’t certain she was entirely prepared to meet the erotic masculine promise that’d emanated from every pore of his body since the moment he’d dug his way from the rubble.
After a time, she’d begun to wonder what kept him. She’d wanted him nearby, if at least to bask in the comfort and security his fiendish presence afforded her.
He’d survived. His body was still warm and vibrant.
He was still her husband. Hers. The possessiveness of the pronoun felt more significant than ever.
He belonged to her. With her. And she needed him.
Dressed in a simple ivory frock, she perched on the bed for as long as her discontent would allow.
When it became apparent a visit from him wasn’t forthcoming, she grudgingly admitted a thirst had awakened within her. One not easily slaked by water or wine. She needed to drink in the unparalleled sight of him, to absorb the scent and heat of him.
To remind herself she was alive, that he was well. Because, somehow, he’d become necessary to her.
Her riotous emotions had swung like the pendulum of a great clock. And with each passing minute she spent alone, she’d felt less in control. Of anything.
Her feelings.
Her destiny.
Her very existence.
She’d inquired of the desk clerk as to Redmayne’s whereabouts, and he directed her outside, where the porter pointed her toward the sea.
Breezes toyed with her hair like playful fingers, tossing it with soft but unruly chaos as she descended the switchback stairs to the beaches below.
Only to find the evening beaches mostly deserted.
Concerned, she begged the pardon of an elderly gentleman walking a white dog who resembled a puff of cotton. “Perhaps you can help me, monsieur, I’m looking for an extraordinarily tall bearded man. He’s…” She trailed off. How did one describe the Duke of Redmayne to a stranger? Especially today. Was he still attired as he’d been at the catacombs?
“There was just such a man, madame.” The kindly gentleman tipped his hat. “Swimming in the du Val cove tucked back next to Corbeau Noir Cliff behind the dunes.” He pointed to where the cliffs cut in sharply, the water disappearing behind shallow crests of sand waving with haphazard tufts of sea grasses. “I thought this man might be touched in the head to swim at such an hour, as the sun will soon be gone, and the wind grows chilly.”
“Merci!” she called, cursing the sand falling away from beneath her slippers as she lifted her skirts and hurried toward the cove.
Once she crested the dunes, she hurried across a gentle path through vibrant beach grasses, holding her hands out so the muted breezes encouraged the reeds to paint gentle things on her palms.
The small knoll crested next to the golden face of the cliff, and she found that the other side of the dune crawled down toward the high tide.
Alexandra froze, struggling to fully comprehend the visual cornucopia before her.
The sun’s final crescent barely peeked above the curvature of the sea, setting a multihued fire to the various striations of clouds batted around by a gathering evening wind. The summer air blew thick with an approaching storm, heavy and hostile with both heat and moisture.
Venerated by this crimson firmament, Redmayne rose like Neptune from the waves, slicking his wild hair to his scalp with a smooth lift of his chiseled arms.
The consequences of staring at the sun for too long were well documented. Even a glance was inadvisable.
One might go blind.
And yet she stared, unblinking, at a sight arguably more brilliant than that of the disappearing orb. What devastation might befall her, she wondered, if she gaped at him for too long?
The starch abandoned Alexandra’s knees and she stumbled to the side, reaching for the nearby cliff face to steady her.
She’d seen naked men before.
In anatomy books, granted, and paintings, and the plethora of sculptures she’d been unable to avoid studying at the Sorbonne.