He stared down at the garment in his hands. The stitches blurred by a narrowing of his vision as red began to bleed into his periphery.
How many times had he made use of the convenient opening with a mistress or a lover?
He’d endeavored to do the same with Alexandra the other night.
Anger tightened his shoulders, then his chest, the tension rippling down his arms until he dropped her undergarment as though it scalded him.
Turning, he searched for something to break.
The table closest to him did nicely. He kicked at it, sending it colliding into the crank press. Then he proceeded to dismantle it violently with fists and boots, fighting the horrific portrait forming in his mind.
She’d requested that they face each other …
Because she’d been taken in some dreadful, demeaning fashion.
He ripped something off the wall and smashed it onto the ground.
He’d been too aroused, too utterly entertained by her to truly wonder why she’d asked him to be gentle so as not to do her intimate damage.
Because … Because someone …
He roared as his gorge rose, and he had to swallow several times, using iron will not to heave the contents of his stomach on to the floor.
Something else violently disintegrated beneath his gathering madness.
He tried. By God, he tried not to allow the clues to conjure the images of her … like that. But alas, he’d narrowed down her ordeal to a few lurid and unthinkable circumstances.
The portrait screamed at him, and he wished she could rip open his skull and scrub the image from his mind.
So he ripped other things, clothing, linen, rending them so they matched the tattered shreds of his humanity.
God! The things he’d accused her of. The ruthless seduction he’d all but forced upon her on their wedding night. She’d requested the lights off, not so she couldn’t see his face, but so he couldn’t see her fear.
He’d been so uncompromising about her shyness, so relentless in his all-consuming desire.
And so unforgivably cruel when he’d thought she’d lied about her virginity.
She’d not been acting the innocent, she’d truly not known what to do. She’d never experienced pleasure before, only pain.
You claim you’ve never been kissed? Well, you sure as hell have been fucked.
A raw, torturous breath hissed out of his throat as a fathomless, abysmal pit of regret, shock, and self-disgust threatened to buckle his legs from beneath him.
Like the monster he’d never wanted to be, he’d tortured his poor wife.
The games. The teasing. The agonizing anticipation of ten days, when all she wanted was to be done with her wifely duties. To have the untenable obligation in her past, instead of looming like a sword over her head.
Because the expectation of a terrible thing was often worse than the reality of it.
And how had he finally approached that situation this evening? By pressing his inflamed, naked body against her. Kissing her with all the savage lust unleashed by a brush with death and exacerbated by her exquisite feminine beauty.
He’d pinned her to a chalky cliff, imprisoned her with his oafish body, intent on wrapping her strong, lovely legs around his waist so he could fuck all the life-affirming desire roaring through him into her.
No woman deserved that for their first time with a new lover, no matter how many she’d had before, let alone a woman with her particular trauma.
The crimson-hued wave of rage receded, and another tide of exhaustion overtook him as he surveyed the devastation he’d wrought on the laundry room.
It shamed him that he’d acted thus, but he couldn’t have faced her filled with such impotent, violent, passionate hatred.
Never. He’d never frighten her like that. Never face her with the fury contained within him. Not as long as he lived.
He needed this fatigue in order to maintain the gentility she’d require of their next interaction. Because, even now, a cold splash of murderous haze lingered inside of him. Longing to demand answers from her.
Like who? And how? And where could he find the—he dare not even call him a man—the mud-sucking villain?
Because every breath he took was borrowed from the devil. Every day since the terrible day he’d put his hands on her would be carved out of his flesh.
Yes. A Redmayne’s revenge was slow. It would be wet. It would be messy. Methodical. And ultimately lethal.
But now was not a time for that. First, before he could hunt down and take apart a true monster, he must do his level best to put his wife back together.
She deserved that, at least, to feel safe with him. From him.
Carefully, he retrieved her drawers and hung them just as they’d been before, his hands visibly trembling. They seemed so small and pretty and clean in a room afflicted with such disarray.
Turning, he went to find her, prepared to answer for his crimes against her, whether intended or not.
In the hallway, Constance single-handedly held back a bevy of wide-eyed clerks, porters, and his favored maître d’. They all gaped at him, some with wariness, and others with apparent concern.
“I’ll replace all that is broken on the morrow, and pay for any extra work I’ve caused,” he offered wearily. “I couldn’t … go to her—”
“Do not you worry yourself, Your Grace,” Constance said in a small, kind voice. “They only know what they need to, but they understand.”
“They understand what?” he asked, not wishing to have brought any embarrassment to his wife.
Constance opened her mouth to reply, but a young, swarthy porter beat her to it.
“Quelqu’un a essayé de nuire à la femme qu’il aime.”
Wearily, Piers turned to take the back stairs up to her room, not allowing himself to contemplate why he didn’t bother to correct the boy.
Someone tried to harm the woman he loves.
* * *
When Piers didn’t immediately find Alexandra upon opening the door to her room, he called her name, allowing his eyes to adjust to the dimness.
No lamps had been lit, and daylight had almost faded entirely, giving way to an early gloom. Other than the cream damask curtains performing a ghostly dance at the open balcony doors, everything in the cozy suite remained still.
A magnetic awareness tuned the fine hairs on his neck and arms. A charged pull as subtle and as potent as that of the moon on the tides drew him around to find her. On the other side of the bed, tucked between the wardrobe and the wall, Alexandra stared stone-faced and unmoving, her arms around her knees and her gaze fixed on the far wall.
This time, when he said her name, it was in an aching whisper.
She flinched, but didn’t look at him. Not until he made his way around the bed, slowing to attempt a careful approach.
Countless questions and platitudes sprang to his lips, the first of which was: Are you all right?
But he bit down on his lip, refusing to ask the insipid question. Because, of course, she wasn’t all right.
And part of that was his doing.
In a swift but oddly graceful motion, she pushed away from the wall and stood, stepping out to face him. Her back straight and shoulders squared, like a martyr readying to meet her fate. He yearned to help her, to hold her, but wasn’t certain she’d even want him to touch her just now.
The soft blue of an overcast gloaming painted her a paler shade of ivory than he’d ever seen. Tears smudged bruises beneath her eyes and pain etched hollows below her cheekbones. Her lips, swollen with her grief, with his kisses, glistened as they shook.