Page 110 of How to Love a Duke in Ten Days

One dark, scarred brow lowered. “Then… why do you look as though someone walked over your grave?”

Because there was a small chance someone wanted to make his ancestor’s grave her own.

Tomorrow night.

She lowered her voice to a whisper, painfully aware of their public venue. “I am tremendously abashed to be so indelicate as to inquire about my um… my stipend. I would send it to them, if I may, to ease their financial distress.”

And she would. Whatever was left of it would go to her parents and her brother. She’d make certain they were taken care of should anything happen to her.

His tense expression relaxed a bit, as though relieved the source of her distress was something as paltry as money. “I’ll have my solicitor contact theirs upon our return to Castle Redmayne to set up an allowance for your family.”

His flippant benevolence pricked her conscience with a thousand poisoned needles, and the toxins coiled in her gut as she choked on her reply.

“Their need is a little more dire than that, I’m afraid. Might I send it in a post or with a courier? It would save you and your solicitor the trouble,” she rushed to offer.

“A courier from France? Are they so in need they cannot wait out the week for us to return home?”

“I’m ashamed to say… that might just be the case.” Alexandra dropped her head, the shame very, very real. Shame for being deceitful. For casting her own family in a worse light to save her own secrets.

He put his hand beneath her chin, lifting her overwrought gaze to meet his own. “I’ll wire my solicitor today, have him courier it to Bentham Park straightaway. They’ll have it in two days.”

Alexandra never thought it would be possible to feel both tenderness and desperation at once. But here it was warring inside of her with enough enmity to make her ill. “Might we just visit a bank in town? Draw upon funds there?” she suggested hastily. “My father is… as I said, he’s not well. And my brother doesn’t know the extent of our troubles. He would rather the money come from me, I think. It would ease his tattered pride.”

The scar in her husband’s lip deepened, as it did when he was perplexed or displeased. “I’ll lose some in the exchange rate…”

“Take it from my next payment. From my trousseau or in lieu of a ring,” she blurted. “You can dock it from whatever you like. Indeed, I vow that I will endeavor to see after my own maintenance from here on out. I’m an educated woman, after all, willing to work for my own fortunes. I don’t want to be a bother. I don’t… I don’t want you to regret—”

A finger pressed over her lips, silencing her, before lifting to dash at a tear she hadn’t realized had escaped. His savage features glowed brilliant in the break of the sun, but what truly astounded her was the temperate compassion with which he regarded her.

“No wife of mine need ever know shame.” This was decreed with a steely yet tame sort of affection that stymied her into silence. “So many of the old nobility are in similar dire circumstances these days. What with agriculture giving way beneath industry and tenant farmers abandoning their lands for more profitable factories.” He lifted his finger from her lips and smoothed at her trembling chin. “If you promise to lift your spirits, we’ll go to the bank in Le Havre tomorrow and I’ll draw upon whatever sum you like.”

“T-truly?”

“Don’t look so surprised,” he chuffed. “I’d not deny your family a living, and perhaps in time your beloved brother can learn a bit from Ramsay and me about venture schemes and capital markets. I’ll do what I can to build the Bentham title once more. As you help me secure my legacy, so I can help secure Andrew’s. It’s the least I can do.”

A surge of relief, gratitude, and an emotion so powerful Alexandra couldn’t begin to define it, drove her against him in a scandalous public display of affection. “What didI do to deserve such a generous husband?” She let a few more tears fall, these wrought of happiness.

He gave a little bemused chuckle, his big hand drawing little circles of comfort on her back. “Well… you must have been very wicked, indeed, to have been sentenced to a life in my company.”

“No.” She pulled back to look up at him, searching his rather bewildered expression. “No, you are wonderful. Truly, incomprehensibly wonderful. You are quite literally saving the lives of those I love most in this world. I’ll do anything I can to repay you.”

Piers basked for a moment in her exuberant gratitude. Surely, she was exaggerating the scope of his assistance, but if the result was her arms around him, who was he to say nay?

Besides, he didn’t hate the idea of collecting upon her appreciation…

He’d missed this. The press of her body against his. The scent of her hair. The gentle weight of her cheek on his chest.

Though they’d spent an inordinate amount of time in each other’s company, he’d been careful,socareful, not to fan the sparks of his ever-present desire into an inferno that might reduce them both to naught but ash.

Three days.

Threedays and he’d spread her naked upon a bed and not let her up until neither of them could move. Then they’d eat, rest, and do it all again.

Three eternal,infernaldays.

Her rapid breaths against him had begun to slow as she took the comfort his embrace offered her. Not for the first time, Piers found himself thanking the stars that thiseccentric, impulsive woman had proposed to him. His marriage, while fraught with danger both physical and emotional, had exceeded his expectations in almost every aspect.

Not that his expectations had been particularly high.