Page 113 of How to Love a Duke in Ten Days

“If the headmaster was murdered, Lady Throckmorton, who would you hazard did it?” he asked idly, glad the dig site drew near.

“It’s obvious who did it.” Julia twisted her lips, blue eyes sparkling at Alexandra. “I’ve always known.”

The fingers on his jacket became talons as his wife leaned toward the smug woman opposite her. “Who?” she demanded.

Julia quirked her lip, gorging on the rapt attention. “Either his lover or…”

CHAPTERTWENTY-ONE

Or the groundskeeper.

Alexandra pried her clenched teeth apart and rubbed at her aching jaw. She glanced up from the crate of bones she’d classified and categorized in front of her to watch her husband dip a ladle into the water bucket.

Julia’s words had been running through her mind all afternoon.

De Marchand hadn’t been killed by a lover, but a victim. And buried by the groundskeeper.

Did Julia know? Or did her words exhume a whisper of truth Alexandra would rather remain buried?

That the groundskeeper wasn’t as trustworthy as they’d all suspected.

Jean-Yves had been among the workers at the tombs these past four days, watching her alertly and smiling when he caught her eye.

Just as he did now.

Alexandra did her best to smile back at him, though theattempt felt brittle and tense. It unnerved her to have the man touch elbows with her husband.

Could his expression of geniality hide a deeper greed or malevolence?

She would find out on the morrow.

With the tunnels and vaulted crypt completely secured, Redmayne and Forsythe hauled the crates she’d packed with various sundries, artifacts, armor, and, as soon as she could finish dusting and chipping away some remnants of the burial shroud, the bones of Ivar Redmayne.

She’d have worked a great deal faster if she’d not been plagued by infernal distractions all day, not the least of which had been her barbarian husband.

He’d been moving stones and earth all morning before aiding Forsythe and the engineers as they fortified the final tunnel into the Redmayne Crypt.

Sweat glistened at his hairline and painted his tawny neck with a lustrous gleam in the lanternlight. One more button of his smudged ivory shirt had come undone, revealing the dramatic swells of his pectorals.

Quite suddenly, she became aware of the dryness of her own mouth, now plagued with a powerful thirst. One the water might not quench.

She refused to watch. Refused towant.

There was simply too much to do. Too much at stake. Too much to ponder over and worry about beyond his diverting feats of unbridled masculine strength.

Besides, he’d been absolutely insufferable all afternoon, turning every burdened journey down the tunnel into a rivalry, insisting upon shouldering the heaviest load.

At one point he’d actually foisted upon Forsythe a crate of animal bones, with some snide remark about how bones were hollow and light. Then he’d promptly lifted a cratethe size of a small horse packed with iron weapons and jogged—jogged!—down the tunnel.

Was it any wonder he nearly drank the entire bucket of spring water?

Alexandra couldn’t decide who she was more churlish toward. Him for acting like a self-important, teenaged ass, or her for being impressed by it.

On top of everything, Julia enjoyed the spectacle immensely. That is, when she wasn’t insisting upon wandering about the various rooms, touching everything, fiddling with mechanisms, and asking incessant, inane questions of both her and Forsythe.

And speaking of poor Dr. Forsythe, once his masculinity was called into question in front of his workers and two women, he’d done his best to match Redmayne lift for lift and load for load.

Between all of this, the responsibility for a delicate skeleton, and a blackmail letter scalding her through her skirt pockets, Alexandra thought she might expire from the rein she’d held on her temper. Tension coiled her muscles as tight as a springboard, and a headache had begun to crawl from her shoulders and into her neck, threatening to winch a vise around her temples.