Page 114 of How to Love a Duke in Ten Days

Forsythe joined Redmayne at the water bucket, waiting his turn. At this late afternoon hour, he appeared nigh close to death, sweat-drenched and red-faced as she’d never seen him.

Taking pity on him, she offered a conciliatory smile, one he returned with a bit of his old winsome vigor before Julia distracted him.

Noticing their shared moment, Redmayne set his ladle down, stalking toward her with that loose-limbed, feral grace of his.

At the possessive heat in his gaze, Alexandra almost dropped the femur, so she returned her own gaze firmly to her work, refusing to mark his approach even as he leaned down to address her.

“You may offer him your pretty smiles, wife,” he growled low in her ear, “because your pretty moans and sighs are mine.”

Ignoring the burst of butterfly wings in her womb, Alexandra glanced up sharply to make certain Forsythe hadn’t heard his salacious comment on the other side of the cavern.

The doctor’s head was bent toward a cooing Julia, seemingly inured to them.

Alexandra whirled on her husband, shaking the femur at him like the finger of an impassioned politician.

And quite forgot what she was going to say.

Must heinsiston smelling so appealing all the time? Even hissweatwas alluring. Clean and sharp with hints of leather, earth, and a salty, masculine musk.

Instead of castigating him for tormenting her thus forfour days,she whispered curtly, “You’re being unkind.”

His large shoulder lifted in ambivalence as he bent to press his lips to her aching jaw. “I’m being honest,” he rumbled.

“You’rebeingridiculous.”

“Now who is unkind?” he teased, rooting into her hair to nuzzle at the downy skin behind her ear.

She swatted him away, not because she wanted to, but because she understood the dangers of his intoxicating touch.

“This is the last of it.” To distract him, she held out his umpteenth-great-grandfather’s impressive thigh bone to him. “I’ll admit, the men of the Redmayne line certainly share a remarkable physical structure. Down to their verybones. Ivar would have been mere inches shorter than you, but I’d wager he was equally thick and burly. Also, his teeth were healthy, as I’ve noted yours are.”

He ran his tongue over wolfish incisors, testing their health as his eyes twinkled the color of the Baltic Sea on a clear day. “A man might dine upon such poetic compliments from his lady wife.” He sighed dramatically.

She frowned, refusing to be charmed by his good humor. “I’ve found a few healed broken bones, likely suffered in battle,” she continued. “But for one on his tibia from when he was a child. Other than that, he was a robust man, even his knees were intact and his joints healthy. His cause of death would have had to have been something to do with his organs, because his bones show no signs of deterioration or disease. At least not upon initial inspection.”

“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 expectanyman 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 onlyheconsidered a rival.

The nerve of him. The unmitigatedgall.

“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.