Page 119 of How to Love a Duke in Ten Days

It had taken some doing to intimidate her into submitting to an examination in the next tent over. Her hands had been abraded, but what other injuries could she have sustained?

Trying to rescue him.

“What makes you think that?” he asked of Giuseppe.

“Do you not speak of love?” The elder man’s impertinence rankled him, and he cast him a warning glare. He didn’t dare speak, as his blood ran hot. His temper high. And a thousand foul words sprang to his tongue.

The medic wisely moved on. “It’s quite apparent she is utterly besotted with you.”

“Because she tried to save my life?”

The older man had eyed him as though he’d never met a man so dense. “If she didn’t love you, she would not have slapped you twice.”

Piers had looked away then, so the observant man wouldn’t see his heart glowing through his eyes.

The medic wasn’t privy to the extraordinary circumstances of their marriage. Nor the extent of their denied passion. Nor the unfeasibility of trust between them.

However, he’d been right about one thing.

She’d slapped him twice.

Because she cared.

The sting of her palm still lingered on his cheek. And every time he marked it, an absurd smile threatened to engulf his entire face.

He’d fought it the entire way back to the hotel, unwilling to allow her to see it. She’d be unable to interpret the expression, and he wasn’t ready or willing to discuss it.

In fact, they didn’t speak much in the carriage, but her hands, more scraped than wounded and thus not warranting bandages, remained firmly tucked within his own.

When he found the culprit, the bastard would pay in five times the blood for every single scratch on her perfect skin.

They sat hip to hip, her head resting on his shoulder. It was as though some polymer or adhesive had grown between them, resisting any separation.

He barely felt a twinge in his leg as he swept her down from the carriage and mounted the steps into the grand lobby.

“Your Grace.” The desk clerk called as they passed him, holding out a slim piece of paper. “You’ve a telegram.”

“Later,” he barked, mounting the first stair.

He was alive. She was alive. That fact, so often taken for granted, scorched a fire through his veins that he meant to quench with her body.

Ten days be damned.

What mattered other than that she cared? That he yearned?

He’d spend an indecent number of hours bathing her. Bathing with her. All her creamy, sweet skin slick with soap beneath his hands. He could only imagine her slipping her lithe body against, over, and around his. He’d wash every soft and feminine crevice, conducting a thorough examination with his hands, and then his mouth.

Would she do the same? Would she discover him as shescrubbed the grit from his body? His cock reacted with such violence to the thought, he suppressed a groan and quickened his pace.

He wanted—no—neededher hands on him. Small, elegant hands. So efficient and competent, used to intricate work and detailed exertion.

He needed her spread open on the bed beneath him. Wide and bare and without restraint.

Tonight, he was going to—

“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.