Page 16 of How to Love a Duke in Ten Days

“You are lucky,” he clipped, grasping her hand. “I think you shaved twenty years off my life in twenty seconds.”

“What do you think you are doing?” She tried to snatch her hand away, but he held fast, relieving her of her traveling gloves.

“Searching for rope burns.” He spread her fingers wide with rough thumbs, examining her upturned palms. “Your gloves were but scraps of nothing.”

“I am unharmed,” she protested, trying to ignore how warm his skin felt against hers, despite the rain. How small and pale her hands appeared when cupped in his rough, square paws.

How fiendishly strong his fingers were. How helpless she’d be against that strength.

She yanked on his grip with unnecessary violence, tightening her hands into fists and hiding them in her skirts. “As—as I stated before, I’ll live.”

“So it would seem.” A wet chill replaced the warmth his hands had provided, matching the frigid note in his voice.

Alexandra forced herself to look into eyes as electric blue as the lightning, a crystalline clearness almost void of color, and no less sinister for the features into whichthey’d been set. The scars had something to do with that, certainly.

The shortest of the wounds branched from the dark hairline at his temple and interrupted his eyebrow. Had his dark hair, slicked back by rain, not concealed the wound, she wagered she could follow it high into his scalp. The longest fissure blazed across a sharp cheekbone into a well-kept beard, appearing again as a merciless gash through his lush lips.

Lush?Great Caesar and his glory, had she struck her head?

Alexandra blinked once. And again. Unsuccessfully attempting to tear her gaze from his mouth. Lips so soft simply didn’tbelongon a face so brutish as his. The incongruity both perplexed and compelled her.

“Are you able to stand?” His tone turned as wintry as the storm.

He’d caught her staring.

Alexandra snapped her eyes shut in mortification. He probably assumed she’d been gawking rather than admiring.

Not that shehadbeen admiring.

Shehadn’t—wasn’t—wouldn’tdreamof—

His hands manacled her arms, but before she could draw a breath of protest they were both on their feet. He released her the moment they were upright.

Alexandra reeled, her world pitching as much from the brief physical contact as the abrupt change of posture. She reached for the post to steady herself, and instead found a disc of hot muscle stretched beneath cool, wet linen. His chest twitched beneath her palm, as if the touch had surprised him as mightily as it did her.

She snatched her hand back into the cradle of her ownchest. The warmth of his flesh again lingered, she noted with no little alarm.

“F-forgive me, I’m a little unsteady.”

“Are you certain you don’t need a doctor?” He stepped forward, concern etching his scars deeper as his arms reached out to provide a buffer should she fall.

Alexandra shifted out of his reach most ungracefully. “No!” She put up a hand to stop him, fully aware how useless it was to try. No world existed in which her feeble strength could be pitted against his in her favor. “No, I—I am quite unharmed. See? No need to concern yourself further.”

Lord, she couldn’t look at him again. He was simply too big. Too—male. Despite his cultured accent, he didn’t appear at all civilized. Indeed, he could have belonged to the scores of rowdy and robust men her professors had hired to protect them in unknown countries.

Men she’d spent a decade doing her best to avoid.

A silent and solemn stare made most anyone uncomfortable enough to flee her presence. It’d worked on everyone from desert marauders to determined matrons with notions of a convenient marriage for their sons. She’d wielded it with some expertise for years now.

So, why couldn’t she make herself lift her eyes from the mist? Why did the warmth of his skin linger in such a strange fashion? Why did her lungs still refuse to fully inflate?

Perhaps shedidneed a doctor.

“I’m trying to decide if you’re incredibly brave or exceptionally stupid.” His imperious tone broke her stupor.

Her eyes snapped to his, her fears shoved behind indignation. “I beg your pardon?”

“What were you thinking trying to control a beast ofMercury’s proportions? You saw what he did to that idiot porter and the lad is half again your size!” His frown deepened the interruption of the scar on his lip.