Page 2 of How to Love a Duke in Ten Days

He’d discovered the cave.

The Ecole de Chardonne for girls had originally been built into the side of Mont Pèlerin as a clever château-fortress by a Frankish aristocrat in the eleventh century. In its depths, the boiler churned and roared, and during a night of exploration four years prior, Alexandra had chanced upon a labyrinthine walkway which, when bravely followed, became less of a hallway and more of a cave until it abruptly ended at a wall of ivy and thorn bushes.

Here, she and her dearest friends, Francesca Cavendish and Cecelia Teague, had created a haven for their Red Rogues Society. Red, because they all had hair of some variant shade of such. Rogues, because they spent every moment away from their so-called lady’s education, to learn all the things not allowed their sex. They read Poe and Dumas, war reports, and lascivious poetry. They taught themselves Latin and algebra. They’d even giveneach other masculine monikers which they used during their society gatherings and in correspondence. Frank, Cecil, and Alexander.

They’d become too bold over the years, Alexandra realized as she stared at the port decanter gripped in the headmaster’s hand. In their quest to discover and enjoy manly pleasures and pastimes denied ladies, they’d taken to occasionally pilfering a thing or two from the few male residents and employees at de Chardonne. Innocuous things, they thought. Things that would never be missed.

Like one of any dozen of decanters the headmaster possessed.

“Port is not a drink one offers a lady,” he started. “But I think you’ve developed a taste for forbidden things, have you not?” An almost giddy satisfaction dripped from de Marchand as he offered her the glass. “A hunger for pleasures only allowed to men.”

Dumbstruck, Alexandra could think of nothing else to say or do but accept the wine with white, trembling fingers. She dared not take a sip. She couldn’t have swallowed if she tried.

“You assumed no one knew about your little society all these years?” he scoffed gently. “Your trio of redheads. The fat one with all the wealth and no title. The scrawny, impertinent countess.”

Indignation flooded her at his valuation of her compatriots, enough to free her tongue. “I don’t at all consider that a fair assessment of—”

“Andyou,” he said with ungainly, almost accusatory heat. “The flawless balance of both. Slim, but supple. Delicate and desirable.”

Alexandra’s dinner roiled in her stomach.

De Marchand stepped back behind his desk and pulled open a drawer.

“It isn’t appropriate of you to say such things, sir. My father wouldn’t appreciate—”

The sight of the pearl-handled shaving razor halted her breathing, and as de Marchand began to produce the contraband she and her friends had acquired over the years, a strangling sensation paralyzed her.

A pair of braces, a top hat, cuff links, shirts, and several other incidentals. They hadn’t all been his, and many others had been castoffs.

Even so.

She hated that he’d been to their cave, that he’d defiled their sanctum with his odious presence. She resented him for touching things that, although not hers to begin with, had become treasures.

Treasures the Red Rogues had fully intended to return upon graduating.

“Four years.” The number seemed to impress him as he placed the items in a cluster at the edge of his desk in measured, meaningful motions. “You stole from me when you didn’t think anyone was watching. You delved into my intimate things.Forbiddenthings.”

A slither of oily disgust oozed through her insides, snaking around her guts and tightening them painfully.

His head shook in barely perceptible motions. “We are more alike than you’d imagine, Lady Alexandra. I, too, have a penchant for forbidden things.”

Forbidden.

As forbidden as what lurked in his ever-present dark eyes upon her.

His stare had become a chill permanently lodged in her spine. And that chill kept her posture ramrod straight as she stood before him. It readied her limbs for retreat.

“So clever,” he repeated. “But not clever enough to have known I watched you.”

“I do know you watch me, sir.” She’d been aware of it since she’d been too young to recognize just what glimmered in his eyes. A desire not onlyforbidden,but criminal. “More than is seemly. More than is right.”

“Let us not dwell on what is right or wrong.” He motioned to her stolen goods. “I’ve watched you enough to find your eyes search for me, as well.”

A breath of disbelief escaped her. “Only like a rabbit searches the sky for an eagle.”

“You think me a predator, then?”

Indignation scored at her. He wanted her to fear him. “I don’t think of you, at all, sir.”