Page 26 of How to Love a Duke in Ten Days

Puzzling patterns of colorful skirts twirled into the old courtyard as a trio of ladies, their chins all tilted to the sky, frolicked like a tumble of exuberant schoolgirls.

A feminine exclamation struck a chord of enthusiastic recognition in Piers that traveled all the way down to his sex. “Look at this place! It’s a thousand years if it’s a day. I’m itching to dig into the walls, to see what secrets are buried here.”

Alexandra Lane.

The sight of her took the rhythm from his step, and he nearly tripped on a barnacle-crusted stone.

The sound of her unselfconscious laugh pilfered the breath from his lungs.

And when she’d noticed his approach, something hot and guilty in her garnet eyes stole a full beat from his heart.

What a little thief she turned out to be.

Awareness pulsed through the brined air between them.

She sank into the safety of her compatriots, rousing them from their investigation of a nest residing in a crumbling embrasure.

He’d not recognized Lady Francesca Cavendish until he’d joined them in the old courtyard, which was now little more than a meadow.

“Your Grace,” the countess greeted in surprise. “I thought our appointment wasn’t for another hour or so.”

“Ladies.” He bowed.

Alexandra’s auburn brows drew together with an expression both astonished and troubled. “Your… Grace?”

Their gazes shifted in unison. They’d both noted the glint of metal from behind the old portcullis. The movement of a forearm. The unmistakable click of a hammer.

“Get down!” he bellowed.

Alexandra hurled her body toward the other two women, knocking them back just as a pistol blast joined the din of the hunting rifles in the distance.

Most of the guests awake at this hour were shooting pheasant in the forest beyond the grounds.

A brilliant time for a murder.

All three women had appeared to avoid injury. They scrambled to their feet and ran for what had once been the medieval armory, now a crumbling wall covered in ivy.

Piers launched himself at the gunman, breaking his firing arm before the volley had finished echoing through the stones.

The subsequent violence was, admittedly, self-indulgent, but Piers couldn’t stop his fists from slamming into the face of the assailant again and again.

And once more.

As the skin of his knuckles split against a stranger’s jaw, Piers tried to think of a more satisfying sensation than the impact of flesh and the crunch of bone beneath his fists.

Nothing came to mind.

There was fucking, he supposed. But he could think of no lover, mistress, nor whore who provided the kind of unadulterated release as did delivering a well-deserved beating.

Not these days, anyhow.

Power. In this arena, the physical one, he wielded it. He studied it. Hebecamepower. Primal and potent. It no longer had to be something he danced with. Something he was shackled to. Something to run to the farthest corners of Blighty to escape.

Strength gathered in his sinews and flowed through the arrangement of his motion. It bulged in the cords and ropes of muscle he’d built maneuvering through countries where the environs were just as lethal as the locals and the lions.

And almost as lethal as he.

Almost.