Page 31 of How to Love a Duke in Ten Days

At this, she leveled him an anxious, searching gaze. “Can you?”

“I certainly intend to find out,” he muttered.

Her free hand crept to the cravat at her throat. She tugged and fidgeted with it as if to struggle for a few nervous swallows of air. That didn’t seem to help, so she pressed a glove to her cheek, then to her forehead, then dropped it back to her side to bury it in her skirts.

Despite the bracing breeze still carrying the scent of last night’s storm, a sheen of perspiration bloomed at her hairline. She had surpassed anxious and was leaving frightened behind her in the race toward true terror.

A strange and unprecedented urge welled within him, unsettling him almost as much as the sight of the pistol had.

The yearning was ludicrous—he wanted nothing more than to take her hands in his and smooth away her trembling. He wanted to…holdher, to offer comfort that he, himself, had never received.

He shook away the notion, landing on a constructive approach.

Misdirection.

“What snakes did you shoot?” he asked. “Some sort of cobra, no doubt.”

“Snakes?” It took several seconds for the glaze of confusion to clear from her eyes before she answered. “N-no, there weren’t as many cobras in Egypt as one is led to believe. Where our company camped near the lighthouse of Alexandria, we were mostly plagued with horned vipers. Th-they’d, um…” She took a shaking breath, lifting the gun hand to toy with her hair only to discover she still held it. Guiltily, she lowered it to point at the ground.

Piers let out the breath he’d caught, using all his self-control not to snatch it from her.

“They were prevalent, these devil vipers?” he prodded, sensing she’d lost her place in the conversation.

“Yes.” She refused to lift her eyes. “Yes, and they matched the startling white of the sand, and so it was almost impossible to see them until it was too late.”

“I imagine you became quite the markswoman during your tenure there.” He said this just as much for his benefit as for hers, as she’d seemed to again forget about the weapon clutched in her hand.

“Actually, no, I didn’t have much use for my pistol once I adopted Anubis.”

“A dog?”

“A cat.”

He pulled up short, causing Merc to toss his head. “I’ll admit to not being the best pupil as a boy, but isn’t Anubis a god with a dog’s head?”

“Yes. But Anubis somehow looked like the statues of him… and acted like a dog.”

“How so?”

A twitch at the corner of her tight mouth compromised her frown. “She’d pounce on them, seizing the snakes behind their head and shaking the stuffing out of them. I know cats are predators. But I swear I’ve never seen the like.”

“She?” Piers echoed. “Where is this wondrous cat now? I should like to take a holiday to visit her.”

A fond half-smile softened her lips, though her voice contained a melancholy note when she said, “I left her with a little orphan girl named Akasha in Egypt.”

“What for? We’ve plenty of snakes in England she could happily slaughter.”

“I thought Anubis would get rather cold here.”

Piers gestured to the lazy summer grasses and thewarmth of the afternoon tempered by sea breezes. “Plenty of felines seem to do well despite our climate.”

“Well, certainly, but they’re English cats, aren’t they? Anubis didn’t have any fur.”

Piers gave a melodramatic gasp. “A naked cat? I’ve never heard of such a thing.” He had, of course, but he’d begun to pull her away from the cavern of fear she’d been edging on only a moment ago.

“They’re called sphinx cats,” she said in the voice of a professor at a lectern. “They’re incredibly rare and are considered to be most holy.”

He clicked his tongue and chuffed. “You’re putting me on.”