Page 46 of How to Love a Duke in Ten Days

Because I was raped. Because Cecelia’s father was cruel and Francesca watched men in masks slaughter everyone she loved.What draw had the opposite sex after all that? Besides, were they to marry, their lives, their dreams, and their money would no longer be their own. Because—until now—no one was willing to pay the price for the protection a husband could provide.

None of them had needed to.

“For reasons, innumerable,” she muttered.

He made a droll sound. “No doubt. Well, I’m not ignorant of the fact that the countess would rather kiss a toad every night than my malformed lips. I suppose she’ll have to let the duchess stipend and subsequent heir bonuses ease the misery of being a casualty of my vengeance.”

“Duchess stipend?” Alexandra lowered her whisky glass to rest on the marble ledge of the veranda.

“It’s an antiquated practice, I know, but her indulgent father insisted upon it.” He smirked. “A lurid sum of money, even by my standards.”

Alexandra clutched the railing. He must have known he was being terribly uncouth to speak of it. And yet, none of their interactions had resembled anything close to propriety.

Why start now?

A duchess stipend… A lurid amount of money.

A soft thud and a strange click from the direction of the duchess’s rooms drew both their notice, and Alexandra had to make a desperate move to keep him from investigating.

Panicking, she spouted the first thing that had come to mind. “What happened to your face?”

To her relief and chagrin, it worked. He turned back to level her with the kind of examination one tended to save for whatever was being crushed beneath a microscope.

“Oh, I’ve offended you, haven’t I?” Why was she forever doing that? Blurting out the most ridiculous things.

The duke reached up and slid his mask away, revealing his scars. “You mean you don’t believe I’m a werewolf?” he asked, his eyes glinting a dark azure challenge in the night. “Or a demon?”

She could believe both of those things.

God’s bones but there was something… inhuman about him. Something at once bestial and ethereal. Primal and preternatural. Elegant and enigmatic.

How could such a paradox of a man exist?

And why did he bedevil her so?

“I don’t believe in curses or demons,” she reiterated. “Are not men monstrous enough?”

For a moment he said nothing, and then, “A jaguar came upon our company in the night whilst on a hunt in Peru. It swiped at me, I shot at it. We wounded each other. Not a very exciting story.”

Alexandra took a drink, trying to imagine the pain of such a predator’s claws flaying open one’s face. He was lucky to have kept both eyes.

He was lucky to be alive.

“The wounds refused to heal,” he continued. “And then I came down with such a terrible fever, no one expected me to survive. I even sent a good-bye letter to my fiancée.”

“To Francesca?”

“No, no, I’d forgotten Francesca existed. For the first ten years after her family’s death, it was barely agreedupon that she’d survived that fire. And once her survival had been established, our fathers were both dead, and she was naught but a girl I’d never met on a faraway shore. No, until very recently, I’d fancied myself in love with another.” He drank deeply, finishing his whisky in two swallows. “I thought to spare both Francesca and myself from an unhappy match by declaring the silly contract void years ago. Your friend seemed eager enough to do the same.”

“What changed your mind?”

“I returned three months to the day after I’d written the farewell letter, to find my fiancée married to my cousin, the next in line to the Redmayne duchy.” He stared at the bottom of his glass, as though lamenting its emptiness.

“That’s… why you resurrected the contract with Francesca?” The pieces of the puzzle began to fit neatly together. Francesca’s summons truly had nothing to do with her past, and everything to do with his.

Redmayne nodded, guilt playing a thief with his gaze. “Your friend overcame the reputation of death as miraculously as I did. Noble marriages have been built on less. To be honest, any lady of lineage would do. I don’t want a particular woman. I want what only a woman—a wife—can provide me.”

“An heir,” Alexandra whispered.