Page 84 of How to Love a Duke in Ten Days

“Unfortunately,” he continued drolly. “The fact remains thatmyheir needs to be born of your body. And, as impertinent as you might find it, I must be certain any issue of yours belongs to me. Thus, we can forbear each other’s company for ten days or so; I’m certain you won’t find that too much of a chore.”

“I wouldn’t resent forestalling our intimacies to ease your mind,” she said carefully.

“Of course you wouldn’t.” He swiped up his coffee cup and stared into the grounds at the bottom, as though wishing to divine the future in their depths.

“I confess to being confused by your logic,” she admitted.

He slid her a level glance. “How so?”

“Well, if we avoid the marriage bed for now, it’ll be proven that I am not with another man’s child at this time,” she began. “But when I conceive in the future, how can you—or any man, for that matter—be certain that a child belongs to him. There’s no way to tell.”

“I’d know,” he growled.

“You couldn’t possibly.” Her brow puckered. “It’s something that, as a scientist, I’ve always found odd about our society compared to many of the ancients. A name follows that of the male line, however, one only has categorical proof that a child is the product of a woman’s body. No man can be absolutely certain a child is of his line, that his wife hasn’t taken a lover, unless he’s with her every moment of every—”

With a furious burst of strength, Redmayne hurled his cup overboard. It sailed through the air, reflecting the sunlight with every rotation until it splashed into the water and disappeared.

Alexandra stared at the place it sank, not daring to meet the dangerously glinting eyes now boring a hole into the side of her head even as he bent to grit into her ear, “I’d.Know.”

She turned her face, her cheek meeting his, grazing the grains of his beard. She expected him to pull away, but he didn’t. The absurd notion to rub against him like a cat rose within her, and she drew her cheek across his.

“I wouldn’t,” she whispered against him. To any onlooker, they’d appear to be the besotted newlyweds, nuzzling each other beneath the French sun. “Take a lover, that is. I don’t betray my vows. I hope you can trust that.”

His cynical grunt was hot against her neck, as he rooted into the hollow behind her ear, inhaling against her hair. “There’s no reason to trust you,” he lamented, his fingers curling around her arms to draw her closer. “And I probably never will.”

“Why?” she asked, breathing him in, as well. His exotic scent mixed with the brine of the sea, intoxicating her. What a strange conversation to be having with their mouths, when their bodies reacted to each other’s proximity in such a conflicting way. “Why do you doubt I am in earnest?”

“Do you trustmyword?” he challenged, his mustache tickling at her neck before his lips pressed there. “When you know next to nothing about me?”

She hesitated. He was right. What did she know of him? She’d no idea if he was truly a man to be trusted. Not with her body. Her past. Her secrets.

Her life.

She knew the smell of his sweat was anything but repellent. That she liked to sink her hands beneath the lapels of his jacket just so she could shape her fingers over the breadth of his chest. That for such a big man, he had yet to use his strength against her. Even in anger. And that horses allowed him to be their master. That an extra sense of such beasts could often pick up the measure of a man.

Jean-Yves had a dog whose ears would flatten, and lips would curl, at the presence of Headmaster de Marchand.

It should have been a warning.

But the horses and hounds at Castle Redmayne, they responded to Piers’s firm lead because of his alternate gentility with them.

The beasts trusted him.

Shouldn’t that count for something?

“Perhaps, my lord, rather than avoiding each other for ten days, we could spend our honeymoon in each other’s company?” she suggested.

He stiffened and pulled away.

She missed him instantly.

“That really isn’t necessary. What would be the point?”

“Well, if we are to be Duke and Duchess of Redmayne. If we are to raise a child—children—together it might be easier if we are better acquainted. Friendly, even.”

He tossed his head in an almost equine manner. “Dukes don’t generally have much of a hand in raising their own children.”

“No…” she acquiesced. “But Redmayne, while very grand, isn’t like modern vast estates so it’s unlikely you’ll be able to avoid them. Or me.”