Page 93 of How to Love a Duke in Ten Days

“Well, you’d best make that a very obscure quote, indeed.” He leaned back, a deep breath filling his deeper chest. “Because if I guess that one, then I’ll get to choose whatyoudo tome.”

Alexandra might have choked if she hadn’t just swallowedhard. Setting the empty glass down, she lamented how improper it would be to ask for another. As if she’d summoned him with the thought, the maître d’ was there with a decanter and an obliging smile.

Bless him.

If she were lucky, the wine would lend her bravado.

She searched her thoughts for excerpts both apropos and somewhat obscure, while remaining fair.

“‘O, beware, my lord, of jealousy,’” she warned, “‘it is the green-eyed monster which doth mock. The meat it feeds on…’”

He made a wry sound, his eyes shifting as though searching through his memory. “While uncommonly wise, Shakespeare didn’t have my faithless mother, nor did he have Rose in his past. Though he had a Rosaline…” The uninjured side of his lip lifted rather triumphantly.

Drat.She’d gone too easy. Everyone knew Shakespeare.

Something he’d said tugged at her. “You don’t speak of your parents often,” she observed. “And when you do mention your mother, it’s most unfavorably.” She didn’t follow her observation with a question, but he replied as though she had.

“My mother was cruel and my father was weak. They made each other miserable. My mother chipped away at his heart—his soul—with broken vows, frivolous flirtations, and callous dalliances until there was nothing left. Until he’d become such an empty husk of a man, he ended his own life.”

“I’m sorry. How awful.” Alexandra fought to school the pity from her gaze, sensing it had no place in this conversation. But her heart ached for him. For his distraught father.

“It was a long time ago.” His tone remained impassive.Lighthearted, even. But he sawed at his food, stabbing at it as though it’d disrespected him most egregiously.

“They say time heals all wounds, don’t they?” She expelled a caustic breath, her own fork idly scraping across the plate. “And I suppose that’s true to a point. But there is no mistaking the scars…”

She searched his face, his sinister, scarred face, thinking that perhaps his own heart bore the remnants of unseen wounds just as grievous.

Was it any wonder he was so cynical? So distrustful of women. He’d watched his mother destroy a kind and beloved father, and subsequently fell in love with a woman just as faithless as she had been.

“I’d rather not speak of parents and the past.” He waved his hand, brushing the distasteful subject aside.

“Now let me see…” He considered her for a moment. “I must ponder when and where it pleases me most to kiss you next, as I’ve won the first prize of three.”

“Kiss me where on my person… or where geographically?” she asked, pressing her hands to cheeks that were flushed and hot even through the silk of her gloves.

“An excellent question,” he purred.

Alexandra glared at him, taking extra time with her next bite as she contemplated her next quote.

“Consider that you might want me to win this, wife.” Sin colored the timbre of his voice in decadent, velvet notes, seeming to even darken the candles flickering over their feast.

Did she?

It was a dangerous thing, she was beginning to realize, to underestimate the Terror of Torcliff in any arena, physical or otherwise.

“Tell me,” he continued, covering the hand she’d restedon the table. “Does the thought of being at my mercy entice you?”

Alexandra froze. How could she say yes? The thought of being at his mercy terrified her, as he was a man most famouslywithoutmercy.

And yet. How could she say no?

Because she’d be that much more a liar.

Locking eyes with his, she said, “‘Teach me to feel another’s woe, to hide the fault I see, that mercy I to others show, that mercy show to me.’”

His eyes narrowed, darted this way and that, as though grappling with his own memory behind them.

She had him,she thought triumphantly. She’d bested him.