Chapter Eleven

The crowd hadn't yet dispersed, but Magnus looped his arm through Alexandra's and steered her deftly through a pair of tall,

scrupulously groomed hedges onto a path, whereupon they undertook a somewhat circuitous route toward where the carriage waited

for them.

Alexandra assumed the point was to evade any straggling well-wishers. Presently the hubbub of voices gave way to the songs

of birds and the wind rushing through the trees.

He hadn't dropped his arm. Her hand didn't seem to want to relinquish its light grip upon it, either.

"Were you surprised to hear about the Letters Patent?" she asked.

"Yes, damn the man for springing it upon me," Magnus said good-naturedly enough.

Alexandra laughed.

"I'm so pleased for you, Magnus," she said gently. Almost shyly.

He nodded. His expression was abstracted, somber.

"Congratulations, Countess," he said quietly.

And in that moment, regardless of all that had transpired between them: she was moved, suffused with his awe and triumph as surely as if it was her own. This boy who had once emptied slops was now a peer of the realm, outranking her own father. It was tempting to call it miraculous, but Magnus had earned every single honor along the way with sweat and blood, and in so doing he had conferred this honor upon her, too, though she felt she patently didn't deserve it. In that moment she fervently wished for him that he had never laid eyes on her, so that she would not have devastated him, so that nothing would taint the glory of this moment for him.

What's done was done. She wondered if he currently entertained similar thoughts—wishing he'd never laid eyes on her—but then

thought, perhaps not. He was the one who claimed life was too short to waste a moment on regrets. He wanted to move on with

his life, and he'd decided to do it without her.

"Mr. Lawler will send by messenger documents for you to review regarding the New York property, so you should receive them

this afternoon. I'll have the carriage take you back to The Grand Palace on the Thames, and I'll get a hack to White's. I've

a meeting with a number of gentlemen there. Earl or no, I'm a respecter of rules. So of course I'll endeavor to return in

time for dinner, as the rules, and my admiration for the food at The Grand Palace at the Thames, demand."

"Very well. Thank you."

Her answer was a bit delayed. She realized her head had gone slowly, increasingly muzzy from the delicious feel of his big arm looped through hers.

The gold top of his walking stick winked in the sun as they strolled in silence for some time, just like this, the wind rushing

through the trees like a crowd cheering the new Earl and Countess of Montcroix.

They were both wordless for a long stretch, as if strolling arm in arm was something illicit. Or perhaps because, oddly, strolling

with him seemed as wholly satisfying as conversation. A complete activity. She found she did not want to forego this homely

pleasure, regardless of its transience. Regardless of whether it had begun for the sake of appearances. It might never happen

again.

Suddenly he gave a short laugh. "I was just nearly lashed by one of your bonnet ribbons. Such an unjust punishment for a national

hero."

She hadn't realized they'd come entirely undone again. "My apologies. But I'm afraid I had no choice. My reputation for mercilessness

precedes me."

He laughed again. "Stop a moment," he suggested amiably.

She obligingly came to a halt.

He pivoted to stand before her, snatching the ends of her fluttering ribbons from the air.

She stood patiently still.

He was leisurely about tying them. So oddly peaceful to be tended by such a large man.

He was doing it, she understood in a flash, be cause he wanted to render service. Specifically to her. He wanted to care. It was his nature.

She didn't know why watching him, his face absorbed, somberly go about tying her ribbon should make her heart contract with

a bittersweet sort of pain.

He ought to have had a family to care for.

"I don't know how I manage to do it," she faltered. "I'm forever turning my head to look at things, I suppose, and in all

that vigorous motion they just gradually undo themselves."

"There's so much to see," he commiserated absently as he pulled the satin into a bow. "Who could blame you?"

This was both true and a little silly, and suddenly they were smiling at each other.

There's so much to see.

That was precisely it. Figuratively and literally.

Because a realization had been settling slowly into place. The faint lines at the corners of his eyes, the scars, the hard

chiseled edges and the soft sensual ones, the thick, stern brows—none of his features were precisely traditionally beautiful,

but everything was exactly right. And this, paradoxically, seemed like the very definition of beauty. She could not look away.

She didn't know how this had come to pass, and it unnerved her utterly.

"There." His fingertips lightly, momentarily rested on the bow he'd just tied.

"Thank you. You are better at tying than untying."

He gave a short laugh, then, as a seeming afterthought, he gently grasped either side of her bonnet and tugged it gently to adjust it.

And as he dropped his arms to his sides again, his fingertips slowly feathered over the downy hairs at her nape.

Such a remarkably subtle thing.

So very deliberate.

So absolutely devastating.

A quicksilver rush of heat poured from the nape of her neck right down through the center of her and pooled between her legs

in a shocking, sharp pulse of lust.

She was fairly certain her nipples were erect.

She stared at him, stunned.

Her skin seemed to be humming softly, as though he'd called it to life like a choir director.

And that's when she realized that he must have been noticing those minute changes in her sensual awareness of him, too, blooming

in her like her own secret spring.

And now...

Was he testing her?

Or testing himself?

His eyes were so dark now: all pupil. His face was somber and taut.

Her mind flashed to the first moment he'd seen her. That remarkable stillness, as if he needed to brace himself to accommodate

the fact of her. His stillness last night, when she'd emerged from her room. That compliment.

Looking at him now, she had a sense for the first time of the sheer force of everything he kept leashed. It waited there, just below his surface.

And all at once she was suspended between exhilaration and fear.

"Did you love him?" His voice was low. A little gruff.

The question shocked her so thoroughly her mind went momentarily blank.

He asked it as though this was a continuation of that conversation they'd held in the semi-dark garden years ago.

Then again, in many ways, that conversation had never ended. It was the undertone of every word they said, in every single

moment they'd spent together since then.

It had been, in many ways, the thread which had wound through her entire life since her wedding night.

And now her heart was rabbit-kicking away in her chest.

She stared at him. Stunned at the astonishing quality and timing of the ambush. Then of course, he was the strategist.

She could have sworn his breath was held.

There was so much she hadn't known or even anticipated about this man. But of the things she felt she instinctively knew about

him, none astonished her more than the conviction that, in some ways, he was more vulnerable than she was. Hence her instinct

to protect him from pain.

Another thing she knew for certain was that, whether or not he believed her, she could not and would not ever lie to him. Regardless of the cost.

"Yes. At the time, I felt as though I did love him."

She revealed this delicately. She would not apologize for something that had been true and that she did not regret.

He took this in.

"Do you still?" The words sounded measured. The tone was almost gentle.

But his voice was a little hoarse.

She wondered if this brave man had needed to gather nerve to ask it.

And if he was, in fact, braced to hear her answer.

What was the truest truth? What happened to love left behind deliberately? Was it like the weather? Did it merely spend itself like a storm,

and then make way for new weather?

She wasn't anymore the person who had loved Paul Carson for so short a time. She could not even conjure his face clearly.

But one lingering impression remained.

"What is left of the feeling now... is gratitude. He was a refuge during a difficult time."

If Magnus wanted to know more, she would tell him. If he wanted another apology, he would not get one. She had apologized

the night she'd kissed Paul. She didn't know what groveling would accomplish. And God help her, she didn't think it was in

her to grovel, anyway. Cursed pride.

She hoped this was the end of the questions for now. Her chest felt strangely sore from the effort of containing emotions too big, too complex, for her heart to hold. Her arms had suddenly gone cold from nerves.

She felt as though she was awaiting a verdict of some kind.

Magnus's gaze was thoughtful. And while there was nothing censorious in it, there was nothing particularly forgiving in it,

either.

Details intruded upon her awareness during this silence. How his lower lip was a little fuller than his upper lip, and the

effect was almost intolerably erotic. How if she tipped her head forward now it would likely land where his heart was beating.

She imagined the feel of it, thud, thud, thud, like a battle drum, against her cheek. Despite the tension, her body seemed

to be pointing out these things to her as if they were critical to know.

The breeze was suddenly a caress on her skin. For all the world as though it was taking a liberty.

Magnus's gaze flicked to her mouth and lingered for the span of about two heartbeats, before returning to her eyes. The result

was precisely the same as if he'd dragged a finger along the short hairs at her nape again. That flash of heat between her

legs.

That catch in her breath.

He was a dangerously compelling man. She was certain the ways in which he was subtle and the ways in which he was not were

also strategic choices.

He noticed too much.

He had taken advantage once before by noticing too much, and look where that had gotten them.

He finally gave a nod. He extended his arm, and lifted an eyebrow.

Relieved, she regarded his arm a moment, then gently, tentatively laid her hand upon it.

In silence that was more pensive than fraught but was a little bit of both, they strolled out of the statue garden, and toward

his waiting carriage.

"The weather certainly turned," he said. "Would you like to wear my coat?"

She in fact, irrationally, very much wanted to wear his coat.

"Thank you for the kind offer, but no, thank you. I think I'll be fine inside the carriage."

And as they walked, absorbed in separate but likely similar thoughts, she realized there was a question she had never dared

outright ask him .

She remembered so clearly his marriage proposal. There had seemed little of ardor in it. It had been grave and stately and

earnest.

But she recalled how softly illuminated his face had been when she'd said "yes."

How satisfied he'd been with it all. Because he'd known he'd be getting what he wanted. Or was it something else?

Her heart accelerated.

They arrived at the waiting carriage, and Magnus made a friendly gesture to the driver indicating he ought to stay put; Magnus

helped her into the carriage, and stood back.

She held the door open. His eyebrows flicked in surprise.

She gathered her nerve. And asked it.

"Why me?"

He froze. Something akin to panic flashed across his features. He looked caught out.

She felt a slightly unworthy little surge of satisfaction that catching him out was at all possible.

The breeze flipped the ends of his coat and ruffled his hair in the long silence that followed.

Perhaps he was deciding what answers to give her. Or whether to answer at all.

"Because..." He exhaled, and then she saw something like resolve settle over him. "Because I thought I had never in my

life seen anything so lovely as you. It made me feel"—he made a short, pained sound, almost but not quite a laugh—"it made

me feel unfamiliar to myself. Entirely new."

She stared at him.

Spellbound by the gift of this information.

By what he was saying and what he wasn't saying. By his subdued, thick voice, and the tension in his features, and by how

his words had been traced faintly with resentment and uneasiness at the necessity to reveal any vulnerability at all to her.

For all these reasons, she was certain this was truth.

It didn't mean any of it was still true.

For a shining moment in time, he'd basked in the glow of his illusions about her.

And then she'd shattered them.

She could not for the life of her think of what to say.

"And I wanted you in my bed more than I wanted my next breath," he concluded simply.

And as she sucked in a short, sharp breath, he touched his hat to her and firmly closed the carriage door.

The driver snapped the ribbons and the carriage lurched away.

For the rest of the afternoon, every breath Alexandra drew felt just a little hotter than usual. As if I wanted you in my bed more than I wanted my next breath had permanently raised her temperature.

She had asked the question, and had somehow failed to anticipate that she might not know what to do with the answer once she

heard it.

One part of his answer nearly cracked her heart with its painful beauty, because in it she heard echoes of that battered,

unwanted, tender boy who had still dared to admire, to aspire to, something lovely. Who had been laughed at when he'd dared

to reveal his feelings.

The other scared her and thrilled her in a way that made her feel, as he'd said, unfamiliar to herself.

Both infuriated her.

As if she'd been handed the pieces of something impossibly beautiful that had been broken long ago.

But he'd asked her: Do you still love him?

She found she hadn't the nerve yet to examine why he wanted to know that, in particular.

As promised, Mr. Lawler had sent over documents: copies of the deed of transfer, a detailed description of the property, documents outlining their financial arrangement—he was indeed settling a significant sum upon her—and helpful lists of names of persons and businesses: the bank and banker upon whom she could call, local merchants and craftsman and neighbors and the like, along with letters of introduction from the colonel, now the Earl of Montcroix.

He'd been absolutely thorough and efficient when he set out to banish her.

She breathed shallowly, and tipped her forehead in her hands for a moment and imagined Magnus silently burning for her during that house party, and disguising it so well with his intimidatingly controlled, dignified facade. He had simply

made his plans. He thinks you have developed a rapport, and that you will be a credit to him , was what her father had told her, when he'd informed her of Brightwall's extraordinary offer of marriage. And I want you to accept him . They both knew she would.

But perhaps she had sensed the intensity of Brightwall's regard. She simply hadn't known what to call it. If she'd known the whole truth of how

he'd felt, would she have shied away from it, and from him?

She didn't know. She had been in love with Paul, and this perhaps had kept her from ascribing any significance to the nature

of Brightwall's attention. Or to the way he fascinated and unsettled her. To the way he'd inspired something almost like protectiveness,

perhaps even tenderness, in her from the first. Yes: as he'd said to her father, they had developed a rapport.

And she'd simply been a different person then.

She'd never had a lover in the literal sense of the word.

She had never... ached ... with want in the presence of a man, the way she did now, in Magnus's presence. Not even with Paul, whose kiss had admittedly

been lovely. And her first and only kiss to date.

She was still young, and every moment she spent in proximity to Magnus reminded her of how she'd been hiding from herself

how excruciatingly lonely she'd been for five years. Because it had been far too painful to confront.

And she was certain Magnus—even as he sent her what she decided she'd call the banishment documents—knew how she felt.

If he'd ever dreamed of exacting the perfect retribution... taking advantage of this would be the perfect way to do it.

It seemed wildly unfair, infuriating, that he should hold yet another card. That he should possess the superior experience

and all the control.

Then again... perhaps he didn't possess all the control.

What would he do if she were to test his resolve?

That would be a risky game, indeed.

But one, she decided, worth playing.

He'd intended to be at the boardinghouse for dinner—the food here was astonishingly good—but he'd been delayed in various meetings and he'd been obliged to take a quick pub meal instead.

He'd dodged the sitting room in favor of the smoking room when he'd returned, as he'd been in the mood for brandy, cheroots,

and uncomplicated company.

Also because he was not quite ready to see Alexandra.

Telling her two truths he'd never uttered to another soul had left him feeling conflicted and unsettled and raw.

He hadn't told her the entire truth, of course. He was no fool. One did not recklessly show one's hand.

The second truth he'd shared had been by way of playing a card. It had been a defensive maneuver of sorts. Because the first

truth had left him feeling vulnerable and exposed, which was his least favorite way to feel. Shocking her had been a way to

retrieve some of his power, an attempt to ascertain something he suspected.

He'd had the breath-stealing pleasure of watching her eyes go dark, which had been his answer. And he'd thought about this

for the rest of the afternoon.

Magnus believed the animal-den snugness of the smoking room was a further testament to the genius of the proprietresses of The Grand Palace on the Thames. A handsome yet stain-hiding brown was the prevailing theme, evident in the worn but still-plush carpet, long velvet curtains, and the furniture, which was of the pleasantly battered variety that invited a man to sprawl or prop booted feet upon it. Clearly Hardy and Bolt were fortunate in having wives prescient enough to anticipate a man's occasional need to be unbridledly disgusting in the company of other men.

Captain Hardy, Lord Bolt, Colonel Brightwall, and Mr. Delacorte leaned against the four walls in companionable silence. Brandies

had been passed around. Cheroots had been lit and sucked into life. Smoke rose and mingled.

They were all thinking about sex. For different reasons.

"At least he lets her go first every time," Mr. Delacorte finally said. "It's the gentlemanly thing to do."

While Mr. Delacorte was rather pleased to finally not be the only one making untoward noise in the boardinghouse—an irritated

guest had once compared his snoring to the sound of a rusty saw dragged across rough bricks—no one who'd heard them was exactly

enjoying the sounds emanating from Corporal and Mrs. Dawson's room.

Apart, presumably, from Corporal and Mrs. Dawson.

Corporal Dawson seldom joined them in the smoking room. He and his wife kept a busy schedule behind a closed door.

"Well, there isn't much a bloke wouldn't do for his lady, am I right?" Delacorte pressed, when no one replied, and merely

stared at him, warily.

"Tread carefully, Delacorte." Captain Hardy exhaled smoke.

"Of whom and what are we speaking, if I may ask?" Magnus liked Delacorte.

"Corporal Comesalot and his wife," Delacorte said.

Magnus coughed a laugh, startled.

"Delacorte." Lucien stared at him. "For God's sake. Colonel Brightwall is our esteemed guest. If you say things like that...

he's going to want an affectionate nickname, too."

Magnus smiled. This conversation was the reason Magnus liked smoking rooms in general. Sequestered in such a place, men didn't

have to pretend that they weren't fundamentally a bit awful, and at least as gossipy as women, if not more. Any night at White's

revealed the truth of this.

"Believe me, I've been called many things other than my name." He paused. He couldn't help himself. "How much is a lot?"

"No one stands by the Dawsons' door to do a count, but five times a day seems to be the outside guess. Judging from the...

sounds," Delacorte informed him.

This conversation was doing very little to distract Magnus from his self-inflicted sensual torment.

"That's about all a bloke is useful for in his twenties, so hats off to him." Magnus blew smoke toward the ceiling. "Though

I'm grateful the French didn't get him so he can enjoy himself now. The army will be hard enough on him."

All the men in the room smiled knowingly, as they were all closer to forty than to thirty years in age.

The days of five times or more a night, however, were behind them. And every last one of them was thinking this, and not saying it.

But Magnus doubted anyone could burn more volcanically than a man who had longed for the same woman for nearly five years.

Not even a twenty-year-old man.

She'd once loved a young man of that age. And that man had kissed her, and held her face tenderly. This was indeed burned

upon Magnus's memory.

But Magnus had touched Alexandra like a lover today to let her know that he recognized her dawning desire, and that he knew

it was all for him. He'd wanted her to know that he not only saw this... he knew what to do about it.

But he might as well have set himself on fire. He had restlessly burned for the rest of the afternoon.

Regardless of what he'd told her, he didn't think she could ever truly comprehend how desire could be a form of suffering,

or what it had cost him to endure it.

He could not quite shake off a low-simmering anger. Wanting a woman who had betrayed him felt like a weakness. Surely war

ought to have drummed all frailty out of him.

And yet he felt weak in an entirely different way when he thought of her kneeling next to Mrs. Scofield, gripping her hand,

and, with her inimitable fiery grace... defending him.

"Your suite is in the annex, so you may not be aware of this, Colonel," Delacorte said. "But that little wife of his makes noises like you've never heard in your life."

Captain Hardy sighed. "Delacorte... we aren't completely exempt from being gentlemen in here."

"I apologize. But the colonel needs to understand the full picture, I think," Delacorte defended. "Otherwise we wouldn't be

discussing it. And I didn't say it was a bad thing. It's just very loud."

Magnus looked at Hardy and Bolt for confirmation, eyebrows upraised.

"It's... good God, it's quite something," Bolt agreed, reluctantly. Uncomfortably.

"Ah." Magnus nodded slowly, taking this in.

It was a damned struggle not to shift restlessly at the thought of making a woman moan in pleasure.

"Maybe Mrs. Dawson is doing it because Corporal Dawson asked her to do it," Delacorte reflected. "After all, everyone has

different tastes. We're all men of the world. What wouldn't you do for the right woman? A woman once asked me to say ‘ yes , Your Majesty' over and over again while we were, ah, enjoying a little jingle bang, and did I do it? Yes, I did."

The other men stared at him.

"I'll tell you the greatest sacrifice I ever made for a woman," Lucien finally said. "After I married her, I moved into this

boardinghouse, whereupon I met you, Delacorte, and was subsequently forced to hear that story, which I cannot now ever unhear."

"Ha." Delacorte, secure in Lucien's affections, was always delighted to be teased. He gestured with his cheroot at Bolt and

Hardy. "I heard the two of you were standing by their door with your pistols drawn. Very gallant of you to want to rescue

the girl from the throes of pleasure, of course. But one would think two worldly fellows like yourselves ought to have guessed

what was going on in there. A bloke starts to forget when he gets up in years, I suppose."

Hardy and Bolt fixed him with baleful gazes.

Delacorte smiled at them kindly, wildly amused at having scored a little point.