in excellent repair and boasted fireplaces large enough to burn a heretic or two should the need arise.
Pressing her hands to her heated cheeks, Alexandra considered sloughing off her robe to cool down. Her attention snagged on the large ancient shutters resting upon iron hinges which kept the storm at bay. Or would have, once upon a time, before a recent clever duke had sturdy windows installed within the old casements.
She’d rather it be cool inside, so she could keep her layers of clothing on.
She always felt more comfortable in layers.
“I’m going to open a window to let in a bit of fresh air,” Alexandra called to Cecelia, who was finishing her nighttime ablutions in the washroom.
“Capital idea, old fellow!” Cecelia called back, quite clearly cleaning her teeth from the garbled sound of her words.
Alexandra smiled as she padded to the window and undid the latch. Once the great wooden panels had been secured against the wall, she turned the delicate handle to the window glass, and pushed it open.
Poor Cecelia had been racked with guilt over her tardiness, she’d exclaimed a thousand apologies, painfully aware that had she been on time with the carriage, Alexandra might not have had her encounter with the stallion.
Nor with the—
Alexandra’s mouth fell open.
Nor with the stablemaster.
The very one who stood across the gently sloping grounds, outlined in lantern light as he leaned against the wide-open stable doors in a pose most pensive.
The Terror of Torcliff.
She instinctively shifted out of his view, but it became apparent that his focus was not the castle at all but the village past the moors or the black swath of sea beyond.
Of course he was still at the stables. The new horses would have to be padded down for the night and the great stallion checked for wounds caused by his misadventure.
The man’s features were concealed by the distance, the darkness, and the storm, but Alexandra knew immediately it was him. In all her travels, she couldn’t remember meeting a man with his proportions.
Perhaps in effigy, or immortalized in stone or marble, but not in reality.
When she had seen him that afternoon, his dark hair had been slicked back by rainwater, but now it hung about his eyes in jagged tufts, as though he’d mussed it in a futile attempt to keep it dry in such weather.
What did he search for in the distance? Alexandra glanced over to the lovely little village and to the edges of the moor, the golden glow of the town ending in an abrupt horizon at the cliffs. It was an unparalleled vista, but her eyes found their way back to the outline of the man. Had he moved? Could he see her?
Likely not. The light was dim in Cecelia’s rooms, and the windows of the round tower in which they were housed faced more toward the sea than the stables. Had she not been leaning out to open the windowpane, she’d have missed him altogether.
With a few swift and impatient movements, the man jerked his shirt from the waist of his trousers and ripped it from his shoulders and down his arms before discarding it.
Alexandra clapped her hand over her mouth. Then her eyes. Then her mouth again.
Even from across the lawn, the light silhouetted him so clearly, she could make out the distinctive latissimus dorsi flaring with strength across his back. His shoulders—deltoids—rounded and sloped to his neck in a broad, beautiful sweep.
Arrested by the sight, Alexandra didn’t blink until her eyes burned.
Why would he disrobe? To shapeshift, perhaps?
The odd and errant thought shamed and irritated her. Really, what a ludicrous notion. A werewolf indeed. She’d spent a great deal of her life in the company of mummys’ curses, resident demons and devils, superstitions, and gods. She understood the science behind them.
Or the lack thereof.
That such a misconception should reside in her own enlightened empire elicited a sigh for the whole of humanity.
She had seen more than her share of bare masculine torsos. Laborers in Cairo. Tribesmen in sub-Saharan Africa. Even a native on display in America once.
Never had she paid them the least bit of mind. In fact, she’d avoided noticing anything about the male physique beyond their bones.
The dead could do no damage.
The dead … had none of what made a man dangerous. The things that had lent them life had turned to dust. Strength, blood, muscle, flesh.
Sex.
All of it disintegrated, leaving only a story.
But … a man like the one who stood before her detained her notice against