on his features. Though she hadn’t meant any, she felt as though he might need a thorough humbling. “Oh come, Dr. Forsythe and I have dedicated our lives to academia; you can’t possibly be asserting that you’re as well educated.”
“As you say, I couldn’t possibly.” He regarded her for another long and mercurial moment wherein she couldn’t tell if he were angry or amused. “All right, Doctor. I propose a game. A battle of wits, as it were.”
“Between you and Forsythe?” she puzzled.
“Hang Forsythe. Between you and me.”
Alexandra’s fork paused halfway to her mouth. “What are the terms of this battle?” she asked skeptically
“Three quotes.” He wiped his mouth with a linen napkin and drank deeply from a bloodred Bordeaux. “Scour your learned mind of all the books you read at the Sorbonne. If I guess the first one, I get to name the place and time of our interlude tonight.”
“Interlude?” she breathed.
“You did say we were to continue to trade favors, did you not?”
“Well, yes but—”
His expression was all wickedness and heat. “I’m merely making things interesting. Upping the stakes, as it were.”
Alexandra’s own eyes narrowed, apprehension twisting with anticipation in her core. “What if you guess the second?”
“Then I get to choose what I do to you.” His voice deepened. Darkened. Along with his unmistakable intent.
“Did you change your mind? Do you mean to consummate—”
“I mean to show you, wife, just how much two people can do to each other without consummation.”
The wine Alexandra gulped did nothing to moisten her dry mouth. She hadn’t forgotten what he’d said on the ship earlier before the accident.
You let me use my tongue.
“A-and the third?” she stuttered around lips going numb.
“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 what you do to me.”
Alexandra might have choked if she hadn’t just swallowed hard. 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,