from them. I honor their journey through this world, and hope they have found peace in the next. That … I might also find peace.” She studied the napkin in her lap. “Sometimes, though, I fear the weight of my sins will pull me into the abyss. I hope if God exists, if we are to stand judgment, that justice is more compassion than vengeance.”
Piers studied her, noting the weight of which she spoke curling her shoulders forward in a self-protective posture most ladies wouldn’t indulge in public. The sadness emanating from her permeated the fortifications he’d erected around his heart.
“What sins could you possibly have committed—?”
The unmistakable sound of silver tapping against crystal evoked a pall of silence among the attendees as Forsythe called them to attention.
Piers glared over Alexandra’s bare, smooth shoulder at him, wishing fervently the crystal would break and slit the man’s wrists.
No such miracle occurred.
Alexandra turned in her chair to heed the man, and Piers set his jaw against a maelstrom of churlish resentment.
“Mesdames et messieurs,” Forsythe began, lifting his glass as he prepared a toast. “It is with humbled gratitude and fervent anticipation I accepted the commission to become the next foreman of this exciting archeological expedition. So often, as surveyors of the past, we archeologists are called to distant locales where the climates, both political and ecological, are so very inhospitable. It is in such places, one learns to appreciate, to admire and esteem, those closest to him.”
Forsythe’s gaze slid to Alexandra.
Piers’s grip on his knife tightened as suspicion churned the meal he’d enjoyed to bricks of disgust.
“I am fortunate in this particular vocation, in this lovely country, that we can study the ancients of our own vast and violent English history, rather than those of another mystical society,” the doctor continued, swinging back to the company at large. “Fortunate, indeed, that the descendant of our Viking specimen is not only among the living, but among us here, tonight.” He turned to their table, directing all attention not to Alexandra, but to Piers, himself.
“To His Grace, Piers Gedrick Atherton, the Duke of Redmayne, and his new and incomparable duchess. May your marriage be long and fruitful.”
“À votre santé!” the audience toasted, and Alexandra turned to Piers, her smile radiant as she urged him to stand, to accept the applause beginning to swell. When he didn’t instantly comply, she stood, obliging him to do so, or to risk disrespecting her in public.
Piers didn’t hear their applause as he stood.
He still contemplated the meaning of the word “sin.” The sins his wife might have committed in her past. The ones she might commit against him in the future.
The sin he wanted to commit with her here. Now. Iniquities so fiendish, even the devil would blush.
“Would Their Graces indulge us in a waltz to begin the evening?” Forsythe stroked his mustache above a cheeky grin and the assemblage made affirmative noises as the chamber musicians thrummed the first notes of Strauss.
Piers advanced, thinking Forsythe would look a great deal better wearing the champagne rather than drinking it. Such seemingly innocuous words. Appreciate. Admire. Esteem.
But not when it came to his wife.
My wife. The beast within him snarled. Mine.
Was he too quick to believe her when she claimed there was not—nor had there been—a relationship between them? Forsythe’s look had certainly conveyed more. And for a man who disliked Piers as heartily as he was certain Forsythe did … why would he take such pains to show him such public courtesy?
Curious, indeed.
What Piers wouldn’t have given to have been able to catch the look Alexandra had given back to Forsythe.
Had it been one of similar meaning?
A small hand slipped into his, as Alexandra stepped out in front of him, a vision of mahogany hair, emerald silk, and metallic gems as she glided past a few tables, the topiary, and the grand fireplace.
She nodded to Forsythe and her vapid friend—Piers forgot her name, Jane?—but then she paid them no further heed as she led Redmayne to the middle of the grand room.
Piers pulled Alexandra close, closer still as he twirled his graceful wife across the marble in a seamless, flawless waltz.
He hoped the intelligent Dr. Forsythe made some keen fucking observations. Such as, the perfect fit of her body against his. How synchronous their rhythm was. How, even though Piers was arguably the unsightliest man in the room, he could still get the most beautiful woman in the world to smile up at him, just as she did