Set in Stone: A Contemporary Adventure Romance Novel (Legend Book 1) Page 6

  “I’ll admit it’s a bit unnerving to walk through here at night,” I whispered, leaning close.

  Her cheeks blushed as a trembling smile appeared. “Was I that obvious?”

  “It’s all right, but we’re here. Allow the artist within you free.” I opened the heavy wooden door and let her enter before me.

  “Oh, my!” Alexandria exclaimed.

  The sound of her heels on the stone to carpet made me chuckle inwardly. I stood at the door, watching her in amusement. She was so innocent, so lost in the magic I had to offer her. She had no idea what I could give her if only she’d let me.

  Alexandria went from wall to wall, staring wide-eyed at the tapestries hanging on the wall. I reached my hand just inside the room to flip a switch. The soft, natural lighting, specially created so as not to harm the centuries-old fabrics, bathed the room in a glimmering light.

  “Oh, my goodness . . . these are . . . ”

  The gold sewn into the fabrics brought the pictures to life in a 3D effect. When she turned, I saw her eyes water. “The Abraham Tapestries. You have them?” She walked with a slow cadence, her hand out, gently tracing over the edge of one of the revered pieces.

  I couldn’t help but smirk. “I have been blessed to come across so many gems such as this.”

  “But these are in Hampton Court’s tapestry room! How did you get a set for yourself? They cost millions of pounds! They were made over five hundred years ago . . . how?” She stepped back, looking at the line of tapestries down the wall.

  “There are ways, Ms. York. There are ways.” I motioned for her to come out of the room and shut the door behind us. “Lunch should be ready by now. Shall we go eat and resume our tour when we are finished?”

  I escorted her back down to the grand dining hall, where M and the head maid, Orla Tudor, had the table set for two. I pulled the chair out for her. She settled herself down, glancing up at me. I saw the look on her face. She seemed torn between trusting me and keeping me at a distance.

  “Thank you.” Alexandria’s posture was rigid.

  “Of course.” I walked to the other side, across from her, and slid into my seat. “I hope you enjoy a good roasted pheasant. Cavall and I flushed a few earlier this morning.”

  “Cavall?” A manicured eyebrow arched at the name.

  I gave a sharp whistle, and a large, hulking beast trotted into the room. He sat loyally at my side, his huge head settled into my lap.

  “This is Cavall.” I stroked between his gray ears.

  “He’s a wolf.” Her eyes widened in fear.

  “Yes, he is. I found him caught in a trap when he was a pup, and I couldn’t let such a magnificent animal suffer.”

  Cavall’s eyes shut as he leaned into my hand.

  “M and I brought him in and raised him, healed him. When we tried to send him back into the wild, he always came back.”

  I whispered to Cavall. He made a whining sound before trotting over to Alexandria.

  The wolf sat next to her, a large grin on his face as he tilted his head. Alexandria looked at me, back at the wolf, and then back at me.

  “He’s harmless. I promise. Don’t you trust me?” My gaze challenged her.

  “Cavall.”

  She said his name, and he scooted closer to her. Gingerly, she reached her hand out, and Cavall, ever the good boy, placed his nose under her touch. Soon, she was scratching his ears and under his chin. I had to admit that usually, Cavall was standoffish with strangers. My eyes flicked over her smiling face as she spoke softly to Cavall. She must have a pure heart for a wolf to accept her.

  “He’s absolutely sweet.”

  She watched the hulking beast trot away to lay next to the door.

  “He’s been a loyal friend.” My eyes found hers across the table.

  M brought out the trays of roasted pheasant, baked potatoes, and glazed carrots. Warm bread was already set on the table. Alexandria touched the fine bone china, her small fingers tracing the intricate, raised pattern around the edges.

  “You didn’t have to do all of this just for me.” Her hands lowered back down into her lap.

  I shook my head. “Nonsense. You are a guest. Besides, I believe in formalities. In today’s world, technology sucks us in, and we don’t realize how much life is being missed around us. I have to say I despise technology.” My elbows rested on the table, fingers laced together as I rested my chin on the bridge they created. “It takes away our privacy, puts information out to the world that should remain private, and spreads lies. What do you think, Ms. York?”

  Her face revealed nothing. I could tell she was thinking about a response. Her hand reached for the glass of wine she had been poured. A red cabernet, imported from Italy. She swirled the liquid around and brought it to her nose to smell. Her face was thoughtful as she studied the legs of the wine.

  “It depends on if you are a person who has secrets to hide, Your Grace.” Blue orbs returned sharp and focused on mine. “If one has nothing to be ashamed of or to hide, what does one have to fear from technology?”

  Annoyance crept from my toes, over my stomach, and to my chest. So she was willing to play a game of rhetoric. My eyes narrowed, and I tried to understand exactly what she was hinting at with her notion of secrets. I decided to take the same approach as I had a few nights before. With a sigh, I sat back and rested both hands on the table.

  “You believe the rumors about me, don’t you?” I forced a sad expression. “You believe the lies about me that have been whispered throughout the nobility and country. I am the Dragon, the Black Duke, a man who is a thug.” With a nod, I knitted my brows together. “This is why I hate technology.”

  “Perhaps, you should hate people, since they are the ones who start the rumors.” A flicker of regret for her words echoed in her eyes.

  Good.

  Break her.

  Make her feel for you.

  Manipulate her.

  “People will always be people, Ms. York. What do you know about me?” I motioned for her to begin eating. “No reason to let your food grow cold.”

  Alexandria picked up her fork and took a bite of carrot. She took a few more mouthfuls of food before answering my question. “Would you like honesty?”

  “I demand it.” My eyes narrowed at the idiocy of the question.

  Why would I ask just to be lied to?

  Alexandria set her fork back down. She sat straighter. Then she unleashed. “I always thought you were an old, haggard man who’d rather keep his money than spend it. I’ve also heard you are more or less a thug and that your seat of nobility is a farce.”

  I couldn’t say anything as she continued to surprise me with her forwardness.

  “You weren’t born into a position to inherit, nor did your family or you win your seat in battle. Also, Avalon—in the middle of Kent.” She tried and failed to hide a snicker. “You are the duke of a place that doesn’t exist. Would that make you the Duke of Nothingdom?”

  Ah, there she was.

  A searing flood of anger raged through my bones. How dare she be so bold! How dare she insult me! She didn’t even know who I was! And to make it even better, the bloody girl wasn’t finished.

  “I hear you have affairs with women that end quickly when you grow bored. I hear you have more money than Her Majesty and more clout than Cameron. They gifted you your nobility to keep you on their side rather than fight with you.”

  Her eyes grew cautious again. I didn’t know why until I heard my knuckles pop with the pressure from my balled fists.

  “Is that all, Ms. York? Are you quite done?” My voice was cold, seething. There was no mistaking that she had found a button and pushed it repeatedly.

  “Yes. I am.” Her voice was softer, realizing how far she had gone by my biting tone. She wasn’t so bold now.

  With a heavy sigh, I smoothed my features and ran a hand through my hair. Counting to ten, I offered a tight smile.

  “I know that is what you have heard. Do you believe t
hem? All of those myths about me?” I forced my eyes to soften.

  Seduce her.

  “I don’t know.” It was an honest admission.

  “What do you know of me now?” I truly wanted this question answered. What did she think of me?

  She swallowed, and her eyes shifted from her plate to me.

  “You aren’t old and haggard at all. You do give graciously to charities. You are very much a giver of gifts – no matter how unwanted or undeserved they are.”

  She played with the bracelet on her wrist, and my lips twitched.

  “What I don’t understand is how a man such as yourself—with your looks, wealth, and giving personality—has lived alone for so long.” Her eyes zeroed in. “Unless the womanizing rumors are true.”

  Hit her where she will eat her words.

  “May I tell you something, confide in you about something I have never told anyone?” My sorrow-filled voice had her attention.

  Carefully, she once again analyzed my words. I could see the wheels in her head churning.

  “What makes you think I won’t run to the media?” Alexandria tossed her long, rich-colored hair over her shoulder. She was sizing me up.

  “I know because you’re a good person. You are fair.” I lowered my eyes before looking up, knowing the storm that brewed within them. “And you’ve lost people you have loved, just as I have.”

  The flash of grief in her gorgeous face intrigued me. I calmly waited, celebrating that I had touched a part of her.

  Lips pursed, she nodded. “Go ahead.”

  Ah, good girl.

  “I lost the woman I loved a long time ago. Ever since then, I just haven’t been able to find anyone who moves me as she did.” This drew the sympathy I wanted from her.

  “I’m so sorry.” She spoke in a quiet tone. “Were you married?”

  “Yes, we were. She and I, we were very much in love.” I smiled at the memory.

  “How did she go?” Alexandria leaned forward, completely interested.

  “Well, I found out before she passed that she had been having an affair.” For whatever reason, staring at Alexandria and telling her an honest truth, one she should already know, pained me. One that was embedded into her very existence hurt me. It hurt me so much. “I abandoned her soon thereafter. I couldn’t deal with the lies, the deceit, so I left her. A year later, she was dead. By an illness I still do not know of what.”

  Looking up, I saw her face twisted in horror and shock. I decided to continue.

  “I gave her everything; myself, my heart, my love, my home, my wealth. It wasn’t enough. I never understood how some people could be so cruel. We can give someone everything, confess everything about ourselves, and it’s not enough.”

  “I understand.” She cleared her throat, staring at her hands. “I had someone like that once. He was everything to me. I even told him how much I loved him, and he said he loved me, too.”

  She laughed, but it sounded so sad, and it made something stir in my gut. It jogged my memory to the first time I had met her in her dreams. She had been apprehensive but curious, as if she had been expecting someone. Was this that someone?

  “Oh? I’m terribly sorry. I take it he still left?” I softened my voice to be gentle, sympathetic to her case.

  She nodded. “We were going in different directions. It was for the best.”

  Her forced smile made my chest tighten.

  “It is never easy when you lose someone you love. You and I have more in common than we knew.” I held her gaze for a moment. The silence that passed between us—I couldn’t describe it.

  My pain mixed with hers. She sat thinking of someone she lost, while I sat thinking of . . . her. Centuries of playing cat and mouse with the woman I loved and spurned in the same breath had me desperate to end it. It always ended with her in my dreams. In reality, I was always without her.

  “So what kind of pieces were you thinking of commissioning me for?” Alexandria picked her fork back up and continued the conversation as if nothing had happened.

  The change in subject took me back a bit. I hid my confusion at how she easily slid from an emotional topic to work. So I did the same.

  “Well, you enjoy mythology. I would like this.” I motioned for M to bring over a small bronze statue. It was a maiden lying on a bed while her winged lover wrapped his arms around her.

  M set it down on the table between us before going back to his station sideboard.

  “Eros and Psyche.” Leaning forward, she touched the details etched into the wings of Eros.

  “Then you know it?” I stood, coming around and leaning on the table next to her.

  She nodded. “Yes, it’s one of my favorite Greek myths.”

  “What do you like about it?”

  My eyes drank her in. Her face was transfixed on the small statue before her. The urge to reach out and caress her cheek, to take her right then, flooded my senses. I let my hand anchor myself to the table.

  Her body grew tenser the closer I came to her. Clearing her throat again, she let her hands sweep over the curvature of the piece before us.

  “Psyche was a human; a young woman with whom Eros fell in love,” she said.

  Her feather-light touches over the details made me ache. I wanted her to caress me like that with tenderness and care. I had deprived myself of human connection for so long now. I hadn’t allowed myself to get close to anyone. I always outlived them, or they always left.

  “She was told she would be married to a man she didn’t know on one condition: she wasn’t allowed to look at him in the light. He would come to her at night and lay with her, but she never knew what he looked like. Her sisters told her he was a beast; that he was a monster, and she had been tricked.” Alexandria pulled her hands from the statue’s bronze finish. “So one night, she disobeyed him. She pulled a candle up to see his face, and there was the most beautiful man she had ever seen. A god—Eros. He flew away from her, telling her they could never be together now that she had seen him.” She looked up at me, eyes wide. “She felt terrible, believing such lies and seeing the one who had wanted her was so beautiful.”

  My breath caught. Her voice was that of a skilled storyteller, weaving me into the depths of the tragedy of the couple on the table.

  “And did she do anything?” My voice was soft.

  Alexandria nodded. “She endured trials set out by Aphrodite to win Eros back. They were impossible trials, but all the while, Eros helped her.” She smiled. “Psyche didn’t know he’d never left her side—after all, she couldn’t see him, sense him, or touch him. But he protected her. And in the final trial, he begged Aphrodite to relent.” Her fingers continued to trace the statuary. “She agreed, and Eros took her to Zeus, where their love was seen as true and she was made into a goddess. She became immortal because of her love for Eros and his love for her.”

  I had never heard the myth of Eros and Psyche told in such a raw, human point of view. Without thinking, I reached out to let my hand brush against her cheek.

  If only she knew how true that story was. How in a different age and time, so much truth rang from it. Her lashes fluttered under my touch. She sat inches away from me at the table. I had to remind myself to stay anchored. I could love her from afar but had to maintain my distance in case I failed.

  I offered a small smile, dropping my hand. “Forgive me; you completely enraptured me with that story. And yes, that is exactly how the myth goes.” I put some distance between us. “I would love it brought to life for my grand ballroom. I would love it even more if it were your hands that brought it to life.”

  It took her a few moments to compose herself. Red once again spread over her cheeks and nose. She gave a tight smile back with a nod. “I would be delighted to. Do you have a contract I could look over? An agreement of some kind?”

  I celebrated a silent victory as outwardly, I kept calm. The smile that slid across my face was a rare, genuine one. I knew it changed my face from harsh to warm, from ag
ed to youthful. The look in her eyes told me so.

  I held out my hand. M delivered the contract to me, and he gave Alexandria a gentle smile. I set it down in front of her, along with a fountain pen.

  “Please take all the time you need to read it. I had it drawn up specifically for you. If you need a lawyer of yours to look it over, feel free.”

  My words were lost on her as she skimmed over the packet quickly. She was hardly reading as she thumbed through the pages. The monetary figure did garner a reaction.

  “Your Grace! Sir, this amount for payment is . . . I could never . . . ” She seemed lost. She didn’t know what to do.

  In an attempt to ease her mind, I kneeled down beside her chair and placed my hand over hers. Not masking a thing, I forced her to look at me.

  “I do as I please. I believe this work from you is this value. Do not insult me by refusing.”

  Her hand twitched under mine. A dark, sinister desire challenged my controlled state.

  Does she want to turn her hand?

  Does she long for someone to hold?

  “And, please, if we are to work together, call me Avalon.”

  “Avalon . . . ” She tried the word slowly, carefully.

  I rather enjoyed the way it sounded coming from her beautiful mouth. She nodded.

  “Then please call me Alexandria. Ms. York is just too—formal.” She looked back at the contract.

  I smirked. “I will consider it.”

  “It’s my one condition.” Her face was set in stone.

  I couldn’t argue with her.

  “All right; as you wish.” I stood and walked away from her, needing to put distance between us.

  She read the last few pages, and the tension grew thicker. Would she agree? Would she sign it? I swallowed past the lump in my throat and glanced over at M. His face told me nothing. The one time I needed reassurance, I would have none.

  Alexandria paused, glancing up at me. “You want me to stay here for the time it takes me to finish the piece?” She seemed unconvinced.