Page 34 of Wedded to the Beastly Duke
Instead, he held out his hand. “Allow me.”
Blinking, unable to hide her surprise, she did as he asked and handed him the little fork. He then knelt in the soil and began raking through it.
“No pulling by the stems,” he said, “or you’ll leave the roots in the earth and they’ll just grow straight back.”
Still baffled by this turn of events, she kneeled by his side. “How doyoupropose I go about it?”
“Like this.” He showed her how to dig her fork into the earth, upturning it and uprooting the plants. “See how deep these roots go?”
“Yes,” she said, glancing at his face.
Engrossed in his work as he was, he didn’t notice her perusal. This was not the face of a tyrant who wanted nothing more than the blind obedience of his wife. He was kneeling in the dirt, not caring about the state of his breeches, getting his hands dirty in a way she was certain was unseemly for a duke.
Whowasthis man she had married?
Lost in his work, he continued along the flowerbed, pausing only to shrug off his coat. Then his waistcoat. The sun was hot, and sweat dampened his shirt, making it cling onto his back and sides. Emmeline stared at the pale skin underneath, captivated by the way his muscles moved and worked under the translucent fabric.
She had never seen so much of a man before. Part of her wondered if she would ever see so much of him again.
Part of her wondered what he would look like without his shirt obscuring her view.
As though he heard her thoughts and was providing an answer, he reached down, grasping his shirt by the hem and tugging it up and over his head. Emmeline’s mouth fell open as he tossed his shirt aside and returned to his work.
He had no idea what he had done. And how shockingly enticing it was to look upon his bare skin. Sweat gleamed on his sides and his ribs, which she could see in clear definition as he bent over.
Soft skin, so soft, and yet the muscles in his back proved how strong he was. She had never seen muscles like that, and she wanted to take her time admiring them. He was no marble statue. He was flesh and blood, and there was something captivating about the sight.
She glanced up and took in his back. Specifically, the lines across it. Frowning, she leaned in closer to get a better look. She’d never encountered a male body before, but these lines were white, the skin puckered. In some places they were raised, ropy scars that extended across the entire length of his back, bypassing the dip of his spine.
Her breath caught as she realized what they were.
Scars. Hundreds of them, from tiny white flecks to huge scars across his shoulders. It looked as though someone had beaten him, taken a whip or rod to his tender flesh.
His bare, innocent flesh.
She couldn’t convince herself these were new.
Hesitantly, she brushed her fingers across his damp, hot skin. “Did the navy do this to you?” she whispered.
His shoulders hunched, and he dropped the fork, straightening and stepping back in one fluid, abrupt movement. His face was twisted with anger. “Don’t presume you have the right to talk about my back.”
“It’s awful, Adam.”
He snatched up his shirt and yanked it back over his head. “I’ll thank you not to make comments about my personal appearance, Emmeline.”
“But it’s horrific. Whoever did that to you ought to be punished!”
His nostrils flared as he looked at her. “Don’t pretend as though you have any care for my well-being. Your behavior thus far has shown the opposite. Leave the garden. I’ll hire a gardener to weed if the sight of it troubles you so much.”
It was not the sight of the garden that troubled her. She had not known it was possible for her to feel so fiercely about him, but the violence inherent in those scars made her want to wrap her arms around him and protect him from the demons in his past.
Her reaction, she knew, was entirely irrational. He was not a man over whom she should feel protective. After all, he had practically forced her to marry him. He would have forced her sister if she had not volunteered. And he had shown no signs of sympathy or regret for her plight.
She should feel nothing for him.
But her feelings had already undergone some level of change. He had been kinder and more gracious to others than she had once thought him capable of. And his servants continued to speak well of him—he plainly wasn’t the tyrant she had assumed him to be.
And now she was seeing proof that his time in the Navy had quite literally scarred him.
