Alexander stared into Myn’s inscrutable face. “I attacked him?”
“When you changed.”
Alexander stopped, his shirt falling from frozen fingers. “When I changed?”
Myn regarded him with unblinking blue eyes. He looked so human, and then he did not. “It has begun.”
Alexander kicked the shirt aside and strode across the room, barely feeling the chill air licking his hot skin. “What the hell do you mean? And why did you come with me to England? You disappear for days at a time, and I have no control over you.”
Myn simply watched him. “You like control.”
“It is how I have survived.”
“You are like her.”
Alexander swung on him. “Like whom? Your cryptic conversation would make me insane, except I already am going insane.”
“You are like the one you call Anastasia. She likes control and when she does not have it, she does not know what to do.”
Alexander had no desire to talk about Anastasia. She’d been avoiding him, missing appointments, and that never boded well. She’d walked with him at the garden party today, but her purpose had been to antagonize the Duchess of Gower and lead him to Meagan. Anastasia was quite pleased he’d marry Meagan; she was almost giddy with it. But he hadn’t spoken to her privately in days.
“Anastasia is nothing like me,” he said. “She is driven by vengeance.”
“As are you. When your father died, you wished to kill the men who murdered him.”
The memories assailed him, the picture as vivid as the day he’d stood in the courtyard with the firing squad and watched his father be shot. The old Imperial Prince had grabbed a musket from one of his soldiers and shot Alexander’s father, formerly his best friend, in the chest, laughing while he did it.
“Of course I did,” Alexander answered. “I wanted every one of them to die for shooting my father. The soldiers were following orders, but I still wanted them to pay.”
Myn nodded. “But you were young and too weak. You knew you had to bide your time until you were strong. You had to wait much time for your vengeance, but you had it.”
“In the end, yes, I did.” Alexander had tasted triumph when the old prince, half insane, had placed his hands in Alexander’s and said, “I will do whatever you say, whatever you want. The people think I am Imperial Prince but I am your slave.”
The revenge had not tasted as sweet as Alexander could have wished, because the Imperial Prince by that time had no idea what he did for more than an hour at a time. But Alexander himself had helped the insanity take hold of Damien’s father. He had guaranteed it.
“And now you live for Nvengaria,” Myn said.
“Yes. Why do you question that?”
Myn went silent, his eyes enigmatic.
Alexander moved to the window and looked out at the moonlit garden far below. He had the strange desire to be out there under the moonlight, but not in the garden. In the open, running, for some strange reason hunting.
“Yes,” Myn said in a low voice, right behind him. “Let it take you.”
“Let what take me?”
Alexander did not turn. He quivered with rage and uncertainty, and the damn love spell kept turning in his brain, making him think of Meagan lying asleep in her bedroom on the other side of Mayfair. Her flushed face in repose on her pillow, her glorious hair a riot against her white sheets. Two more weeks. He would never wait two more weeks.
“The love spell is calling the change,” Myn said. “It has opened you to it.”
Alexander turned around, slowly and carefully. “If you do not tell me what you mean, I swear to you I will put you in chains and throw you into the deepest dungeon. I will find a dungeon, no matter how hard I have to look. In fact, I will build one especially for you.”
Myn smiled slightly. “You are right to be angry. Your father, he never told you. You are like her.”
“Whom?” he demanded. “Anastasia?”
“Your mother.”
Alexander stopped. He remembered his mother as a vague presence in his earliest years, a touch on his back as he drifted to sleep, a voice singing softly. He’d never really known her. She’d died of a fever when he was only five years old.
“You knew my mother?” Alexander looked Myn up and down. “You cannot be older than I am. At least you do not appear to be.”
“I knew her because she returned to her people before she died. She gave me attentions because I reminded her of the small child she’d left behind. You.”
Alexander stared at him, letting the words sink in one at a time. “Her people,” he repeated. “What people? My father and I were her people.”
Myn shook his head, his black hair moving on his shoulders. “Your mother was of my people, Alexander of Nvengaria. She was logosh.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Alexander waited in the church, expecting to feel the cool readiness he’d experienced at his first wedding, but today his mouth was dry and his face pale like he was an untried youth fearing his bride would jilt him at the last minute.
In the month since he had met Meagan at Lady Featherstone’s ball, his whole life had changed. And as if the love spell had not wreaked enough havoc, Myn’s announcement had shaken to the core everything Alexander believed. The fact that his mother had been a shape-shifting logosh, one of the wild peoples of the mountains, was difficult to accept.
Myn had tried in the past few weeks to teach Alexander how to shift and accept it, but the lessons hadn’t worked. Alexander hadn’t experienced the memory lapses or the changes since the night after the garden party with Meagan. He suspected that the love spell had something to do with it. Meagan was ripping open that part of him and letting the beast free.
Now Meagan, in a gown of yellow silk, walked toward him on her father’s arm, orange blossoms in her hair and the diamonds he’d given her around her neck. She might destroy him, but he refused to call off the wedding. He had made a promise, he had ruined her, and he would do his duty by her. If he never saw her again after tonight, so be it. She deserved some compensation for blundering into the path of the Mad, Bad Duke.
The wedding had been hastily arranged, but it was still one of the grandest occasions of the Season. The entire ton turned out, including the Dukes of York and Clarence, their brother the king, the Duke of Wellington, the Duke of Devonshire, and many other nobles greater and lesser. With them were the ambassadors from France, Hanover, Prussia, Austria, Spain, America, and other corners of the globe. Nvengaria was a tiny country, but so many wanted to court it.
Myn attended the wedding, standing well in the back, watching with the stillness of an animal. Myn seemed perfectly satisfied that Alexander would marry Meagan, had said cryptically that it was meant to be.
As for Meagan, he was dying for her. The detached part of him wanted to keep her at a distance, but his body and soul craved her.
She halted next to him and sent him a sideways glance, her face serene. The feel of her next to him, the scent of her mixed with the orange blossoms, and her soft touch on his arm nearly undid him.
Alexander needed to be sharply focused and ruthless, calm and clearheaded. He needed to keep the beast at bay, and that was impossible when his dreams, waking and sleeping, were filled with Meagan, with touching her, tasting her, kissing her, riding her.
Black Annie needed to end the love spell before it was too late, but the damn witch was slippery. His men had never succeeded in tracking her down, not even when they became fixtures at the end of the cul-de-sac on which she lived. He’d never before been unable to put his hands on a person when he wanted to, and Black Annie’s elusiveness enraged him.
Alexander realized that the bishop, mitered and garbed in golden robes, was staring at him, awaiting his response. Alexander cleared his throat and said, “I will.”
Meagan raised a brow as though wondering what had his attention wandering. He’d explain to her later, in detail, exactly what he’d been thinking. Then again, maybe
he shouldn’t. Damn the love spell and damn Myn. Meagan deserved to know, and yet…
Give me tonight. Give me tonight with her, and I will tell her. Then she can decide whether she wants to go as far away as she can from me. But I need this night.
The bishop was staring at him again while Meagan fixed him with a watchful gaze. Alexander had no idea what the man had just said.
“Dreamin’ of the wedding night, are ye?” Egan McDonald whispered loud enough for the first pews to hear.
Amid the tittering, Alexander said, “I beg your pardon. Please repeat the words.”
Meagan gave him a tight smile. “That is what you are supposed to do, Alexander.”
More titters. Alexander placed his hand over Meagan’s and held it tight, while the bishop droned again what he was to say, and Alexander repeated it.
“I, Alexander Octavien Laurent Maximilien, take thee, Meagan Elizabeth Tavistock, to be my wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward…and thereto I plight thee my troth.”
His beautiful bride didn’t tremble at all when he slid the wedding ring, diamonds and emeralds on a band of silver, onto her finger. His hands, however, were shaking and slick with sweat while he promised to worship her with his body. She noticed and slanted him a look of concern.
Could she know what beautiful eyes she had? Brown and shining, flecked with gold, like the sun-dappled water of a pond.
With some relief, the bishop concluded, “I pronounce that they be man and wife together, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.”
Alexander leaned down and touched Meagan’s ripe, red lips with his own. It was done.
The wedding breakfast proceeded at Maysfield House for all the dukes and duchesses, ambassadors and their wives, not to mention Michael Tavistock and Simone, who mostly behaved herself, for which Meagan was thankful. The banqueting went on and on, the highestplaced people in the ton seeing no reason to abandon the food and drink and festivities too soon.
So many toasts were drunk to the bride and groom that Meagan was dizzy with champagne, and she spoke to so many people she quickly lost track of to whom she said what. The first Grand Duchess, she thought darkly, likely had been able to address each person by name and make them feel special. Meagan, in the end, could only babble incoherently and hope her utterances made sense.
She barely saw Alexander, who was being the cool Grand Duke and left her side soon after the meal. As she watched him speaking to the Russian ambassador, she wondered how many treaties favorable to Nvengaria would appear in the morning.
At long last, as the afternoon wore into evening, the guests began to depart. They would return home and change clothes and descend later on the town in the usual social whirl to gossip about the wedding.
Michael and Simone were the last to leave. Meagan kissed her stepmother’s cheek and squeezed her hands, relieved that the happily chattering Simone was going home. But when Michael gathered Meagan in his arms, Meagan’s tears began to flow.
Michael held her tight, the warm smell of his plain cashmere suit making her heart ache. “You be happy, my girl,” he said, his voice thick.
“Yes, Papa.”
Behind Michael, Simone sniffled and dabbed her eyes delicately with a lace handkerchief. “Oh dear, I was going to be so brave. But we are only streets away, and in the summer, you and Alexander will come to Oxfordshire. We will have a house party the envy of all of England. I’ve already begun the arrangements.”
Michael pulled away from Meagan, a wry smile on his face. She shared the smile, but she already missed them.
Alexander’s stiff English butler, Montmorency, stood at the open door, his nose in the air, his shoulders back. The Tavistock barouche waited outside the entrance, Roberts holding the door. Roberts scratched his left calf with the toe of his right shoe, leaving smears on his white stocking.
Dear, bumbling Roberts nearly unleashed Meagan’s tears again. Her simple home life was receding like the last wave of a tide, and no matter how much she wanted to be with Alexander, she knew she was losing something irreplaceable.
She forced a cheerful smile and waved her parents out the door, telling Roberts to be careful riding home on the back of the barouche. The doors slammed, the carriage jumped forward, Roberts hanging on for dear life, and they were gone.
Montmorency shut the front door, enclosing Meagan in the echoing black and white rotunda of the front hall. She shivered, rubbing her hands on the sleeves of the dark green silk gown Meagan’s new lady’s maid had helped her don after removing her wedding finery. Her first matronly colors—no more pale cream and white for Meagan.
While the house had been filled with guests and bustling servants it had not seemed too large, but now the walls stretched up and up to the dome far above, and the quiet of so much empty air seemed to press in on her.
“Your Grace,” Nikolai said behind her.
Meagan whirled. “Goodness, Nikolai, you move like a cat.”
“I beg your pardon,” Nikolai said, not looking one bit sorry. “His Grace wishes you to formally meet your staff.”
“Now?” Evening shadows pierced the hall, and Meagan had been looking forward to retiring to her new chamber, throwing herself across the elaborate tester bed, and falling fast asleep. Her nerves were stretched raw.
“His Grace wastes no moment of any day.” Nikolai kept his face straight, but she’d already learned that the valet’s choice of words spoke volumes. “This way, please.”
Meagan let go of her dream of a good sleep and followed Nikolai across the tiles and into the staircase hall. Her dress made a pleasing swishing noise, her slippers echoing on the marble floor.
“You no longer need to show guests to the door, Your Grace,” Nikolai said as they began their climb up the wide staircase with its elaborate, scrolled-iron banisters. “One of the English servants can see to that.”
He pronounced the word “English” with a slight sneer, and gave a backward glance at Montmorency, who was walking toward the servants’ stairs below them. The butler’s back became stiffer.
Meagan spoke in a brisk tone. “In any case, they were not guests; they were my parents. ‘Tis a different thing.”
“If you say so, Your Grace.”
“I do say so. Lead on, Nikolai. I am certain His Grace does not like to be kept waiting twenty seconds longer than he must.”
Nikolai’s lips twitched. “As you say, Your Grace. He is in the Asia Hall.”
“Is that the room with pillars carved like palm trees?”
“No, Your Grace, that is the India sitting room. The Asia Hall has the Chinese furniture. You will soon learn to distinguish them.”
“Only if I do not grow weary on all these stairs,” Meagan said, struggling to keep up with Nikolai’s longlegged stride. “The staff must be wonderfully fit.”
“Another reason you do not need to see people to the front door, Your Grace.” Nikolai waited on the landing for her to catch up. “You need only move between the first and second floors, that is all, except for large ceremonial occasions such as balls. You never need to descend, unless you are going out.”
Meagan looked up the line of the staircase, which rose two more floors above them. “And what is up there?”
“The third floor houses small Alex’s nursery and his nanny and tutors. Above that are the servants’ rooms, and you need never climb there.”
“I see.” Meagan smoothed her hand on the railing. At home, she used to dash up to Rose’s attic room to fetch forgotten things while Rose attended to Simone’s toilette. As a girl in Oxfordshire, Meagan had often sneaked up to the maid’s rooms to play card games in the middle of the night.
The third-floor landing looked elegant and lonely. Alexander’s son had attended the wedding but been whisked away when they returned to the festivities here. Meagan had kissed his sticky cheek before he was carried away under the sneer of the French ambassador’s wife.
“This way, Your Grace,” Nik
olai said, sounding anxious.
Meagan reluctantly turned and followed Nikolai around the gallery to double doors halfway along. With the exception of her bedchamber and Alexander’s study, this was the first she’d see of the house’s grand rooms.
The Asia Hall was decorated in hues of bright yellow, Chinese red, and lacquer black. Yellow silk with a red fan pattern covered the walls, the U-arm black lacquer chairs were upholstered in scarlet, and the cabinetry and tables were japanned or inlayed with mother-of-pearl. Windows draped in Chinese red faced the street, which lent fog-shrouded light to the candlelit room.
At least a dozen people, both Nvengarian and English, stood in a semicircle in the middle of the room. Dominic anchored one end, and a thin woman in dull gray with a long nose and intelligent eyes anchored the other. Nikolai took his place next to Dominic.
Alexander waited in front of them, standing straight. Although he’d changed his military coat with the medals for a plainer one, still blue, he’d retained his sash of office. She wondered if he wore the sash to remind his English staff who he was, or to remind himself.
He waited with his usual inscrutable coolness and no hint of the distraction she’d sensed in him at the altar. He was once more Grand Duke Alexander, in command of himself and everyone around him.
When she reached his side, he slid a hand to her waist and gave a nod toward the assembled staff. As one they bowed or curtseyed, then eyed Meagan with frank interest. Some she’d already met—Mrs. Caldwell the housekeeper, Dominic her bodyguard, the lady’s maid Susan, Nikolai, Gaius, and a few of the Nvengarian footmen who’d served guests this afternoon.
Alexander began without preliminary. “These are your personal staff and will report to you. Some have been culled from my own staff, and others are new. They will assist you in your various duties and help you become familiar with your role as hostess.”
Mrs. Caldwell on the end curtseyed. “Your Grace,” she said, her words as tight as the gray bun on her head. “You will report your needs to me, and I will see that your wishes are carried out. I will also assist in planning the menus for all your meals and making arrangements for social activities in the house. Mr. Edwards…” She pointed at a trim, rather nondescript man at her side. “He will be your secretary, assisting with your correspondence and any written communications you require. You have met Susan, your lady’s maid. She is French.”
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