Kisses Like a Devil

by Diane Whiteside

  “You speak German, don’t you?”

  Why the devil was he bringing that up?

  “Fairly well, yes.”

  “Ever heard of Eisengau?” Roosevelt swung around a straight-backed chair to face him and straddled it.

  “I have one of their shotguns,” Brian acknowledged, baffled by the change in subject. Eisengau was known for weaponry, not the size of their army.

  “What sporting man doesn’t?” snorted Roosevelt, making his guest grin.

  “It’s supposed to be a small place, on the northeastern fringes of the Alps.” Brian shrugged off his disinterest.

  “Which designs and sells the best cannons in Europe.”

  Truly? As well as shotguns?

  “Why should that make me interested?” He was a civilian now.

  “Do you think the same lazy fools who gave us those slow-moving rifles in Cuba will find their way there for some good cannons?”

  Brian froze, his lemonade halfway to his lips. “Hardly,” he admitted.

  He shot a hard look at his former commander, who he’d known since earliest childhood. That was something to be said for family connections: he could ask a question and expect a straight answer. “Why do you bring it up? You’re not the President. You’re only the candidate for Vice-President.”

  “On the same ticket as the incumbent President.”

  “That’s no guarantee of being elected,” Brian reminded him.

  Colonel Roosevelt harrumphed and flung himself to his feet, never one to sit still for long. “Somebody has to go there and see what they’ve got to offer.”

  “Why the hurry?”

  “There’s a rumor they’ve got a gun as big as anything on a battleship.” And being an old Navy man, Roosevelt would have heard about it.

  “The War Department won’t look into it,” Brian guessed.

  “Not quite.” Roosevelt smacked a big fist into his palm. “They simply don’t have the money to buy it. Eisengau runs an auction at their army’s summer maneuvers where the atmosphere is lax—” Enough to make Roosevelt, who’d been uncovering political corruption for decades, mention it? Amazing—“and bidding can run very, very high.”

  Rich enough to make a former Under-Secretary of the Navy cautious? Ouch.

  “Budgets are tight and Congress is out of session—and you, sir, have no authority.” Brian sipped his lemonade again. Dammit, he wasn’t a soldier any more, charging up a hill with bullets whistling through his shirt. Nobody could make him do anything, especially not when this was somebody else’s responsibility. Like the rest of his family, he needed to go help his big brother.

  Still, if there were that many countries visiting Eisengau all at once, it might be a very good place to find out what the Russian half of the Peking relief force was actually supposed to do.

  Roosevelt’s lips compressed. He hated being reminded of limits. “We can arrange for you to be temporarily back in the Army. The War Department has unearthed some loopholes in the regulations.”

  Brian blinked, caught totally off-guard. Become a major again?

  “You have the money to compete, in your own right.” Roosevelt lowered his voice.

  The younger man eyed him disbelievingly. Go on his own? “But I’m not an artilleryman. I wouldn’t know a good cannon from a mediocre one.”

  “You’re a smart man and you know explosives. Buy what looks interesting and bring it back here for the experts to decide.”

  “Just because I’m rich.” Yes, he could undoubtedly indulge in a cannon or two out of his own pocket.

  But why should he pull the War Department’s bacon out of the fire, after the way they’d left the regiment to rot and die in Cuba without medical supplies, in exchange for making the Spanish surrender?

  “Remember San Juan Hill?” Roosevelt shifted to an orator’s coaxing croon and he leaned forward. “All those hours when the Spaniards had us pinned down and our men were wounded and dying along the road and in the fields.”

  Oh shit, and the smells. Brian nodded, a muscle jerking in his jaw.

  “Until the artillery came up. Old-fashioned artillery, using black powder, the same as they used forty years ago. Those guns opened a way for us to take that hill.”

  “Without them, we’d probably be dead.” God knows he relived that scene time and again in his nightmares. He rose and leaned against the bookcase, head bowed before the picture of Roosevelt’s beloved father.

  “Just go to Eisengau, major, and see what they have.” Brian’s shoulders instinctively straightened at the sound of his wartime rank. “If there’s nothing, come home. But if you find something interesting, buy it and Congress will reimburse you.”

  “Aren’t you exceeding your authority or something—sir?” Brian swung around.

  “If I’m not elected, then your family connections will certainly look after you.” Roosevelt thumped his desk, making the tomes jump and fall over. “And the next bunch of American soldiers who go into battle will have far better cannons than we did.”

  And they wouldn’t have to die, rotting within hours like pigs, the way his friends had. Never again, not if he could help it.

  He’d swing through some of the European capitals on the way, just to see what he could hear about the Russian intentions. Then, off to Eisengau to sift every last gossipy tidbit from the all the drunken soldiers there. Somewhere, somehow, somebody had news that would help Neil.

  “Are you in, Major?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Brian snapped to attention and saluted.

  Eisengau, July 1900

  Meredith quickly took the last steps down into the square from the college, her long black academic robe whipping around her ankles. Her neatly strapped books swung from her hand, ready to be hidden away for the summer, and her headdress’s ribbons brushed her forehead. In the grand duchy’s modern capital, only female college students wore traditional headgear—and only during the school year. The intricate wreath would be packed away once she reached home, together with her black velvet robes, to spare her mother and stepfather any reminders of their increasingly unpleasant bargain.

  After four years, she still hadn’t brought home a fiancé. Her opposition to doing so had grown as firm as her parents’ determination to force her into an advantageous marriage. Only their income from keeping her in school kept the atmosphere remotely civilized but that had become an ever-narrower bridge across a deep chasm.

  Stiff linen nudged her waist, arguing that she quickly complete her sole errand. Oh, she would, she would. She’d finally had the chance to take action and she’d seized it.

  She grinned privately and scanned the old market square for her best friend. She’d won their private race and reached the rendezvous point before he expected her.

  Intricate old buildings framed the great expanse, currently filled with a multitude of vendors. They sold anything a housewife could desire, starting with food, and the aromas made her mouth water. Whether from small carts or large booths, donkey-drawn or set out in front of a store, they were the gaudiest specimens Eisengau could provide and very popular.

  There! A sturdy black dog raced in circles around the drinking fountain with several other dogs, all of them leaping in the air to catch droplets of water.

  Meredith threw her head back and laughed. She wasn’t the only one glad to see semester’s end. She could hardly wait to tell her friends what she’d done. Now the grand duke would have to listen to them.

  Morro’s head snapped up and he barked a joyous welcome. He twisted, changing direction in mid-air, and raced toward her, dodging between obstacles rather than around them.

  She grinned and waited for him, her best and oldest friend. She’d buy him a meat roll to celebrate her secret treasure, once she turned it over to be safely hidden.

  A whir and a long drum roll brought the great clock, pride of the ruling dynasty for three centuries, whirling into action. Saints and soldiers strutted in circles atop the New Town Hall’s bell tower, c
areless of the humans below them. Church bells began to ring across the city, once after another, announcing the noontime hour. Tomorrow St. Martin’s Church in Old Town would hold its weekly concert, reminding everyone who’d gained the largest organ in town thanks to the last war.

  Flower vendors hastily straightened their wares, while scared cabbies whipped up their horses and raced for safety, desperate to escape the ban on being caught in New Town by foreigners. They disappeared under the great barrel-vaulted colonnades, originally built to keep businesses above the great spring floods which regularly ripped through the entire valley, and into Old Town’s narrower, winding streets. Only the ancient floodwall protected the historic quarter, not broad avenues and squares, or deep underground drains.

  The train blew its whistle sharply once, then again on a long, breathy sigh. Steam oozed out of the station and slid down the tracks, veiling Paris Avenue and Eisengau’s Old Town’s rough walls beyond it.

  Meredith gritted her teeth, barely tolerating another view of the daily injustice. She was never sure whether to race through the square at this hour or delay long enough to avoid the train from Berlin and Paris.

  Crimson tile rooftops marked houses and shops clinging to the crag below the Citadel. Only a few, privileged newcomers would be permitted to ascend the narrow roads cut into the Iron Mountain and journey to the ducal palace, sprawled like a sated python over the rock. Black smoke slowly spiraled into the sky behind the cathedral’s gothic spires, as it had for all the millennia since swords were first beaten out against the peak’s unyielding heart.

  And that made everything completely normal in Eisengau—or “Iron Mountain” in German.

  Morro planted himself in front of her, tongue lolling out from between his teeth, just as the clock sounded its final note. Perfect timing, as ever.

  “You marvelous boy,” she crooned and bent to scratch his head behind the ears.

  “Fräulein Duncan.”

  Her boss’s all-too-familiar Germanic bark sent her stomach diving for her boots. For a moment, her head spun. Remember, he can’t see through your robes, she reminded herself fiercely.

  The massive, curving bulk of Colonel Heinrich Zorndorf, Eisengau’s chief cannon designer, almost blocked the sun. Taller than most men, his waist measurement nearly equaled his height. His nose was as sharp as a vulture’s rapacious beak, his mouth was as tight as a python’s grip, and his jaw jutted like a tiger’s strike. But his eyes were as sharp as a saber’s edge.

  “Colonel Zorndorf,” she acknowledged and rose slowly to her feet. She plastered a smile on her lips, hoping it looked like her usual polite, patient version.

  “They will be working tonight at the foundry.”

  “Again?” The betraying word slipped out before she could stop it. Morro whipped around, planting himself between the two of them.

  Travelers streamed past, isolating them in a bubble of concentrated conversation.

  “What’s three consecutive weeks when perfection is required?” He frowned at her, his bushy eyebrows beetling under his spiked helmet.

  When they’ve been laboring at least fourteen hour shifts and haven’t had a single day off?

  “I’m sure all will end well.” She’d learned long ago what she could, and could not, do. Openly disagreeing with him was profitless. She shifted her books, nudging her elbow against the linen tied around her waist.

  Oh please, let him not notice that my robes are much thicker than usual…

  “You will need to observe and take notes.”

  “Tonight? After dark?” She gaped at him. The foundry was almost five miles outside town. She went there regularly during daylight—but at night? For a properly bred girl to walk there alone during those hours was unheard of.

  “Of course. My name is all the shield you need.” He threw back his shoulders, a lascivious sneer curling his lips.

  Yes, but that implied she was either his mistress or his fiancée! She could hardly tell him her friends at the foundry would protect her. She should simply say her mother would never agree. She opened her mouth to object.

  A soft, rumbling growl rose from Morro.

  “I will be attending Grand Duke Rupert’s reception for our foreign visitors,” he went on. “Such a pity you can’t attend that instead, since the company there will be very warm.”

  Zorndorf leered down at her, his gaze running over her body like a slimy glove. It lingered on her bosom and traveled lower, scrutinizing every fold for clues to the female form hidden underneath. What if he realized she’d abruptly lost her normally trim waist?

  Dear God, what if he guessed she was carrying the plans for Eisengau’s magnificent new cannon, strapped around her waist? She had to end this.

  “Yes, of course, I’ll do my duty and go to the foundry tonight.” She’d have to visit her friends now, rather than wait until this evening’s workers’ party central committee meeting. But she should be able to catch Liesel at home and Liesel could hide the plans for her.

  “Excellent, I knew you were a good girl.” He reached out to chuck her under the chin and she stepped back quickly. Morro deliberately didn’t follow immediately, causing Zorndorf to almost trip. By the time her boss recovered, she was standing a few paces away with her very innocent canine companion at her side. Four years of working for the pig had given them far too much practice in that move.

  Zorndorf glared at her, puffing out his chest even farther as he drew himself erect. “I’ll also need two new drawings of the ceremonial limber, the one which holds the ammunition for the Citadel’s antique cannon.”

  “Two new drawings? Are more countries coming to the summer maneuvers?” She’d thought all the reservations had been received.

  “Only one additional—the United States.”

  An American? What would he look like? Surely nothing like somebody out of her dime novels.

  But he might be—fascinating, the way her two lovers hadn’t been.

  She yanked back her thoughts before they could wander too far. “And who else?”

  “The Russians have finally paid enough to attend all of summer maneuvers. So they too will receive the traditional memento, a program with their coat of arms on the ceremonial limber. You will draw the limber from memory and a court artist will add the coat of arms.”

  Her mouth twisted wryly. A memory challenge but a small one, considering she’d recreated blueprints for entire cannons before. Still, these drawings would be reviewed by the grand duke’s fussiest artists and her work had few creative touches to please them.

  “Certainly, sir.” She blatantly dodged a departing traveler, who was trailed by a cartful of luggage. “Is there anything else?”

  Zorndorf frowned, his mouth tightening until his beak of a nose seemed to dive toward his chin. “No, nothing for now, Fräulein Duncan.”

  She waited, her back rigidly straight, until he vanished into a hansom cab. Then she shook, the priceless plans resting under her ribs.

  Morro whined restlessly and nosed her fingertips.

  “Yes, dear, I know we must leave.” She rubbed his pricked ears, drawing the soft leather through her fingers for reassurance.

  He grunted deep in his throat and butted her hand, knocking it away. His gaze was focused, straining toward something far across the square.

  “What on earth?” She looked up.

  A single man stepped out of the colonnaded station, isolated by a swirl of travelers. He was tall and broad-shouldered, clad entirely in black. His broad-brimmed hat readily identified him as an American, a rarity here in Eisengau despite its famous summer music festival and military maneuvers. His clothes were well-made yet neither dandified nor a uniform. Straight black hair brushed his collar and his skin was tanned golden brown from the sun, something seldom seen amid these stone walls. His blade-sharp nose, high cheekbones, and stubborn jaw could have been carved by a master sculptor.

  He paused on the top of the steps to look around, graceful as a hawk scanning a meadow, y
et utterly unself-conscious. His brilliant blue eyes flashed over the crowd like light passing through the finest stained glass—and lingered on Meredith.

  Her breath caught in her throat. How many newspaper articles about American adventurers had she devoured? How many cheap novels about men like him had she bartered for?

  And to finally see one in the flesh…

  She instinctively rose to her feet.

  The young British military observer limped over to him. Broad grins and thumps on the back announced their old friendship. They were gone within a minute, leaving her alone.

  As Zorndorf’s secretary, she knew everything that went on behind the scenes at Eisengau’s summer maneuvers and weapons’ auctions. She’d never been allowed to meet any of the guests, nor would she be. But she could dream—after she saw the plans into safekeeping.

  Her friends would be completely surprised. They’d never expected her to accomplish the feat so soon.

  She grinned again and headed for Liesel’s tiny apartment.

  “Meredith!” Liesel, a very pretty, plump, little blond, opened the door wider. “Please come in. Will you join us for sausages?”

  Meredith stepped inside, twitching her skirts out of the way so Morro could renew his acquaintance with Liesel’s beloved mutt. They’d come here so often that the two dogs played together like each other’s shadows. The windows were shut at the moment, despite the day’s steamy heat.

  “I didn’t expect to see you this afternoon.” Liesel was chattering as usual. She’d talk just as much when she tried to convince Meredith to buy a new dress. “But we’re all friends here and there’s plenty of food.”

  There were eight people in the room, crammed into the sofa or perched on chairs. It was more than she’d expected to see.

  But they were her friends and the family of her heart. They’d studied together at the gymnasium, before they came to the university. They’d united together here, outraged by the grand duke’s treatment of the workers. There’d been good times, too, such as when new records came from America and they could learn the latest dances together. Or when they’d go to the beer houses for fun, not for rallies.