The Mad, Bad Duke

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “Did you set him on me? He has been following me everywhere.” She glared, her brown eyes shining with anger.

  “I cannot answer if I do not know who you mean.”

  She snapped her hands from him, breaking the dance. “Myn, your pet logosh. What does he want from me? Oh, I cannot stay.”

  She whirled, diamonds flashing in her hair, and fled the ballroom, leaving Alexander standing alone in the middle of the floor in front of the entertained ton. Alexander growled under his breath, then growled again when he saw Meagan hurry out of the room after Anastasia.

  Scurrilous gossip would make much of this. Hiding a sigh, he strode after them.

  Dominic, like the good bodyguard he was, had followed Meagan, and Alexander followed the man’s bulk to a small sitting room at the end of a hall.

  Inside, Anastasia sat on a sofa, her arms drawn about her body, rocking and shaking. Meagan hovered over her worriedly, her handkerchief held out in offering. Alexander closed the door against the interested stares of people who’d crowded the hall behind him.

  “What do you think you are doing?” he began.

  Anastasia looked up and shrieked. Meagan too gasped, and Alexander swung around to see Myn calmly stepping through a window in his logosh form. Dominic tensed but made no move.

  Myn’s demon form shrank and melded into that of a wolf, huge and gray, his eyes still logosh blue. He padded to Alexander and rose to become human again in a hum of magic. He wore nothing on his large body, which in no way seemed to worry him.

  Meagan’s mouth hung open, but Anastasia regarded Myn in near terror.

  Alexander felt the magic in himself respond, his body wanting to change. He fought it. Now was not the time, not here in an anteroom in the French ambassador’s house.

  “Has something happened?” he asked the logosh.

  “The one you call von Hohenzahl awaits you,” Myn said in Nvengarian. “He has ordered men to capture your wife or you, he said he did not care which. They wait in the streets between here and your own house.”

  Dominic growled. “Let me take them, Your Grace. I and my men will rout them.” He smiled a feral grin. “It will be a pleasure.”

  Nvengarians loved a good fight. Alexander shook his head. “If you round up these men, von Hohenzahl will simply hire more. I will confront him and cut off the problem at the head.”

  Dominic’s eyes glinted. “Even better, sir.”

  “What is he saying?” Meagan asked, brown eyes round. “Alexander, I don’t understand.”

  “Intrigue,” he answered her in English. “Nvengarian and Austrian intrigue. Dominic will take you home and he and his men will stay with you, while I visit von Hohenzahl. Anastasia, I want you with me. I will leave you at your hotel.”

  Anastasia’s eyes were haunted, but she forced a smile. “If you run off with your mistress while your wife goes home alone, people will talk.”

  “Good. While their minds are filled with tittle-tattle, we can go about our business undisturbed.” In Nvengarian he said, “Myn, I need you too.”

  Meagan rose swiftly and put her hand on Alexander’s arm. “You are going to do something dangerous, aren’t you?”

  “More dangerous to von Hohenzahl, I assure you.”

  Her fingers closed over him, the love spell sliding around them both. Damn von Hohenzahl. If not for him, Alexander could ride home with Meagan alone and lift her into his arms in the carriage. He’d experiment with how much they could do in a moving conveyance in the middle of Mayfair.

  He slid his arm around Meagan’s waist and pulled her close, leaning down to kiss her. Never mind the other three staring at them, Dominic in glee, Anastasia wistfully, Myn neutral. He wanted Meagan and her taste and her scent, damn intrigue and damn all Austrians who couldn’t stick to gossiping in coffeehouses in Vienna.

  The door swung open behind him, the draft breaking his bliss. A deep voice and a Scottish burr filled the room. “‘Tis a wee commotion you’re causing out here, Your Dukeness. Everything all right?”

  Reluctantly, Alexander eased away from Meagan. Her eyelids were heavy, lips parted in longing, the love spell affecting her as much as him.

  “Egan McDonald,” he said to the Scotsman who filled the doorway. Egan’s kilt, his brogue, and his wild hair showed that he was fully playing the Mad Highlander tonight. “Perfect.”

  “Tell me, lass, what it is about Nvengarian men,” Egan said, a teasing twinkle in his eyes as he and Meagan entered Maysfield House, “that makes their brides so sad to be shunted off to the likes of Egan McDonald? First Princess Penelope, now the Grand Duchess. A man’s got his pride, ye know.”

  Meagan let Gaius take her cloak and led Egan to the India sitting room and called for tea.

  “I beg your pardon, Egan,” she said. “Please forgive my rudeness. I am worried about Alexander is all.”

  Alexander, before he’d kissed her and departed with his entourage, had beckoned Egan to him. “Guard her well,” she’d heard Alexander say in a low voice. “Stay with her until I return.”

  “Ye needn’t worry about him running to another woman, lass,” Egan said, sitting in a particularly ugly armchair and stretching out his brawny legs. “Especially not Anastasia. I gather ye know why he works with her. But even if he did not, ‘tis not his way to pursue a bit of muslin. He’s a cold man, is Alexander.”

  “No, he is not.”

  Meagan clamped her mouth shut as Egan raised his brows and Gaius trotted in with a tray of tea and some whisky for Egan. Meagan felt some small affection for Gaius because he reminded her much of Roberts, the bumbling Tavistock footman, although Gaius did not drop things nearly so much.

  Egan motioned for Gaius to leave the decanter of whiskey. The young man moved it to a table next to Egan and departed, and Egan poured himself a large measure.

  “Ye’ve cracked his shell, have ye?” Egan lifted his glass in salute. “Good on ye, lassie.”

  “Alexander does not have a shell.” She thought of the warm passion she’d glimpsed in her husband’s eyes, not only when they were making love or under the love spell, but when he glanced at her from across the ballroom tonight or glared at her after she’d poured wine in his lap. “He is a man of deep feeling. Others have made him bury it, that is all.”

  “Well, ye’d know best.” Egan took another gulp of whisky and winced. “Och, this stuff doesna agree with me as when I was younger. I saw Alexander staring daggers at the smitten gentlemen around ye, so ye might be right. He’s letting the feelings out for ye, any rate.”

  “Do you know what he is doing tonight, Egan?” Meagan poured tea from the silver pot, her hand unsteady. “He has not given me precise information about his intrigues.”

  Egan shook his head. “The only people who know what he’s up to is himself and Lady Anastasia and that logosh.”

  Meagan bit her lip, thinking of how Myn had suddenly appeared and how unnerving it had been to watch him change shape. Why the logosh would turn up at a ball to find Alexander, she did not know, but it worried her. They’d spoken mostly in Nvengarian, which meant everyone in the room but she had understood what was going on. “He is in danger, isn’t he?”

  “Grand Duke Alexander of Nvengaria?” Egan raised his brows. “He’s been in danger since the day he was born, love. You canno’ be high-placed in Nvengaria without assassins gathering in the shadows. The position of Grand Duke is inherited, but when the line is gone, the Council of Dukes elect the next lucky sod. The plotting that goes on would curl me hair, were it not already.” He grinned.

  “You know so much about Nvengaria. I know so little, except what Penelope writes, and I have the feeling she gilds the truth. She likes to put a bright tint on things.”

  Egan crossed his booted feet, settling himself comfortably. “I lived there a time, with a Nvengarian family. Cousins of Prince Damien, as a matter of fact. They were distant enough relatives that the intrigues of the court didn’t touch them,
and they kept themselves apart from the old Imperial Prince. Safer, that was.”

  “I wish Alexander was not so important,” Meagan said softly. “But then, if he were an ordinary Nvengarian he’d have stayed in Nvengaria, and I never would have met him.”

  Egan slanted her a curious glance. “Then ye would have been spared all this muck.”

  “I know, but I wouldn’t know Alexander.” She fingered the diamonds at her throat, his latest present to her.

  Egan chuckled. “Lassie, I believe ye are in love.”

  “It is a love spell. You are an old friend, I don’t mind you knowing. A woman called Black Annie put a love spell on us, and I do not know why. For her amusement, it seems.”

  “A love spell. Och, how Nvengarian.”

  “Black Annie is English.”

  “Yes, but someone must have paid this witch to do the spell, probably to confound Alexander. He’s a powerful man and there’s more than one who’d like to see him fall.”

  Meagan felt a twinge of worry. “I know. But why me? Why not some important man’s wife? That would be much more of a scandal and hindrance than making him fall for a country gentleman’s daughter.”

  “Donna ask me, lass. The ways of Nvengarians are a mystery, doesna matter that I lived there. Young Zarabeth could confound a saint, and then she had to up and marry one of the Council of Dukes. A bloody idiot from all I hear.”

  Meagan’s curiosity piqued, Egan’s tone and scowl diverting her from her own troubles. “Zarabeth?”

  “Daughter of the family I lived with. She could scold like the veriest fishwife, devil take her.”

  His eyes softened, and Meagan sensed his thoughts drift back to Nvengaria and the scolding young woman who had married someone else.

  “Egan,” she said.

  He snapped his head up as though realizing he’d given himself away. He met Meagan’s measured gaze and smiled ruefully. “Keep it to yourself, lass. Egan McDonald, the Mad Highlander, is a fool.”

  “Is she why you never married?”

  Egan drained his glass of whisky and poured another. “Me, marry? The Mad Highlander, the great war hero, the wild bachelor? Why, ladies would be cryin’ their eyes out.…” He trailed off, catching her look. “All right, ye’ve caught me. What is it about ye and your friend Penelope that makes me enter the confessional?”

  “Did Zarabeth turn you down?” Meagan asked.

  “I never asked her. She was too young, I thought, and we parted not on the best of terms. As I said, she could scold.” His voice dropped. “And then I learn she’s married. What’s a bold, brash Scotsman to do?”

  “Perhaps you will find someone else,” Meagan suggested gently.

  “Doubtful, lass. And donna get that matchmaking glint in your eye. I had me chance, and ‘tis done. I truly donna mind hordes of ladies chasing me up and down Mayfair, so put it out of your head that I am miserable, and tend to your own troubles.”

  Meagan couldn’t help smiling. Egan was red and uncomfortable and reaching for more whisky. She’d keep her thoughts to herself, but there had to be someone….

  She laughed a little. “Do you know, the Duchesses of Cranshaw and Gower have made me promise that I will give a ball, my first as Grand Duchess of Nvengaria. I am terrified. The Duchess of Gower wants me to trip, and the Duchess of Cranshaw wants me to blossom so she can rub it in the face of the Duchess of Gower. They are squeezing me in two.”

  Egan looked grateful she’d changed the subject. “A grand idea. When the ton learns ye can host a fine entertainment, they will turn a favorable eye on ye. Your star will rise.”

  “But good lord, Egan, I know nothing about it.”

  “That is why ye have staff. Leave it to that nice Mrs. Caldwell.” He shivered. “She can look at a man and make him feel like a guilty schoolboy what’s not finished his rice pudding.”

  “She has been very kind to me. She knows the running of this house backward and forward.”

  “See that? She will have the ball arranged in a trice, and ye have dozens of servants to do all the work. All ye need do is stand at the top of the ballroom stairs and shake hands until your fingers go numb.”

  “I hope you are right.”

  Egan leaned back in his chair and studied the brightly colored and rather unconvincing tigers and lions and gods cavorting on the ceiling. “Good lord, that’s enough to make a man nauseated. Or give him nightmares. How do ye live in this ornamented house?”

  Meagan jumped to her feet. “I cannot sit still. Would you like me to give you a tour? Montmorency leads people around on Wednesdays for a shilling. This will save you the cost.”

  Egan grinned. “Lead on. I will gawk as much as ye like.”

  Meagan hoped that wandering through the many rooms of the mansion would still her worry about Alexander, but that was not to be. She took Egan to the ballroom with its curved red ceilings and huge gold and crystal chandeliers. They visited the Asia Hall and the anteroom done in glittering gold and white, and the huge dining room with its black marble columns and paintings of bloody battle on the walls.

  “Nice thing to look at while you’re eating,” Egan remarked.

  Meagan laughed. “Precisely what I thought upon first viewing them.” Her smile died and her eyes widened as the paintings reminded her of Alexander’s battles. “I wish he would have let me stay with him tonight. I hate not knowing what is happening to him.”

  Egan sent her a sympathetic smile. “Aye, lass, I know. But Alexander is a resourceful man, and experienced, and he’s got that logosh and bloodthirsty Nvengarians around him. ‘Twill be all right.” His smile turned to a grin. “Let me regale you with stories of my crazy family in Scotland. I’ll make ye laugh, and he’ll be home before ye ken it.”

  Yet even as he began his stories Meagan knew they couldn’t distract her from Alexander.

  Otto von Hohenzahl looked fearfully down at the Nvengarians who had him pinned to the wall of his study. Alexander watched him from across the room, Myn beside him. The logosh now wore his usual linen shirt and rough breeches, clothes he had stashed in Alexander’s carriage.

  Myn’s appearance at Alexander’s side had caused von Hohenzahl to go sheet white and gibber in fear.

  “I find it curious,” Alexander began, “that you know what a logosh is. Not many do.”

  Von Hohenzahl spoke thick German, his dialect almost indecipherable. “He can kill all of us in this room.”

  “I know.” Alexander spoke Nvengarian, refusing to switch languages for von Hohenzahl’s benefit. “Perhaps I will leave him alone with you, to find out what he does.”

  “No!” Above his pristine cravat, von Hohenzahl’s eyes bulged.

  “Then cease threatening my family. If your men come anywhere near them, I will let Myn do whatever he likes with you. That might mean ripping out your throat or telling you Nvengarian fairy tales. I will let him choose.”

  “You see,” von Hohenzahl bleated. “I was right.”

  Alexander growled. “Right about what? Be clear.”

  “The logosh will follow you. You can lead them, Your Grace. That is your key to taking over Nvengaria, not negotiating with Damien.”

  His eyes gleamed with ambition, and Alexander felt disgust. The man must truly think he could dance into Nvengaria with Alexander at his side, have Alexander create an army of logosh to sweep down on Damien and boot him off the throne. Was this the “secret weapon” he’d been raving about? He was a fool if so. The logosh served Princess Penelope and her alone.

  “You assume I have any interest in taking over Nvengaria,” he said, voice cool. “Certainly not if it means letting an Austrian get his clutches on it.”

  “Nvengaria will never stand up to Austria,” von Hohenzahl said desperately. “We are too strong. We will win through in the end and be the most powerful empire in the world.”

  “Spare me your pseudo patriotism. You care for your own glory, not Austria’s. You would double-cross Prince Metternich in a heartbeat if you t
hought you could. You want Nvengaria for yourself, to prove to Metternich you can take it.”

  “If you kill me, another will spring up to take my place,” von Hohenzahl said.

  “If I kill you, it will be to make you be quiet.”

  Julius held up his wicked-looking knife. “May I cut his throat, Your Grace? Please?”

  Von Hohenzahl’s eyes widened at the bloodlust in Julius’s smile.

  “No, Julius. London is a civilized place, more or less. I would not like to lose you to their justice system.” Alexander walked closer to von Hohenzahl and looked up at him. “From now on you have a new master—me. You dislike Metternich because he steals your ideas and ignores you. Now you will work for me against him.”

  “I cannot,” von Hohenzahl said, face white.

  “If you do not, you will die and no one will be able to tell how. I have many more problems to take care of than you, and a new wife to tend to. I would like one less distraction while I get to know her.”

  “Metternich will kill me,” von Hohenzahl bleated.

  “He might. But if he doesn’t, I certainly will. The choice is yours.”

  He instructed his guards to release the diplomat. The two men who held von Hohenzahl looked disappointed, but they eased off and lowered the man to his feet. The Austrian swallowed and adjusted his cravat.

  Alexander studied him coldly. “Give me your loyalty and I might be lenient. But I will watch you, and if you take one step too far, if you make one more threat to my family, you will pay a high price.”

  “What about the Austrian woman?”

  Alexander allowed no flicker of emotion to cross his face. “You speak of Lady Anastasia Dimitri?”

  “Yes,” he panted. “Lady Anastasia. She is up to something. She is hand in glove with Metternich, and she means to bring down Nvengaria. Allow me to break her for you, to show you my loyalty.”

  Alexander regarded him in disgust. The man switched loyalties too quickly, and such a person was not to be trusted. The idea that Anastasia would work with Metternich was ludicrous, and von Hohenzahl was either lying or he was a fool. Alexander heard the lust in von Hohenzahl’s voice, the hope that he could have Anastasia to himself.