Penelope and Prince Charming (Nvengaria #1)(119)
Sasha had turned bright red and stammered a bit. “I did, Your Highness, yes.”
Damien rested his forehead briefly on his fingertips before returning his imperial stare to Sasha. “You are a mage? Why the devil didn’t you tell me?”
“A humble one only, Highness. I could never, ever be strong enough for the Council of Mages. It was a minor spell, a simple one. Only … I miscalculated.”
Penelope leaned around Damien, curious. “What do you mean, miscalculated?”
“It was meant to send the logosh—Wulf—to sleep,” Sasha confessed. “He’d crept back to the house, and I so feared he’d hurt you. So I did a sleep spell.” His flush deepened. “But the entire household went to sleep, not only Wulf.”
“Sasha,” Damien rumbled.
The small man bowed his head. “I am deeply sorry, Your Highness. You may punish me as you see fit.”
“You old fool,” Damien’s voice softened. “Never mind. But if you ever decide to use a spell to protect me again—tell me first.”
“Yes, Your Highness,” Sasha said, then he smiled, knowing he’d been forgiven.
* * *
After the wedding ceremony came another long banquet, then a ball. Damien smiled and talked and charmed his way through it, though Penelope’s feet hurt, her head ached, and she could not remember by the end of the evening what she’d said to whom.
She danced with Damien—the opening dance to much fanfare and cheering—and then she was passed around through the entire Council of Dukes and Council of Mages, at least those who could stand up long enough to take one turn around the ballroom.
Egan MacDonald lapsed into playing the Mad Highlander, regaling people with harrowing stories of life in the Highlands and on the Peninsula during the war. He demonstrated a “traditional” Highland dance, hopping up and down and kicking his feet crazily to drums and fiddles and much applause. Penelope, who had seen true Scottish dances, knew he’d made it up, but the Nvengarians loved it.
As the evening progressed, the resemblance of the wedding ball to a cultured gathering in a Mayfair home diminished, and the Nvengarian characteristic took over. Wine flowed, and the dancing moved from constrained waltzes to free-for-all riotousness as the music became more and more frenzied.
Even the most staid matrons and older gentlemen joined in the circle dances, where circles wove inside circles, and lines of people, linking hands, pulled each other in sinuous waves through the huge ballroom.
Those not dancing clapped, including Penelope and Damien standing on the dais together, the sounds growing louder and faster as the dancers frantically tried to keep up with the time.
The laughter gave way to whoops and ululations as the ancient madness that lay buried inside every Nvengarian rose to the surface. Penelope’s heart beat faster, feeling the stirrings within herself, dark needs that told her, as much as Alexander’s pieces of paper tried to deny it, that she was truly one of them.
Penelope felt Nvengaria’s magic, its wildness, and its barely suppressed savagery seeping from the bones of the land itself. No matter how many elegant palaces and estates adorned the hills, these were at heart a very basic people, as primitive as the logosh. There was probably more link to the logosh in Nvengarians than they knew themselves.
As the ballroom grew darker, the red light of braziers taking over as candles burned to stubs, Damien clasped Penelope’s arm, his grip firm. “Let us adjourn,” he said into her ear, his breath warm.
“Should we?” Penelope asked. “We are the guests of honor.”
Damien’s face was flushed, his eyes deep blue and glistening in the flickering light. “We should, before I drag you under a table and ravish you.”
Heat spread through Penelope’s body. Damien might do just that, if the look in his eyes was any indication. “Then we should go,” she said quickly.
They made no formal farewells. Damien simply led Penelope to a small door in the back of the ballroom and out.
He steered her through dark, narrow servants’ corridors and then up winding staircases until they reached the private floors. Damien left the servants’ passages then and led Penelope to the bedchamber they were to share. His fingers never left her arm, his hand hot, his breathing rapid.
Damien’s huge bed of state, nearly twice the size of the one they’d been given in Carleton House, dominated the chamber. The coverlet was cloth of gold, and a canopy of red and gold hung from the high ceiling above it.
“Goodness,” Penelope said, gazing at the giant bed. “Seven or eight people could sleep in that.”
Damien kicked the door closed. “Tonight, only two.” He stilled, looking more like one of the logosh of the mountains than an Imperial Prince. “Take off the dress if you want to save it from me.”
Penelope touched the fine silk of her white and pink gown. “It is rather splendid.”
“Take it off,” Damien repeated, voice going fierce. “Else I’ll rip it from you.”
Penelope remembered how he’d asked her to slowly undress for him the night at Carleton House, but she sensed that tonight, Damien would have no such patience. They were married in truth, in all ways, and they no longer had to hold themselves in check.
Under Damien’s intense gaze, Penelope quickly slid off the simple gown and laid it across a chair.