The Mad, Bad Duke (Nvengaria #2)(44)

“Who?” 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 glistening in the moonlight. “Your mother was of my people, Alexander of Nvengaria. She was logosh.”





Chapter 13





The whirlwind of wedding preparations came to an end when Meagan and Alexander married at St. George’s, Hanover Square, the Sunday after the banns were last read, a month from their wild meeting at Lady Featherstone’s ball.

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 tight, as though he were an untried youth fearing his bride would jilt him at the last minute.

Myn’s announcement had shaken everything Alexander believed to the core. The fact that his mother had been a shape-shifting logosh, one of the wild peoples of the mountains, was difficult to accept, though it was easy to understand why his father had never told him. If the old Imperial Prince had ever discovered that Alexander was half logosh, what would he have done with that knowledge?

According to Myn, Alexander’s mother had fallen in love with his father and left the mountains to live with him in the city, keeping the secret of her true self from all but her husband. When she knew she was dying, she returned to the mountains and her own tribe, and Alexander’s father had let her go.

His father had not been able to pass on the secret before his sudden execution. Myn had sensed Alexander’s logosh side of him trying to come to the fore and had decided to travel with him to England and prepare him. The memory lapses occurred when the logosh in him tried to take over. The Alexander part of him fought to regain control by blotting out the memory of shifting.

Myn wanted to teach Alexander how to shift and accept it, but the lessons hadn’t worked. Since the night after the garden party with Meagan, Alexander’s memory lapses and changes had ceased, though he did not know why. Perhaps the knowledge of what he was had calmed the being inside him, or his anticipation of the wedding let his iron control win. He wanted nothing to interrupt his way to Meagan.

Now she walked toward him on her father’s arm in a gown of yellow silk, orange blossoms in her hair, and the diamonds he’d given her around her neck. The love spell with Meagan might destroy him, but he refused to call off the wedding. Alexander had made a promise, he had ruined her, and he would do his duty by her. If he never saw Meagan again after tonight, so be it. She deserved some compensation for blundering into the path of the Mad, Bad Duke.

Though the wedding had been hastily arranged, 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. He seemed perfectly satisfied that Alexander would marry Meagan, had said cryptically that it was meant to be.

As for Meagan, Alexander was dying for her. The detached part of him wanted to keep her at a distance, but his body and soul craved her.

Meagan halted next to him and sent him a sideways glance, her face serene. The warmth 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 clear-headed. 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. Meagan was ripping open the mad part of Alexander and letting the beast free.

Black Annie must be forced to end the love spell before it was too late. Alexander, however, had not managed to put his hands on her. His men hadn’t succeeded in tracking her down, not even when they became fixtures at the end of the cul-de-sac on which she lived. Alexander had never before been unable to unearth a person when he wanted her, 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 far away as she can from me. But I need this night.