The Mad, Bad Duke (Nvengaria #2)(66)
“You’ve cracked his shell, have you?” Egan lifted his glass in salute. “Good on you, lassie.”
“Alexander does not have a shell.” Meagan thought of the warm passion she’d glimpsed in her husband’s eyes, not only when they were making love, but when he simply 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, you’d know best.” Egan took a gulp of whisky and winced. “This stuff does not agree with me as much as when I was younger. I saw Alexander staring daggers at the smitten gentlemen surrounding you this evening, so you might be right. He’s letting the feelings out for you, any rate.”
“Do you know what he is doing tonight, Egan?” Meagan poured coffee from the silver pot, her hand unsteady. “He has not given me precise information about his intrigues.”
Egan shook his head. “Alexander is a man who plays his cards close to his chest. The only people who know what he is up to are himself, Lady Anastasia, and that logosh.”
Meagan set down the pot, thinking of how Myn had suddenly appeared and how unnerving it had been to watch him change shape. Why Myn would turn up at a ball to find Alexander, she did not know, and the fact that he did so worried her. They’d spoken together in Nvengarian, which meant everyone in the room but Meagan had understood what was going on. “Alexander’s 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 cannae 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 next one is elected from the Council of Dukes. The plotting that goes on would curl me hair, were it not so already.”
“You know much about Nvengaria,” Meagan said wistfully. “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’s, 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 weren’t so important,” Meagan said, frustrated. “But then, if he were an ordinary Nvengarian, he’d have stayed in Nvengaria, and I never would have met him.” Her heart burned, the emptiness of that statement catching her.
Egan slanted her a curious glance. “Then you would have been spared all this.”
“I know, but I wouldn’t know Alexander.” Meagan fingered the diamonds at her throat, his latest present to her.
Egan chuckled. “Lassie, I do believe you’re in love.”
Meagan flushed. “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. Aye, 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 bite of worry. “I know. But why put the spell on me? Why not some important man’s wife? That would be much more of a scandal and hindrance than making him fall for a nobody. I am a country gentleman’s daughter, not in the least interesting, with no scandal attached to me. At least, not until now.”
Egan sent her a piercing look. “I would not say not interesting, lass. But do not ask me. The ways of Nvengarians are a mystery, doesn’t matter that I lived there awhile. Young Zarabeth could confound a saint—and then she had to up and marry one of the Council of Dukes. A bloody idiot from what 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.”
Egan’s eyes softened, and Meagan sensed his thoughts drift back to the scolding young woman who had married someone else.
“Egan,” Meagan said quietly.
Egan 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 MacDonald, the Mad Highlander, is a fool.”
“Is she why you’ve never married?” Meagan asked, interested. She’d long suspected that Egan nursed a broken heart, had declared so to Penelope when she’s first met him.
Egan drained the glass of whisky and poured another. The clink of crystal and trickle of liquid were loud in the silence. “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 you 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, to my thinking, and we parted not on the best of terms. As I said, she could scold.” His voice quieted. “And then I learn she’s married. What’s a bold, brash Scotsman to do?”