The Mad, Bad Duke (Nvengaria #2)(87)
Adolpho’s Book of Seductions was required reading for both Nvengarian young ladies and young men when they came of age, but the book was extremely racy by English standards. She wondered where Meagan had come by it and decided that Meagan had more facets to her than met the eye.
Anastasia’s maid finished her hair and stood back deferentially, ready to tuck her mistress into bed for the night. Anastasia remained in the chair.
“That is all, thank you so much. I will sit up and read a book.”
The abigail, well-trained, nodded. “Yes, my lady. Take care you don’t catch a chill.”
She poked the fire high and threw on another log, ensuring that Anastasia would be well warmed, before dusting off her hands and departing the room.
Anastasia smiled privately as the abigail went. The woman had taken it upon herself to become Anastasia’s nursemaid. She was of a mind that every lady should have a husband to look after her, no matter that she was titled and vastly wealthy. Anastasia felt the abigail’s pity, and it amused her.
She lost her smile as she lifted the brush and pulled it through her hair.
Dimitri had liked to brush out Anastasia’s hair. He’d stand behind her and carefully stroke the hairbrush through her tresses, the feeling of the brush on her scalp sensual and intimate. Then Dimitri would lean down and kiss her, and things would turn exciting from there.
Dimitri had been the most exciting man Anastasia had ever met. He’d sometimes tired her desperately with his excitement.
Now where had that disloyal thought come from? Anastasia frowned at her reflection, startled.
Dimitri had taken shy little Anastasia from her prim and proper Austrian home and showed her a world of incredible delights. Nvengaria’s soaring sharp mountains and deep valleys had amazed her after living her entire life on the flat plain of Vienna. She had never even seen the magnificent Alps in her own country until Dimitri had showed them to her.
Dimitri had taught Anastasia how to live outrageously and love outrageously, how to find her wild side and set it free. Her pious Austrian family had been shocked and horrified by her swift marriage to him, but the Nvengarians had loved her.
Dimitri had taught Anastasia to ride like a hellion, shoot pistols as well as any man, dance for three days and still be able to host another grand dinner party. They had been wild and reckless and young, and Anastasia had been so, so happy.
Dimitri had died the same way he’d lived—brave, defiant, risking everything. He’d often told her that his greatest fear was dying in a bed, old and diseased, while grown children hovered around him waiting for their inheritance.
Well, he’d avoided that fate on both counts. Dimitri had died in a blaze of glory in the Peninsular War, and Anastasia had never conceived a child.
Dimitri had left Anastasia a large estate and all the money he’d accumulated through his grand speculations. But she had no child, nothing of him, and that had hurt her for a very long time.
Her thoughts of Dimitri were interrupted by a quiet knock on the door. The sound was so faint that at first she hadn’t been certain she’d heard it.
She lowered the hairbrush without turning around. “Come in,” she said softly in Nvengarian.
The door slowly opened and Myn slipped into the room. His dark hair glistened in the candlelight and his blue eyes fixed on her.
“I thought you’d come tonight,” Anastasia said, regarding Myn in the mirror. “But I must say I never thought you’d knock first.”
Myn closed the door and moved to her, his step silent. “I learn human ways.”
Anastasia’s heart pounded. The nearness of him, the fresh, outdoor scent of him did things to her senses. Sudden warmth pooled at the base of her spine as Myn picked up the hairbrush.
She closed her eyes as he slid the brush through her hair. At the same time, he loosened the ties that held her peignoir closed and dipped his fingers inside to touch her bare body.
Chapter 22
Alexander hunted. He ran through the woods, muscles of his lean cat’s body rippling, his breath coming fast and hot. He was far from civilization, where cultivated fields had given way to woods and bleak moors.
He needed to run, run, run.
When he’d walked into the ballroom and seen Meagan with Egan’s arms around her, his logosh instincts had wanted him to kill innocent Egan MacDonald for daring to so much as touch her. Alexander had decided to travel a long way into the countryside where he could run the instincts into the ground.
It should have been Alexander teaching Meagan the dance, his arm around her waist as they slowly moved around each other. But then, the love spell coupled with the logosh inside him could not have borne simply dancing with her. Alexander would have carried Meagan off, or taken her in the ballroom under Egan’s nose, he was not certain which.
Alexander craved her, and he needed her. Hence, he’d taken himself as far away from London as he could, and changed.
He liked the shape of the panther, with its sleek black fur that helped him be unseen in the darkness, the heightened senses of smell and hearing, and his strange new sense of sight. The creatures of the forest gave him a wide berth, but he could sense them waiting in the dark, huddled in panic.
No need to worry, he thought with a touch of grim humor. He wasn’t a true panther but a human who liked his meat cooked and served on a plate with sauce. A good bottle of wine didn’t hurt either.