The Mad, Bad Duke (Nvengaria #2)(90)
“I will do it,” he said. “But do not rejoice yet. If someone gets stabbed, it will be your fault.”
Nikolai beamed. “Excellent, Your Grace. I will tell them the glorious news.” He sprinted away, his step buoyant.
Meagan kept her hand on Alexander’s arm, hoping his intense gaze would return to her. “He seems pleased. Are you really that good at the dance?”
“Competent, as I told him.” Alexander’s gaze still followed the path Nikolai had taken. “The dance is part of every Nvengarian male’s training.”
“Alexander,” Meagan said softly.
At last he looked down at her, and she wanted to take a step back. The anger and impatience in his eyes could have knocked over a house. Meagan moved her hand along the inside of his arm, knowing he’d likely pull away, but not able to help herself.
Alexander’s eyes darkened, pupils spreading to drown the blue. “Please walk away from me,” he said, voice unsteady.
For answer, Meagan tightened her fingers around the warm cashmere of his coat.
Alexander leaned closer, his breath hot on her cheek. “I want to rip that pretty dress to shreds and put my hands all over your body. That is what I will do if you do not walk away from me. Is this what you wish?”
Meagan slanted him a hot smile. “I do, as a matter of fact.”
“In the middle of the ballroom with guests soon arriving?”
“I think I care not whether it is in the ballroom, or the morning room, or the bedroom.”
Alexander went rigid. “You want me to lose control?”
“No.” Meagan stroked his arm once more then with great reluctance released him. “I just want you.”
She turned her back on him and glided away.
That was what the instructions in Adolpho’s book had told her to do. A man could not resist a woman giving him a promising look and then abruptly leaving him. She threw a swift smile over her shoulder, following the lesson to the letter, but Alexander never moved.
* * *
He would go to her tonight, Alexander determined as the guests began to stream into the house.
As a good host, Alexander waited at the top of the stairs to the ballroom to greet them. Meagan stood beside him, her faint spicy perfume touching him. He could smell the true scent of her under the perfume, his heightened senses letting him find the musk of her.
His wife had known exactly what she was doing earlier that evening when she’d rubbed his arm and given him that secretive look, then tossed the little smile over her shoulder as she left him. Seduction Number Seventeen from the Book of Seductions.
Whoever had given her that book would pay.
Then again, Alexander would not mind reading the book with her, playing along with whichever seduction she chose.
And he would, he decided. His lessons with Myn were helping.
Learning to let go after twenty years of holding in his true self was proving the most difficult thing Alexander had ever done. But letting the logosh part of him come into his life without fighting it or trying to control it was the only way, Myn had said.
Little by little, Alexander was learning to be what he was. Soon, perhaps, he would be able to let himself be himself with Meagan. The night he’d lured her to the maze he had so complacently believe he could control everything—the logosh, himself, the lovemaking.
That had backfired, Myn had explained, because being logosh wasn’t about control—it was about releasing control.
Tonight, when they were fatigued after the ball, Alexander would take Meagan upstairs and undress her. They’d be tired from dancing, from smiling at people, from solving the little trials that cropped up when one hosted a ball. In their mutual exhaustion, he would commence with the slow, quiet lovemaking that eased Meagan to sleep and let him bathe his senses in her.
Alexander sent her a faint smile from time to time, one only for her. When Meagan caught the smile, color rose on her cheeks and her eyes sparkled. She knew.
But first they had to get through this tedious ball. The reception line was long because every single person Meagan had invited had turned up. Refusing an invitation to famous Maysfield House for the Grand Duchess’s first at-home affair would never do.
King George came, Bath chair and all. Three ladies hovered near the king, throwing jealous glances at each other. A very elderly dowager duchess arrived, leaning heavily on a pair of walking canes and supported by her granddaughters, because, she said in a booming voice, she wouldn’t miss this for the world.
Meagan had invited the most important and most tastefully elegant people of the ton. Not everyone had a title, but they came from the best families or were the best conversationalists or the most philanthropic in London. Alexander’s heart swelled with pride at her taste and discernment. Meagan was going to gain a reputation for keeping brilliant company.
Her guest list had extended itself to the lovely Lady Stoke, wife of Viscount Stoke who, stories went, had once been a pirate, and probably still was. The viscount looked the part—blond hair tamed into a queue, a broad-shouldered body, and faint lines around his eyes etched by sun, weather, and harrowing experiences. He had taken well to civilized life, or perhaps that was the influence of the beautiful wife on his arm and his equally beautiful black-haired daughter.
Stoke’s daughter from his mysterious first marriage, with her exotic looks and deep brown eyes, was the same age as Meagan. Miss Maggie Finley had not yet married and rumor spun that her mother had been a wild Polynesian woman. Society regarded her with interest but uncertainty, unsure they wanted such a foreign-looking miss among their ranks. As an outsider to English shores himself, Alexander sympathized with her.