KISSES LIKE A DEVIL
KISSES LIKE A DEVIL
DIANE WHITESIDE
KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.
http://www.kensingtonbooks.com
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Author’s Note
Prologue
The Grand Duchy of Eisengau, somewhere northeast of Switzerland, spring 1896
Meredith Duncan trailed her mother back into the house, her shoulders braced like a guardsman on parade. Scientific curiosity had led her to weigh each double-flounced, steel-braced satin sleeve before it was sewn onto her gown’s velvet bodice. She’d discarded the appalling results before she could include the diamond—well, fake diamond—bow, her abominable corset, or the wires in her skirt which made it resemble an umbrella.
At least Mother had been pleased when she saw the results. Meredith almost wished she hadn’t passed her exams, just so she could have studied longer and escaped the military band’s concert.
They handed their capes to the single housemaid who was still waiting up for them. They’d moved into this large, upscale house a few months ago and only the public rooms were completely furnished in Mother’s trademark mix of dark wallpaper, heavy furniture, and the Judge’s hunting trophies. They’d economized elsewhere by cutting back on staff.
“My dear?” Judge Baumgart’s tall frame almost filled his library’s door. “Did you meet any new officers?”
Mother’s face, which had brightened, promptly closed. She held out her hands to him. “I’m sorry, my love.”
Meredith sighed and turned for the stairs. Maybe, someday, a man would look at her like that. But, until then, some conversations didn’t have to be repeated.
“How could she not meet any eligible officers at a military concert? Eisengau is a military country!” The Judge’s voice rang through the hallways, underlined by the kitchen door’s bang. At least the housemaid had escaped.
He stalked into the foyer, meeting them by the great central staircase.
“Cavalrymen, artillerymen, infantry…And this year, tall women are in fashion for once. Surely she could have found somebody to pay attention to her and help the family?”
“I’m afraid not, my love. Even though the band was playing fashionable tunes by someone named Wagner about Nordic heroines with her coloring, nobody did more than say hello to us.”
“Well, she does lack your curves. Where are you going, Mary?”
“Meredith!” She took her foot off the bottom stair and spun around to correct him. Nine years in his household and he still wouldn’t call her by name.
“Mary.” He glared back at her. “Every child, especially a girl child, should have a proper Christian name. If you’d been born here, your father wouldn’t have been able to register your birth, let alone have you baptized.” As befitted a second-tier judge, her stepfather’s ideas were extremely conventional. She still fought him every day on this subject.
Claws scuttled on the hardwood floor upstairs.
“He honored his mentor and fellow college professor.” She bit the words off, trying to keep her tone level.
“By giving his daughter the fellow’s family name? More likely, he was so drunk he couldn’t fill out the paperwork properly,” the Judge sneered.
“How dare you say that about my father!” Meredith fumbled for something, anything to throw at the obnoxious wretch she had to live with.
A small black form leaped down the stairs and slammed into Meredith’s skirts, badly denting their wire cage. Morro, her rough-coated schnauzer, took up station before her and bared his teeth at her stepfather. Fifty pounds of knee-high fearlessness was growling so deep in his throat it was almost soundless. Dear God in heavens, her young watchdog meant to attack if necessary.
She had to protect him, just as much as he needed to defend her. She slowly sank to her knees beside him, praying all the hours she’d spent training him would pay off.
What would it be like to have a two-legged guardian?
The Judge’s usual furious torrent of words halted.
Mother turned pale and her hand crept toward her throat.
“My dear, please! The servants will hear. And, Meredith, you should know better than to challenge your stepfather.”
The Judge nodded briefly, which wasn’t quite an apology. Meredith did the same, never taking her eyes from him, and slipped her fingers into Morro’s collar.
“Socair ort,” she soothed him in Gaelic. Far simpler to tell him to take it easy than to convince her pulse.
Morro hissed in an octave below speech, still eyeing the Judge. Her stepfather glared back at him, equally hostile.
If Grand Duke Rudolph hadn’t sent his best lawyer to Scotland to pick up a new set of memorabilia Ossianic, from that great Scottish epic collected—or written—by Macpherson, she’d still be back at home. Instead of stuck here in Eisengau, an unwelcome appendage to the ambitious lawyer’s Scottish wife.
What could they all agree on?
“Morro and I will go upstairs now and say goodnight to Paul and Johann. I’m sure they’re wondering where Kavalier’s favorite playmate is.”
Her stepfather’s shoulders loosened.
Meredith had inherited Morro from the Judge’s elderly aunt. But he’d truly earned his place in the household by making friends with Kavalier, the very expensive, silver-gray, Weimaraner hunting dog he’d bought for his two young sons—the apples of his eye and the center of all his hopes.
Upstairs was also where her collection of penny dreadfuls, those lurid examples of low literature, was hidden away. Truth be told, her favorites were their American cousins, the dime novels that were much harder to find here and told stories of strong men along the American frontier. Their heroes were much more interesting than any of the over-dressed popinjays she’d met tonight. After this far nastier than usual brawl with her stepfather, she deserved to curl up in bed with one of them.
Proper young ladies weren’t supposed to fantasize about rough men, like the ones featured therein. A tall, dark-haired man with brilliant blue eyes and a blinding smile, who could hold his own against impossible odds. Proper young ladies weren’t supposed to masturbate, either. Knowing she combined the two activities would undoubtedly send Mother into high hysterics.
She curbed a smile and waited, donning her best placid-as-milk expression.
“Yes, of course. Good night, daughter; we can talk in the morning.” Mother made a shooing motion.
“Not yet.” Ice slivered through Meredith’s veins at his tone. “We need to decide what to do with M—her.”
Meredith froze halfway onto her feet. He’d stopped himself from calling her Mary but she didn’t trust him or the subject.
“What do you mean?” Mother spread her hands. “I’d planned to continue taking her out into society.”
Meredith finished standing up and guided Morro into his most gentlemanly stance. Appearance, after all, was everything in this house.
“Very expensive—and fruitless. She left Scotland nine years ago but all she has to show for her time in Eisengau is an exam certificate to prove she successfully attended school. She can’t even trot out a panoply of well-connected friends.”
But breeding wasn’t every
thing!
Even so, she was hardly about to bring home revolutionaries to meet a judge, no matter how good their breeding. And if he heard them talk about how poorly the grand duke treated his workers, her stepfather would undoubtedly throw them out of his house, anyway.
“She doesn’t even have a dowry to attract a husband, unless I give her one.” His tightly pursed mouth made it clear his wallet wouldn’t open for his wife’s daughter.
“There’s her inheritance from your aunt,” Mother suggested hopefully.
“Frau Masaryk was an old woman whose age must have rotted her brain.” He began to pace. Meredith drew herself farther up the stairs to avoid coming anywhere near him.
“She left her lands here to you,” Mother reminded him.
“Such as they were.”
And Meredith was given the pick of her dogs, thank God.
“And her foreign investments for the education of my stepdaughter as her, quote, only living female relative, unquote.” He snorted in disgust. “I couldn’t even break the will because the monies are abroad.”
“But the will does allow us to be paid for feeding and clothing her while she attends school.”
Go back to school? Oh yes, please…
He swung around to face his wife. “All we’d have to show is her registration at a school. After that, I’m sure I could persuade Heller not to look closely at the receipts, even if I had to pay him a percentage.”
“Lovely! After a few months, we could vacation at the spa in Baden-Baden, where we’d meet all the best people.” Mother clasped her fingers, her sleeves quivering. “A good boarding school for her might even give her some prospects.”
Boarding school? Oh, dear God, no!
And she could hardly tell Mother and the Judge again how determined she was never to marry. What did she know about those schools that they wouldn’t like?
“Aren’t boarding schools only for a year or so, especially when you’re already seventeen?” She ducked her head and tried to smile sheepishly. It was a trick she’d encountered in several dime novels.
Mother frowned, thoughtfully.
“Wouldn’t it be better to send me somewhere it would take longer for me to get my degree? Like—” she hardly dared breathe—“The university?”
“Women at a university? How unladylike!” Mother closed her eyes and shuddered, her mouth’s corners turned down as if she smelled something noxious.
“Eisengau University is already accepting women now”—for the second year—“And it would take me at least four years to obtain my degree in modern languages. Longer, if I went for an advanced one.”
“Frederick, tell her no.”
“Four years or more?” The Judge went for the argument’s core.
Meredith nodded eagerly. Four years when she could delve into books and spend hours out of this house with her friends. And possibly help the workers’ poor children.
Mother read the changing winds just as clearly. “She’d be much more likely to catch a good husband there, than at a boarding school. After all, so many military men pass through the university.”
“Yes, every one of Eisengau’s officers must take at least one course there. Many of them study under Zorndorf, the grand duke’s top cannon designer.”
Zorndorf? That pig?
“Or she might meet a staff member from one of the foreign legations,” Mother dreamed, wrapping her arms around herself and spinning, as if she were waltzing. “Somebody titled, who Grand Duke Rudolph would thank us for linking to Eisengau. But she must be in the right place to meet such men.”
Meredith cast her eyes up to the ceiling. How many foreigners would hang around the university, desperate to marry a local girl? They were more likely to be spies than wife-hunting. She’d personally be happy to study French, or Russian, or pick up another new language.
But it would at least dodge the possibility of a husband.
“The general student body, where all the military officers pass through?” Meredith suggested. She could disappear into that crowd and make friends, or not, as she chose.
“Too laissez-faire,” Mother sniffed.
“Or Colonel Zorndorf’s office. I hear he’s looking for a secretary again.”
The two women gaped at the Judge.
“Again? But he’s always unkind to females,” Mother protested.
Thank you, Mother, for thinking of me just once.
“She’s not his wife,” the Judge retorted. “Every high-ranking officer speaks to Zorndorf regularly because of the summer maneuvers. Where better for M—our daughter to meet them?”
But Zorndorf? He might be a genius but he was famous for being crude and impossible. “Would he even consider a woman?” Meredith asked.
“It’s been almost a month since his last secretary left so he’s probably desperate. He must have somebody who speaks foreign languages, given all his contacts with the foreign buyers for Eisengau’s famous weapons.”
The job might not be all bad, if it got her into the university.
Zorndorf oversaw creation of all the new cannons at the grand duke’s foundry. If she worked for him, she could help the workers there. The poor cripples, who’d lost a hand or a foot. Her heart lurched whenever she saw them in the street—especially the burned children—but Mother would never stop to give alms.
“For once, Meredith’s pitiful drawing skills might even come in useful.” Mother’s casual, vicious words shredded Meredith’s nerves, like a thunderstorm from hell. “She can’t create anything but she can copy what she’s already seen. Zorndorf might enjoy that, since he’s surrounded by draftsmen.”
She took a deep breath and pushed the old wound away, reminding herself it didn’t matter. The future was what she made of it. Even so—working for Zorndorf? She continued to fight their proposal.
“Surely being his secretary would take too much time from my studies.”
“You can only attend the university if you agree to work for Zorndorf,” the Judge said firmly, looking down his long nose at her. She could almost hear him hammering his gavel on the wooden bench.
She swallowed, Morro all warm reassurance under her hand. She had to make the best of it. It’d get her out of this house and Mother’s husband-hunting expeditions.
“Very well.” She’d use this opportunity to attend school and help the workers at the same time.
With any luck, she’d have more pocket money for buying dime novels, too.
Chapter One
Sagamore Hill, Long Island, New York, June 1900
The tiger glared at Brian Donovan, its jaws stretched wide enough to engulf his head. He rubbed it with his boot and swirled his glass of lemonade, grateful for the reassuring chink of ice cubes on such a hot day. Teddy Roosevelt had at least a dozen other hunting trophies here, plus hundreds of books. They could send his conversation off in a thousand unpredictable directions.
Heat and sunlight filtered into the study through the white-draped windows, closely followed by children’s laughter. He’d have some kids of his own soon, as soon as he found another good Catholic girl his folks would approve of. But the next one would be reliable, unlike that money-grubbing Mary FitzAllen.
The governor of New York cast a wistful glance over his shoulder then dropped two massive tomes onto his desk. “Heard you’re about to leave for Europe, Donovan.”
Brian regarded him from under his brows, wondering what this was all about. Like every other Rough Rider, he’d answered his old colonel’s summons as soon as it was received. “Yes, sir. I plan to join my parents and younger brothers in Berlin. My brother’s trapped in Peking and they’ve been pushing the European governments to build a unified army.”
And paying bribes. They’d transferred all the family’s cash reserves to Switzerland, in case it would help.
“So they’ve been helping merge together that combined force.”
“It was the only way to rescue the diplomats besieged in the embassy compounds, which is where we b
elieve Neil is.”
Sweet Jesus, may he still be there and alive.
“With those peasants rampaging across all of China—I’d like to see exactly how they earned the name Boxers!—it’d take a sizable command to get those folks out and back home. Your family’s to be commended for helping pull it together.”
Brian shrugged the compliment off and waited, not offering any details. He’d been stuck long enough in San Francisco, waiting for word from Neil. He didn’t need any reminders of how helpless he’d felt while his parents had been working the European capitals. He’d been sitting there for weeks, playing every string of the family’s connections across China and the Pacific to no avail, fighting for any news of Neil.
At least he could move into action now, thanks to that asinine European decision to give Russia command of the army’s secondary wing. Why the devil couldn’t they give it to somebody with fewer Asiatic ambitions—like France or Italy? But no, it had to be Russia, who was always so desperate for gold and land that there was no telling what their troops might do. Charge into battle without orders, just to take a useful port or loot a city? Many of their soldiers were only half-disciplined, too, dammit.
He’d seen it happen once before, on the far side of India’s Northwest Frontier. A business trip there had caught him in the middle of the so-called Great Game played mercilessly between Britain and Russia for control of Central Asia. No brother of his would be caught in the backlash of Russia’s troops going out of control, if he could help it.
Only Europe still held any traces of the orders given to those Russian troops. When he’d received the cable asking him to come to Paris, he’d immediately handed everything off to his uncles. They could watch for news out of China as well or better than he could.
But nobody else in the family had the experience to sniff out the smallest signs of Russian ambition and follow them to their source. He was damn glad to go hunting overseas to help block any potential threat to Neil.
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