A frazzled Gina was struggling to hang on to a red-faced, furiously squirming infant in a frilly dress and a lacy headband with a big pink bow. Zia had her arms full with the second, equally enraged and similarly attired baby. The duchess sat straight-backed and scowling in regal disapproval, while the comfortably endowed Honduran who served as her housekeeper and companion stood at the entrance to the kitchen, her face screwed into a grimace as the twins howled their displeasure.
Thankfully, the duchess reached her limit before Dom was forced to beat a hasty retreat. Her eyes snapping, she gripped the ivory handle of her cane in a blue-veined, white-knuckled fist.
“Charlotte!” The cane thumped the floor. Once. Twice. “Amalia! You will kindly cease that noise at once.”
Dom didn’t know whether it was the loud banging or the imperious command that did the trick, but the howls cut off like a faucet and surprise leaped into four tear-drenched eyes. Blessed silence reigned except for the
babies’ gulping hiccups.
“Thank you,” the duchess said coolly. “Gina, why don’t you and Zia take the girls to the nursery? Maria will bring their bottles as soon as Osterman’s delivers the milk.”
“It should be here any moment, Duquesa.” Using her ample hips, the housekeeper backed through the swinging door to the kitchen. “I’ll get the bottles ready.”
Gina was headed for the hall leading to the bedrooms when she spotted her cousin four or five times removed. “Dom!” She blew him an air kiss. “I’ll talk to you when I get the girls down.”
“I, as well,” his sister said with a smile in her dark eyes.
He set down his carryall and crossed the elegant sitting room to kiss the duchess’s cheeks. Her paper-thin skin carried the faint scent of gardenias, and her eyes were cloudy with age but missed little. Including the wince he couldn’t quite hide when he straightened.
“Zia told me you’d been knifed. Again.”
“Just nicked a rib.”
“Yes, well, we need to talk about these nicked ribs and bullet wounds you collect with distressing frequency. But first, pour us a…” She broke off at the buzz of the doorbell. “That must be the delivery. Natalie, dear, would you sign for it and take the milk to Maria?”
“Of course.”
Dom watched the stranger head back to the foyer and turned to the duchess. “Who is she?”
“A research assistant Sarah hired to help with her book. Her name’s Natalie Clark and she’s part of what I want to talk to you about.”
Dominic knew Sarah, the duchess’s older granddaughter, had quit her job as an editor at a glossy fashion magazine when she married self-made billionaire Devon Hunter. He also knew Sarah had expanded on her degree in art history from the Sorbonne by hitting every museum within taxi distance when she accompanied Dev on his business trips around the world. That—and the fact that hundreds of years of art had been stripped off walls and pedestals when the Soviets overran the Duchy of Karlenburgh decades ago—had spurred Sarah to begin documenting what she learned about the lost treasures of the art world. It also prompted a major New York publisher to offer a fat, six-figure advance if she turned her notes into a book.
What Dom didn’t know was what Sarah’s book had to do with him, much less the female now making her way to the kitchen with an Osterman’s delivery sack in hand. Sarah’s research assistant couldn’t be more than twenty-five or twenty-six but she dressed like a defrocked nun. Mousy-brown hair clipped at her neck. No makeup. Square glasses with thick lenses. Sensible flats and that shapeless linen dress.
When the kitchen door swung behind her, Dom had to ask. “How is this Natalie Clark involved in what you want to talk to me about?”
The duchess waived an airy hand. “Pour us a pálinka, and I’ll tell you.”
“Should you have brandy? Zia said in her last email that…”
“Pah! Your sister fusses more than Sarah and Gina combined.”
“With good reason, yes? She’s a doctor. She has a better understanding of your health issues.”
“Dominic.” The duchess leveled a steely stare. “I’ve told my granddaughters, I’ve told your sister, and I’ll tell you. The day I can’t handle an aperitif before dinner is the day you may bundle me off to a nursing home.”
“The day you can’t drink us all under the table, you mean.” Grinning, Dom went to the sideboard and lined up two cut-crystal snifters.
Ah, but he was a handsome devil, Charlotte thought with a sigh. Those dark, dangerous eyes. The slashing brows and glossy black hair. The lean, rangy body inherited from the wiry horsemen who’d swept down from the Steppes on their sturdy ponies and ravaged Europe. Magyar blood ran in his veins, as it did in hers, combined with but not erased by centuries of intermarriage among the royals of the once-great Austro-Hungarian Empire.