"Perfectly all right. May I present another goddess of goodness and light?" He urged forward the quiet, dark-skinned woman standing beside him. "The only meaning in my life, Braxtyn of Canterbury, my beloved wife."
"My lady," Braxtyn said in her melodic voice, "you are most welcome to our home. I confess, I do not curtsy well either, and it gives me the headache to attempt to make poetry of my sentences. The latter remains an exclusive and annoying practice of my husband's, which he will cease doing." She eyed her spouse. "At once."
"I live but to please you, my darling." Geoffrey held up hands mottled with faint ink stains in a gesture of surrender. "And the only manner in which to continue would be to compare Lady Alexandra to a starling. Beautiful they may be, but a damned nuisance in the garden."
Alex gave Michael an amused look. "Sounds about right." She clasped hands with the suzerain's wife, hesitating again as she looked down at the contrast between their skins.
Braxtyn's full cheeks dimpled. "If you are wondering how a woman of the islands came to be Darkyn, Geoffrey's father purchased me from a slaver as a girl. He put me to work in his kitchens, and eventually I became cook. Fortunately for me, Geoffrey loved food almost as much as he does writing."
"All of this is Braxtyn's fault," the suzerain said, gesturing around them. "I became a Templar only because we fell in love but could not marry. I released her from servitude before I took my vows, you know, but the damn woman didn't want her freedom. Then I returned from the Holy Lands, cursed by God, a damned blood-drinking monster, and here she was, waiting for me with open arms."
"Someone had to look after you," his wife chided. To Alex she said, "He became a Templar so he could glean more stories from Holy Land pilgrims, although he always dreadfully distorted everything they told him. There was talk in Greenwich of having him hanged for the lies and immorality he published with his tales."
"That was all the doing of Arundel," Geoffrey said, and glanced at Alex. "He was the archbishop of Canterbury. He despised attacks on the clergy, and reformists like me who made them highly amusing. He tried twice in one day to have me killed in Greenwich."
"Really." Alex frowned, and Michael took pity, leaned forward, and murmured the French version of Geoffrey's surname. As soon as he did, her expression cleared. "Oh, so you're that Geoffrey." She put her hands on her hips. "They made me read your book in high school."
"Who said Americans had no taste?" The suzerain adjusted the frill at the end of his sleeve. "My published work remains the greatest example of classic English literature ever written."
"Sure, if you can read that Middle English stuff," Alex said. "I couldn't have understood half the words without the modern translation on the facing page."
Geoffrey sniffed. "'Tis tragic how our noble language has deteriorated over the centuries."
The suzerain finished the formal introductions between his men and Michael's while Alexandra answered Braxtyn's questions about their journey and her first impressions of London.
"I daresay Thirty St. Mary Avenue was that building you describe as a striped rocket ship—we call it 'the Gherkin'—but I cannot recall a structure that resembles a miniature of your American house of Congress with a blue rooftop," Braxtyn said.
"I think Lady Alexandra means the Imperial War Museum," Geoffrey put in. "Before it stored the weapons of empire building, it housed much more violent occupants. In those days it was called the Bethlehem Royal Hospital for the Insane."
Alex's eyebrows rose. "It was a mental hospital?"
"An asylum—the most notorious in our country's history, I fear," Braxtyn admitted. "You would know it as Bedlam." She offered Alex her arm. "Come. Let me take you to your rooms and help you settle in before Geoffrey begins describing the delights of Madame Tussauds."
"Nonsense, everyone loves the waxworks," Geoffrey called after them. "They have actors put on executions by guillotine in the Chamber Live now. There's a wonderful exhibit on Vlad the Impaler, who may or may not have been Kyn. And who can resist watching Guy Fawkes being hung, drawn, and quartered a hundred times a day?"
"That is precisely why," Michael heard Braxtyn say, "I never permit him to take our visitors sightseeing."
Michael watched as the two women walked up the wide, winding staircase leading to the upper floors. "You are blessed by your sygkenis, mon ami."
"I had heard that you were cursed with yours, but she seems most polite for a female of this time. I'm slightly disappointed." Geoffrey gestured toward his study. "You must tell me how you curb her tongue, although I hope beatings are not involved. Unless Braxtyn should administer them to me."
Michael chuckled and followed him into the large room, which was crowded with stacks of books, magazines and newspapers. The oddly designed chairs by the fire drew his attention. "You have redecorated. Again."
"I am shamelessly addicted to IKEA," Geoffrey said. "Braxtyn shudders over it—over the centuries she has become a dreadful furniture snob—but I adore the ingenuity of the Swedes. Besides, no one faints in horror if I dribble a bit of ink or wine on the cushions. You can't do that with Renaissance antiques—or, at least, I recommend you do not."
Michael nodded. "Has Richard arrived?"
"He journeyed from Ireland yesterday but spent the night in the city with that French tresora of his. I expect he will grace us with his presence before midnight." Geoffrey poured two glasses of bloodwine and offered one to Michael. "I propose a toast: to our appalling treatment of excellent wine, our love for our beautiful and saucy women, and our devotion to our always noble if sometimes misguided Kyn brothers. May our Heavenly Father forgive us for the first, bless us for the second, and help us keep the last from wavering too much over the next fortnight."
"Amen." Michael raised his glass and drank before going to stand by the fire. He could not bring himself to sit down in a chair that resembled a warped chest protector made of straw. "How have you managed to live all this time so happily with Braxtyn?"
"Aside from this mewling, pathetic love I've felt for her since I was an idiot human boy? Probably because she has allowed me to. Sit down, man; the furnishings won't bite. I'm infatuated with these Gungholt rockers." Geoffrey demonstrated by dropping his long frame into one of the odd-shaped chairs.
Michael gingerly followed suit. "I do not mean to pry."
"Yes, you do." The suzerain grinned. "I've never seen you look at a woman as you do your Alexandra. Has the lady any idea of who you are? Or, more precisely, were, before you became her mewling, pathetic lover?"
"No, thank God." He set aside the wineglass and hunched over his folded hands. "I should tell you that Alexandra is not like other Kyn females. She has not fully accepted our ways, and she refuses to feed from mortals. She still seeks a cure that will turn us back to humans."
Geoffrey made a hideous face. "Good God. Cannot you convince her to take up needlepoint instead?"
"She is a doctor, and that is what they do—cure things." Michael felt a surge of bitterness. "I think someday she will come to accept what we are. I hope. She can be as unpredictable as she is difficult."
"Difficult women have defined this nation. Boudicca. Eleanor of Aquitane. Elizabeth the First, long-lived toothy-quimmed Grendel that she was." Geoffrey flung a long arm across the back of his chair and gestured with his wineglass at the portrait over the fireplace of a young, plump Queen Victoria. "And, lest I ever forget, our beloved Vicki. She certainly forgot us."
"You were wise to summon me," Michael pointed out. "If I had not removed her memories of the attack you thwarted, she would have told her advisers about you and the Kyn. You know how humans were in that time. They would have blamed you for the murders and hung your head from the gates of Windsor."
"At least we stopped Jack, may he still be busily sizzling in hell." Geoffrey leaned over to spit into the fire to seal the curse. "I had an interesting chat with Halkirk some weeks back. Among other interesting tidbits, he mentioned a rumor that Jaus had turned a human female. While crashing planes and being assaulted by a Brethren hunter, no less. He knew none of the details, but I wager that you do."
Michael made a mental note to have a talk with his lords paramount about their penchant for transatlantic gossip. "We are still investigating the matter."
"You know how Halkirk is; teenage girls have more discretion." The suzerain's expression turned shrewd. "Jaus's sygkenis would make the fifth mortal to be turned since your much-needed face-lift. Five in the last five years. And none could be turned for the previous five hundred years."
Michael inclined his head, acknowledging the veiled warning. "There may be others hiding from us, as Nicola Jefferson did. She made the change alone after she was attacked."
"You mean, after Elizabeth killed her parents, tore out Nick's throat, and buried her in the ground with mum and dad, or so Gabriel told Croft." Geoffrey shook his head. "Ghastly business, that."
Croft Pickard, Geoffrey's tresora, slipped into the study. "Forgive the intrusion, Suzerain, Seigneur." He bowed respectfully to Michael before addressing his master. "My lord, Caen has called from town. He reports that the Irish contingent has left the Savoy and should be arriving within the hour."
"Thank you, Croft. Alert the guard and advise Lady Braxtyn that the cat is out of the bag." When the tresora bowed and departed, Geoffrey said, "My lady will keep yours occupied while we greet the high lord, if you like."
Richard Tremayne, high lord of the Darkyn, had abducted Alexandra from America and held her hostage in Ireland in hopes of forcing her to give him a method of changing other mortals to Kyn. Alexandra had instead found a treatment for Richard's changeling condition and thwarted a plot by Richard's own wife to assassinate the high lord.