The Duchess Diaries. Merline Lovelace

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       Ten

      Everything Gina had ever learned or heard or read about self-defense coalesced into a single, instinctive act. Whipping her purse off her shoulder, she swung it with everything she had in her.

      “Hé!” The intruder flung up his arm and blocked the savage blow. “Várj!”

      “Várj yourself, you bastard!”

      Gina swung again. This time his arm whipped out and caught the purse strap. One swift tug yanked it out of her hands.

      “If you’ve hurt my grandmother...”

      She lunged past him into the kitchen. Her fingers wrapped around the hilt of the largest knife in the upright butcher-block stand.

      “Jézus, Mária és József!” The stranger chopped his hand down on her wrist, pinning it to the counter. “Stop, Eugenia. Stop.”

      The terse command pierced her red haze of fear but her heart still slammed against her chest as the questions tumbled out. “How do you know my name? What are you doing here? Where’s my grandmother?”

      “The duchess is in her bedroom, asleep, I presume. I am here because she invited my sister and me to stay. And I know your name because we’re cousins, you and I.”

      “Cousins?”

      “Of a sort.”

      When she tugged her wrist, he released his brutal grip. A smile softened the stark angles of his face. “I’m Dominic. Dominic St. Sebastian. I live in Budapest, but my parents came from Prádzec. Your grandmother’s home,” he added when she looked at him blankly.

      It took her a moment to recognize the name of the town on the border between Austria and Hungary, in the heart of what was once the Duchy of Karlenburgh.

      “I don’t understand. When did you get here?”

      “This afternoon.” He gestured behind him to the coffeemaker just starting to bubble and brew on the counter. “It’s midnight in New York, but morning in Hungary. My body has yet to adjust to the time change and craves its usual dose of caffeine. Will you join me for coffee and I’ll explain how Anastazia and I come to be here, in your home.”

      “No coffee,” Gina murmured, her hand fluttering to her stomach as she tried to absorb the presence of this dangerous-looking man in her grandmother’s kitchen.

      He was as sleek and as dark as a panther. Black hair, black shirt, black jeans slung low on his hips. The T-shirt stretched taut across a whipcord-lean torso. The hair was thick and razored to a ragged edge, as though he didn’t have time or couldn’t be bothered with having it styled.

      “Tea, then?” he asked.

      “Tea would be good.” Slowly getting her wind back, Gina nodded to the cabinet behind his head. “The tea caddy is in there.”

      “Yes, I know.” His smile reached his eyes. “The duchess told me to make myself to home. I took her at her word and explored the cupboards.”

      Whoa! This man’s face cast in hard angles and tight lines was one thing. The same face relaxing into a lazy grin was something else again. Gina had a feeling Dominic St. Sebastian could have his pick of any woman in Budapest. Or pretty much anywhere else in the world.

      The fact that he knew his way around a tea caddy only added to the enigma. While the fresh-made coffee dripped into the carafe, he brewed a pot of soothing chamomile. Moments later he and Gina were sitting across from each other with steaming mugs in hand.

      “So,” he said, slanting her a curious look. “The duchess never spoke to you of me or my family?”

      His speech held only a trace of an accent. A slight emphasis on different syllables that made it sound intriguing and sexy as all hell. Wondering where he’d learned to speak such excellent English, Gina shrugged.

      “Grandmama told my sister and me that we had some cousins, four or five times removed.”

      “At least that many times. So we could marry if we wished to, yes?”

      The tea sloshed in her mug. “Excuse me?”

      “We’re well outside the degree of kinship forbidden by either the church or the law. So we could marry, you and I.”

      A sudden suspicion darted into Gina’s consciousness. Despite the duchess’s seeming acceptance of her granddaughter’s single-and-pregnant status, was she resorting to some Machiavellian scheming?

      “Just when did my grandmother invite you and your sister to New York?”

      “She didn’t. I had to come on business and since Anastazia had never been to the States, she decided to accompany me. When we phoned the duchess to arrange a visit, she invited us for tea. She was so charmed by my sister that she insisted СКАЧАТЬ