He narrowed his eyes. “Do you not know who I am?”
Magdala frowned. “I’m afraid I’m not familiar with the country manor houses …”
The man threw back his head and laughed. “Is that how I appear? An inebriated country heir, hoping to find some fun in the city? Excellent. I like that. I think I’ll lean into it.”
Bewildered, Magdala frowned at him, her brows bunched.
The man seemed to teeter perpetually on the edge of a wry laugh, like he was keeping his amusement to himself. His eyes sparkled. “You’re very astute. I suppose you must be, working with royals all day and night. For me, I can’t imagine anything more dull.”
She opened her mouth to reply, but he cut her off. “Don’t tell me it’s honorable work,” he said. “The only work that is honorable is that which does not pay. The queen, the captain, the priest, none of it is honorable.”
“I thought the fresh air and trees of the country were supposed to cure cynicism, sir.”
He smirked. “They’ve done their best, but I am a hopeless case.”
“Let me take you inside.” She offered him her arm. He shrugged and took it like he was leading her to the dance floor.
“Do you dance?” he asked, leaning down conspiratorially. His voice, tickling her ear, sent a shiver through her, and she pulled away from him and placed her hand on his back. It was a practiced movement, typical of bodyguards, but with him it felt too intimate, perhaps because that small, treacherous spark still burned in her heart. He was so unlike the ideal man her father had painted for her, with his bare feet and rolled sleeves and untidy curls. So why this sudden yearning to know him?
“I asked if you dance,” he repeated.
Magdala was a good dancer, but she could never keep her feet and hips in the restrained rhythms of Largotian waltzes. The only way she knew how to dance was around a Russuli bonfire. If she tried that here, Huxley and the rest of the court would be scandalized. Her father would die of shame.
“No,” she replied bluntly.
“I can teach you.”
“I’m working.”
“Work for me for a few minutes and indulge my lust for dancing. What’s your name?”
Magdala glimpsed Julian walking below them in the garden, and she steered the young gentleman toward the shadowy staircase. “I am going to take you down to Julian Davenport and relinquish you to his care.”
He let out a sharp laugh. “He’ll have ideas about my care, I have no doubt.”
Magdala hovered her hand over his back as they descended the broad stone stairs toward the garden. Her palm burned when she touched him, and she pulled it away again.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Devney,” she replied, brusque.
“Your proper name.”
“Magdala.”
“Ah, like the flowers that grow in the Wildlands. So, you’re Ashkendoric,” he said.
Magdala’s eyes snapped up. “No. I’m Russuli.”
The Ashkendoric kings had conquered the Wildlands long ago, but the Russuli still resented being called Ashkendoric. They were culturally separate from the rest of the kingdom, even if they paid taxes to Marwenna, the current queen.
He grimaced. “Never mind, then.”
“Why? Are youAshkendoric?”
“I don’t know what I am,” was his airy reply. “But my father was. My brother was Ashkendoric, but he grew up in the Wildlands.”
Magdala noted the use of the past tense in both instances and wondered what happened to this man’s family.
