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August was slamming New York City when Dominic St. Sebastian climbed out of a cab outside the castle-like Dakota. Heat waves danced like demented demons above the sidewalks. Across the street, moisture-starved leaves drifted like yellowed confetti from the trees in Central Park. Even the usual snarl of cabs and limos and sightseeing buses cruising the Upper West Side seemed lethargic and sluggish.
The same couldn't be said for the Dakota's doorman. As dignified as ever in his lightweight summer uniform, Jerome abandoned his desk to hold the door for the new arrival.
"Thanks," Dom said with the faint accent that marked him as European despite the fact that English came as naturally to him as his native Hungarian. Shifting his carryall to his right hand, he clapped the older man's shoulder with his left. "How's the duchess?"
"As strong-willed as ever. She wouldn't listen to the rest of us, but Zia finally convinced her to forego her daily constitutional during this blistering heat."
Dom wasn't surprised his sister had succeeded where others failed. Anastazia Amalia Julianna St. Sebastian combined the slashing cheekbones, exotic eyes and stunning beauty of a supermodel with the tenacity of a bulldog.
And now his beautiful, tenacious sister was living with Grand Duchess Charlotte. Zia and Dom had met their long-lost relative for the first time only last year and formed an instant bond. So close a bond that Charlotte had invited Zia to live at the Dakota during her pediatric residency at Mt. Sinai.
"Has my sister started her new rotation?" Dom asked while he and Jerome waited for the elevator.
He didn't doubt the doorman would know. He had the inside track on most of the Dakota's residents but kept a close eye on his list of favorites. Topping that list were Charlotte St. Sebastian and her two granddaughters, Sarah and Gina. Zia had recently been added to the select roster.
"She started last week," Jerome advised. "She doesn't say so, but I can see oncology is hard on her. Would be on anyone, diagnosing and treating all those sick children. And the hospital works the residents to the bone, which doesn't help." He shook his head, but brightened a moment later. "Zia wrangled this afternoon off, though, when she heard you were flying in. Oh, and Lady Eugenia is here, too. She arrived last night with the twins."
"I haven't seen Gina and the twins since the duchess's birthday celebration. The girls must be, what? Six or seven months old now?"
"Eight." Jerome's seamed face folded into a grin. Like everyone else, he'd fallen hard for an identical pair of rosebud mouths, lake-blue eyes and heads topped with their mother's spun-sugar, silvery-blond curls.
"Lady Eugenia says they're crawling now," he warned. "Better watch where you step and what you step in."
"I will," Dom promised with a grin.
As the elevator whisked him to the fifth floor, he remembered the twins as he'd last seen them. Cooing and blowing bubbles and waving dimpled fists, they'd already developed into world-class heartbreakers.
They'd since developed two powerful sets of lungs, Dom discovered when a flushed and flustered stranger yanked open the door.
"It's about time! We've been…"
She stopped, blinking owlishly behind her glasses, while a chorus of wails rolled down the marble-tiled foyer.
"You're not from Osterman's," she said accusingly.
"The deli? No, I'm not."
"Then who…? Oh! You're Zia's brother." Her nostrils quivered, as if she'd suddenly caught a whiff of something unpleasant. "The one who goes through women like a hot knife through butter."
Dom hooked a brow but couldn't dispute the charge. He enjoyed the company of women. Particularly the generously curved, pouty-lipped, out-for-a-good-time variety.
The one facing him now certainly didn't fall into the first two of those categories. Not that he could see more than a suggestion of a figure inside her shapeless linen dress and boxy jacket. Her lips were anything but pouty, however. Pretty much straight-lined, as a matter of fact, with barely disguised disapproval.
"Igen," Dom agreed lazily in his native Hungarian. "I'm Dominic. And you are?"
"Natalie," she bit out, wincing as the howls behind her rose to high-pitched shrieks. "Natalie Clark. Come in, come in."
Dom had spent almost seven years now as an Interpol agent. During that time, he'd helped take down his share of drug traffickers, black marketeers and the scum who sold young girls and boys to the highest bidders. Just last year he'd helped foil a kidnapping and murder plot against Gina's husband right here in New York City. But the scene that greeted him as he paused at the entrance to the duchess's elegant sitting room almost made him turn tail and run.
A frazzled Gina was struggling to hang on to a redfaced, 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 pdlinka, 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.
The Duchy of Karlenburgh had been part of that empire. A tiny part, to be sure, but one with a history that had stretched back for seven hundred years. It now existed only in dusty history books, and one of those books was about to change Dominic's life. Hopefully for the better, although Charlotte doubted he would think so. Not at first. But with time.
She glanced up as the instigator of that change returned to the sitting room. "Ah, here you are, Natalie. We're just about to have an aperitif. Will you join us?"
"No, thank you."
Dom paused with his hand on the stopper of the Bohemian crystal decanter he and Zia had brought the duchess as a gift for their first meeting. Thinking to soften the researcher's stiff edges, he gave her a slow smile.
"Are you sure? This apricot brandy is a specialty of my country."
"I'm sure."
Dom blinked. Mi a fene! Did her nose just quiver again? As though she'd picked up another bad odor? What the hell kind of tales had Zia and/or Gina fed the woman?
Shrugging, he splashed brandy into two snifters and carried one to the duchess. But if anyone could use a shot of pdlinka, he thought as he folded his long frame into the chair beside his great-aunt's, the research assistant could. The double-distilled, explosively potent brandy would set more than her nostrils to quivering.
"How long will you be in New York?" the duchess asked after downing a healthy swallow.
"Only tonight. I have a meeting in Washington tomorrow."
"Hmm. I should wait until Zia and Gina return to discuss this with you, but they already know about it."
"About what?"
"The Edict of 1867." She set her brandy aside, excitement kindling in her faded blue eyes. "As you may remember from your history books, war with Prussia forced Emperor Franz Joseph to cede certain concessions to his often rambunctious Hungarian subjects. The Edict of 1867 gave Hungary full internal autonomy as long as it remained part of the empire for purposes of war and foreign affairs."
"Yes, I know this."
"Did you also know Karlenburgh added its own codicil to the agreement?"
"No, I didn't, but then I would have no reason to," Dom said gently. "Karlenburgh is more your heritage than mine, Duchess. My grandfather—your husband's cousin—left Karlenburgh Castle long before I was born."
And the duchy had ceased to exist soon after that. World War I had carved up the once-mighty Austro-Hungarian Empire. World War II, the brutal repression of the Cold War era, the abrupt dissolution of the Soviet Union and vicious attempts at "ethnic cleansing" had all added their share of upheavals to the violently changing political landscape of Eastern Europe.
"Your grandfather took his name and his bloodline with him when he left Karlenburgh, Dominic." Charlotte leaned closer and gripped his arm with fingers that dug in like talons. "You inherited that bloodline and that name. You're a St. Sebastian. And the present Grand Duke of Karlenburgh."
"What?"
"Natalie found it during her research. The codicil. Emperor Franz Joseph reconfirmed that the St. Sebastians would carry the titles of Grand Duke and Duchess forever and in perpetuity in exchange for holding the borders of the empire. The empire doesn't exist anymore, but despite all the wars and upheavals, that small stretch of border between Austria and Hungary remains intact. So, therefore, does the title."
"On paper, perhaps. But the lands and outlying manors and hunting lodges and farmlands that once comprised the duchy have long since been dispersed and redeeded. It would take a fortune and decades in court to reclaim any of them."
"The lands and manor houses are gone, yes. Not the title. Sarah will become Grand Duchess when I die. Or Gina if, God forbid, something should happen to her sister. But they married commoners. According to the laws of primogeniture, their husbands can't assume the title of Grand Duke. Until either Sarah or Gina has a son, or their daughters grow up and marry royalty, the only one who can claim it is you, Dom."
Right, he wanted to drawl. That and ten dollars would get him a half-decent espresso at one of New York's overpriced coffee bars.
He swallowed the sarcasm but lobbed a quick glare at the woman wearing an expression of polite interest, as if she hadn't initiated this ridiculous conversation with her research. He'd have a thing or two to say to Ms. Clark later about getting the duchess all stirred up over an issue that was understandably close to her heart but held little relevance to the real world. Particularly the world of an undercover operative.
He allowed none of those thoughts to show in his face as he folded Charlotte's hand between his. "I appreciate the honor you want to bestow on me, Duchess. I do. But in my line of work, I can hardly hang a title around my neck."
"Yes, I want to speak to you about that, too. You've been living on the edge for too many years now. How long can you continue before someone nicks more than a rib?"
"Exactly what I've been asking him," Zia commented as she swept into the sitting room with her long-legged stride.
She'd taken advantage of her few hours away from the hospital to pull on her favorite jeans and a summer tank top in blistering red. The rich color formed a striking contrast to her dark eyes and shoulder-length hair as black and glossy as her brother's. When he stood and opened his arms, she walked into them and hugged him with the same fierce affection he did her.
