Stay the Night by Lynn Viehl Page A

he had instructed Phillipe to keep around their home in New Orleans. “I imagine that their scent pleases him.”
    â€œSeigneur, welcome to my territory, our home, and England.” Geoffrey, suzerain of London, stepped down and folded his tall, rawboned frame into a bow that would have seemed theatrical, had it been made by any other Kyn.
    â€œSuzerain, I am most happy to be here.” Michael returned the bow before offering his hand. “It has been too long, Geoff. Lady Braxtyn.” He turned and bowed to the lady beside the suzerain, straightening to admire her artfully draped sarong of blue-green batik and the elegant folds of the sapphire scarf she wore wrapped around her head. “You dazzle me, my lady, as always.”
    Pleasure glowed in her dark eyes. “It is wonderful to have you here with us, Seigneur.”
    â€œYou should have come to see us after you laid siege to Dundellan,” Geoffrey said, winking shamelessly. “But you have made up for it by bringing to me an angel from heaven.”
    Michael never tired of watching his lover meet his oldest friends among the Kyn. At first it had secretly amused him to see his sygkenis cope with being showered with flowery praises, generally for her grace and beauty. A thoroughly modern woman, Alexandra had never learned how to accept compliments for anything except her medical skills, and to be told she had the tresses of a forest nymph or the eyes of a river sylph often left her speechless. Over time, however, she had grown accustomed to the effusive Kyn manner of greeting, and had learned to respond with an acceptable measure of grace.
    After Michael performed the introductions, the suzerain seized Alexandra’s hand.
    â€œMy dear lady.” Geoffrey bowed so low over her knuckles that the tip of his nose bumped into them. “At long last we meet.” He straightened, looming over her, and placed his rather ridiculous feathered green hat over the untidy thatch of his carrot-colored hair. “Your praises have been sung to me both near and far, but I see they fail to encompass the paragon of beauty, intelligence, and charm that you are.” His wiry orange brows drew together over pale green eyes. “I fear I shall be spending these next weeks at your feet.”
    â€œI’ll have to wear nicer shoes while I’m here.” She returned his smile. “I’m happy to meet you, too, Suzerain . . .”
    â€œCall me Geoffrey, my lady,” he insisted. “I avoid at all times my surname, as it could not be humbler, and I dread to be thought of as naught but a shoemaker.”
    â€œWell, I’d curtsy, Geoffrey,” she said, “but whenever I try I usually stumble or fall over.”
    â€œPerfectly 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.”
    â€œMy 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.”
    â€œI 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