Bronwyn Scott - Seduced By The Prince’s Kiss

Stepan smiled ruefully and swung astride his horse. He had smuggling to soothe his agitated soul. It gave him purpose and a cause. It kept him out of the house a good part of the day and out of Anna-Maria’s energetic orbit. For the sake of all parties concerned, he’d concluded long ago that Anna-Maria was a passion best indulged at a distance.

* * *

She saw him coming the moment he turned down the long drive towards the house. Hmmm. Where had he been this time? Anna-Maria stood carefully to the side of her gauzy white bedroom curtains where no one could see her and pondered her question. She’d made something of a study of Stepan in the long winter months he’d been with them in Little Westbury. It had begun as a way to pass the time until spring, until she could go to London and make her debut. She was nineteen and by rights she should have gone to London last year, but she’d been too new to British shores in her brother’s opinion. This year, she could hardly wait. Finally, her life could begin. Anything would be more exciting than the country.

But until she could go to London, her brother’s friend made an interesting enough subject. There was an air of mystery to his absences. He left mid-morning and returned late each evening just in time for dinner. Anna had entertained the notion of trying to rise with him in the mornings, but the earlier she rose, the earlier he rose, until he was leaving well before his usual mid-morning departures. She’d experimented with that variable for a week before she gave up trying to pace him.

She watched Stepan ride up the drive, so straight in the saddle, his hands and legs moving imperceptibly to guide the big horse. Stepan’s riding was refined. He might not be a cavalry officer like Nikolay, but he rode just as well. She’d grown up watching him ride. Stepan, like the others, had always been in her life, just as her brother had. If her brother acted more like a father to her, his friends acted more like uncles. Nikolay, Illarion and Ruslan were the friendly sort of uncles. Affection came easy to them. They’d been the ones to pull her braids, to tease her, to tickle her and make her laugh. Stepan was more reserved, hardly ever indulging in horseplay even when she was younger. When she was growing up, Dimitri had explained in terms a six-year-old could understand that Stepan didn’t know how to be part of a family. They had to teach him.

If so, Stepan still didn’t know. He’d grown more reserved the last few years, more distant, not only emotionally, but now physically. He and the others had spent most of last year in London at her brother’s town house. She’d missed all of them. Together, they’d been her family, but she’d missed Stepan most. Regardless of how stoic he was, she’d grown used to his presence. He was always there, a fixture she could count on, less mercurial than Illarion, more even-tempered than Nikolay. She’d been excited when Dimitri had told her Stepan was coming for the winter. She thought she’d have Stepan all to herself for nearly four months! But when he’d arrived, he’d been more aloof than ever and had spent many of his days like this one—gone.

The realisation steeped the sense of mystery. What or who drew the stoic Stepan out into the cold and the rain? Below her on the drive, Stepan dismounted and gave the reins to her brother’s groom. Anna smiled. That was her cue. She would greet him and ferret out his secrets; maybe she would even coax a smile from him. Out of all her brother’s friends, Stepan smiled the least and worried the most.

Stepan stood in the entrance hall, unwrapping a muffler as she sailed down the stairs, all air and light teasing. ‘Where have you been? Who have you seen?’

Stepan looked up. She’d startled him. ‘Are you my mother now?’ It was not an unkindly chiding, but it was still chiding. There was no mistaking that he was scolding her.

‘Someone needs to be if you’re going to be out all day and come home soaking wet.’ She took hold of his muffler and finished unwrapping it. ‘Shall I call for a bath?’ She shook out the wet wool, droplets splattering the hardwood floor. Stepan peeled off his greatcoat, making it clear he didn’t want any help. ‘Where’s Tate? Shouldn’t this be the butler’s job, Anna-Maria?’

‘I beat him to it, and it’s Anna , as I’ve told you before,’ she reprimanded him with a smile that she knew made the most of the dimple to the right of her mouth. The few boys in Kuban she’d been allowed to meet had thought her smile was her best quality. She hoped the young gentlemen in London would, too.

Stepan didn’t. Perhaps he didn’t even notice it. ‘Your name is Anna-Maria and has been since the day you were born.’

Anna shrugged and gave a toss of her dark curls. ‘I prefer Anna, it sounds more English.’

He noticed that . His dark eyebrows winged upward at her reasoning. ‘Why ever would you want to be more English?’

She put her hands on her hips and faced him squarely. ‘Perhaps for the same reason you cut your hair.’ In Kuban, he’d worn his hair longer like Nikolay and Illarion. They had kept theirs, but Stepan had cut his immediately upon arrival. It had now grown to the point where he could pull it back as he did today.

‘What would that reason be?’ Stepan’s grey eyes narrowed. He did not like being challenged or forced to reveal anything private.

‘To fit in, of course,’ she answered honestly. Then she grinned. ‘And because it’s more exciting. Anna-Maria is a nun’s name. Anna is more sophisticated.’ She pronounced it with a short A — Ahnnah . It sounded foreign, but not too foreign, she thought.

Stepan gave her censorious look. ‘Being more exciting is hardly what your brother wishes for you.’

She made a face. She knew that all too well. Dimitri, well meaning as he was, would keep her hidden in the country for ever if he had his way.

Stepan made to move past her to the stairs, his wet greatcoat draped over one arm. ‘If you will excuse me, I will go and clean up before supper.’

‘No, I don’t think so.’ She stepped in front of him, her skirts brushing his leg. ‘You’re not going upstairs until I have a smile from you.’ Did she imagine he stepped back? She pressed forward again, her hands playfully gripping the lapels of his jacket. ‘I’ve decided, you must pay a toll,’ she teased.

Stepan’s jaw tightened. ‘What might that be?’

She tried another smile. ‘You must answer my question.’

‘And if I don’t answer?’

‘Then I get to guess.’

‘Very well, you may guess. Quickly, though, I don’t want to catch a chill. A few minutes ago you were concerned about that.’ He was impatient in his barely restrained intolerance.

Anna forged on. She wasn’t oblivious. He was dismissing her, swatting her out of the way as if she were no more than an irritating fly. The sentiment sat poorly with her. She wanted to shock him into paying attention to her, to prove she wasn’t an annoying fly. She said the most outrageous thing she could think of. ‘Were you with your mistress?’

His grey eyes went flinty, his expression stern with reprimand as he removed her hands from his lapels. ‘That is hardly a ladylike guess,’ he scolded.

‘I know you all had them in Kuban. I’m not a child,’ she protested.

‘I know ,’ Stepan growled. There was something dangerous in his tone as he made to move around her, but she was entrenched now. This had become about more than goading a smile from him. She would have his acknowledgment and she would have it now. Determined, she countered his move, blocking him at the foot of the stairs.

‘You have to answer. Am I right?’ she challenged, although a piece of her didn’t want to be right.