Bronwyn Scott - Seduced By The Prince’s Kiss

‘Where I was is none of your business and you’re wrong. I never agreed to answering. That was your rule alone.’ He moved again. This time she let him pass. She wasn’t in a mood to play any more. Anna watched his departing back march up the stairs, shoulders as straight and as unyielding as ever. Her mind worked over its own answer. Did Stepan have a mistress? The others had taken lovers by the scores in Kuban. Their affairs had been legendary. She’d used to overhear them talking with Dimitri late at night when she was supposed to be tucked up in bed, safely out of earshot. None of them would have dared to mention anything of that nature to her directly. But Stepan? If he’d had a mistress, he’d kept it very quiet.

She preferred not having abject proof of such a liaison. Stepan was hers, had always been hers in a way the others had not. Any one of them would have fought for her, but it had been Stepan who had come for her the night they escaped. It had been Stepan who had taken her up before him on his big horse and wrapped his cloak and his arm about her and galloped off into the darkness. She had not been afraid. There was never a need to be afraid when Stepan was with her. He was her constant fixture, always there.

Anna wandered into the library. Not much had changed since Kuban in that regard. Stepan was with her still. The others had married and gone their own ways; Nikolay was in London with his riding school, Illarion and Dove still away on their never-ending honeymoon travels, and Ruslan was who-knew-where. She suspected Stepan knew, though. He was their unofficial adahop , their leader. He knew everything. She stared absently at the fire, her thoughts focused inward. It had not bothered her to lose the others. She’d been happy for them, she’d been swept up in their romances and their weddings. Her dashing ‘uncles’ deserved true love in the new lives they’d fashioned for themselves. But in all fairness, she didn’t feel that charitable towards Stepan. She’d never thought about losing him that way, that one day he’d find someone.

It wasn’t that she didn’t want Stepan to marry and have a family of his own, it was simply that she’d never thought of him doing it, of leaving her. Perhaps he already had. Who did he see in London when he wasn’t here with them? How did he spend his days? His nights? Did a pretty Englishwoman already hold his heart and his attentions? Anna wished she had not spoken those hasty words out loud on the stairs. They’d conjured up a host of new, unsettling thoughts and she couldn’t stop thinking about their implication: one day Stepan would leave her.

Chapter Two

He should leave. It was the one thought Stepan returned to time and again over the excellent roast beef supper that night. He could rent a house of his own—perhaps he could even contact Preston Worth about renting his house with the caves beneath it in Shoreham. Wouldn’t that be convenient, to smuggle vodka from a prevention officer’s own home? The risk-taker in him rather liked the idea. But then, he’d be dining alone and these suppers at Dimitri’s would disappear.

Stepan took another swallow of the wine, an exquisite, full-bodied burgundy, and surveyed the table. These were occasions he loved to hate or was it hated to love? Each night Dimitri and his wife, Evie, served a piece of paradise; warmth and security presented in a delicious, hot meal and comfortable conversation with local guests. Every aspect of the meal was a reminder of what his life would lack without Dimitri. This was not a scene he could replicate on his own. He had no family other than the one Dimitri had adopted him into two decades and one year ago. Ever since he was ten, he’d basked in the borrowed light of Dimitri’s familial glow. To walk away from that was no small thing, but neither was his sanity.

Tonight, dining with the Squire’s family was no exception. Perhaps he even felt that glow more keenly given the direction of his thoughts. While there was a price for leaving, there was also a price for staying: watching Anna-Maria dazzle the table every night, constantly bracing himself for her sudden appearances like the one in the entrance hall today, a feminine ambush of smiles and silk coming down the stairs or popping into a room at any time, conjuring up reasons to spend hours a day away from the house, knowing that Anna-Maria was oblivious to all of it.

Stepan filled his glass again. Why shouldn’t she be oblivious? He was twelve years her senior. He’d known her since she was born. He’d seen her skin her knees. He’d seen her cry when her ‘pet’ frog of one day escaped from his jar. He’d even seen her as a stubborn six-year-old stamp her foot in a temper when Dimitri had refused to spoil her with a porcelain doll. He was privy to the best and the worst of her. He was like a brother to her, or perhaps an uncle just as Nikolay and the others were. Why should she even be aware of how he looked at her now?

Across the table, Anna-Maria was teasing the Squire’s son. Tonight, she shone in a gown of cerulean blue, a simple crystal heart about her neck and her dark hair piled up high—something Evie was letting her practise this winter before going to London. The poor boy smiled and blushed, unable to take his eyes from the radiant creature talking to him and yet not knowing what to do with her.

Oh, mal’chik, Stepan thought, you are in over your head. I have been with the most sophisticated women of the Kubanian court and I am barely afloat. She is captivating, vivacious, passionate in her tempers... She is dangerous and she doesn’t even know it.

As she had been today on the steps, her hands twisted into the lapels of his jacket, her body so close to his that he could feel the heat of her, the light brush of her breasts against him.

Anna-Maria might look upon him as an uncle or brother, but no uncle or brother would ever entertain such thoughts. Stepan took a long swallow of wine, which was getting better with each glass. His awareness of her shamed him. It made a hypocrite of him. He’d always thought of himself as forward-thinking. He’d been one of the first to protest the repressive and archaic laws in Kuban that compelled girls into arranged marriages at young ages without providing them a voice or a choice in the matter. He’d seen girls as young as fifteen wed to men in their fifties. He did reason with himself that this was hardly the same. At thirty-one, he was in his prime like many well-born Englishmen who waited until their thirties to marry and took brides ten to twelve years their junior. But that didn’t make the situation more palatable to Stepan. He knew the general reasoning behind it: the younger the better when it came to producing the next heir and moulding an unformed mind. He refused to assess a woman’s value in the same way he would a brood mare.

Even with these arguments, he hated himself for the attraction. He could not say when his feelings had changed, when he’d become aware of her in the way a man is aware of a woman he desires. He was doubly careful with her now, with Evie and Dimitri, too. What would they think if they knew? Dimitri wanted more for Anna-Maria than an exiled prince.

The Squire reached for the carafe at Dimitri’s informal table—no hovering footmen here. Everyone served themselves. ‘The wine is excellent, Petrovich. Wherever do you get it?’

Dimitri smiled and nodded towards Stepan. ‘Stepan has a connection, a French vintner by the name of Archambeault who ships to him.’

Monsieur Archambeault was otherwise known as Ruslan Pisarev, former Kubanian revolutionary, now a happily married, soon-to-be owner of a small but profitable winery in Burgundy. Dimitri’s eyes met his at the mention of their friend. Ruslan did not want to be found by the world, at least not by his real name. It was one of their secrets, one of the many things that had bound them together over the years. Stepan loved Dimitri as a brother. Dimitri had given him a family when he’d had none, sharing his own father with him, and hope when he’d had even less. Dimitri had given him a reason to seek out the freedom he claimed to want. Without Dimitri, all those things might have remained dreams only.