Love Me Again

by Wendy M. Burge

  Christina felt like laughing in his face. Instead she continued to walk on, away from him as fast as she could. “Do you believe all he wants to do is incapacitate you?” she inquired coolly over her shoulder.

  “Would you care?” He sounded like a sulky little boy.

  Taking a deep breath, she was so tempted to say No, I wouldn't. But it would be a lie, for she did care what happened to him. She cared what happened to all of them. When she felt him touch her shoulder, she flung an arm out, forcing him back. “No! Stay here; I will find my way to the apartment myself. Stay here and think about your choices, Robert, and I will think about mine.” Then she quickly wended her way through the crush of guests milling about the huge ballroom.

  Robert stared after her, then with a particularly foul curse, he ran a trembling hand through his hair. What in hell had he done? She was right; there was no way he could come out a winner in the upcoming confrontation. What a completely asinine thing to do. He groaned as he followed her steps slowly into the bright, overly heated room and barely caught a final glimpse of her as she exited the hall. Almost simultaneously he caught sight of the archduke, staring after her. He stiffened as the bastard's eyes swiveled in his direction.

  Even across the vast, noisy hall he could hear the man's mocking laughter.

  * * * *

  As soon as Robert had disappeared, Varek turned away from the staring faces, a frown wiping any pretended humor from his face.

  Tomorrow it would all be over, he told himself with fatalistic assurance, and then he and Christina could get on with their lives.

  His foul humor was growing apace with the evening's festivities, and now an insidious pain had settled behind his eyes, as if to mock him for this absurd debacle. As if his lark would fall into his arms after killing a man she had affection for. What in hell was he thinking?

  He started when he felt a tap on his shoulder. Looking around, he saw Sergei standing behind him, his detached gaze staring right through him. Varek's hands fell to his side as he turned about to fully face yet another antagonist.

  “What do you want, Massallon?”

  “Christina wishes a moment of your time. In private, your highness.”

  Varek's eyes narrowed in shared hostility. “Cut the bull. You call me ‘your highness’ in that tone of voice again and I'll cut your tongue out. Besides, never in your misbegotten life have you ever addressed me so.”

  Sergei looked at him and asked in a flat tone. “Then how should I address you?”

  Varek's lips kicked up in a lethal smile. “Why, mine enemy. What else? Where is she?”

  Without another word, Sergei turned on his heel and walked away. With a sigh, Varek followed. It hurt to be at odds with Sergei, but he couldn't shake this feeling of betrayal every time he caught a glimpse of his old comrade. And, unfortunately, Sergei was always underfoot, watching out for Christina. It made these hellish evenings all the harder, having to deal not only with his emotions for Christina, but also his lost friendship with Sergei. To say the least, he was never far from being in a killing rage and he simply wanted for all these roiling emotions to stop. He wanted his old life back, and he was beginning to fear that it would never happen.

  Sergei led him down several corridors till the sounds of the ball were far behind them. Varek idly wondered if Sergei was escorting him to his death, and at that moment, he didn't much care. So on he went, following blindly where Sergei led.

  Sergei stopped at a door, and again without looking at Varek or saying a word, he opened the portal and stood aside, waiting for him to enter. Without hesitating, Varek stepped over the threshold, noted the dark room, then heard the door click shut behind him.

  He stood there in the dark, wondering if he was alone, then he heard the faint whisper of a lady's skirts and blindly he turned toward the sound. Breathing deep, he caught the subtle fragrance of Christina, and instead of relaxing, he tensed even more.

  “Well, I'm here, lark. You call and I come running. Rather pathetic, wouldn't you say?” He couldn't seem to keep the self-derision from his voice as he cautiously stepped closer to where he sensed she was. His eyes slowly adjusted to the dark, and finally he caught sight of her as she moved into a ghostly beam of moonlight filtering through the darkness. As usual, his heart stopped at the sight of her. He closed his eyes, almost in despair. Would to God he didn't love this woman so much.

  “What do you want?” he asked with weary impatience, though he already knew what she wanted. She was here to protect her beloved Robert.

  “What do you want from me, Varek? We can never marry again. So what? You want me to come to you as a lover?” Her words were a seductive whisper in the dark distance between them. Varek stood rigid where he was, for if he moved he was afraid of what he might do to her. The pounding in his head increased with his disillusionment and shattered dreams. For a moment he couldn't even think straight, so fearsome was the ache. Taking a deep breath, he inquired of her in return, his voice cold and distant, “Is that what you want?”

  Her answer was immediate, “No. What I want is for you to leave me alone. I want you to leave Vienna. But you don't really care what I want, do you, Varek?”

  This time she spoke with such sadness, Varek's anger melted from him in rivulets of confusion. All his life he had wanted what was best for Christina. Now he was tearing her world apart again, and the terrible thing about it was he couldn't seem to dredge up any sympathy for her. All he could think of was his own loss, his own pain, and if it was suffocating him, he could only imagine what it was doing to her. With a guilty start, he remembered the smudges he had seen earlier under her lovely eyes, and he could only blame himself. This somber stranger who stood before him was beginning to erase his precious memories of his vibrant lark, and even knowing of the melancholy and pain he was causing her, he still couldn't make himself walk away. Just being able to look across a crowded room and meet her eyes was worth everything in the world to him. If only she could feel this same sense of connection...

  Swallowing, he walked over to a chair and sank into it. He dropped his head back in exhaustion and looked up at the vague shadows shifting overhead. He swallowed again and tried to blink back the sting of tears. “Why did this happen to us, lark? What did we ever do to deserve this? Every day of my life since you disappeared I've pondered this. Do you know, for I certainly have never been able to figure it out?”

  The silence hung heavy between them until her voice came so softly that he had to strain to hear her, “We were born into royalty. Ours lives were never our own.”

  He shook his head. “No, I've thought of that. It's too simple. You know what I think? I think that God envied us our happiness.”

  Christina stepped forward, her hand reaching out to him. “Varek, you mustn't think that.”

  “Why not? Could He punish me anymore for my heresy? God never listened to me when I begged for His mercy on my knees. He never listened to me then, so why would He bother now?” The irony in his voice was unmistakable. “Now you come back into my life and I am just suppose to look the other way? How can you even ask that of me, Christina?”

  He heard her draw in a shuddering breath. “Varek, I can't divorce Robert. Even if I wanted to, I can't.” He felt her fingers feather through his hair. It was the frightened edge in her voice more than her words that caught his attention.

  All weariness dropped away as the true meaning behind her declaration began to sink in. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled as he slowly stood up and stepped closer to her. He froze when she took a few stumbling steps back, frantic to keep the distance between them. The room seemed to tilt about him and then fade as he strained to look closer into her averted face. “What do you mean, you can't?”

  When she didn't answer, he took a long step forward and grabbed hold of her chin, forcing her to meet his accusing glare. Suddenly, he was terrified. The look in her eyes made him want to retch.

  Lips barely moving, he demanded, “Go on.”

&n
bsp; Christina closed her eyes, the darkness a void swirling around her. I can't do this! I can't!

  “Finish it, Christina.” Varek's deadened voice told her that he suspected her secret. He had to suspect, for there could only be one thing that could so thoroughly crush his hopes. She couldn't look at him, craven creature that she was, so she didn't open her eyes. But before she could speak, she felt herself grabbed roughly by the arms.

  Varek held a tight rein on the brutal fear seething within him, yet still he shook her with more force than he meant. “Open your eyes, damn you! Look me in the eye when you tell me this, Christina!” he snarled, his hot breath searing her cheek.

  Christina's eyes snapped open. Unfortunately the tears blinding her still couldn't hide the sight of his ravaged face. “I have a son, Varek. Robert and I have a son.” Her words were scarcely more than an anguished whisper.

  His hands tightened with a grip that she was sure would bruise her for life, just as the stark pain in his eyes would leave her heart torn. He was shaking his head in disbelief, the scalding blue of his eyes burning through a mist of tears.

  “No!” came his tortured moan. “How could you?”

  “I'm sorry,” she sobbed.

  “No!” he yelled as he almost threw her from him.

  Christina stumbled and watched in despair as he backed away from her, staring at her with a revulsion she would never have thought him capable of. Again, she felt the old crippling pain of all her failures to give him the child they had both wanted and needed so desperately. Weeping, she stretched out her hand toward him.

  With a foul obscenity, he pushed her hand away and turning his back on her, he ran from her cries.

  * * * *

  Varek burst into his private rooms and, seeing his valet there, roared at the hapless man to get out. After a stupefied gape at his master, whom had always been the extreme of cool inflexibility, the man scurried out barely missing the door that was slammed on him.

  Varek stood there panting, his eyes shut tight against the spinning room.

  A son. She had a son!

  With a moan he clasped his head, his fingers tunneling deep into his hair. And he squeezed. Then he squeezed harder still, the pain shooting through his skull a plea that by sheer force alone he could crush this horrible truth from his mind.

  She had given Basingstoke their son, the son they had prayed for for ten years! She had blessed this stranger with their only salvation to stay together.

  Tears blinding him, Varek stumbled to his bed and fell upon it. And for the first time in six hellish years of lonely existence he could not stop the flood of tears that were wrenched from deep within his soul.

  A soul that still belonged to the woman who had betrayed him, not once, but twice.

  * * * *

  Hours later, Christina heard a soft tap on the bedroom door. She ignored it, praying he would go away. When the panel swung inward she snapped her eyes shut and forced her body to relax, feigning slumber.

  She could feel Robert standing over her. Knowing her chest was moving too erratically, she held her breath. “I know you're awake, love. Am I welcome?” She turned away from him. Her cheeks were wet against the cool linen and her head felt heavy and painful. Squeezing her eyes shut, she again prayed he would just go away.

  “I'm sorry,” his words whispered over her.

  She tensed; then, shifting about, she raised up onto an elbow and looked up at him. He was a dim silhouette in the moonlight. “Did you recant your challenge?”

  “No.”

  She fell back down, and again turned away from him.

  It had all been for nothing, she thought with a deadened sense of finality. She had broken Varek in the cruelest way, hoping that it would make him come to his senses about the hopelessness of any future together. But the duel was still on. Neither had recanted. She couldn't even summon a modicum of guilt for Robert when she heard the door open and close softly behind him.

  With dry, aching eyes, she waited for the dawn.

  * * * *

  Sergei was admitted into the archduke's presence later that night, unsure what his mood would be. He found him sprawled in a massive armchair before the fire, brandy snifter in hand. Sergei eyed the brandy speculatively.

  “Well, well,” Varek drawled, his voice just slightly slurred, his mood apparently mellow. “Here representing my beloved wife's husband?”

  Sergei's shoulders stiffened. Not so mellow, after all. Slowly he approached the lazing man, tensed for anything. However, Varek just lounged there, smiling cynically at him.

  “At least you are finally admitting the truth of it, the fact that Christina does, indeed, have a husband.”

  The hand swirling the brandy glass, paused. “But not for long,” Varek softly pointed out, his smile derisive. Of course it was a hollow promise, echoing back at him with mocking frequency. But what the hell. It was his bloody fantasy.

  Still unsure as to Varek's mood, Sergei sat uninvited across from him. After a long minute of indecision, he finally said, “There is something I should tell you about your nemesis, whether you want to hear it or not.”

  Varek simply took a sip of brandy and ignored him.

  “A year after we left Austenburg, Christina was sunk into such a depression that I was at a loss as how to reach her. No matter what I did, or where we settled, nothing could spark her interest. Then one day, it just became too much for her, and...” Sergei's voice trailed off and he sadly shrugged as he recalled those hellish months. When he looked up he noticed that Varek's bloodshot eyes were watching him with an intensity that froze him to his seat. Having Varek's undivided attention only made it harder to continue; but he did, dragging each word out under the unblinking weight of Varek's silent hostility. “She tried to kill herself, Varek. One night she wandered out into a snowstorm. It was the middle of the night and I didn't see her go. She had on nothing but her nightgown.”

  Sergei couldn't even detect a flicker of an emotion in the unblinking, frigid eyes bent upon him. Just the mere stillness of Varek's lounging body was more powerful than any form of an explosive rage vented upon him.

  Wetting his lips, Sergei told him. “It was Robert who thankfully found her. He saved Christina's life, Varek. Whether I like that man or not does not refute the fact that if not for him, Christina would not be here today. And it is just one more thing that holds her loyal to him.”

  The silence that followed was deafening, and Sergei began to wonder if Varek had even heard him as there was not so much as a flicker of an emotion in the deadened gaze turned on him. It was like staring into a death mask, the soul long departed.

  Admitting defeat, Sergei finally stood up and walked to the door. He paused with his hand on the latch and glanced back over his shoulder, murmuring, “I just thought you should know.”

  When Sergei was gone, Varek finally blinked as he looked up at the large portrait above the mantel. A youthful, laughing girl smiled down on him. During the sitting of this portrait Christina had just found out she was pregnant with their first child. Despite the weight of royal disfavor bearing down upon them because of their unmarried state, her abundant joy never faltered during those halcyon days.

  “And don't I deserve any of your loyalty for saving your life? He is so much more worthy of your gratitude, lark?” Of course, she didn't answer him. She never did.

  Lifting his glass, Varek drained the last of the brandy in one long swallow, then let the glass slip from his numbed fingers. Staring into the fire he wondered with a deadened sense of finality how he could feel so empty inside and not be dead.

  Seven

  The mist was just beginning to rise and dissipate when Varek rode into the appointed glade. He was noticeably alone, the lack of seconds by his side stirring curiosity in the assembled men standing about the clearing. As he dismounted, Varek casually greeted most of the men who were mutual acquaintances, a little surprised that there were so few witnesses to such a juicy tidbit of sport. The duel must have been
kept quiet. He wondered why considering it wasn't every day that a royal personage fought a man in order to reclaim his wife.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he took note of Robert standing stiffly beside Sergei. The two men were exchanging what appeared to be some rather heated words, before Robert sliced a hand down cutting off the argument. Sergei gave a curt nod and strode across the clearing toward Varek. It was obvious to all that Sergei was not happy with his office this morning.

  “Good morning, your highness. Are your seconds behind you?”

  Varek's brow rose in haughty amusement. “No. Is there a problem with that?”

  Sergei hesitated, then shaking his head, he pointed out wryly, “No, but then you never were one to do anything by the book.” Giving him a bow, he intoned solemnly, though the twinkle in his eye was unmistakable. “I am, of course, at your service, your highness.” When Varek shot him a steely glare, he dryly added under his breath, “And no you may not rip out my tongue.”

  “Pity,” Varek murmured as he stripped off his gloves, fighting the unwilling smile that tempted his lips. Looking about him, he nonchalantly inquired, “You are acting as Basingstoke's second at her behest, I take it?”

  “Actually, no. I am here at her request to tend to you.”

  Varek's head whipped around, and he stared blankly at his old friend. “To attend me?” he repeated, confused.

  Sergei rocked back on his heels, his hands locked behind his back. “Yes, you see, Basingstoke had already chosen his seconds before I even knew of the duel.”

  Varek's eyes narrowed. “You mean you made yourself scarce.”

  Sergei gave him a smug grin. “Precisely.”

  Varek glanced away, unaccountably touched by Sergei's sense of loyalty. Clearing his throat, he pointed out coolly, “Well, I have no need of you as you will soon discover.” With these cryptic words, he sauntered over to Robert, coolly studying his rival's demeanor as he closed the distance between them.

  Sensing the tension in the men about him, Robert slowly turned to face his adversary. He was already in shirtsleeves, his coat, waistcoat and cravat discarded. His stocky body was stiffly poised, and he seemed mentally prepared for the coming ordeal. If he was experiencing any nervousness, it didn't show, except that he was perhaps a bit paler than usual.