To Wed a Wicked Prince

by Jane Feather

  “Strange goings-on in a gentleman’s ’ouse, I must say,” Morecombe muttered. “An’ you look as if you’ve been dragged through a hedge backwards. Ethel’s taken a bath up for you.”

  “Oh, thank you, Morecombe.” She managed a warm smile and then asked, “Is Boris back yet?”

  “Aye, come back this mornin’, ready to see to ’is master’s foreign breakfast,” Morecombe declared, every muscle expressing disapproval. “In a right state he’s been when ’e found the master not ’ere.”

  Livia nodded. Silly to have had doubts about Boris’s loyalty. “Could you please ask Mavis if she could make me one of her possets? I can’t think of anything I’d like better…oh, and one for the prince too, if she wouldn’t mind.” Alex might not acknowledge it, but he needed the soothing mixture of hot milk and wine flavored with cinnamon, cloves, and honey as much as she did.

  “Aye” was the only response, and Livia dragged herself upstairs, conscious now of an overpowering weariness in no way relieved by the absolute conviction that nothing would ever be the same again. Her marriage, her husband, this life that they had led…wasn’t real in the way that she’d believed it to be.

  Now that the excitement of the chase and the sweet relief of having Alex safe was over, cold reality was a bitter pill to swallow. She loved Alex and he loved her, but that hadn’t prevented him from doing what he’d come to London to do, even though it had nearly taken him away from her. Had he given her a moment’s thought? Had he tried to imagine how she would have felt with his abrupt and final disappearance? And even if he had, it didn’t make any difference to him. He’d still gone ahead with his plans. If Tatarinov had not come to find him, he would be on his way to his death in Russia now, and she would never know anything about it…about who he really was.

  And somehow that felt like the ultimate betrayal. They had shared the most intimate secrets of their bodies, but his spirit, his very self, had been kept hidden from her. She loved him, but could she go on living with him when he withheld so much of himself from her?

  Ethel greeted her with a torrent of questions and exclamations that Livia allowed to wash over her as the maid helped her out of her stained and torn garments. “Eh, m’lady, that’s tar, that is?” Ethel observed in astonishment as she took Livia’s chemise and saw the black smudges between her breasts. “Where on earth did that come from?”

  “It’s a long story, Ethel,” Livia said, sliding into the hot bath. “Pass me the soap and I’ll scrub it off while you wash my hair.”

  She could hear only a subdued murmur from Alex’s room and after a moment, soothed by Ethel’s hands in her hair, kneading her scalp, she closed her eyes and drifted into a trance…a trance that grew deeper as she sipped the posset Mavis sent up, and the warm wine and honeyed milk drugged her senses.

  She wasn’t aware of the adjoining door opening until Ethel said, “Good afternoon, sir. Should I leave the princess now?”

  “Just for a few minutes, Ethel,” Alex said as he came over to the bath.

  Livia opened her eyes, looking up at him. He was once again immaculately groomed, clean-shaven, his wheat-colored hair well coiffed and glossy. The cuts and bruises were still there, of course, but they seemed less noticeable. His blue eyes drifted down her body and he smiled, a smile that she remembered so well from their lovemaking. It started in his eyes, a deeply sensual glow of appreciation, and then his mouth curved in a perfect bow. And despite her unhappiness, her nipples hardened beneath the water.

  “How are you feeling?” she asked, trying to ignore her arousal, which in the circumstances was just plain perverse.

  “Much better,” he responded. “That drink one of the twins made was a remarkable pick-me-up.”

  “I thought it might do you good.”

  He continued to look down at her and his expression was now grave. “I have to see some people, sweeting,” he said. “But when that’s done, we must talk.”

  “What people?” she asked. “Fellow assassins?” She bit her lip, hearing the acid in her voice.

  “You could say that,” he responded dryly, the sensual glow banished from his eyes. “I suppose Tatarinov told you everything.”

  “Only under duress,” she said. “I threatened him with your pistol, and the dogs chewed his ankles.”

  For a moment his expression brightened with amusement, then became grave again. “My meeting won’t take long. Will you be up here or in your parlor?”

  “In the parlor,” she said. Somehow the bedroom didn’t seem the right place for such a conversation, and she certainly didn’t want to be naked.

  “Very well, I’ll come to you there.” He turned to the door. “Shall I send Ethel back?”

  “Yes, please.”

  He left her chamber and went downstairs to the library, where his fellow conspirators were already gathered, the vodka bottle passing freely between them.

  “Good God, Prokov, what happened to you?” Constantine asked in horror.

  Alex told them, sparing no details.

  “Sperskov is gone?” Fedotov said in disbelief. “Arakcheyev’s men?”

  “Sperskov is probably at the bottom of the river now, poor devil, and Arakcheyev’s henchmen at the bottom of the North Sea, or they soon will be. The question, my friends, is how do we proceed from here?”

  “Cautiously,” Constantine said grimly. “Someone put them onto Sperskov.”

  “I think we can assume that our man in the army in Finland has been picked up,” Alex said calmly. “They’ll get what they can out of him, but fortunately he knows no names. Only that someone paid him well to abduct the czar.”

  “He was paid in English gold,” Fedotov pointed out. “That’ll pinpoint us.”

  “Yes, but they won’t move without more information,” Alex said, pouring himself a glass of cognac, hoping it would do his head some good. “It’s to be assumed Sperskov only gave them me, since no one came knocking on your door. And since Sperskov is gone and Arakcheyev’s henchmen also, we’re safe enough for the present.”

  He took a cautious sip and then put the glass down. It did nothing at all for his headache and he couldn’t afford to be fuddled when he talked with Livia; there was far too much at stake.

  “So what now?” Fedotov asked.

  “We lie low,” Alex said decisively. “Let the talk die down around the czar and then we see.”

  “And in the meantime, Mother Russia allows herself to be governed by Napoleon Bonaparte like some province of France,” Constantine muttered dourly. He drained his glass. “Very well. We can’t do anything until Tatarinov turns up again anyway.”

  Alex saw his visitors out and then went to Livia’s parlor. He gave a perfunctory knock on the door and went in. The terriers rushed at him in ecstatic greeting and on this occasion he neither put them out of the room nor subdued them.

  Livia was sitting on the window seat, a book open in her lap, but it was clear she had not been reading. She was very pale, her pallor accentuated by her afternoon gown of pale yellow muslin. Ordinarily the color suited her, but this afternoon it made her look sallow.

  She was aware of this but had decided once the gown was fastened that as she had no interest in enchanting her husband at this time, it mattered little if she didn’t look her best.

  “Have they gone?”

  “Yes.” He leaned against the door at his back and regarded her closely. “You know I love you.”

  “Yes.” She clasped her hands loosely in her lap and the book fell to the floor, but she made no attempt to retrieve it.

  “And you love me.”

  “Yes.”

  He steepled his hands against his mouth in a gesture so familiar to Livia that she could feel tears welling behind her eyes. “And you know now who I am, what brought me to London, and what I intend to do.”

  “Yes.” She began to wonder if this litany of the obvious would ever end. “Are you still intending to do this thing?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Tha
t will depend on many factors. But you need to know that I have not given up, and that I will work for my country in whatever capacity strikes me as opportune at any time.”

  “I see. And if I asked you to give that up, for my sake, for the sake of our marriage…our love…”

  “I could not agree.”

  “Well, at least you told me the truth for once,” Livia said, not caring that she sounded bitter. “I’m grateful for that. At least I know how I stand, and where I come in your priorities.”

  “If you wish it…if you decide that that’s what you want…” he began, painfully feeling for the right words, “then I will leave you and return to Russia. There need be no scandal. You will remain my wife, Princess Prokov, with this house and a very generous income. It will be said that I was summoned by the emperor and had no choice but to go. We decided you should stay here rather than risk the rigors of a journey across war-torn Europe. My continued absence can be explained in many ways, and if you decide you would like to remarry, then I will arrange for a divorce in Russia and you will be free.”

  Livia said nothing. She gazed at the bleak prospect of such a future and knew that she would never want to remarry. She would remain in a separated limbo for the rest of her life.

  “Is that what you would wish, Livia?” he asked quietly.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Probably, but I need time to think.”

  “Of course.” He bowed with a little click of his heels and left her.

  Livia sat on the window seat for a long time, as the shadows lengthened and the winter dark set in. Ordinarily her instinct at such a time would be to go to Mount Street and seek comfort and counsel there. But she couldn’t face her friends with this. This was something she had to wrestle with alone.

  Alex went downstairs, filled with a bleak despair. This journey had been so long in the planning, so complex in the execution, and it had taken so many twists and turns for which he had been utterly unprepared. He had not expected to find this love…this absolute need to nurture and protect. And he had never expected to find himself the recipient of such a need. He didn’t even know how to both give and receive it. He had never been taught how to open himself to such emotions.

  He walked into the salon, where the lamps had just been lit and a soft glow suffused the room. His mother looked down at him from above the fireplace. Her eyes…his eyes…clear and steady. Were they saying anything to him? What would she say to him…to her son?

  “What was she to you, then?”

  Alex turned, startled at the soft Yorkshire burr behind him. Morecombe, soft-slippered as usual, stood looking up at the portrait.

  “My mother,” Alex said simply.

  Morecombe nodded. “Aye, the lassies an’ me thought ’twas summat o’ the kind,” he said. “Ye’ve ’er look about you…O’ course it was afore our time, but we knew there was summat not right. Our lady ’ad a sadness to her…broke our hearts it did, when it came on her bad.”

  “My father had it too,” Alex said quietly.

  “Best not let ’istory repeat itself, then,” Morecombe declared laconically.

  Alex shook his head. “I had come to that conclusion myself.”

  “Good, then ye’d best be about it.” The old man turned and left the salon.

  Alex stood in front of the portrait for a moment, then he nodded and went upstairs.

  Livia was still exhausted; the few hours sleep she’d snatched in the inn that morning seemed to have happened in another lifetime. Every bone and muscle in her body ached and her eyes were tight and sore, as if she’d been weeping for hours. As soon as Alex left her, she went into her bedchamber, locking the door behind her. She could face no solicitous servants at the moment. She threw off her clothes, letting them lie where they fell, and dropped her nightgown over her head, turning wearily to the bed.

  She had one upraised knee on the mattress when the adjoining door from Alex’s chamber opened. She looked over her shoulder to where her husband stood, his face white, his blue eyes filled with fire.

  His voice, however, was quiet, although the determination, the fixed purpose behind his words was as clear as a thunderclap. “My father sacrificed his love for his country, there can be no other explanation for those letters, for his empty wasteland of a life,” he said. “But I will not. Livia, you are mine, and you are not leaving me and I am not leaving you. I can’t imagine why I even had such a ridiculous, asinine idea.”

  He crossed to the bed in three strides and lifted her off, setting her on her feet in front of him, his hands gripping her shoulders.

  “Look at me, Livia, and tell me you don’t belong to me. Tell me that I do not belong to you.” He shook her a little in emphasis. “Come on, Livia. Tell me.”

  She looked up at him. “You know I can’t.”

  “Yes, I do know it.” He pushed up her chin and kissed her so hard she was sure it must have hurt his battered mouth, but he held her thus for a long time, his mouth against hers, his breath rustling across her cheeks, his free hand tracing the line of her body from her breast to her hips.

  He held her until the blood began to move warmly through her veins again, until the rigid sinews of resistance melted and she leaned into him. Then he lifted her against him and lay down on the bed with her, cradling her head in the hollow of his shoulder, trailing his fingers through the tumbled cascade of dusky curls.

  “I am defeated, sweeting, unmanned,” he said softly. “I will give up my country if I must, and settle down and become an English gentleman with nothing on my mind but sports, and hunting, and cards.”

  Livia smiled into his shoulder as a curious peace filled her. He meant it, but he didn’t know what such a sacrifice would mean for him. “What nonsense,” she said. “You can’t do that, you wouldn’t be you. Harry Bonham manages to serve his country and his wife perfectly satisfactorily, why shouldn’t you be able to?”

  Alex smiled ruefully. “I wondered when you’d take me into your confidence about Bonham.”

  “It wasn’t my confidence to break,” she said. “Did you know all along?”

  “For quite a while,” he admitted. “But the situation is a little different, my love. Bonham serves the country he lives in and his loyalties are very clear-cut. It is rather different for a Russian and always has been. Loyalty to king and country makes sense for an Englishman, but not always for a Russian. The emperor is not good for his country.”

  “Then you must work to remove him,” Livia said simply, remembering again her father’s advice on the issue of compromise at a crossroads. “I understand that, what I don’t understand is why things must be kept from me. Particularly things that make you the man you are, the man I love. I don’t like secrets and I loathe deception.”

  “And I am guilty of both,” he agreed, bending an arm behind his head to pillow it. “I am by nature secretive, my love. It was the way I was brought up. My father kept everything about himself from me, everything about my mother. Until I saw those letters I never dreamed he was capable of any real emotion other than devotion to country and duty.”

  “How lonely you must have been,” Livia said, hitching herself onto an elbow and stroking his cheek.

  “I was,” he agreed, “but no lonelier than most children in my country. Russian parents tend to be distant at best.” He sighed a little and attempted a rueful laugh that failed miserably. “But I do wonder why my mother never asked about me in those letters. If she had, my father would surely have answered her in one letter at least.”

  “No, I think it’s quite the opposite,” Livia said. “I think it was too painful for Sophia to think of you at all, let alone to ask about you. She had to go on living; surely it was easier for her to pretend that you did not exist for her. She must have been so young when she lost you and the love of her life. She had an entire life to live without what made it whole for her.” She shuddered a little, thinking how close she and Alex had come to just such a destiny.

  “What a wise woman you are
,” he said, bringing his arm down to stroke along her back. “I’ve married beauty, wisdom, and amazing courage and fortitude. I don’t quite know why I deserve such good fortune, but if you promise to be gentle and not squeeze me too tightly, I will endeavor now to show you how utterly and totally I love you, wife of mine…how I complete you, and you complete me.”

  “Then show me, my prince,” she murmured, moving herself over him, her fingers deftly unfastening his britches. “But in deference to your bruises, I shall do all the work in this demonstration.”