Awakened by the Prince's Passion

by Bronwyn Scott

  ‘Are you not pleased to be here?’ Dasha rose from her knees, reading his face as she took her seat next to Maximus.

  ‘I was just recalling how different the circumstances were when I was here last.’ Ruslan busied himself with his clothing. But Dasha nodded as if he’d said more.

  ‘I will miss the villages, too,’ she said softly. Tonight, they would spend their last night as man and wife. They would go to Ekaterinodar not as the Archambeaults but as Prince Pisarev and Princess Dasha Tukhachevskenova.

  The carriage turned down a final street. His friend, Guillaume, lived two streets down. They were nearly there. Ruslan felt something in his stomach clench. Time for new beginnings. Time to re-establish his objectivity. Time to avenge his family. As important as those reasons had seemed in London, when all of this had begun, they were markedly paler now when compared to the woman seated beside him.

  ‘A penny for your thoughts?’ Dasha ventured. ‘Are you worried about your friend?’

  Ruslan shook his head. ‘No. I was just thinking how much I wanted to be a wine merchant.’ He had, in fact, never wanted a vineyard as much as he wanted one right this moment. His kingdom for a grape. At the moment it seemed like a good trade.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Guillaume was the innkeeper of the Salty Sailor, a weathered tavern on the docks, and he looked the part—older, heavyset with deep-set eyes that had seen much of the world. He might always have been an innkeeper if it hadn’t been for the eyes. Dasha thought he might have been something else, someone else, before he’d been an innkeeper. Before he’d become French. Such were the people Ruslan knew—intriguing, walking stories.

  Guillaume welcomed Ruslan with a hearty hug that would have cracked the ribs of a lesser man. He showed them into a back room through a secret door in the inn’s brick wall, although the taproom wasn’t busy. ‘One can never be too cautious.’ Guillaume winked at her, shutting the door behind them. He wiped his hands on a wide, white apron, his eyes sharp, giving her a speculative look while he spoke with Ruslan. ‘Now, tell me what is this business about needing safe passage into Kuban? Isn’t it usually the other way around?’

  ‘I need safe passage and news,’ Ruslan clarified. ‘What do you hear about the revolt, Guillaume?’

  Guillaume raised a bushy eyebrow, no doubt wanting to know if he could speak freely in front of her. Ruslan nodded. ‘You may speak openly. She’s the reason we’re here. Guillaume, this is Princess Dasha Tukhachevskenova, heir to the throne of Kuban.’

  Guillaume’s brows knit. Was that disapproval she saw on his face? For her? Or for Ruslan? The big man shifted on his feet. ‘I didn’t take you for a royalist, Ruslan. I thought you were against the Tsar’s policies.’

  ‘He is,’ Dasha spoke up, unwilling to be talked about as if she weren’t in the room. ‘As am I. I mean to reform Kuban’s governing practices, if given the chance.’

  ‘If given the chance? That’s the real question these days, isn’t it?’ Guillaume’s initial hostility relented. ‘I’ll get some wine and ale, and we’ll talk, yes?’

  ‘He doesn’t like me,’ Dasha said as Guillaume left to get refreshment.

  Ruslan held out a chair for her. ‘Guillaume has reason. The Tsar took his land. He was nothing but a farmer who happened to have land the Tsar wanted for hunting.’

  Dasha released a breath. Ruslan was watching her with steady eyes. She needed to be strong. He didn’t need to cushion her from anything. ‘I suppose I’ll have to get used to it, to people not liking my...family. It still seems odd to say that.’ She tried for a smile.

  ‘They will like you, once they get to know you. They’ll see that you’re different,’ Ruslan offered.

  Guillaume came back with a tray and settled them with food and drink before launching into his news. Dasha listened intently, too intently. It was hard to eat after a while. Her stomach became a pit. No one suspected the Princess was at large. The attack in London was likely not linked to any orders from Kuban. This was all good news on the surface. She smiled, trying for confidence. ‘We should have safe travel then to Ekaterinodar.’

  But then the real work would begin. She would have to prove herself, not just her worthiness for the throne, as Ruslan thought, but her very identity. The latter created real fear the closer they came to Kuban. What if someone recognised her? What if they had known Dasha, by some impossible stretch of the imagination and knew she wasn’t the Princess? What if she was denounced as soon as she stepped foot into Kuban? Guilt rose once more.

  She should have told Ruslan before. Even when they’d first fled London didn’t seem too late now in retrospect, although it had at the time. But now, her confession would be much too tardy to make a difference. Still, she owed him the truth, didn’t she? She should tell him, but when? How? Or would ignorance save him? He could plead honestly that he’d known nothing if it came to that. No, that argument only provided a coward’s shelter. She set aside her napkin. Her appetite was entirely gone. She had to tell him. Soon. Today. Before they went a step closer to Kuban.

  Ruslan rose after they’d eaten. ‘We’ll need to gather supplies, Guillaume. Do you know somewhere we might find more appropriate clothes and passage to Ekaterinodar?’

  Guillaume nodded. ‘Passage is easy. You’re in luck and that’s saying something this time of year. There’s a ship that sails tomorrow. As for the clothes, I know a few places to look.’

  ‘I have enough clothes for travel. The two dresses are plenty,’ Dasha protested. She didn’t want to seem frivolous in front of this farmer the Tsar had dispossessed. Fancy gowns would not convince Guillaume she was different.

  ‘Dasha,’ Ruslan interrupted firmly. ‘It will be hard to persuade people you’re a princess when you only have two dresses. Guillaume knows what to do. In the meanwhile, allow me to show you around Marseilles.’

  She understood. They would play the Archambeaults one last time. Under the alias of a wine merchant, Ruslan would send casks of the local Mourvèdre red to Stepan to tell him all was well and that they had made it this far—Marseilles, the last sanctuary.

  * * *

  Confession was good for the soul. The thought poked at Dasha, hard, as they walked the aisle of Église de Saint-Nicolas-de-Myre. The church was new, Ruslan shared, completed only last year. It was a testament to the cultural melting pot that was Marseilles, a port that was home not just to the French but to the Mediterranean world: Christians seeking refuge from Ottoman persecution, Kubanians seeking refuge from their provincial Tsar with his provincial policies, Greeks and Italians and Algerians coming to trade. The new church recognised that diversity.

  France was Catholic, but l’Église de Saint Nicolas was eastern in its flavour and orthodox, too. Dasha saw evidence of it in the gold-leaf icons, the abstract geometric mosaic and the mid-eastern architecture. Dasha stopped before the stand of votive candles arranged in front of a Christ icon along the side aisle. She reached to light one and froze. She stared into the candlelight, letting the images race fast and swift through her mind. Words fell from her lips in a rush in case the images slipped away, forgotten again. ‘There is a cathedral in Kuban, Saint Catherine the Martyr. On her feast day in November, we would go and light candles.’

  ‘Yes, the royal family worships there,’ Ruslan encouraged softly, but she felt him tense in expectation and hope that a memory was coming.

  She went on, clinging to the images in her mind before they could slip away. ‘I lit one for Katya Ustinova, the general’s wife. Her death was so very tragic. I lit a candle for...’ She stopped there, cutting off the last words: my parents. Why would she have lit candles for her parents? They’d been alive. Unless... Her knees buckled. She felt Ruslan’s arms take her weight, felt him guide her to a bench.

  ‘You’ve remembered something else? Someone you lit a candle for?’ Ruslan pressed quietly. She could feel the excitement building in him o
ver her remembrance. However, his excitement carried none of the anxiety of hers. She wanted to remember, yet she feared what those memories would show her, what she’d discover about herself.

  Dasha bowed her head. She needed to tell him, now. What better place to confess her dirty secret than in a church? ‘Ruslan, I have to tell you something and it will change everything.’ Possibly even how he felt about her.

  He risked his life for you, you owe him.

  Her conscience stabbed at her. She hoped he didn’t say meaningless words like ‘nothing could change the way I feel about you’. They wouldn’t be true. He couldn’t love her, couldn’t care for her, once he knew what she’d withheld. After weeks of travel, weeks of loving him on the road, she knew him well enough to know he would be angry over the omission, but more than that, he’d be angry she hadn’t told him before, that she hadn’t trusted him with this most vital fact.

  She drew a breath and took one last look at his handsome profile. She wanted to remember him this way, the way he looked before he hated her. Then, she let her words out in a rush of hope and fear. ‘What if I am not the Princess? What if there were two women on the landing like in my dream and Captain Varvakis rescued the wrong one?’

  To his credit, Ruslan did not move away, did not look at her with anger. But his jaw tightened, his mouth set grim and his mind was working hard as he digested the words. She’d had months to process the idea. He had only a few moments. She was patient. She waited.

  He fixed her with a stare, full comprehension dawning that she was not looking for reassurance. She was telling him something. ‘This is not the first time you’ve doubted, is it?’ He ran a hand over his mouth and this time he did rise from the bench as the other piece of her disclosure took him. It was the piece she feared most, the piece that would take him from her. ‘You’ve doubted all along, haven’t you, Dasha? You don’t believe you’re the Princess. All this time, I thought the doubts were only about your ability to rule, but they’re about your very identity.’

  He began to pace. She could see the full horror and complexity of the situation dawning on him. She could imagine what was running through his versatile mind, all he’d risked in bringing her this far, in putting his name to this mad scheme. To him, it hadn’t been mad, merely a restoration of a rightful princess. Until now. Her confession changed all that. It was no longer a simple matter of facing down the Rebels, of persuading people knowing he was armed with the truth. He had only to make others see that truth. He would condemn her now.

  Ruslan pushed a hand through his hair, making it stand boyishly on end, and her heart ached for him, for what she was putting him through. He’d been nothing but kind and she’d paid him with half-truths. Any moment, he would realise she hadn’t been worth it. He turned to face her and she braced herself for the verbal blow.

  ‘You are the Princess, Dasha.’ This was not the condemnation she’d expected.

  ‘Ruslan, listen, I might not be. In my dream, the other woman—’ She began her argument, but Ruslan interrupted.

  ‘We have empirical proof, Dasha. You embody the physical description right down to the scar on your wrist. You play the piano expertly, you remember not being allowed to have pets in the palace, you remember the cathedral where the family worshipped.’

  ‘You want to justify my identity, it’s only natural,’ Dasha refuted calmly. ‘After everything you’ve invested, you don’t want to be wrong, not at this point.’

  ‘No, I want to be honest.’ Ruslan’s words stung. Dasha swallowed against the implications of that simple sentence. She had not been honest in keeping her doubts from him. But the implications were more far reaching than even that. The issue of honesty called into question Varvakis’s own story. If her doubts were true, it would mean Varvakis had lied. The very thought of that conjured up a host of other horrors—that Varvakis had lied deliberately to further the Moderate agenda or simply his own ambitions. If so, he’d made an imposter of her. She’d become a fraud with no name. She had no idea who she was but a man’s pawn.

  Dasha felt the world spin. Men had left their homes, risked their lives for her, for a lie. She gripped the bench. No, it couldn’t be true. Her very sanity clung to Ruslan’s arguments. Surely Ruslan was right.

  Ruslan came to her, kneeling and taking her cold hands in his, his touch lending her strength. He was not repudiating her, but accepting her. ‘It is natural for you to doubt. You have no memory of who you are. You are relying on whatever facts you can create, or whatever has been told to you, but your identity is there in other ways, too, implicit ways. You carry yourself like royalty. At dinner that first night, you knew which fork to eat with, how to handle difficult men and situations. Even the way you think stamps you as a member of the royal house.’ He smiled here, catching her off guard. She knew he was remembering their many discussions about strategy, about decisions. His case was compelling. Even she was starting to be convinced. Perhaps her doubts were natural and perhaps he was right. ‘Your cynicism should convince you if nothing else. You are always questioning motives, looking for angles, never accepting anything at face value. You passed the silk test.’

  ‘What?’ What did silk have to do with any of this?

  Ruslan chuckled. ‘Madame Delphine told me how you questioned the quality of the silk she showed you. How many people do you think would know the difference, let alone how to test it? Only a woman of exquisite calibre would know.’

  Dasha froze, withdrawing her hands from his warm grasp. She missed his strength, his comfort immediately. Dismay swamped her. The dinner, the dresses and who knew what else? Maybe even the puppies at the stable had been a test of her character, or a test designed to prompt that specific memory. Oh, God, if that were true, then even bringing her here to the church had been a test. ‘You were testing me.’ This whole time he’d been testing her. For what purpose? But she knew to what purpose. It had been an issue of trust with him, too. He had not trusted she was who Varvakis claimed.

  It was one thing for her to hold doubts, but for him to have had those doubts was somehow worse. A chasm began to open between them. They had not trusted one another. The unspoken accusations hung in the air between them. They’d given their bodies to one another, but in the end they hadn’t given their confidences. She had not trusted him with her worries and he had devised secret tests of her worthiness, tests she had obviously passed to find herself here in Marseilles. But that only made it worse. Whatever they had between them was starting to unravel and it was her fault. She’d pulled the first thread with her confession.

  ‘Ruslan, what happens now?’ She managed to meet his gaze. Something in his eyes gave her wild, irrational hope. Perhaps they could stop the game here. They could turn back, go home to London and start again.

  * * *

  There could be no starting over. He could see that was the answer she craved. In truth, it was the answer he wanted to give her. The answer he had to give her was far more difficult. ‘We go forward, Dasha.’ He was resolute even as he was resigned to this less than satisfactory path. ‘It is too late to do anything else.’ Too late for Kuban, too late for them. What was done could not be undone as much as he wished it could be otherwise. If her doubts were founded...if she wasn’t the Princess...the consequences didn’t bear contemplating.

  ‘Even if I am a fraud?’ Dasha seemed suddenly fragile, ethereal, with the candlelight turning her hair, her face angelic in the shadows.

  ‘You don’t know that. Doubt is not a negation of the truth, merely a questioning of it,’ Ruslan replied. ‘You are a better option for the country than civil war.’

  It was killing him not to touch her, but he knew if he went to her, he could whisper temptation in her ear, the very temptation she wanted to hear: that they could run. ‘What do you want me to say, Dasha? That I will take you anywhere you want to go?’ That he would be anything she wanted him to be, the exiled prince, the wine maker,
the merchant? He would set aside restoring his family’s honour for her. But that wasn’t an option any longer.

  She looked away from him. ‘Maybe I am.’ She shook her head against the impossibility of her request, and yet, what she had set out to do was no less improbable than what she asked of him—to find a way out. The only difference was honour. There was no honour in running away. Her country needed her, or at least they needed who they thought she was.

  ‘To go forward will change everything, Ruslan.’ She looked at him again, her eyes pleading silently for what she could not ask. Part of his heart broke at her remarkable strength. Even in desperation, Dasha would not beg. But she would try to protect him. He heard it in her arguments. She was warning him off.

  ‘I don’t know who I am, Ruslan. I might be a princess, but I might be someone else. I might in truth be the imposter that people may shortly accuse me of being. I don’t imagine the Rebels will accept me without a fight. They will try to discredit me. If they are successful?’ Her voice faltered over the words ‘Well, there are consequences for that.’

  Yes. Rather irrevocable ones: the block, the axe. He would spare her those images if he could. He had visions of Dasha, accused of treason, being put on trial for claiming to be the Princess. It would not be a fair trial if things made it that far and the end would be a foregone conclusion; Dasha executed through no fault of her own but through the mistake of one man. Varvakis could not be wrong. The stakes were too high. ‘I won’t allow it, Dasha. The Rebels will accept you. I will see to it,’ Ruslan vowed.

  ‘You will do nothing of the sort, Ruslan!’ Dasha trembled, overcome at last, her bravery cracking. ‘I will not drag you down with me. You can’t save me from my fate.’