The Most Coveted Prize

by Penny Jordan

  From somewhere she managed to drag out of her pain a lifeline of anger to cling on to, to stop herself from being submerged in her own grief. Only that frail fragile thread of anger enabled her to turn towards Kiryl, pain darkening her eyes to the dark grey of stormy seas.

  ‘You might think that you have succeeded in your plan to use me to blackmail Vasilii into letting you win the contract, but you haven’t,’ she told him fiercely. ‘That plan depended on me loving you and … and being blind to what you really are. But I’m not blind to reality now. Now the only thing I feel for you is contempt—for you and for myself, for being stupid enough not to see you for what you really are.’ Despite her best efforts, the pain of her true emotions at the cruel destruction of her dreams made Alena’s voice shake slightly. ‘I never want to see you again—ever.’ Bravely she told him, ‘I didn’t love you. I loved someone I created inside my own head and heart—someone I now know never existed. That was weak and foolish of me. I made it easy for you to deceive me, but I shall never make that mistake again. And as for marrying you. I’d rather stay single all my life.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Alena, but I’m afraid that you must marry him.’

  Alena stared up at her brother.

  ‘What? Vasilii, you can’t mean that. I know what he is now. He doesn’t have the power to force you to give up the contract because he doesn’t have me any more.’

  ‘The situation isn’t as simple or as clear-cut as that. I’m afraid there is no other choice for you, Alena. Not if what I have been told about the intimacy of your relationship is true.’ Vasilii paused before continuing, ‘Of course, if it is not …’

  Vasilii meant if they had not been lovers. Alena’s heart sank. If only she could be more like Kiryl and lie without any compunction. But she wasn’t and she couldn’t.

  As the reality of what Vasilii had said started to sink in, involuntary tremors of distress and misery shook her body. To her shock she saw that Kiryl had taken a step towards her. Immediately and instinctively she stepped back. She couldn’t let him touch her. She couldn’t. Because even after what she had heard she was still afraid that if he did touch her he might find some rebellious cell within her body that would defy her and respond to him. No, of course not. That would never happen now. No, she was stepping back because the thought of him touching her revolted her—nothing else.

  But as she struggled to come to terms with what was happening, her half-brother’s grim words had her switching her attention to him with growing disbelief. ‘You might not see it that way at the moment, but by brokering a deal that includes marriage to Kiryl for you I am trying to protect you and our family’s good name.’

  She shook her head, pleading with him in an anguished voice, ‘No, Vasilii.’

  ‘‘I’m sorry, Alena, but you must marry him. However, the marriage need not last long,’ Vasilii told her. ‘If it helps, try to think of it as a coat that will give you the protection of respectability when you most need it.’

  Was that supposed to reassure her? Marriage to Kiryl would be more like a shroud wrapped so tightly around her self-respect that it would destroy it.

  ‘Vasilii, please,’ she pleaded.

  ‘Believe me, you will find it much easier to live your future life as a respectable divorcee than as a discarded mistress. We are all judged by our circumstances, no matter how little we may like that fact. We are accorded or denied respect according to how others judge us. I would not like to see you become the kind of woman who is passed from man to man for pleasure before being discarded—and that is what I fear could happen.’

  ‘I would never let that happen to me,’ Alena protested, fresh shock filling her as she listened to her half-brother’s unvarnished home-truths.

  ‘You might not have any choice. Should Kiryl choose to make the details of your relationship public, then you will automatically be judged by other men to be equally available to them. As your husband, though, it will be his duty to protect your reputation as his wife. This is a business arrangement—a bargain in which we all lose something just as we all gain something—and it is as necessary for the honour of our family name as it is for Kiryl’s desire to win the contract. If you had told me before getting involved with him things might have been different, of course. But since you did not …’

  It was all her own fault. That was what Vasilii was saying to her. And deep down inside herself Alena knew that she agreed with him. If she hadn’t created that silly fantasy inside her head about Kiryl then perhaps she would have thought more logically and carefully about his motives when he had actually approached her. And what about when he had taken her to bed? Would she have been capable of thinking logically about his motives then?

  How easy he must have found it to make use of her own vulnerability to him. She had been so naïve, thinking that he wanted her as much as she had wanted him, that his feelings for her were the same as hers for him. He had been able to dupe and deceive her because she had wanted to believe him. And now she must pay for that lack of judgement.

  Had their father still been alive things might have been different. He had often gently teased Vasilii about the traditional paternalistic ideas he had absorbed from the time he had spent with his maternal grandparents after the death of his mother. The fusion of Arab and nomad blood within his mother’s tribe meant that, for all he was a twenty-first-century citizen of the world, her half-brother could be rather old-fashioned when it came to certain moral issues. She had never imagined, though, that it would ever impact on her own life in the way it was doing now.

  ‘Kiryl and I have already shaken hands on our agreement,’ Vasilii told her. ‘Your marriage to him will take place as soon as it can be arranged.’

  ‘But not until Kiryl has secured the contract,’ Alena couldn’t resist putting in, her voice brittle with all that she was feeling as she looked directly at Kiryl for the first time. ‘After all, that is what all this is about for you, isn’t it, Kiryl? This is what it has all been about for you right from the start.’

  She was trembling from head to foot, Kiryl could see, her emotions spilling past her self-control and into her voice so that he could hear her pain. Pain where such a short time ago there had been joy and happiness. He was responsible for that pain.

  Something unfamiliar and previously unknown was growing into life inside him. Remorse? Guilt? Kiryl didn’t know. He only knew that it made him want to reach out to Alena, to hold her and comfort her, to tell her that it wasn’t too late for him to stop things. He could pull out of the deal—tell Vasilii that he had changed his mind.

  What? What on earth was happening to him? He couldn’t really be thinking about throwing away everything he had worked so hard for and risk losing the contract that was so vitally important to him just because of Alena’s pain. She meant nothing to him, and that was the way he wanted things to stay.

  ‘This marriage is for the best, Alena. I promise you that.’

  ‘The best for whom?’ Alena challenged her brother bleakly. ‘Certainly not for me.’

  Was that a sigh she could hear from Vasilii? Hardly. She was just imagining it—just as she had imagined that look of torment she thought she had seen briefly in Kiryl’s eyes.

  ‘You are both as bad as one another,’ she told them tonelessly. ‘Two businessmen for whom I am simply a bargaining tool, like a slave to be bought and sold to suit your purposes.’

  She couldn’t bear what was happening. She really couldn’t. Unable to trust herself to say any more, she turned and fled to the sanctuary of her own bedroom, locking the door behind her.

  She might feel that she couldn’t bear the situation she was now in, but Alena knew that she would have to. She had no other choice. Financially she was totally dependent on Vasilii. She had nothing of her own other than what was in her bank account and a wardrobe full of clothes. She had no training she could fall back on, no qualifications, and she knew her half-brother well enough to know that, having made up his mind about her future, he wou
ld not change it. If she tried to escape her unwanted marriage he would track her down and find her. The only solace she had was what Vasilii had said to her about the marriage only needing to be of short duration.

  Standing alone in her bedroom, looking out of the window onto the windswept London rooftops below her, Alena made herself a promise.

  The two men she had trusted absolutely, whom she had thought loved her as much as she loved them, had betrayed her cruelly and callously, destroying not just her belief in them but her ability to trust and her belief in love itself—at least for her. Some people like her mother, her parents, were lucky—they found true love. But she was obviously not one of them. Not worthy of being loved. Only worthy of being used.

  She pushed that thought away. She might have to marry Kiryl, but hopefully her sentence would be a short one and then she would be free. And from the searing pain of what she had endured Alena vowed that a new Alena would be created, rising from the ashes of what she had once been like the legendary phoenix, to be stronger, better, wiser—an Alena who would never again allow anyone to hurt her. This new Alena would control her own life and make her own choices, and those choices and decisions would not include allowing any other man into her life to hurt her as both Kiryl and Vasilii had. She would use the time during which she was forced to be married to Kiryl to forge her own future. And that future would be her mother’s charity. Her future and the focus of her life.

  A new sense of purpose filled her, and with it a steely strength. Her reward for agreeing to this marriage that Vasilii was insisting upon would be the right to control the charity. Kiryl and her brother would have to learn that they were not the only ones who could issue ultimatums and strike bargains.

  Kiryl. The pain she had been holding at bay ever since she had realised the truth about him surged through her, making her want to cry out in agony against its savaging of her emotions. But Alena wasn’t going to give in to that raking clawing pain. It must be endured, suffered—because that was what would make her stronger.

  CHAPTER TEN

  WEDDING dresses. Alena was trying her best to avoid looking at them, but it was next to impossible when she was surrounded by them as she sat in the salon of an exclusive upmarket wedding dress designer whilst a variety of models paraded dresses in front of her for inspection. It had been Vasilii, of course, who had made the appointment for her. She couldn’t care less what she wore for a wedding she didn’t want to a man who didn’t want her and had never wanted her—even if he had pretended otherwise. She’d rather wear sackcloth and ashes.

  Her throat went tight as she fought against the upsurge of misery that threatened her. It wasn’t because of any treacherous feelings for Kiryl that she was feeling like this. He meant nothing to her now—less than nothing. No, it was the sight of all those white dresses, with their symbolism of happiness and hope, so outdated in modern-day society with their fragile delicacy, their sheer impracticability, their inability to withstand the reality of a world that would trample on them. Rather like marriage itself. Entered into with such dreams and hopes. But not for her. Her marriage would not be like that.

  As she had come into the showroom two other women had been leaving, mother and daughter by the look of them, their shared happiness in the smiles they exchanged reminding Alena of all that she had lost with the death of her own mother. Her mother would never have let this happen to her. Her mother. Alena closed her eyes and blinked against the dryness of a pain that went too deep for tears.

  She would have to choose something, of course. There was no point in drawing out this senseless parody of what choosing her wedding dress should be. The model standing in front of her now was wearing a gown so beautiful that the sight of it should have filled her heart with delight. Had she been a true bride-to-be, about to marry the man she loved, then this would be the dress she would have chosen, Alena recognised. The slender column of silk-satin was cut and seamed so that it fell elegantly to the floor after gently caressing the model’s body, its neckline and arms covered by the most delicate lace that Alena had ever seen. Tiny crystal bugle beads sewn into the seams at the back of the dress to form a train gave just the right amount of shimmer. It was the kind of wedding dress she would have loved to have worn for Kiryl had he been the man she’d originally thought him.

  The sight of the dress, so beautiful, representing that special something of a love that should be pure filled her with more pain. She couldn’t bear to be there any more. She couldn’t bear to think of wearing one of these beautiful gowns at a ceremony that would be meaningless for a marriage that would be devoid of all the things marriage should be. She didn’t care what she wore.

  Abruptly she stood up, her action bringing the hovering saleswoman swiftly to her side.

  ‘I have to go,’ she told her shakily.

  ‘But your gown—you haven’t chosen anything.’

  ‘You choose,’ Alena told her. ‘I can’t.’

  ‘But you’ll need to try the dress on,’ the saleswoman protested.

  Alena shook her head.

  ‘No. Just choose something for me and then have it altered and sent to the apartment, please.’

  They had her measurements. They’d measured her when she arrived. The last thing she felt like doing now was standing in front of a mirror looking at a reflection of herself in a dress for a wedding she didn’t want.

  All the other arrangements had now been made. Their engagement had been announced within hours of the deal made by Kiryl and Vasilii, and now their June wedding was less than three weeks away. Not that Alena had been involved with the plans for the ceremony. Over the weeks that had passed since their engagement she had flatly refused to have anything whatsoever to do with it, leaving the two men she now thought of as her betrayers to make what arrangements they chose. They were to be married in a civil ceremony in St Petersburg, followed by a lavish wedding party—and that was the final callous treachery as far as Alena was concerned. That she should be forced to ‘celebrate’ a travesty of everything she had hoped her marriage would be in the city that meant so much to her, where she had believed she had found a love as perfect as the one shared by her parents.

  Her only solace in the humiliation and misery she was being forced to endure was her involvement with the charity. Vasilii had not been inclined to agree to her demand to be allowed to take control of it initially, when she had returned to his office to confront him with her demand, but Kiryl had stepped in, his expression shuttered and his voice devoid of emotion as he spoke to her brother.

  ‘I would prefer it if you would agree. It will give her something to do whilst I am away on business.’

  For a minute she had been tempted to say that she had changed her mind, that simply by speaking as he had Kiryl had contaminated the charity, just as he had contaminated what she had thought of as their love. But then the new cool and clinical Alena she had become reminded her that the charity would ultimately be her escape route to a freedom in which she’d control her own life, so she had bitten back her rejection and Vasilii had nodded his head and given way.

  After her morning spent looking at wedding dresses she didn’t want to wear, the last thing Alena felt like doing was going to view the townhouse in exclusive Knightsbridge that Kiryl had arranged for them to rent for the brief duration of their marriage. Alena didn’t care where they lived. All she cared about was getting back her self-respect, and that could never happen whilst she was married to Kiryl. Kiryl, however, had insisted that it was necessary for her to give approval to the house he had chosen, and Vasilii had backed him up.

  Before she had realised the truth about Kiryl she would have been thrilled at the thought of living anywhere with him, never mind this smart townhouse, Alena admitted as she got out of a taxi outside the address Kiryl had given her. The house was Georgian in style, in a pretty leafy square with its own private garden.

  Climbing the steps, Alena rang the bell to one side of the highly glossed black-painted door. To her dis
may it was Kiryl, not the estate agent she had assumed would be there, who opened the door for her.

  Automatically she stepped back, flinching when Kiryl reached out and took hold of her arm to draw her into the hallway of the house, with its immaculate off-white-painted walls and its wrought-iron staircase that curled elegantly upwards.

  ‘Why are you here?’ Alena demanded, pulling herself free of Kiryl’s hold. ‘After all there’s no one here to see us acting out this … this appalling charade.’

  ‘Perhaps I wanted to make sure that the house is to your liking,’ Kiryl responded in a terse voice, before telling her curtly, ‘I suggest that we start upstairs and then work our way down. If there’s anything you don’t like, please let me know. I’ve taken the house fully furnished, but obviously if you wish to change anything—’

  ‘There’s only one thing I want to change, and that’s the fact that I ever met you,’ Alena told him bitterly, heading for the stairs.

  The house had obviously been handed over to a top interior designer to work on. On the uppermost floor were a guest suite and two smaller bedrooms sharing a bathroom. From the window of one of them she could see down into the private garden in the square. Two young women were sitting on a bench there, buggies parked close to them.

  Children. Alena’s heart ached as though someone was tearing it apart.

  ‘Are you happy with these rooms?’ Kiryl asked.

  Although she had her back to him, Alena could feel him standing behind her. If she turned round she would be so close to him that all it would take for her to be in his arms was one single small step. In his arms. That was the last thing she wanted. The security she had thought was there for her with him had never been anything more than a lie—just like everything else about him.

  ‘Am I really supposed to believe that you care what I think?’ she challenged.

  Down in the garden, one of the women lifted a small child out of its buggy. Alena had to turn away to escape from that emotive sight. Once—a lifetime ago now—she had actually dreamed of having Kiryl’s children. Children to whom they could both give the love Kiryl himself had been denied as a child. How deluded she had been. Delighted, deluded and deceived. Blindly, Alena headed for the stairs.