If so, Stepan still didn’t know. He’d grown more reserved the last few years, more distant, not only emotionally, but now physically. He and the others had spent most of last year in London at her brother’s town house. She’d missed all of them. Together, they’d been her family, but she’d missed Stepan most. Regardless of how stoic he was, she’d grown used to his presence. He was always there, a fixture she could count on, less mercurial than Illarion, more even-tempered than Nikolay. She’d been excited when Dimitri had told her Stepan was coming for the winter. She thought she’d have Stepan all to herself for nearly four months! But when he’d arrived, he’d been more aloof than ever and had spent many of his days like this one—gone.
The realisation steeped the sense of mystery. What or who drew the stoic Stepan out into the cold and the rain? Below her on the drive, Stepan dismounted and gave the reins to her brother’s groom. Anna smiled. That was her cue. She would greet him and ferret out his secrets; maybe she would even coax a smile from him. Out of all her brother’s friends, Stepan smiled the least and worried the most.
Stepan stood in the entrance hall, unwrapping a muffler as she sailed down the stairs, all air and light teasing. ‘Where have you been? Who have you seen?’
Stepan looked up. She’d startled him. ‘Are you my mother now?’ It was not an unkindly chiding, but it was still chiding. There was no mistaking that he was scolding her.
‘Someone needs to be if you’re going to be out all day and come home soaking wet.’ She took hold of his muffler and finished unwrapping it. ‘Shall I call for a bath?’ She shook out the wet wool, droplets splattering the hardwood floor. Stepan peeled off his greatcoat, making it clear he didn’t want any help. ‘Where’s Tate? Shouldn’t this be the butler’s job, Anna-Maria?’
‘I beat him to it, and it’s Anna, as I’ve told you before,’ she reprimanded him with a smile that she knew made the most of the dimple to the right of her mouth. The few boys in Kuban she’d been allowed to meet had thought her smile was her best quality. She hoped the young gentlemen in London would, too.
Stepan didn’t. Perhaps he didn’t even notice it. ‘Your name is Anna-Maria and has been since the day you were born.’
Anna shrugged and gave a toss of her dark curls. ‘I prefer Anna, it sounds more English.’
He noticed that. His dark eyebrows winged upward at her reasoning. ‘Why ever would you want to be more English?’
She put her hands on her hips and faced him squarely. ‘Perhaps for the same reason you cut your hair.’ In Kuban, he’d worn his hair longer like Nikolay and Illarion. They had kept theirs, but Stepan had cut his immediately upon arrival. It had now grown to the point where he could pull it back as he did today.
‘What would that reason be?’ Stepan’s grey eyes narrowed. He did not like being challenged or forced to reveal anything private.
‘To fit in, of course,’ she answered honestly. Then she grinned. ‘And because it’s more exciting. Anna-Maria is a nun’s name. Anna is more sophisticated.’ She pronounced it with a short A—Ahnnah. It sounded foreign, but not too foreign, she thought.
Stepan gave her censorious look. ‘Being more exciting is hardly what your brother wishes for you.’
She made a face. She knew that all too well. Dimitri, well meaning as he was, would keep her hidden in the country for ever if he had his way.
Stepan made to move past her to the stairs, his wet greatcoat draped over one arm. ‘If you will excuse me, I will go and clean up before supper.’
‘No, I don’t think so.’ She stepped in front of him, her skirts brushing his leg. ‘You’re not going upstairs until I have a smile from you.’ Did she imagine he stepped back? She pressed forward again, her hands playfully gripping the lapels of his jacket. ‘I’ve decided, you must pay a toll,’ she teased.
Stepan’s jaw tightened. ‘What might that be?’
She tried another smile. ‘You must answer my question.’
‘And if I don’t answer?’
‘Then I get to guess.’
‘Very well, you may guess. Quickly, though, I don’t want to catch a chill. A few minutes ago you were concerned about that.’ He was impatient in his barely restrained intolerance.
Anna forged on. She wasn’t oblivious. He was dismissing her, swatting her out of the way as if she were no more than an irritating fly. The sentiment sat poorly with her. She wanted to shock him into paying attention to her, to prove she wasn’t an annoying fly. She said the most outrageous thing she could think of. ‘Were you with your mistress?’
His grey eyes went flinty, his expression stern with reprimand as he removed her hands from his lapels. ‘That is hardly a ladylike guess,’ he scolded.
‘I know you all had them in Kuban. I’m not a child,’ she protested.
‘I know,’ Stepan growled. There was something dangerous in his tone as he made to move around her, but she was entrenched now. This had become about more than goading a smile from him. She would have his acknowledgment and she would have it now. Determined, she countered his move, blocking him at the foot of the stairs.
‘You have to answer. Am I right?’ she challenged, although a piece of her didn’t want to be right.
‘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.
In return, he’d given Dimitri unquestioning loyalty, ushering the Petrovich family to safety in England and leaving behind the only life he knew—a life full of privilege but lacking in affection. Dimitri had given him so much. He could not repay his friend by coveting his sister, especially when he knew how much Dimitri had given up in the raising of her.
In theory, Stepan wanted all the best for her, too. At a distance, he could embrace the knowledge she was in London having a Season without having to experience it in person. He wouldn’t have to witness her flirting with London’s young beaux the way he had to watch her charm the Squire’s son tonight. He wouldn’t have to watch her dance in the arms of gentlemen with titles more legitimate than the honorific he bore. Yes, it would be best to leave. He wondered if he’d find the discipline to do it. After all, he’d simply be exchanging one type of hell for another, the only difference being that one hell held Anna-Maria in it and the other did not. It was hard to say which one was worse. Perhaps hell didn’t have varying degrees, only varying interpretations.
* * *
There was brandy after the meal and the requisite half hour of polite conversation with the ladies after that while Anna-Maria played the pianoforte. All in all, it was a very satisfactory country evening, the sort that usually filled him with a soft contentment, a domestic denouement of sorts to the adventure of his days. But tonight, Stepan had little to contribute and he was glad to see the Squire’s family go. Anna-Maria shut the door behind them shortly after ten, with a laughing farewell to the Squire’s son and a promise to go riding as soon as the mud cleared. She turned, a beaming smile on her face, her dark eyes dancing with mirth.
‘Be careful with him,’ Stepan said sternly, too sternly. Part of him, the jealous part, wanted to wipe that smile off her face. ‘You will overwhelm him with your boldness.’
‘My boldness?’ Anna-Maria challenged, turning the force of her smile on him. ‘What are you suggesting, Stepan?’ Indeed, what was he suggesting? That she was too easy with her favours? It was hardly what he intended.
‘Nothing, only that he is young and inexperienced.’
‘And I am, too,’ Anna-Maria retorted. ‘Much to my regret.’ She shot a look at her brother. ‘I can’t even go out riding without an escort.’
‘The country is a big place, Anna,’ Dimitri answered wearily. This was an ongoing argument. Dimitri’s gaze met his sister’s in a timeless sibling staredown.
Evie intervened, linking an arm through the younger woman’s. ‘Anna, come and help me check on the baby one last time for the night.’
Stepan followed Dimitri’s gaze up the stairs, watching the two women. Despite his exasperation with his sister, a soft smile played on Dimitri’s face. How many times had that smile been followed by the words, ‘there goes everything I love’?
Not tonight, however. Dimitri sighed. ‘The sooner she gets to London, the better. Perhaps I should have sent her last year even though she’d o
nly just arrived.’
Stepan shook his head, unwilling to let his friend second-guess himself. ‘No, she needed time to adjust, we all did.’
‘I just want her to make intelligent decisions. She’s so vivacious that I worry...’ Dimitri let another sigh communicate all the things he worried about: Anna-Maria running off with the first man who showed her any adventure, Anna-Maria falling in love with the first man to kiss her. Dimitri shrugged as if he could shake off the weight of that worry and fixed his attention on Stepan. ‘You, my friend, were distracted tonight. Is the winter getting to you, too? The walls closing in? Just two months left and it will be better. We can go up to London. The change of scenery will have us appreciating Little Westbury within weeks.’ Dimitri chuckled.
‘Actually,’ Stepan said, ‘I was thinking about not going up to town with you at all. I was thinking I’d stay here, perhaps rent out Preston Worth’s house at Shoreham for a few months.’
Dimitri looked surprised and disappointed. ‘You’d miss Anna’s debut. I am sure she’s counting on you for a few waltzes.’
‘She’ll be surrounded by so many young men, she won’t need me to dance attendance on her.’ He smiled over the pain the realisation caused him. Like the others, she would be launched into a new life. He would be left completely behind.
‘That’s what I’m afraid of,’ Dimitri argued with a laugh. He clamped a hand on Stepan’s shoulder in fraternal camaraderie. ‘She’ll be surrounded by young fools like herself, champing at the bit for a taste of freedom in the big city. I was counting on you to be the voice of wisdom, to help her keep her head and navigate society with decorum.’
Seduced by the Prince's Kiss Page 2