You Belong to Me (3 page)

Stefan chuckled. His wife had never been one to mince words, and being the Queen of Cardinia and under almost constant attendance certainly didn’t help to curb her tongue. But his court was becoming used to her Americanized ways, and her utter lack of diplomacy.

Thinking about his wife reminded him that she was waiting for him—and what she had
seemed
to promise. “We are forgetting about your mother.”

“I was trying to,” Vasili grumbled, and as
his arms slipped around the two closest Gypsy wenches, he added, “Have a heart, cousin. Tell her you couldn’t find me.”

“I won’t go that far, but I’ll give you two hours to present yourself at your old home. Lazar and Serge will make sure that you’re not one minute late. In the meantime, enjoy, my friends.”

Lazar and Serge were already dismounting with eager anticipation. But as Stefan left them to ride out of camp alone, Vasili leapt up and shouted for him to wait. When he yanked his shirt out from under a nicely shaped hip, the women started protesting, loudly, and Lazar, realizing that Vasili was letting duty come before pleasure, as always, did some protesting of his own.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Vasili. He’s got twenty men waiting for him.”

“Not good enough,” was all Vasili said as he found his coat and tossed it over his shoulders.

Serge rolled his eyes. It wouldn’t do any good to point out that Stefan would feel insulted that Vasili didn’t think he could take care of himself for the short trip back to the palace. Stefan
would
feel insulted, but he’d be amused, too, that Vasili would leave such accommodating wenches when he didn’t have to.

Serge sighed and started to remount, but Vasili stopped him. “He needs only one of us. You two go ahead and enjoy. The ladies are already warmed up.”

“Yes, but you did the warming.”

“So thank me. I’m no longer in the mood, anyway, thinking about that appointment with my mother and having to endure one of her lectures. If you insist on coming along, I’ll insist you endure it with me.”

“In that case, we’ll see you tomorrow.”

V
asili’s mother wasn’t wearing the correct expression when she joined him in her parlor later that night. At least her expression wasn’t the one he’d come to associate with her lectures. In fact, her expression was so pleased and happy, he had to wonder if he’d mistaken the reason for her summons.

Long experience assured him that good news would have brought her to him, and he wouldn’t have even considered turning her away at his door as he had her messenger. After all, he did love her, and did try to please her when it was reasonably possible to do so.

It was only for the scoldings and the lectures, when she anticipated arguments from him, that she wanted him in her own territory, which was here in the house he had grown up in. It didn’t matter that he’d moved out of the family home some twelve years ago, first into the palace to be closer at hand for Stefan’s impromptu outings, then into his own town house after he had taken the grand European tour. His mother still felt that this house, and
her own parlor in particular, somehow enhanced her authority. The hell of it was, it did.

The evening was young enough that he had caught the countess before she left for whichever party she was attending tonight. That was exactly what he had counted on, so he could get this over with and enjoy the rest of the night himself. He hoped her party was an important one for which she wouldn’t want to arrive late, thereby keeping this meeting short. Her clothes were no indication, nor the amount of jewels she was wearing, for she never attended any social engagement without being decked out in grand style.

Maria Petroff was a handsome woman in her later years, perhaps more handsome now than she had been in her youth, for no one had ever considered her a beauty. Her thrusting chin and patrician nose, which weren’t exactly feminine, endowed her with a close resemblance to her brother Sandor, the late king, and she’d never been far from robust and stocky of build, which now could kindly be termed matronly.

It had always been a source of bewilderment to her, as well as fierce pride, that she had produced a son like Vasili. But then he took after his father in his looks. All that he had from her were the Barony eyes, eyes so light a brown that strong emotion turned them golden.

On Cardinia’s young King Stefan, with his raven-black hair and dark complexion, people called them devil’s eyes. But on Vasili, with
his golden hair and skin tone, they were merely beautiful, a complement to the fine bone structure that made him so very handsome.

“You look disgraceful,” was the first thing Vasili’s mother said to him.

Since he hadn’t bothered to go home and change before making his appearance, his shirt and jacket were both understandably wrinkled. His hair was also a mess, after so many hands had tested its softness tonight, but on Vasili, anything less than impeccable only gave him a rakish look that women found incredibly sensual.

But his mother’s remark made him instantly nervous, for she’d been smiling when she’d said it. Something was definitely not right here.

His eyes narrowed suspiciously now, he demanded, “What are you gloating about, Mother?”

She actually laughed. “What a distasteful word, and something I would never do, of course.” And with another smile: “Why don’t you pour us a drink?”

He returned her smile, deciding to go along with her for the moment. “An excellent idea,” he said, but as he headed for the sideboard where a variety of spirits were kept on hand for guests, he added under his breath, “Obviously I’m going to need it.”

“I’ll have some of that fine Russian vodka I keep stocked just for you,” she said before he began to pour exactly that for himself.

The request arrested his hand and made him frown. “You don’t like vodka,” he reminded her.

“True,” she replied with a shrug. “But it seems…appropriate tonight.”

She was smiling again. He brought her a small amount of the potent liquor, but he went back to get the bottle for himself and took it with him to the chair opposite the sofa she had settled on. He had filled his glass twice, draining it both times, before he felt fortified enough to say, “All right, Mother, let’s have it. What are you so disgustingly thrilled about?”

“You’re going to have to leave within the week for a trip to Russia.”

“And
that
delights you?”

She nodded, her smile positively glowing now. “Indeed it does, since you will be collecting your bride while you’re there.”

Vasili went very still, and the only thing he could think to say to that alarming statement was, “I’m not Stefan, Mother. He had to go and collect a bride. I don’t happen to have one, thank God.”

“You do now.”

He shot out of his chair and came to stand over her, the very image of bristling male chagrin. He couldn’t remember when he had ever been this annoyed with his mother. Interfering in his life was unacceptable. She knew that and had always respected it. Lectures and sermons she was allowed, worry and concern she was permitted, but something like this?
What the devil had made her think she could get away with it?

“Whatever you have done, Mother, you can just undo. Whatever embarrassment you’ll have to suffer for it, you’ll suffer on your own. I don’t even want to hear another word about it.”

Incredibly, she was still smiling, and she didn’t keep him in suspense as to why. “You might have to hear one or two more words about it, dearest—”

“Mother—” he tried to cut in warningly.

“—since I haven’t done anything, so I have nothing to undo.”

“That’s absurd. Of course you—”

“No,
not
me. The fact that you have a bride waiting for you is entirely your father’s doing.”

With that piece of the puzzle supplied, Vasili began to relax. It wasn’t like his mother to indulge in a practical joke, but he supposed there was a first time for everything.

“And how was he supposed to have arranged this marriage? From the grave?”

She drew in her breath sharply. “That was uncalled-for, Vasili.”

“So is this joke of yours,” he retorted.

“A joke? You insult me even to think that I would joke about something like this.”

“But it’s been fourteen years—”

“I know exactly how long it’s been since your father died.” Her tone was clipped, her displeasure with him still strong. “But according to the letter I received, your betrothal was
made fifteen years ago. That would have been the last time your father was in Russia.”

“You expect me to believe he did something like this without telling you about it—or me?”

“I don’t know why he never mentioned it, but he most definitely did arrange it. I can only assume he felt there was ample time to apprise us of it. After all, you were so young back then—”

“I would have been sixteen, hardly in the cradle,” he snapped.

As if he hadn’t interrupted, she continued. “But he died the next year.”

Vasili’s eyes were glowing by now. This was sounding too serious by half for him to merely feel annoyed. “It’s a lie,” he stated emphatically. “There is no conceivable reason why he would do such a thing.”

Her smile was back, giving him clear warning that he wasn’t going to like her answer. “There is one. Your betrothed is the daughter of your father’s very dear friend, Baron Rubliov. Even you can remember how often Simeon spoke of the baron, how highly he thought of him. Several months out of every year your father went to Russia to visit him.”

Vasili did remember, and remembered resenting the time his father had spent away from home. Of course, when he and his friends had had their grand tour, it had included Russia and the Imperial Court, and he had learned firsthand what his father would have found so appealing about Russia. The ladies there, at least the aristocrats, were incredibly bold in
their promiscuity. They didn’t even wait for marriage to take lovers, virginity apparently not being as highly prized there as it was in the rest of the world.

“I, for one, can imagine your father signing this betrothal contract,” the countess went on. “After all, there was no one here in Cardinia whom he liked half as much as he did Constantin Rubliov. He would have been delighted to have his family joined to Rubliov’s.”

That word “betrothal” was making Vasili see red, and starting to make him panic. “But Rubliov waits fifteen years to bring it to our attention?”

Maria shrugged. “From the tone of his letter, I would say he didn’t think he was telling us anything we didn’t already know.”

“But why wait fifteen years, or—what is the girl, just barely out of the schoolroom? Was he just waiting until she grew up?”

“He doesn’t mention her age, but it doesn’t sound as if she’s
that
young, for he does mention that she was in no hurry to marry, which is why he hadn’t written about the betrothal before now. He also says that he was waiting for you to write, but since you haven’t…”

“Let me see that damn letter.”

She didn’t have to leave the room to retrieve it. Obviously she had expected the demand, and now pulled the letter out of a pocket in her skirt. Vasili tore it open to peruse the fine French scrawl. He had been hoping it had been written in Russian. His mother
could have misinterpreted Russian, because even though they both spoke it fluently, neither of them could read or write it very well. But just about everyone in the Cardinian court could read and write French, and the letter left nothing for misinterpretation. For all its diplomacy, it was a demand for him to honor a betrothal contract that had promised he would marry one Alexandra Rubliov.

Vasili crumpled the letter in his fist and threw it across the room. It bounced off a vase of flowers and rolled to the floor. He felt an urge to grind it into the carpeting with the heel of his boot. Instead he went to the bottle of vodka he’d left by his chair and tilted it to his lips, uncaring that his mother would find such swilling the height of crudeness. Her
tsk
ing proved it, but that didn’t stop him from draining half the bottle before he turned to acknowledge her disapproval with a mocking bow.

Casually now, as if he weren’t seething inside, he said, “Answer his letter, Mother. You can tell him that I’ve already married. Or tell him I’ve died. I don’t care what you tell him, as long as you make sure he understands I can’t marry his daughter.”

Her back straightened. Her lips pursed for battle. “You most certainly can.”

“But I won’t.”

Before the bottle could reach his lips again, she said, “But you will.”

“No!”

He shouted it, surprising them both. He
never raised his voice to her, no matter how irritated he was; at least he never had before. But now he was feeling anger, gut-churning fury, and it stemmed from the sensation of having a trapdoor slam shut on him.

Softer, though no less emphatically, he added, “When I am ready to marry, I will, but it will be my decision, and my choice.”

He would have liked that to be the end of it. It should have been the end of it. He even started to leave the room, taking the bottle of vodka with him. He didn’t get very far before his mother’s words struck his back like shards of glass, lacerating, drawing blood.

“Even you, disreputable scamp that you are, won’t dishonor your father’s name.”

T
anya lifted her veil slightly, just enough so that her tongue could tease the flat male nipple she had exposed on her husband’s chest. He groaned and reached for her, but she made a warning sound and his hands returned to their death grip on the back of the chaise longue he was lying on.

Not being able to touch his wife was driving Stefan crazy, especially with her straddling his loins and having no such restriction placed on her. But they’d made a deal. She would dance for him as long as he swore to control his response this time. He’d sworn, and she’d already danced, but now he was having the devil’s own time keeping his word, and his sweet little witch had decided to do some teasing while she had the chance.

The night they’d first met, in a tavern in Mississippi, she’d danced the provocative harem dance, at least her version of it, for a roomful of avid river rats. He’d thought he could buy her for a few coins and had tried to do so. He hadn’t known at the time, and nei
ther had she, that she was the missing princess he’d been sent to find and bring home, the bride he’d been betrothed to from the very day she was born.

Tanya had danced just for him once before at his request, not long after they were married. Her sensual, though not very revealing, outfit for the dance had been left behind in America, so she’d worn one of her silky negligees instead. Stefan’s response had been unexpected, his desire so inflamed that their lovemaking, while incredibly satisfying, had been rather bruising as well.

But Tanya hadn’t complained that time. She had actually laughed afterward, delighted that she could drive him so wild. His mistresses used to complain if he happened to leave the slightest bruise on them, but his Tanya’s passion was always equal to his. And the very fact that she had created a new dancing outfit, one designed to bring out the savage in a man of Stefan’s lusty proclivities, proved that she enjoyed provoking him.

The promise she had insisted on, however, had nothing to do with her own preference and everything to do with her new condition, which only recently had been confirmed. To the delight of the entire kingdom, his queen was already carrying the royal heir, and taking everything the court physicians told her as gospel. And for Stefan that meant no more losing control, instead having to make promises he could barely keep.

“You know I’m going to get even with you
for this.” He tried to sound casual, but there was nothing casual about what he was feeling.

Tanya raised her head and he could make out a grin beneath the sheer material of her veil, whose color nearly matched her pale green eyes. “How?”

“I know a merchant who sells fine silken cords,” he told her.

“You would tie me down and do this to me?” There was some very clear interest in her tone that wouldn’t be there if she didn’t trust him implicitly.

“I’m thinking about it,” he replied in a half growl, half groan.

Her grin was positively impish. “When you make up your mind, let me know.”

Her head dipped again and she scooted back so that her tongue could trail down the center of his chest toward his navel. He sucked in a breath. His loins lifted involuntarily, nearly unseating her.

“Tanya—I can’t—bear any more,” he gasped out.

She took pity on him instantly. “Then you don’t have to,” she said sweetly.

She sat up to toss off the double veils that had concealed her lower face and long black hair. The top of her two-piece outfit defied description in its transparency and secrets. He wanted to rip it off her. He wanted to kiss her right through it. But the promise he’d made prevented him from doing either. He was
completely at her mercy. Fortunately, that didn’t worry him in the least.

With a smile that promised that ecstasy would soon be his, Tanya reached for the cord on his lounging pants. But her fingers stilled when she heard the commotion outside their door, first raised voices, then the sounds of scuffling, then a very clear thud.

“What the—?” Stefan began, but his unfinished question was answered by the door opening and his cousin storming into the room.

Tanya gave a strangled shriek and rolled off Stefan and the lounge, to crouch on the floor, concealing herself there while she snatched her robe from the end of the chaise where she had discarded it before the dance. She yanked it on, glaring over Stefan’s belly at the intruder.

Vasili didn’t notice, as he hadn’t yet located them in the room. The royal bedchamber was so large, he was still crossing it and saying in no particular direction, “Stefan, I’m sorry to disturb you at this hour, but I have a problem that has me so furious, I fear I will murder someone if I can’t find a solution.”

“You didn’t start with my guard, did you?”

Vasili turned toward the sound of that dry voice. “What? No, of course not. I merely knocked him out. Damned fool refused to let me pass.”

“Perhaps because I didn’t wish to be disturbed, and for a reason.”

Tanya rejoined Stefan on the chaise as he
sat up, his arm immediately coming around her to pull her close. Their state of semi-undress made clear what that “reason” was.

But Vasili acknowledged it with a mere “Sorry, but this simply couldn’t wait, Stefan. It’s worse than a nightmare. It’s so insane you won’t believe it. I still can’t believe it myself.”

“Is he drunk, do you think?” Tanya whispered in Stefan’s ear.

“Shh,” he told her. To Vasili, he said, “I assume you’ve seen your mother?”

“Oh, yes, but had I even the slightest warning about what she was going to reveal to me—with absolute relish, I might add—I would be halfway to the border by now, vanished, never to be seen again. Did she tell
you?
So help me, Stefan, if you knew and didn’t warn me—”

“You know better than that.”

Vasili did, and for the third time he said, “I’m sorry. My reasoning has gone to hell, which is where my life will be going if something drastic doesn’t happen to change what has befallen me.”

“It would be nice if you would tell me what we’re talking about.”

Vasili was momentarily startled. “Didn’t I?” Before Stefan could answer, he continued. “I have just learned that my father signed a betrothal contract fifteen years ago with my name on it. A
betrothal
contract! My mother didn’t even know. Only the girl and her father have known all these years, and only now,
when she is apparently ready to get married, do they bother to write and tell us.”

“Who is she?”

“Is that all you have to say?” Vasili fairly shouted in his agitation. “Who the hell cares who she is, when I have no wish to marry her!”

“You knew you would have to get married eventually,” Stefan said reasonably.

“Not for another ten years at least, and that is hardly the point. Suddenly I have a betrothed I’ve never laid eyes on, and don’t remind me that you faced the same appalling circumstance, because you grew up knowing about your betrothal, whereas I grew up assuming the decision would be mine.”

“Considering how splendidly my own betrothal has worked out, you can’t expect me to dredge up much sympathy for you, cousin.”

“The hell I can’t,” Vasili snapped. “Kindly remember how you felt
before
you met your lovely wife.”

With a squeeze for said wife to assure her that that had been then and not now, Stefan said, “Point taken.”

“And heirs to the crown rarely have a choice about who they marry,” Vasili continued heatedly, “but I’m merely a king’s cousin. No one besides me has the slightest interest in who I marry, and I know damn well I would never have chosen a Russian.”

“She’s Russian?” Stefan said in surprise.

“A Russian baroness, and you know how damn promiscuous those ladies are. This one
has probably already had a dozen lovers, and I wouldn’t be the least surprised if I’m suddenly being summoned to marry her because she’s found herself with child.”

“Then hope that is the case, and wait to marry her until you bring her here,” Stefan suggested. “By then you will know if she is pregnant, which will give you legitimate grounds to break the betrothal.”

Vasili’s relief didn’t last long enough for him to complete the smile he had started. “I can’t depend on that and end up committed if it isn’t so. I would prefer not to go to Russia at all, which is why I’m here. You have been faced with this dilemma yourself, Stefan. What ideas did you come up with to get out of your betrothal?”

“You expect me to answer that
now?
”

Vasili looked at Tanya for the first time. “Would you mind—?”

“Not on your life.”

He gave her a sour look, which she ignored. She wondered what he would do if she laughed, which was what she felt like doing: she was not the least bit sympathetic to his problem. But Stefan wouldn’t appreciate her amusement at his cousin’s expense, so she just listened to them discuss a few options that they both concluded weren’t really options. And she watched Vasili become more and more upset.

She thought her husband was exceptionally handsome, but not like Vasili. No one was as mesmerizingly handsome as Vasili. But she’d
never seen him looking so harried, or so angry. And she’d never seen his eyes glow just as brightly as Stefan’s could, as they were now. He was pacing—
prowling
would be a better way to describe how he was moving—like a trapped tawny lion, golden and furious.

It was fascinating to watch six feet of masculine grace suddenly reveal this volatile, nearly savage side of his otherwise stoical nature. Of the four men who had grown up together and were such close friends, Vasili was the one who attacked verbally and with deadly accuracy, rather than with brute strength. But obviously he was as capable of violence as the rest of them.

Tanya had once been told that he was the man she would have to marry, because Stefan had wanted her to come along with them to Cardinia without any fuss, and he’d thought she, like every other woman, would prefer Vasili. But Vasili had insulted her from the first, thinking her a tavern whore, and she had despised him for that, and for his utter contempt. Besides, even with his scars and his “devil’s eyes,” Stefan had been the one she had been attracted to from the first night they had met, not the too handsome, golden Adonis.

“What are you going to do?” Stefan finally asked his cousin.

“I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do,” Stefan said quietly.

“Yes, I do.” Vasili sighed. “But there won’t be a wedding, not if I can help it. One of them, ei
ther the girl or her father, will call this ridiculous thing off, even if I have to show them what I’m really like.”

“What you’re really like?” Tanya nearly choked on that one. “You mean, what you
can
be like when you don’t want people to like you.”

Since she spoke from experience, he had to concede her the point. “If you say so. Your Majesty.”

It was Tanya’s turn to give him a sour look. Stefan bit back a chuckle and said, “Go home, Vasili. A good night’s sleep is bound to make your situation look less disastrous. After all, even if you have to marry the girl, you don’t have to—”

“The hell he doesn’t,” Tanya cut in indignantly.

“I
told
you she’d make fidelity a royal command,” Vasili growled and stomped out of the room.

Tanya barely waited for the door to close before she said, “Oh, God, I love it. The peacock is finally going to get his feathers pulled.”

“I thought you had forgiven Vasili for the way he behaved toward you on your trip to Cardinia.”

“I have,” she assured her husband. “I understand he was only trying to keep me from falling in love with him. But he should have figured out right away that that wasn’t going to happen, instead of being such an utter ass nearly the entire trip. But he’s still a peacock, and I can’t tell you how much I’ve hoped that
some
woman would bring him down a peg or two, though I wish it were one he was interested in. Vasili’s problem is that women don’t tell him no. They don’t wait to get to know him, they fall instantly for that face of his, and imagine what that’s done to him. It’s no wonder he’s so insufferably arrogant. He can’t get through a day that some woman isn’t trying to seduce him.”

Stefan laughed at her look of disgust. “You would be surprised, Tanya mine, how annoying Vasili finds that circumstance.”

She snorted. “Oh, sure he does, about as much as I don’t like being pregnant.”

Since she was absolutely thrilled about her pregnancy and everyone knew it, she’d just dismissed his remark. “But it’s true,” he insisted, his sherry-gold eyes glinting with laughter. “There is, after all, only so much one man can do in one day.”

There was no way she could restrain her sarcasm now. “Well, that explains it. He gets annoyed when he can’t accommodate every woman who asks. I can’t tell you how sorry I feel for him. I’m probably the only woman he’s ever met who actually,
seriously
, disliked him, but that doesn’t count, since that’s just what he was striving for in my case. But I honestly think it would do him a world of good to meet a woman who ignores him. Unfortunately, I doubt we’ll ever see it happen.”

“And you say you’ve forgiven him?”

She sighed. “I’m sorry, Stefan. I suppose I do still have trouble separating the Vasili I
met from the Vasili I know now. I know he’s usually charming. I know he can be terribly sweet at times. And, of course, I know how fiercely loyal he is to you, and I love him for that. But the arrogance and condescension, the derision and scorn—that didn’t come from nowhere. He has all those traits, though I will allow, not in the abundance I first thought.”

“I’ll go along with the arrogance, but that’s all,” he replied loyally.

She started to argue, but his raised brow stopped her. Vasili was, after all, not just his only cousin, but as close to him as any dearly loved brother could be.

“Oh, very well,” she conceded. “But he’s dreaming if he thinks he can get this Russian girl to cry off from marrying him, and you know it. She’s going to fall instantly in love with him, and no matter how nasty he tries to be, it won’t make any difference in the end. He’ll break her heart, but she’ll still want him for her own.” And then Tanya sighed. “I pity that poor girl, I really do.”