“I must have done it,” Tasia sobbed. “I dream about it all the time. I wake up wondering if I'm remembering or imagining. S-sometimes I think I'm going mad. I did hate Mikhail. I spent weeks in a prison cell thinking about that, knowing I deserved to be executed. The thought is as bad as the deed, don't you see? I prayed for acceptance, for humility, until my knees were bruised from the floor, but it didn't work…I still wanted to
live
…I couldn't stop myself from wanting it.”
“What happened then?” Luke asked, lacing his fingers through hers.
“I took a sleeping draught in prison, to make everyone think I was dead. They filled the coffin with sand, and there was a funeral, while I…I was brought to England by my Uncle Kirill. But there were rumors that I was still alive. Government officials decided to have my body exhumed, to settle the matter. When they discovered that the coffin was empty, they realized I had escaped. That was why Uncle Kirill sent a message to the Ashbournes.”
“Who is looking for you?”
Tasia was silent, gazing down at their linked hands.
Charles rearranged himself in a more comfortable position in his chair. The creases on his face had relaxed, as if he were relieved at being able to confide the whole story to someone. Even as a schoolboy, Charles had hated to keep secrets. He wasn't very good at it. Everything showed on his face. “It's a rather complicated question,” Charles said to Luke. “The imperial government has so many secret divisions and special sections of law enforcement that no one really knows who's responsible for what. I've read Kirill's letter a dozen times, trying to make sense of everything. It seems that Tasia has not only committed a civil offense, she has now broken the criminal code by undermining respect for the sovereign authority—a political crime punishable by death. The imperial government doesn't care about justice. It cares about the appearance of order. Until Tasia is executed in a public display, the enemies of the tsar will use her as a means to ridicule the crown, the corps of gendarmes, the ministry of the interior—”
“And you think they would actually follow Tasia here and bring her back to Russia?” Luke interrupted. “Just to make a point?”
“No, they wouldn't go that far,” Tasia said in a low voice. “As long as I remain in exile, I'm safe from them. The problem is Nikolas.” Luke watched her blot her wet cheeks with her sleeve, and the childlike gesture wrung his heart. He waited silently for her to go on, although he was simmering with impatience. “Nikolas is Mikhail's older brother,” she continued dully. “The Angelovskys want revenge for Mikhail's death. Nikolas is looking for me. He'll find me if it takes the rest of his life.”
Suddenly the compassion on Luke's face was stamped out by arrogant confidence. If all they were concerned about was Nikolas Angelovsky, that was a problem easily solved. “If he does, I'll send him straight back to Russia.”
“Just like that,” Tasia said with a frown.
Luke smiled slightly, envisioning some pampered prince in satin knee breeches. “There's nothing to worry about.”
“If you knew Nikolas, you would understand the cause for concern.” Tasia pulled her hand away and withdrew to the corner of the settee. “I have to leave, before you make everything worse. You would never understand someone like Prince Angelovsky, or what lengths he would go to. Now that Nicholas knows I'm alive, it's only a matter of time until he finds me. He doesn't have the choice to stop, even if he wanted to. Everything he is, blood, history, family, compels him to make me pay for what I did to his brother. He is a powerful, dangerous man.” As Luke tried to speak, she forestalled him with a stilted gesture and turned to Charles and Alicia. “Thank you for everything you've done, but you mustn't involve yourselves any further. I will find a new place by myself.”
“Tasia, you can't disappear without letting us know where you're going,” Alicia cried. “Please let us help you!”
Tasia stood and smiled with loving regret. “You've been wonderful to me, cousin. You've helped me as much as anyone could have. Now I have to manage on my own.
Spaséeba
.” Her expression was shuttered as she glanced at Luke, but he sensed her fatigue, her need for comfort…He saw the price she had already paid for survival. Words seemed to fail her, and she turned away abruptly.
The men stood in unison as she left the room. Luke began to follow her, but he was stopped by Alicia's voice.
“Let her go.”
Luke swung around with a scowl. He was exasperated, angry, eager to do battle. “Did I miss something?” he inquired acidly. “Angelovsky is only a man. He can be dealt with. There's no reason to let fear of him ruin the rest of her life.”
“He's barely human,” Alicia said. “Prince Nikolas and I are third cousins. I know quite a bit about the Angelovskys. Would you like to hear what kind of people they are?”
“Tell me everything,” Luke muttered, staring at the empty doorway.
“The Angelovskys are complete Slavophiles. They hate everyone who isn't Russian. Their family is connected to the royal house by marriage. They are among the wealthiest landholders in Russia, with property scattered over a dozen provinces. I'd guess they own approximately two million acres or more. Nikolas's father, Prince Dmitri Sergeyevich, murdered his first wife because she was barren. Then he married a peasant girl from Minsk. She bore him seven children; five girls and two sons. The children were beautiful, exotic…and primitive. None of them has spent a minute of their lives bothering about abstract things like principles or ethics or honor. They act on instinct. I've heard that Nikolas is just like the Old Prince, very brutal and cunning. If a wrong is done to him, he'll repay it a hundredfold. Tasia is right—he doesn't have the choice of whether to seek revenge. In Russia they have a saying: ‘Another's tears are like water.’ It suits the Angelovskys to perfection. There's no mercy in their nature.” Alicia turned to Charles's protective embrace with a miserable sigh. “Nothing will stop Prince Nikolas.”
Luke watched the two of them coldly. “I can. And I will.”
“You don't owe anything to Tasia, or to us,” she said in a muffled voice.
“I've had too much taken from me.” An odd blue-white glitter came into his eyes. “Now that I finally have a chance at some happiness, I'll be damned if I let some bloodthirsty Russian bastard meddle with it.”
Charles wore the same look of bewilderment as his wife. “Happiness,” he echoed. “What are you saying? That you have some sort of personal feeling for the girl? A few days ago you were dangling her before your guests like a bit of live bait on a hook—” He stopped at Luke's darkly sullen look, and continued in a more diplomatic tone. “It's no great surprise that you're attracted to her. She's a beautiful girl. But please, you must try to put her interests above your own. She's vulnerable and frightened.”
“And you think it's in her best interest to let her fend for herself?” Luke sneered. “No friends, no family, no one to help her—for God's sake, am I the only one who's thinking clearly?”
Alicia pulled away from her husband. “She's better off on her own than putting herself at the mercy of someone who will take advantage of her.”
Charles stared in dismay, lifting his hands as if he yearned to clamp them over her mouth. “Darling, you know Luke is not that kind of man. I'm sure he has the best intentions.”
“Does he?” Alicia gave Luke a challenging stare. “What exactly
are
your intentions?”
Luke responded with his old sardonic smile. “That's between me and your cousin. I'd like to work out some sort of arrangement that will suit her. If she and I can't come to an agreement, she'll leave. At this point you don't have much say in the matter, do you?”
“I don't know you at all anymore,” Alicia snapped. “I thought Tasia would be safe with you, because you were the man least likely to cause trouble. You've never interfered in peoples' lives before. I wish to heaven you hadn't started now! What has happened to you?”
Luke kept his mouth shut, retreating behind a wall of cold pride. He was amazed that they didn't understand, that they couldn't see. When he had sat holding Tasia's hand and listening to the misery she had gone through, his emotions had filled the room. He loved her. He was terrified that she would vanish and leave him just as she had left everything else in her life. He couldn't allow that, for her sake and certainly for his own. He wanted to take action, but there was so much that needed to be explained and understood. If only he could think clearly, unfettered by the pangs of need and love that made everything so difficult to sort out.
The Ashbournes were staring at him, Alicia with displeasure, Charles with the perception of an old, familiar friend. Charles was no fool. Taking his wife firmly in tow, he gave Luke a half-amused, half-understanding glance. “It will be all right,” Charles said quietly, although it wasn't clear to whom he was speaking. “Everyone will do what they must, and things will settle into place.”
“That's what you always say,” Alicia complained.
Charles smiled complacently. “And I'm always right, aren't I? Come, darling…we're of no use to either of them now.”
From her window Tasia had watched the Ashbournes' carriage leave. After hanging up her gray dress and brushing it with mechanical precision, she started to pack. She arranged her belongings in neat piles. The light from a single candle flame sent deep shadows stretching across the room. All light from the village below was extinguished. Even the moon and stars were covered with a murky haze.
Although she was dressed only in her thin shift, her skin was moist with perspiration. A breeze from the window chilled her for a moment, and she rubbed her palms over the goosebumps on her upper arms. She was trying not to think, or feel. She didn't want anything to break through the layer of ice that surrounded her.
It was over, this brief foray into the life of Lucas Stokehurst, and she was glad to end it. Things had become complicated. She could never afford to lean on someone else. She had only herself. She wondered how she should leave, how to tell Emma goodbye, without having to face Stokehurst again. He would make it impossible. It wouldn't matter if he were kind or cruel. Either way would hurt too much to bear.
Quiet footsteps—a man's footsteps—approached her door. Tasia turned, her arms still crossed over her chest, her eyes dilating into pools of blackness.
No…go away
, her mind cried, but her lips moved in a silent spasm. The door opened and closed with a click of the latch.
Stokehurst was in the room with her, his gaze lingering on her bare legs and arms and the exposed length of her neck. It was clear what he had come for. He wore a dressing robe opened far enough to show the clean line of his collarbone and the curved edge of muscle. His skin gleamed like freshly cast bronze. With one glance Tasia saw that he wasn't wearing the hook, that there was a mixture of love and desire on his face. He didn't say a word, nor did he intend to.
A frantic sound rose from her throat, but there was nothing she could say that he didn't already know. The awareness of all her fears and needs was there in his gaze, and still he came closer, his shoulders blocking out the candleglow, his body all darkness and heat as he took her against him.
Tasia hesitated and then threw her arms around him, holding on with all her strength. She was rigid in his embrace, breathing, waiting, her heart pounding brutally fast. His aroused body pressed close, sheltering her as if they stood together in a raging storm. He bent to cover her trembling lips with his own. It was not the way a man should kiss a virgin, no gentleness, no allowance made for innocence. He searched deeply with aggressive surges of his tongue. Closing his hand over her shift, he bunched the thin fabric in his palm and pulled it to her waist.
Luke tugged her naked hips against him, his fingers spreading over the velvety white curve of her bottom. Tasia gasped and reached her arms around his neck, her skin warming instantly at his touch. Her failing soul came to life as he covered her face with warm kisses. Groping over his shoulders, she found the edge of his robe, and pushed beneath to find the hard slope of his back. He responded to her touch with a groan of anguished passion and pulled her shift down until it dropped in a tangled ring on the floor.
He removed his robe, taking Tasia down to the narrow bed with him. His dark head lowered over her body. She felt his mouth on her breast, in tender bites, teasing licks, and when she began to gasp from the torment, he fastened his lips over her nipple and rubbed softly with his tongue.
Tasia felt a quiver of something like pain starting low in her stomach and shooting to the secret place between her thighs. He kissed her other breast, cupping underneath it with hot, gentle fingers, and she lifted herself against him in panting confusion. The ache inside her was maddening. She wanted to feel the entire length of his body on hers, wanted him to crush her with his weight. Wrapping her arms around his long muscled back, she tried to pull him closer. He resisted, staring down at her intently, his hand drifting over her stomach toward the froth of curls no one had ever touched before.
He reached down to a place that was swollen and acutely tender, and she gave a muffled cry as he touched her. His fingertips slid through a patch of slickness, exploring, delicately shaping, working into the soft entrance to her body. He kissed her lips, whispering her name, pressing love words into her damp skin. Tasia relaxed into a state of euphoric pleasure, accepting everything, too absorbed in sensation to mind the intimacy.
She felt him pushing her legs apart, making a cradle of her open thighs. His weight lowered, heralding a heavy pressure at her most vulnerable part. His eyes were staring into hers, and she felt herself drowning in the pools of dark blue. More pressure, burning…a contained force that tore and impaled her. She moaned sharply at the sudden pain. He pushed deeper, taking full possession of her. Then he was still, except for the rough motion of his breathing.
Shaken, Tasia lifted her slim hands to his face, trying wordlessly to communicate her awe at the dark beauty of his body joined to hers. He turned his mouth to her palm, catching her fragile skin with a biting kiss. His hips nudged deeply against hers, and she rolled upward in instinctive response. His slow rhythm filled her. All discomfort was forgotten as he began an exquisite destruction of her senses, until she twisted in mindless excitement beneath him. Their bodies tangled and merged, evoking a deep pleasure that crossed not only physical but spiritual boundaries. Tasia was lost in a bright rush of sensation, her lips parting with a soundless cry.