Page 13 of You Belong to Me
Anna poked her head around the door, and despite the odds they had been at over this subject, she gave him a fond smile and said, “Good luck, darling.”
Some of the tension eased out of him. He was a very fortunate man when it came right down to it. He had three healthy children, a brood of grandchildren—and Anna.
“Now that we may have this house to ourselves,” he said, “will you marry me?”
Her smile widened just a bit. “No.”
He chuckled as she went off to another part of the house. One of these days she was going to surprise him and give him the answer he wanted. In the meantime, it was certainly no hardship being a lover rather than a husband.
A few minutes later, Alexandra marched into the study with her usual brisk energy. “This isn’t going to take long, is it? I have to exercise Prince Micha.” She was referring to one of her own stallions, one of her “babies,” as she called all the offspring from her own personal stock.
“You might want to let one of the Razins exercise him today.”
She lifted a finely arched brow. “It’s going to take that long?”
“Quite possibly.”
She removed her hat, sticking it in the pocket of her coat, and plopped into the chair across from his desk with a sigh. “All right, what have I done now?”
“What youcoulddo is show me that you know how to sit like a lady rather than a—”
“It’s so bad you’re going to prevaricate?”
Her feigned look of surprise brought his brows together. Whenever Alexandra would rather be doing something else, she made sure people knew they were wasting her time. He decided to take a leaf from her book and get to the heart of the matter.
“You haven’t done anything, Alexandra, but what you will be doing is getting married, possibly in the next few days. Your betrothed will be here in less than two hours, and I would appreciate it if you would be on your best—”
“You can stop right there, Papa. Whatever you have promised this man to marry me, you can go ahead and give it to him before you send him back where he came from. My mind hasn’t changed since the last time we had this discussion.”
She hadn’t raised her voice and didn’t even look the least bit annoyed with him. Of course, she hadn’t yet grasped the full meaning of what he’d said.
He did not make a habit of lying to his daughter. He couldn’t remember the last time he had done so. That he was going to now made the color rise in his cheeks. Fortunately, she mistook it for his usual high temper.
“This has nothing to do with our last discussion on the subject of marriage,” he told her. “This has to do with a betrothal contract that Simeon Petroff and I signed fifteen years ago, before he died. And it is a binding contract, Alexandra. It promises that you will wed Simeon’s son, Count Vasili Petroff.”
She came to her feet and leaned over his desk, her color now as high as his, but there was no mistaking that hers was from temper. “Tell me you’re lying!” At the hesitant shake of his head, she emitted a shriek of rage. “You are, I know you are! You can’t tell me I’ve had a betrothed for more than half my life and you never bothered to mention it before now. It defies reason. You would have thrown this man in my face when I told you I was going to wait for Christopher’s proposal. You wouldn’t have let me go on waitingsevenyears if I were promised to another. And what about all those other men you hoped I would take an interest in?”
“If you will calm down for a moment, I can explain.”
She didn’t sit down, didn’t calm down, but she held her tongue, which wasn’t easy when all she wanted to do was scream. Constantin was aware of that fact, but he had had ample time to come up with a reasonable explanation for his so-called “silence” all these years.
“I can’t deny I wanted you to marry Simeon’s son, just as he wanted it. He was my closest friend, as you know. And you were so young then, so—biddable. There was no way to know that you would grow to be so willful and assertive, argumentative, obstinate—”
“I get the point, Papa,” she practically growled.
He grunted before continuing. “I realized when you had your first season that youwould balk at having a husband chosen for you. So with your happiness in mind, rather than my honor, I decided to give you time to choose for yourself—and hoped Count Petroff would turn out to be dishonorable and marry someone else, thereby breaking the betrothal.”
“And what if Ihadmarried someone else?”
He was well prepared for that question. “First, you need to know that young Vasili never wrote to me, which caused me to wonder if Simeon had gotten around to telling his family about the betrothal before he died. It was a slim possibility that he hadn’t, but one I was beginning to count on back then, especially when you showed such interest in that Englishman.”
“Count on? You despised Christopher!”
“But if he would have made you happy—”
“Never mind that,” she cut in impatiently. “If your friend’s family never knew—”
“I didn’t say that,” he cut back in, “only that it was possible they might not know. But in either case, if youhadaccepted someone’s proposal, I would have had to write Vasili Petroff to inform him of it, and I was fully prepared tobeghim to relinquish his claim on you.”
