Page 18 of You Belong to Me
“Not even a little,” she reassured him. “But Iamsorry you had to waste your time in coming here. You must insist that my father make it up to you when you break our betrothal. And if I don’t see you again before you leave, well, it’s been—interesting meeting you.”
With that, she swung around and appeared to leap into the saddle of the white stallion, she mounted him so fluidly. Horse and rider then trotted off around the corner of the house, a brute of a Cossack following behind them.
It wasn’t often that Vasili Petroff was dumbfounded, particularly by a woman. This one didn’t look back once in his direction. She’d said her little speech, then seemed to have summarily dismissed him from her mind. But women didn’tdothat to him.
Lazar came to stand next to Vasili and also stared in the direction in which Alexandra Rubliov had vanished. Without glancing at him, Vasili said, “If you laugh, I’m going to put my fist in your mouth.”
Lazar didn’t laugh, but he was certainly grinning. “You think that would stop me?”
The two friends had been known to tear into each other with very little provocation. Stefan had sent Lazar along with Vasili to keep him out of trouble. But he had jokingly admonished that they not kill each other before they returned to Cardinia. And the six guards, who accompanied the two friends at Stefan’s insistence, were to see to that, as wellas to protect their backs on the bandit-infested mountain passes.
“It would make it difficult for you to continue,” Vasili promised.
“True—but what are you growling about? You should be delighted. Now you won’t have to show her what a bastard you can be. She’s told you exactly what you wanted to hear, and without any effort on your part.”
“Exactly?” Vasili said with irritation. “You must not have been listening carefully, Lazar. The little peasant doesn’t want to marry me, but she expectsmeto break the betrothal. As much as I’d love to, you know I can’t do that.”
“Yes, but look how much closer you are to achieving your goal, thanks to her unexpected revelation. You’ve already won half the battle without firing a single shot. How hard can it be to get her to break the betrothal, once you explain that you can’t? She’s on your side, my friend. She doesn’t want you.”
Having said that, Lazar finally couldn’t resist laughing. It really was incredibly funny, and Vasili’s glower was funnier still. Who would have thought that the one woman who actually had an opportunity to marry Vasili, or at least assumed she did, wouldn’t want to, when hundreds of others would have killed to be in her position?
“By the way,” Lazar added, just to rub it in, “I don’t think she was the least bit impressed by that splendid display of contempt you treated her to. I can’t say that I blame her, butthen I saw the way you were looking at her before you knew who she was.” He had to pause for another laugh. “Jesus, I can’t wait to tell Stefan and Serge about this. They simply aren’t going to believe it.”
8
“Come, sit down, Vasili—you will permit me to call you so?”
Constantin didn’t wait for an answer, resuming his seat behind his desk. His study was what one might expect from a man of his years, sedate, and lacking all flamboyance. It reminded Vasili of his father’s study, before Maria had turned it into a sewing room after his death.
“Though we have never met, I feel as if I have known you all your life,” Constantin was explaining. “But then, you were all your father ever talked about. He was so proud of you and your accomplishments. He wanted to show you off, you know, to take you with him on his travels and hunting trips, but he felt your schooling was more important, particularly since you shared the royal tutors with the crown prince. He was proud of that, too, since he never had such advantages himself, having no connection with the royal family until he married your mother. But I do know he intended to bring you with him to Russiaafter you turned eighteen. I remember when he…”
Constantin continued reminiscing for more than an hour. Vasili was required to make few comments in reply, merely to listen, and he did that avidly, hearing things about his father he’d never known. Long before the baron had finished speaking, the resentment Vasili had harbored against the man for most of his life was beginning to lessen, and by the time Constantin finished with “I still miss him, you know,” it was gone completely.
Ridiculously, Vasili felt close to tears, damn close. He hadn’t cried since he was a small child, and the urge he felt now was all but choking him. He missed his father, too, and until now he hadn’t realized how much. Once his anger over his father’s untimely death had passed, he’d felt a good deal of regret, in particular that he’d never had the opportunity to be friends with Simeon, the way Stefan had become friends with his own father, Sandor, after he’d reached his manhood.
This was certainly not the way Vasili had anticipated his interview with the baron to go. Of course, nothing was going the way he had anticipated, especially his first encounter with his betrothed.
Her remark thatshewasn’t what he had expected was an understatement. He had pictured a pampered and frivolous aristocratic woman whom he could easily intimidate. But he couldn’t imagine intimidating the audacious wench he’d just met. She spoke hermind with brazen disregard for decorum. She dressed like a peasant, amalepeasant at that. And she rode a horse astride, as if she had been born in a saddle. There didn’t seem to be a shy bone in her body. And why the hell didn’t she want to marry him?
Vasili wasn’t sure how he felt about that, but he wasn’t relieved, as Lazar thought he’d be. He had been rejected.Rejected. It was a unique experience for him—well, not quite.
Tanya had also rejected him out of hand when she’d been told he was the king she would have to marry. “I wouldn’t marry your king if you paid me,” was the way she had put it. Of course, she hadn’t believed that she was Princess Tatiana Janacek, or that she had been betrothed at birth to the present King of Cardinia. It wouldn’t have made a difference if she had believed it, though, since she had scorned Vasili at the time, just as he had scorned her.
But even then he hadn’t felt rejected. Nor had he felt whatever it was that had him so irritated now. And his inability to identify exactly what was bothering him only added to his irritation. He was careful, however, to conceal his feelings from the baron.
Originally he had intended to present himself to Constantin Rubliov as a completely undesirable son-in-law. He had assumed, based on his experience with women, that his betrothed would be pleased to have him, and so would be the more difficult of the two Rubliovs to dissuade from this marriage, whereas her father could be easily outraged. But afterlistening to the baron speak so highly and with genuine affection about his father, he knew he couldn’t do it—at least not in the more obvious ways he had planned.
He’d already lied about why he had been delayed in arriving, blaming it on an illness in his party, when in fact he had deliberately wasted time, staying over in each town for days, once for a full week—because of a pretty little redhead—instead of just for the night. The delay was to allow the cold of the approaching winter to hinder travel. If for some reason he had to take Alexandra Rubliov back to Cardinia with him, he wanted the weather to give her an added incentive to turn back. He was, of course, going to give her a great many reasons to end this ridiculous betrothal, but he would utilize anything extra that might aid his cause, including the weather.
But now the rest of his campaign, at least where the baron was concerned, had to be set aside. He wasn’t going to disgrace his father in this man’s eyes by behaving like an utterly detestable son.
But he didn’t have to be perfect either. Perhaps he could disappoint him by not having—or pretending not to have—certain qualities or attitudes the man was hoping to find in him. He just had to figure out what they might be.
“About your daughter, sir?”
“Yes, I was watching from the drawing room when you met her.”
And Constantin couldn’t have been morepleased when he’d witnessed firsthand Alexandra’s reaction to the young count. It was all he could do to contain his relief now, it was so great. Somehow he managed.
