Page 61 of You Belong to Me
It was a large city that had spread far beyond its original walls, which were so old they were crumbling in places and showed evidence of removal rather than repair. Out with the old, in with the new. Too bad betrothals didn’t fall into that category, she mused.
The fog had appeared the morning they’d left the Carpathian foothills, after having spent the night in King Stefan’s private hunting lodge. “Private” described that dwelling well, since it turned out to be a place the king visited when he wanted to be alone, and its one and only bedroom assured he wouldn’tbe bringing friends or family along with him. He had other lodges, of course, that were much larger, but this one was nearest to the mountains.
The stable hadn’t been large enough to accommodate all of the horses, but the snow hadn’t reached the lowest foothills, where the lodge was nestled, and the climate wasn’t much worse than what they had experienced on the Russian plains. As for so many people to bed down, it had been fortunate the hall of the lodge was large.
Alexandra, still in a simmering rage over Vasili’s revelation about selling her horses, hadn’t asked if she could have the single bedroom for the night; she’d simply informed him she was taking it.
He hadn’t been in the best of moods himself and had seemed inclined to argue. “Is that so?”
“You might as well get used to being inconvenienced,” she’d told him. “You’ll have a wife soon.”
“At which time we’ll share—”
“Don’t count on it!” And she’d slammed the door in his face.
She hadn’t spoken to him since. But her anger hadn’t lasted very long and had soon turned into dejection. The past few days had been gloomy, with the fog following them and her mood at its lowest point since she’d begun the journey to Cardinia.
Nina and her brothers hadn’t been able to cheer her up either, even though Konrad wasof the opinion that Vasili hadn’t meant what he’d said about her horses.
“He’s too rich to need or want the profit the whites would bring. Why would he sell them?”
“To get even with me for not saving him from a fate worse than death,” had been her rejoinder.
Konrad had simply said, “If he wants to be saved, he can do the saving himself.”
“You think I haven’t pointed that out to him?”
And Nina hadn’t helped yesterday by informing her, “Lazar asked me why you don’t want to marry Vasili.”
“You didn’t tell him, did you?”
With the most innocent of expressions, Nina had replied, “Was it supposed to be a secret?”
“It’s none of their damn business.”
To which Nina had snorted. “It most certainly is Vasili’s business, and you should have told him.”
“He never asked—you didn’t tell Lazar everything, did you?”
“You mean about all those wasted years—?” At Alexandra’s blush, Nina had lied, “Of course not. I told him to ask you.”
And Alexandra had to assume that since he hadn’t approached her, he’d lost interest in the matter. And she could only hope he wouldn’t mention it to Vasili. But she wasn’t even sure why she felt that way.
It wasn’t as if Vasili’s learning about Christopher would make any difference. If he wasgoing to do the noble thing and bow out because of another man, he would have done it for his own sake. And it wasn’t as if she was worried that he might care. He wouldn’t.
She supposed it was her own embarrassment. She simply didn’t want him to know that she’d waited seven years for a man—and was still waiting.
Now, as they rode through the city that Alexandra had been so sure she would never reach, she was more despondent than ever. She had done everything she could think of to get Vasili to cry off, but she was still betrothed to him, and her time was running out.
She was being taken to his family home. Someone had mentioned that to her, she wasn’t sure who. But she knew she’d be meeting Vasili’s mother there, and she was dreading the meeting because it was going to make the betrothal so final.
And she hadn’t decided yet if she was going to continue her rustic ruse for the countess or give it up, since it certainly hadn’t made much difference to Vasili that she acted like an uncouth provincial. Would it matter to his mother? If it did, did she have enough sway with her son to get him to change his mind? Probably not, but Alexandra supposed that if there was even the smallest chance, she’d have to take it. Yet it was going to be so much more difficult to be outrageously ill-mannered in the presence of another noblewoman, rather than just Vasili and his men. And thisnoblewoman had been the wife of her father’s best friend.
And then there was a small, wicked voice inside her that had been intruding ever since they’d left the bandit village in the mountains, telling her that she ought to stop fighting it and marry the man. Of course, she refused to listen. There were a hundred reasons she couldn’t marry him or didn’t want to, and only one reason she wouldn’t mind doing that, andthatreason she shouldn’t have learned about at all, at least not before the wedding.
She could chide herself for thinking about it, even ignore it—most of the time—when Vasili kept his distance. But when he was near, or when she caught herself staring at him, she would remember his lovemaking so vividly, it would almost render her breathless. And at night, with nothing else to distract her, she was assailed by the memory. What was increasing her despondency was her fear that if the worst happened and she was forced to marry him, she might forget about all the reasons he would make a terrible husband, and compromise herself for mere pleasure.
She could tell herself it wouldn’t happen, but she would have been the first to deny that she’d ever succumb to the temptations of the flesh, yet she’d already done so once. So it could happen, and not wanting it to didn’t seem to be much consolation for her lately.
