Page 2 of You Belong to Me
Anna lifted a brow. “Are you trying to convince me of that, or yourself? Or maybe it’s slipped your notice that Alex ignores everyyoung man you bring home for her to meet, and she hasn’t traveled any farther than Kiev in the past three years, and she made that trip only to shop. Even then, she managed to come up with one excuse after another to remain cooped up in your hotel suite.”
It was actually a relief to Constantin to hear Anna voice his own suspicions, a relief and an easing of the guilt he’d been living with this past week. True, Alexandra’s excuses were always logical and sounded sincere, but they were still excuses. And when she had come up with one of them last week in order to refuse to travel with him to Vasilkov to visit her sister and nieces, he had come to the same conclusions Anna had just drawn, and got morose, thinking about his youngest daughter wasting her life pining for that damned foreigner. Unfortunately, he had also got quite drunk and done something he never would have if he had been sober.
Anna felt the change in his big body, which was no longer relaxed against hers, saw the flush climbing his cheeks, and noted how his deep midnight-blue eyes refused to meet hers. Anna knew him extremely well. Their spouses had died within a year of each other. The four of them had been close friends before that. She and Constantin had continued that friendship, and eight years ago, they had become even closer. She loved him dearly, though she refused to give up her widowed independence to marry him. Nor was it necessary to wed him when she lived in his home as his housekeeper andhostess, and as companion-chaperone to his youngest daughter whenever that duty was required, which was rarely these days.
Right now shame was fairly oozing from him, and she demanded as baldly as Alexandra would have, “Constantin Rubliov, what have you done?”
He moved out of her embrace without answering, walking straight to the mahogany cabinet where numerous crystal decanters were always kept full of his favorite spirits. Anna came up beside him while he filled one of the larger glasses to the brim with vodka. Immediately he lifted it to his lips.
“It’s that bad?” she asked gently. At his barely perceptible nod, she said, “Maybe you should pour me one of those.”
“No,” he replied, setting the glass down, but keeping his hand around it. Half the contents was gone. “You’ll likely throw it in my face, then the glass at my head, then come after me with the decanter.”
His family might be prone to that sort of tempestuous reaction, but she wasn’t. But she was definitely getting worried now. “Tell me.”
He still wouldn’t look at her. “I have found Alexandra a husband.”
That gave her pause, because it was nothing she hadn’t heard before. He had been trying to do just that for the past seven years. So wherein lay the shame he was presently exhibiting?
“A husband?” she said carefully. “But Alex will only refuse him, as she has all your othersuggestions.” He was slowly shaking his head. “She can’t refuse him? How is that—?” She didn’t finish, and laughed instead. “Don’t tell me you think you can insist at this late date. Come now, darling, you know that does no good with this particular daughter of yours. She’s more stubborn than you are, if you haven’t noticed. You would end up raising the roof with your shouts, then give in to her as you always do.”
Again he was shaking his head, and looking even more unhappy about it. And he still wouldn’t meet her eyes. His color was also still high. He was a man genuinely wallowing in guilt.
Fearful new, she repeated her question. “Whathaveyou done?”
His head dropped so low on his chest, she could barely hear the words: “Given my daughter no choice.”
She waved her hand dismissively at that answer. “There are always choices—”
“Not when I have involved family honor, which is the one thing she won’t ignore—at least she’s going to think it is involved.”
“What does that mean?”
“That I sacrificed my own honor, my integrity, my principles, ethics, honesty—”
“What have you done?”
Anna never raised her voice. She was the epitome of all that was gracious and demure. Even when she was angry she would make her point quietly, and cause her antagonist to feel like an ogre in the process. That she wasshouting now brought Constantin’s eyes to her, not in surprise but in dread. He could well lose her when she learned how low he had sunk in his desire to give his youngest daughter the same happiness and fulfillment her sisters had found.
He looked so miserable, so utterly guilt-ridden and despondent, that Anna gave a little cry and threw her arms around his neck. “It can’t be as terrible as you’re letting on,” she whispered by his ear, which was no easy feat since he towered over her by a foot. “Tell me.”
“I have arranged for a betrothal.”
“A betrothal?”
His response was anticlimactic, to say the least. She relaxed against him, leaning back just enough so she could see his face.
“Thank God,” she said with feeling, “I was beginning to think you had killed someone.”
His expression didn’t change; he looked just as miserable, although he was finally looking at her. “I believe I would feel the same if I had killed someone,” he admitted.
Anna’s eyes flared. She could have hit him at that moment, something she would never in her life have considered doing—until now. “Dammit, Constantin, get to the heart of it before you drive me mad!”
He flinched because she was yelling again. Yelling from Alexandra he could take; he even expected it, and could give it back with equal fervor every time, but he couldn’t bear it fromhis little Anna. Yet he deserved it, and her scorn as well.
He finally said, “I sent a letter to Countess Maria Petroff.”
The name brought a thoughtful frown to Anna’s face. “Why does that name sound familiar to me?”
