Once a Princess (23 page)

Stefan had calmed down some by the end of dinner, thanks to the enormous amount of wine he had put away with very little food joining it. It had occurred to him that perhaps Americans were different in the way they handled certain situations, and that possibility was what actually took a big chunk out of his anger. After all, Tanya might lose her temper frequently with him, even with his friends, but he couldn't recall her ever letting it loose in front of strangers, and she would consider Alicia a stranger.

Then again, women adhered to certain rules of conduct when they were together. Two of them could be sworn enemies who would go for each other's throat in private, yet they could behave like perfect friends in public.

Once he'd begun, he came up with even more excuses for Tanya's seeming indifference to the situation. She could be intimidated by Alicia's sophistication and elegance. Tanya's upbringing made her ignorant of social protocol. She hadn't even changed
for dinner, was still wearing the clothes she'd worn on arrival, while Alicia had turned herself out in grand style, her white silk gown new, her jewels abundant. And Alicia was cattily showing off.

He'd seen her do this before and it had never bothered him, the way she fingered her jewels in front of other women, drawing attention to them as if they were trophies. These trophies were three long ropes of pearls around her neck, diamonds at her ears, and not one but four rings on her fingers, each one worth a small fortune. And she took every opportunity to flaunt them in front of Tanya.

Tonight this habit of hers annoyed him, not so much Alicia's typical competitiveness, but that his mistress had jewels he had given her, while his future bride had not a bauble to her name. How much more was Tanya annoyed by it, though carefully keeping her envy from showing?

That was at least one thing he could rectify, and before he left the city—tonight, in fact, since they were leaving first thing in the morning. He didn't care if he had to drag a jeweler out of bed, he was not going to have his bride arrive in Cardinia looking less grand than even the lowliest member at court.

It didn't occur to Stefan as he set off to do just that, with Serge and several bottles of vodka to keep them warm, that he was procrastinating, clearly avoiding making a decision about Alicia,
and
avoiding being alone with her. When it did occur to him, he was naturally disgusted with himself. Yet by the time he returned to the house, a small, jewel-encrusted chest on the coach seat beside him, he had
come up with still another reason to put off a confrontation with Alicia, and this one was more logical than all the rest. He was now too intoxicated to make a decision tonight, one way or the other.

Besides, he had reasoned that he really ought to wait until the morning and speak to Tanya first, alone. If she gave him hell about Alicia, then he would quite cheerfully send his mistress away. But if she said nothing at all about it, then he'd know that the excuses he had come up with were only that, and it really didn't make any difference to her what he did.

That was his final intention, but he hadn't counted on a mistress determined to reestablish her claim on him. When he stumbled into the bedroom Sasha had prepared for him, instead of the one he had shared with Alicia before he went to America, it was to find her in this new room anyway, curled up in bed and waiting for him.

“It wasn't necessary for you to change rooms, Stefan, just for appearances,” she gently chided him. “Your little princess doesn't care where you sleep.”

That was not the wisest thing she could have said to him just then. She realized it when he set down the jeweled chest he was carrying and turned glowing eyes on her. She also realized he wasn't exactly sober. That, at least, she could count in her favor. However, she doubted even that when his voice came out sounding so chilling.

“I don't recall inviting you here, Alicia.”

She tried laughing that off. “You didn't have to, darling. I have shared your rooms for the last two years. Since when have I needed an invitation?”

She was right, of course. She was also forcing him to face his decision about her head-on, right now, when he no longer was clearheaded enough to do so. But there really was no decision to make, was there? He didn't just want Tanya. There was a lot more to it than that, a lot more that she had managed to make him feel for her. With Alicia, all he felt was a desire not to hurt her, bred from two years of familiarity and a certain fondness that their time together had produced.

“Alicia—”

“Come, Stefan, let me put you to bed,” she cut in quickly, before he could actually tell her to leave. “I can see you have had a little too much to drink tonight, so you probably don't need me, but let me at least make you comfortable.”

He came over to the bed and she immediately moved the covers aside for him, at the same time revealing that she was naked beneath them. The one thing he had always liked especially well about Alicia was her body, and she knew it. She also knew that, like most men, he became amorous when he was drunk, wanting to make love whether his body was agreeable or not. She had never liked accommodating him at such times, but tonight was definitely an exception: her future was at stake.

She wasn't stupid. She
knew
things had changed with him. One look at that damn princess was all she needed to tell her that Stefan wouldn't mind at all marrying the bitch, or bedding her. But such a beautiful creature would never want him in return. Didn't he know that?

If he didn't, Alicia had to make sure he did. She was finally the mistress of a king. She had put up with Stefan for two years, patiently waiting for Sandor to die or step down in favor of his son, and she didn't care which. Now that one of the alternatives had finally happened, she wasn't about to lose her position just because Stefan had to get married.

When he just stood there looking at her, but making no move to sit beside her, she began to panic, wondering if anything she could say or do would make a difference at this point. If he had actually fallen in love with that woman…

That horrid thought brought her swiftly to her knees in front of him. “Silly man,” she pouted as she reached to remove his coat for him. “You could not have picked a more inappropriate time to drink too much. You may not want me tonight, but after such a long absence from you, I cannot say the same. But I suppose I can wait if I must. And I can't really blame you after I saw the way that woman behaves toward you. She could drive anyone to drink.”

Stefan didn't bother correcting her about the state of his condition. He wasn't anywhere near so drunk that he couldn't cover her on that bed and make love to her all night. And after his own ridiculously long abstinence, it would undoubtedly take all night before he was finally satisfied. But since it was the wrong bed and the wrong woman, he said nothing. Her remark about Tanya, however, he couldn't let pass.

“What behavior are you referring to?”

“Why, the way she completely ignored you at dinner. And she didn't even care that you saw how
friendly she has become with Lazar.”

The insinuation cut with razor sharpness. The only reason he didn't bleed was that he knew where Lazar's loyalties lay. But the pain of Tanya's “friendships” with other men was still there, and he could not thank Alicia for reminding him of it.

Tightly, he said, “It has occurred to me that her behavior tonight can be attributed to her having witnessed that thoughtless display of affection you greeted me with on our arrival. She is my betrothed, Alicia. You knew better than to be so obvious in who
you
were!”

Anger was making him sober up, but it was the word “were” that increased her panic. “But I didn't even notice her with you,” she insisted, hoping to placate him and exonerate herself at the same time. “And I was so happy to see you, I couldn't help myself. I know I was careless, and it won't happen again, but she didn't care about that, Stefan. I know she didn't.”

“How do you know?”

Alicia lowered her eyes, pretending a reluctance to say any more. She even managed to get his shirt off while he waited for her to answer, his concentration so great he wasn't aware of what she was doing.

Finally he repeated the question, and none too softly. “
How
do you know?”

She still wouldn't look at him, was swiftly opening the front of his trousers. “I'm sorry, Stefan, but I spoke with her at length this afternoon.”

She said no more, forcing him to drag this confession out of her. “And?”

“She said she was relieved to know you had a mistress to keep you from bothering her in that way.”

He moved away from her as his anger increased tenfold. “Damn her, she actually said that to you?”

“And more,” Alicia said as she sat back on her heels, wishing she could have at least removed his trousers before he started pacing. She might not love Stefan, but he
was
a magnificent lover, and she had missed that in his absence—if nothing else.

He whirled on her now. “What else?”

“Stefan, you really don't want to hear this.” When all he did was scowl at her, she figured she'd evaded enough. “Well, she admitted she can't bear your…that is to say, she doesn't like…”

She didn't go any further, but she stared pointedly at his left cheek. The scars there twitched, then disappeared, his face had darkened so with heat. Alicia stared at him in amazement. God, he was a handsome man when you didn't notice his scars. It was too bad she had such an aversion to them herself. Of course, without them, she knew she would never have won this man, so it was an aversion she kept strictly to herself.

Now that the damage was done, Alicia felt safe in criticizing the princess. “She's just a vain girl, Stefan, so what can you expect? She knows how beautiful she is, and knows that she could have any man she wanted—”

“Enough!”

Stefan couldn't believe how much those words
hurt. It was exactly what he had feared, that Tanya wouldn't be able to ignore his disfigurement. He should have known she was lying when she'd claimed she barely noticed his scars because of his eyes. Her constant rejection of him proved it. And that she yielded to his kisses occasionally was just as he had first supposed—she was a whore at heart as well as in fact. But vain? No, about that Alicia was merely guessing. He'd never known anyone less vain or conceited than Tanya. But that was all he could see in her favor right now.

He hadn't noticed Alicia approaching, but he felt her cool breasts first as she pressed them into his bare chest, just before wrapping her arms around him. “Let me help you forget about her for a while, Stefan,” she purred up at him. “You know I can.”

He did know it. He also needed a woman, needed one so badly it was painful. And this one knew how to pleasure a man with the skills of a harlot.

Tanya wasn't sleeping well at all that night. She missed the roll of a ship beneath her after being at sea so long, but that wasn't the only reason, not by a far cry. She simply had too much anger simmering inside that she hadn't released even a little bit. So it was no wonder the tiniest noise kept waking her, and no wonder she was alerted and wide awake again when someone turned the handle on her door.

Unfortunately, she didn't recognize what this sound was. And the fire in the hearth, which had blazed earlier to warm the whole room, had burned down to mere ashes now, giving off no light at all. So she couldn't see the door slowly opening when she tried peering into the darkness around her, nor was there a creak from the well-oiled hinges.

After a few moments during which she didn't hear anything else, she lay down and tried getting back to sleep for the umpteenth time. But then there was a creak, a very definite creak, in one of the floorboards too damn near her bed.

Her eyes flew open again, and unlike the other times she'd been awakened by sounds that didn't alarm her, this time she was frightened, and was reaching for the knife she kept under her pillow, a habit from her days in the tavern that she could be glad she hadn't given up, even on the ship. But no sooner did her fingers touch the blade than the pillow was yanked out from under her head to land square on her face.

For a horrible moment Tanya thought she was being deliberately smothered. It didn't take her long to realize that her first guess was accurate. Someone didn't want her to breathe, was smashing the pillow down on her face so hard she really
couldn't
breathe.

It was the shock that someone was actually trying to kill her, that had her paralyzed with fear for nearly a minute, even though she was gripping a knife in her hand. And it was the pain starting in her chest that finally set her to motion. She could barely move though because her body was trapped under thick blankets, her hand with the knife in it trapped beneath the pillow where it was being pressed down on both sides of her face.

Her free hand found only an arm that wouldn't budge when she pulled at it, because whoever it belonged to was leaning his full weight into the pillow. She pulled at the pillow next, but it wasn't moving either. Her last option was to get to the knife with her free hand, and, thank God, she found the blade of it extended beyond the pillow's edge. But her other hand was still gripping it, and she couldn't open those fingers to release it, because that hand was right under
the one holding the pillow down. She tugged at the blade, turned it around, wiggled it, but the grip she had on the handle with her trapped hand was just too tight. And she was running out of time, a streak of weakness racing along her limbs as the pain in her chest became excruciating.

All she could do then was what she wouldn't do under any other circumstances. Somehow she pushed that blade up and back toward the arm above it, probably breaking her fingers to do it, but she didn't feel that, because she was feeling too much pain everywhere else, and was losing consciousness when the pillow was released on that side of her face. Enough air rushed into her lungs to keep her conscious, and with her other hand released now and the knife still somehow in it, she made a faint swipe at her attacker. She struck nothing, but she was able to steal another breath before he tried smashing the pillow down again. Only he didn't. He knew she had something sharp that she'd stuck him with, and he'd moved back from it.

When she realized the pillow had been released altogether, Tanya didn't even try pushing it off her face; she just rolled out of bed before she could be stabbed or shot, now that the non-messy attempt had failed. Still gasping painful breaths, she landed on the floor tangled in her blankets, in no condition to fight if she had to.

She'd never screamed in her life, except maybe recently in a rage, but she decided this might be a good time to start, simply because she didn't know what her attacker was doing now, couldn't see him,
and was still terrified. Nor did she want that son of a bitch getting away, and she wasn't quite up to chasing him herself yet. But trying to scream after she'd almost been suffocated was no easy task. She tried it three times before the sound finally came out loud enough for it to do her any good.

In less than a minute, her door was thrown open, but it was help arriving, not her attacker leaving. Stefan was first through the door, with Serge right behind him carrying a lamp. They stopped short when they saw only her head poking up from the other side of the bed. But Tanya ignored them for the moment, taking advantage of the light to scan the room. She even looked under the bed, but there was no one there.

“Do you always scream when you fall out of bed?”

The voice sounded so disgusted, Tanya stiffened. Was that really what Stefan thought, that she'd merely tumbled out of bed? “No, I save my screams for murder attempts,” she said sarcastically and then dismissed him and looked toward Serge, who had set the lamp down and was lighting another. “If you hurry, you might find whoever it was who just tried to kill me, before they leave the house.”

With Tanya calmly sitting there on the floor, only her head visible above the bed, and with that bit of sarcasm she'd tossed out, it was no wonder even that Serge asked doubtfully, “Are you serious, Princess?”

She still wasn't breathing normally yet, so her “Very” came out as a very loud sigh, but both men
moved the moment she said it.

In seconds she was alone again, but she'd just happened to catch the glow that leaped into Stefan's eyes before he ran out of the room. She cringed, imagining that he was angry only at being put to the bother of searching for her would-be attacker, which he still probably doubted was real. And if they found no sign of him, that anger would likely be turned on her. As if she cared just now.

She let out another sigh, this one intentional, and dug her way out of her blankets, leaving them where they lay as she pulled herself up to sit on the side of the bed. That accomplished, she set her knife on the table beside the bed and began massaging her fingers. Amazingly, none were broken, but they were definitely sore from being pressed and bent by the knife handle, particularly her little finger and wrist. Her nose hurt, too, from being smashed, and her chest still felt as if it had burst and was merely patched back together. It would probably ache for days. But that was the least of her problems. Figuring out who hated her enough to kill her was the priority of the moment.

Naturally enough, the Stamboloffs came to mind first, but she had been assured they were all dead, so she let that possibility go as quickly as it had come. Her traveling companions she discounted, too. If one of them wanted to get rid of her, he wouldn't have waited this long. It would have been too easy to take her unconscious from her cabin and simply toss her into the sea, then suggest she had fallen overboard or even jumped.

But she knew of no one else here, and the only other people who knew of her existence were all in Cardinia. Of course, that didn't mean that someone from Cardinia couldn't have been waiting here for her arrival. After all, Sandor's man had been waiting here to bring him word of Stefan. Someone else could also have been waiting.

That supposition was logical enough, but she needed a motive. It came to her instantly. Someone didn't want her to marry Stefan. An enemy of his? But why should they care if he married or not? And it seemed as if
everyone
knew he hadn't wanted to marry her, so killing her would be doing him a favor…No, she wasn't going to suspect Stefan. Even if she thought him capable of murder, which she didn't, her instincts discounted him immediately. Besides, it was his
duty
to marry her, and his duty meant too much to him.

So if not an enemy of his, and she had none herself that she could think of…maybe some other woman who wanted to marry Stefan, but couldn't because of his betrothal to Tanya?

As soon as the idea of a woman entered her mind, she knew exactly who her attacker was. She had an enemy after all, but one so new, it was no wonder she hadn't thought of her first. Alicia. Hadn't the woman proved, by deliberately kissing Stefan in front of her, that she felt threatened by Tanya? And hadn't she taken the first opportunity she had to tell Tanya she was Stefan's mistress, just in case that kiss hadn't been obvious enough? Alicia was so worried that Stefan's affections would turn from her to Tanya,
she felt she had to get rid of the competition. And she'd almost done just that.

It all fit, even why the attacker had given up as soon as Tanya had started fighting back. A man wouldn't have. A man would merely have grabbed Tanya back when she rolled away from him, or forced the knife away from her with his superior strength, or used some other means to kill her. But a woman only had the element of surprise as her advantage, and Alicia had lost that. Once Tanya had rolled off the bed, Alicia obviously hadn't thought she was capable of continuing the fight, and so prudently had got out of there—and slipped right back into her own room, which Tanya knew to be directly across the hallway from hers. And no one would suspect her, certainly not the men, because she was probably in her bed right now, pretending to be fast asleep.

Tanya was suddenly so furious, all her aches and pains were forgotten. That stupid woman! How dared she try to take Tanya's life, her
life
, just to hold onto a lover for a while more? Or would Stefan marry Alicia if he were free to do so? That would at least make this attempt understandable—but not forgivable. And Alicia wasn't getting away with it.

Tanya swept up the knife and headed for her open doorway, her eyes trained on Alicia's closed door across the hall. She was almost there, too, when Stefan appeared to block the way, bracing his hands high on the doorframe and giving her a look that said he didn't appreciate wasting his time.

“There was no one in the house, Princess, and all the doors were locked.”

He didn't mention the windows and she didn't ask. Of course they had found no one. But did he have to sound as if that had been a foregone conclusion? The man didn't believe—nor had he believed moments ago—that she had had a harrowing experience. Did he think she had deliberately lied?

Before she could say anything in her defense, whether she would bother to or not, he snapped, “Where do you think you're going with that?”

His eyes had dropped to her knife. Her grip tightened on it, but her voice was perfectly calm when she replied, “I'm going to take care of this little matter myself, since you obviously won't.”

He tried for a calm tone himself, but it came out more a growl. “Put that down and admit you merely had a nightmare.”

“I don't have nightmares.”

He was getting exasperated. “Fine, we'll assume an intruder bothered you. We'll even assume he might still be around, even though we've searched through every…damn…room…in the house.”

“Not all, you didn't.”

“Your room is next to the stairs, so if anyone was here he would have gone that way, since all the other rooms up here are presently occupied.”

“Exactly.”

His eyes narrowed at what he assumed she was implying, but he didn't address it. “It's over,” he said with finality. “So either you can lose more sleep while I have a lock put on your door so you'll feel safe, or I can sleep in here the remainder of the night.”

“Suit yourself. There's ample room on the floor. But I'm going to carve your mistress into little pieces first, so you'll have to excuse me for a few minutes.”

She took one step, only to hear him command, “Stop right there! Did I hear you correctly? You think Alicia tried to do you harm?”

Did he realize he had just admitted Alicia was his mistress? She doubted it. And why should she care at this point? She'd already been told.
Yes, but you were hoping that vengeful witch had been lying, missy, or at the very least that she was going to be his ex-mistress
.

With the anger churning inside her came pain. It was a wicked combination that she could barely control.

“I don't think it, Stefan Barany, I know it. She was in this room when I screamed, or she sneaked out a moment before, but in either case—”

“Either case is an impossibility, you little liar,” he cut in sharply, his eyes starting to glow again. “Because she was with me when you screamed!”

In the middle of the night? And he was only half dressed, she realized now, with no shirt, his trousers not even done up completely, as if he had put them on in a hurry. And Alicia had been with him?

It didn't occur to Tanya that Alicia had just been exonerated, which meant someone else had tried to kill her. She wasn't thinking about that now, wasn't thinking about anything except Stefan making love to another woman. Little wonder that she lifted her arm and threw her knife at him.