You Belong to Me (7 page)

“Don’t mind me. I’ve just come for a bite to eat, since I don’t have time for dinner tonight.”

She hoped
someone
was embarrassed over that remark, though she didn’t look to find out. She strolled forward and snatched an already buttered slice of hot bread from the blue-eyed Cardinian’s plate. That she hadn’t been introduced to him made it all the worse,
but she figured he was the only one there who wouldn’t say anything about her behavior.

A glance down at him showed him more on the shocked side now than surprised. She merely flashed him a smile in exchange for the food, then glanced across the table. Anna had a hand over her mouth. Well, it wouldn’t do to laugh out loud, which she surely was trying to avoid. Constantin’s cheeks had gone red, and not just with embarrassment. Alexandra and her father would really have had a roof-raising argument over this latest unrefined display of hers—if she were around for it. But she wouldn’t be around for any more fights with him…

“Alexandra—” Constantin managed in a choked voice.

She gave him an innocent, inquiring look, which assured him that she was hoping for a display of temper, eager for it, and quite willing to match it. Realizing that, he didn’t oblige and had to swallow his rancor and hope that she wouldn’t further embarrass him.

She would have, except her newest plan backfired on her at that point. Count Petroff, instead of taking advantage of this golden opportunity she was offering him, had risen from the table and was now standing behind her.

“I am delighted you decided to join us, Baroness, however briefly. It allows me to correct
an oversight. Will you give me your hand, please?”

She turned to face him, suspicious. Give him her hand? If he thought he was going to slap her hand for pilfering that slice of bread, as if she were some naughty child, she promised herself she’d give him back much worse. But when she hesitantly offered her free hand, he ignored it and took up the one grasping the buttery roll. With two fingers and an inscrutable expression that was surely hiding his disgust, he took the bread from her and set it aside; then, before she could snatch her hand back, he was slipping a ring on her finger.

It didn’t go on easily, probably wouldn’t have gone on at all if her fingers weren’t coated with butter. She stared at the ring for a moment, bemused to find it so lovely. It was an enormous sparkling diamond surrounded by a twinkling array of sapphires, emeralds, and rubies.

“Now that I’ve seen to my duty, you can run along and finish your packing,” Vasili said. “I realize it is an imposition, for which I apologize, but we really must leave tomorrow. I do hope you will get
some
sleep tonight, though, so do hurry with the chore.”

His apology rang as false as his hope that she would be able to get some sleep—at least to her ears. To the others, he probably sounded sincere. And she was even more furious with the man now, for his duplicity, for pretending in front of her father, when she knew his true feel
ings. That she had come down here to do some pretending of her own was a moot point. She’d obviously wasted her time.

She picked up the slice of bread again simply because she was hungry, and left.

V
asili was up at dawn the next morning, not because he’d planned to leave at such an ungodly hour, but because he’d spent such a restless night, managing to get only a few hours of sleep off and on, and had been quite awake when the sun finally approached the horizon. He couldn’t remember the last time he had spent such a hellish night.

Alexandra’s remark that he should sleep on what she’d told him, that
it’s liable to be the last night of untroubled sleep you’ll get
, was partly responsible. What the hell had she meant by that? What she’d told him was designed to make him lose sleep, yet she’d predicted he’d have worse nights.

The other reason for his sleeplessness was, surprisingly, Alexandra herself. Vasili had rarely ever been around a woman who was in such a tousled state of appearance as she’d been in, unless he’d been romping in bed with her. And that damn red sash of hers that cinched in her waist so tightly showed just how shapely she really was. And white linen
had never looked so good as it did draping and contouring those large, heavenly breasts of hers.

He’d been aroused. And despite the heated words they’d had in his room, and the exasperating subject matter, he’d still been aroused when she’d left him. Then damned if it hadn’t happened again when she’d briefly joined them in the dining room, looking just as tousled.

He should have done something about it, sought out one of those giggling maids who had kept bothering him yesterday with the pretense of asking if he needed anything. Any one of them would have been willing to accommodate him. They’d made that perfectly clear. But he had already decided to be on his best behavior for Constantin Rubliov’s benefit, and that excluded bedding one of the servants when his betrothed slept just doors away.

Fortunately, the baron wouldn’t be making the return trip with him, so Vasili’s very correct behavior would end as soon as he and his men parted from Rubliov’s company. And there had been that girl—he’d forgotten her name already—who had shared his bed at the posting inn the other night. They’d be staying there again tonight, and he’d most certainly make use of her charms again,
and
make sure that Alexandra knew it. The sooner she took offense and demanded that he return her to her father, the sooner he would rid himself of the feeling of being trapped.

Since Vasili was already up and wide awake, he decided they might as well get an early start, and he left his room to rouse the others in his party. He sincerely hoped that Alexandra had been kept up all night packing as she’d predicted. Forcing a lady to rise sooner than she’d intended usually resulted in said lady’s being in a sour mood, and his own mood was sour enough to want company.

He was disappointed, however, in his hope to further inconvenience his betrothed. Finding the household already astir at that hour, he sent one of the maids to wake Alexandra, and was informed that “Alex” was already outside, most likely at her stable. He was surprised enough at hearing a servant refer to the lady of the house so informally that the maid’s calling the stable
hers
barely registered with him.

As it happened, his own mood worsened because Alexandra had gotten a head start on him, and he rushed a grumbling Lazar down to breakfast with the baron, only to find that his betrothed wasn’t going to be joining them for the meal—again. Perversely, he took his time after drawing that conclusion, wasting a good hour unnecessarily, until Lazar was clearing his throat repeatedly and rolling his eyebrows toward the door, all of which Vasili ignored.

When he did finally leave the dining room, the same three maids who had been such a nuisance yesterday converged on him, one carrying his hat, one his coat, and the third
his gloves. His own servant, Boris, whom Vasili had brought along for himself and Lazar, stood behind the women, shrugging his shoulders as if to say he’d been helpless in the face of their combined determination.

Fortunately, it was a situation Vasili found so normal, he barely noticed, accepting the articles of clothing and the maids’ assistance in donning them, ignoring the hands that lingered. But that was how Alexandra found him when she came through the front door to discover what was keeping the Cardinians. The three women surrounding Vasili were touching him as if some shared intimacy gave them the right to do so.

Which happened to be the exact conclusion Alexandra came to, and quite possibly why she remarked with such blatant sarcasm, “I could have sworn someone told me you were in a hurry to return to Cardinia, Petroff. Of course, I should have known a man of your proclivities couldn’t get his arse out of bed at a decent hour.”

Without giving him a chance to answer, she was back out the door before he had even thought of one. The three maids had scattered at the first sound of her voice. Lazar was making noises into the palm of his hand. The baron, however, stood in the doorway to the dining room and looked truly pained in his embarrassment—but no more than he’d been last night when he had apologized for his daughter’s behavior.

“She—ah—she—”

Vasili took pity on the man. Someone ought to, considering he had a daughter like that. “No need for explanations, sir. As you said, she requires…careful handling.”

And he was looking forward to it now, damned if he wasn’t. Ridicule him, would she? He’d have that little wench in tears before the end of the day. After all, contempt was a skill, and could become a weapon in the right hands, and his was developed to perfection for use whenever he needed it.

Alexandra was mounted on her white stallion when Vasili and his men reached the stable yard, or rather, one of the stable yards. Having declined a tour of the estate yesterday, Vasili hadn’t realized that the Rubliovs maintained not one but five large stables, which were spread out from the house to the nearby village.

He still wasn’t curious about the Rubliov estate. Now he was interested only in the object of his present rancor. Again she was wearing a shirt and those unorthodox britches, albeit clean ones, and with a blue sash today, and a much finer coat, this one trimmed in black fur to match the hat that completely concealed her hair.

He was still simmering over her latest effrontery, yet he found himself annoyed about her clothing for an unexpected reason—because he’d actually been looking forward to seeing her properly gowned. Even if she had worn a riding habit, it would have been a feminine riding habit. He had anticipated see
ing her dressed in feminine attire because he had been told the britches were her work clothes. And since she wouldn’t be working on the trip, she shouldn’t be wearing them. Yet there she sat in her male finery, looking impatient—and vibrantly beautiful in the early morning light.

He looked at her left hand and noticed she wasn’t wearing the ring. Why wasn’t he surprised? No doubt she’d wait for the right moment to throw it in his face.

It took him several moments to notice the wagons, but when he did, his eyes narrowed suspiciously. Whatever was in them was piled high under canvas covers. They looked extremely cumbersome, and certainly too heavy for the mere four horses hitched to each of them.

He didn’t question his betrothed, who was watching him silently. He moved straight to the wagon beds to examine their contents. One was filled with at least a dozen trunks. The other held a few more trunks along with a great deal of tack, saddles and the like, and a
great
many sacks of grain. Did she think he wasn’t going to feed her?

Alexandra led her mount over to him, stopping right behind him. She was still silent, watching him closely, waiting for the exact moment when he realized what she was up to. It didn’t take all that long.

He turned, looked up at her and said simply, unequivocally, “No.”

She didn’t even try to mistake his meaning,
merely lifted a slim brow as she told him, “We aren’t married yet, Petroff. You don’t
really
think you can dictate to me until we are, do you?”

He didn’t lose his temper and his expression didn’t reveal how her words goaded him. Instead he raised a brow back at her—he did it so much better than she—and countered, “You don’t really think I can’t, do you?”

She gave him a tight little smile. “I can see you’re going to try. But in this case, you’re wasting your time. This isn’t a brief visit you’re dragging me to, but a new life. I’m not about to leave my belongings behind. If you thought I would, you were deluding yourself.”

“No one is suggesting you do anything of the kind,” he replied.

“Then there is nothing more to say.”

“On the contrary. I will grant you fifteen minutes to gather whatever essentials you will need for the trip, which, by the way, does
not
include sacks of grain, and then—”

She interrupted him with an explanation. “The grain is top-grade and is for my babies. I don’t trust the fodder offered at posting houses.”

Since those few words made not the least bit of sense to him in relation to the subject, and actually confounded him, he was lucky to get out, “Babies?”

But she didn’t have to answer him. At that moment three pure white thoroughbreds were being led by a groom out of the stable. Behind
them came three more with another groom, and another three after that, and…When Vasili stopped counting, there were sixteen of the magnificent animals filling the stable yard.

“Yours?” he asked flatly.

“Every one of them,” she replied, unmistakable pride in her voice.

“Your father is foolishly generous,” he couldn’t resist pointing out.

“My father gifted me with Sultan’s Pride on my sixteenth birthday.” She lovingly patted the animal she sat so he’d know just who Sultan’s Pride was. “The rest of my babies I purchased myself, traded for, and bred.”

A hell of an accomplishment, if he cared to admit it. He didn’t. All he saw was that she expected to transport them over the mountains, with winter approaching, with bandits around every corner who would sell their own mothers for just one of those animals.

“This is ridiculous,” he said. “Your
babies
, as well as your belongings, can follow us if you insist, but we aren’t going to be held back by them.”

She smiled, telling him she’d hoped he’d say something like that. “You’re welcome to go on without me. I certainly don’t need your escort. Of course, if I get lost along the way and end up in another country instead of Cardinia, I’m sure I won’t mind.”

Vasili couldn’t believe they were having a standoff. As much as he would like to go on without her at that point, he couldn’t convince her to end the betrothal if they weren’t travel
ing together, so they had to travel together. But her refusal to obey him was unacceptable. The betrothal gave him complete authority over her, which she obviously hadn’t realized yet. But until they left her father’s authority, which took precedence over his, he couldn’t enforce his will as he would like—yet. Her father…

Suddenly he smiled. “Your father won’t find that suggestion acceptable, wench, and you know it. So I believe I’ll let him explain to you the merits of following my suggestion instead.”

“How typical,” she sneered. “The little boy doesn’t get his way, so he runs to Papa, mine in this case. But by all means, waste some more of the time you’re so concerned about by enlisting his aid—or trying to. You’ll find, however, that he already knows he’s gotten all the cooperation from me that he’s going to get. Or were you under the mistaken impression that I’m an obedient daughter?”

He was angry enough to yank her off her horse and shake her. She knew it and didn’t appear the least bit concerned, probably because of the large wolfhound that was suddenly there between them. The stallion she sat didn’t move a muscle, apparently acquainted with the beast. She was obviously even better acquainted, because she ordered, “Sit, Bojik,” and the dog immediately complied.

Vasili nearly growled, “Something else you think to bring along?”

“Certainly. My pet goes wherever I go.”

“Anything else I should know about?”

He was being sarcastic, but she answered, “Just my maid and my men.”

“Your men?”

She nodded toward the stable. He looked in that direction to find the entrance now filled with three mounted Cossacks, large brutes by the look of them, craggy-faced, each heavily armed and each looking back at him with—he wasn’t quite sure. The men were so ugly, it was hard to read their expressions accurately, to discern hostility from amusement and amusement from mere curiosity.

“They will see to my safety on the journey,” Alexandra informed him.

Stiffly, he looked back at her. “I believe that is my responsibility.”

She actually laughed. “Don’t be absurd. You travel with your own guards because you obviously can’t see to your own safety, much less anyone else’s.” And then she added, with the contempt that
he
should have been utilizing, “But that’s quite understandable, Petroff. It’s been my experience that you court dandies are pretty much useless for anything other than gossip and whoring.”

He was crimson-cheeked by the time she had finished, and so furious he barely got out, “Is that
firsthand
experience?”

Color bloomed in her cheeks now, and with a heated glare she retreated, trotting off with those three brutes flanking her, the oversized Russian wolfhound racing ahead of them, the
wagons following, and five grooms leading the herd of prized stock.

Vasili stood there staring after them, seriously thinking about heading out in the opposite direction himself.