Seduced By The Prince’s Kiss

‘You’ll hardly catch a husband with manners like that.’ Her father huffed. ‘You’ll shame us all in London.’

‘I don’t want to catch a husband, not right away at any rate.’ Anna-Maria tossed her head and slid a defiant glance in Dimitri’s direction. ‘I want to dance until dawn and drink champagne. I want to live a little bit. Besides, who cares if I push my peas around tonight, there’s no one to see, there’s no entertainment for miles. I’ve been stuck out in the middle of nowhere...’ She bit her lip as Evie looked down at her plate. She’d gone too far with her remark. Little Westbury was Evie’s home, her parents were here, her friends and her husband’s work. Evie had never made her feel anything but welcome.

Her father pointed his spoon at her. ‘You are an ungrateful wretch,’ he said, ‘all the sacrifices that have been made for you—’

‘Father, that’s enough,’ Dimitri broke in, soft-voiced but stern with the authority of the head of the household. Always, he had been the peacemaker. No wonder he and Evie were so well suited. Evie was a peacemaker, too. Not like her. Sometimes, Anna-Maria thought she required drama to make life interesting. Not for the first time, she wished she were a little more like her brother who thrived in the seclusion of country life.

‘I am sorry, Evie. I didn’t mean...’ Anna-Maria apologised.

Evie dismissed her efforts with a polite shake of her head. ‘No offence taken. You are young and vivacious, it’s only natural you’d want to surround yourself with activity.’ Evie glanced at Dimitri. ‘We could all use an outing. Why don’t we plan something? Maybe a day with Liam and May before they go back to town?’

Anna-Maria liked May, she was one of Evie’s more scandalous friends, having had a mad affair with her husband before they married. May had, in fact, been younger than Anna was now when it had occurred. But, a day spent talking about babies wasn’t exactly the sort of outing Anna had in mind. She wet her lips, a plan forming. ‘Why don’t we go to Shoreham and see how Stepan is settling in?’ Anna looked over at Evie. ‘We could take him some of Cook’s bread and the lemon biscuits he likes so much and we could advise him on the house. He doesn’t have anyone to help him run such a large place. The servants will run roughshod over him,’ she argued shamelessly. There was nothing Evie liked as much as rectifying a domestic crisis.

‘I don’t know.’ Dimitri seemed dubious. ‘It’s a long way for the baby,’

‘It’s only an hour, maybe two, by carriage, but your carriage is equipped with every luxury,’ Anna argued. ‘We’ll all take turns holding the baby and he’ll sleep most of the way.’

‘That settles it.’ Evie decided the issue with a smile at Dimitri. ‘We’ll go and see how Stepan is getting on.’ She rose. ‘Anna and I will go and talk about what to take with us, while you two enjoy your after-dinner port.’ She beamed at her father-in-law as if he hadn’t tried to disrupt her dinner with a fight.

‘You are too generous with him,’ Anna chided once they were alone in the sitting room. Evie had the baby at her feet and her ever-present needlework in her hands—the perfect picture of domestic bliss.

‘Nonsense. He is a broken man. He has suffered much in his lifetime and he deserves our consolation.’ Evie flashed her a brief smile as she threaded her needle. ‘As do you, my dear. He has suffered, but how he treats you is inexcusable. Dimitri and I are both aware of it.’

‘I killed the woman he loved.’ Anna-Maria shrugged as if the fact meant nothing to her. She should be immune to it by now. After nineteen years of hearing the story, of being reminded her mother died giving birth to her, it shouldn’t affect her.

‘You were a baby. You had no control over that.’ Evie bit off the thread and gave her a considering glance. ‘You’re missing Stepan.’

‘As we all are.’ Anna fussed with her own stitching, a simple handkerchief. The house seemed empty without him. Even being absent so much, he’d managed to stamp the house with his presence. His coat was gone from where it usually hung on the hooks by the front door. Dimitri’s boots looked forlorn where they stood alone without Stepan’s beside them. Anna had slipped into his room, thinking it would help her loneliness. It hadn’t. The room he’d occupied looked positively sterile now that he’d gone, the bedcovers pristine and unwrinkled, the bureau uncluttered by personal effects. It was as if he’d never been there at all.

Evie gave her a sharp look when she was too silent too long. ‘Are you certain this trip to Shoreham is only about helping him set up house?’

Anna’s hand stilled. Evie went on. ‘I watched you waltzing with him the other day.’ Anna froze completely. The other day. The day after the kiss. What had Evie divined? What was there to see? That somehow, at some time, her relationship to Stepan had taken on an edge that she could hardly define? ‘Are you sure your request doesn’t have anything to do with the New Barn barracks being full again?’ She gave Anna a conspiratorial wink. ‘Dimitri tells me a Captain Denning has come to Shoreham with a company of men to catch smugglers. There will be assemblies and plenty of men to dance with while the countryside waits for spring.’ Evie cocked her head. ‘Perhaps they would be more interesting to practise on than the Squire’s son before London? Consider it a trial run.’

Anna smiled in relief and grabbed at Evie’s line of reasoning. ‘The garrison does have its own appeal.’ It wasn’t the only appeal, however, but she could hardly give voice to those other reasons. She could hardly explain them to herself, not when so much suddenly lay unresolved between her and Stepan. With a single kiss, the world had upended itself. She only knew that she wanted to be near Stepan, whether he needed her or not. Where that need had sprung from she wasn’t sure. The kiss had done more than jar him out of his complacency. It had somehow jarred her out of hers—a complacency that had been content to study him through windowpanes and at the distance of a dinner table, a complacency that was content to needle him. Now that she’d got a response, she was no longer content in mere needling. The rock had been turned over and instead of solving the intrigue, it had merely increased it.

Evie leaned forward. ‘I’ll see if I can persuade Dimitri to let you stay on in Shoreham, to help Stepan with the house.’

Anna shook her head, pessimistically. Her hopes faded. ‘How will we ever do that? He won’t even let me go riding without a proper escort, let alone live with a man.’ It was a poor choice of words. It said far too much about how her view of Stepan had changed in the last week.

The comment earned her another sharp look from Evie. ‘But that man is Stepan. It’s not as if you’re living with a stranger. He’s practically family,’ Evie argued.

Not really family, though. One did not kiss family like that, Anna thought. Over the course of the winter, he’d gone from being a childhood fixture to a curious mystery, to being a flesh-and-blood man with deep-seated emotions he strove to hide, along with an ability to shatter one’s world with a single kiss. She should want to run from that intensity, but she found she only wanted to run towards it, to see where it led.

Evie was too deep in her plans to notice her misstep. ‘You can take Mrs Batten, our housekeeper. She has a sister in Shoreham. She’ll enjoy the chance to visit. I’m sure the Worths have their own housekeeper, so this will free up plenty of time for Mrs Batten to keep an eye on you. She’ll be able to give you household management instruction, too. I’m sure Stepan wouldn’t mind the assistance, or the company if he’s as busy as he says he’ll be.’ Evie laughed. ‘Men don’t know how much they take a hot meal for granted at the end of a long day until it’s not there for them.’

‘Of course.’ Anna nodded and gave her attention to her embroidery. She was starting to doubt her eagerness to go to Shoreham. Mrs Batten was highly capable and a moral termagant to boot. And then there was the issue of just how ‘glad’ Stepan would be to see her, especially when Evie apprised him of the plan for her to stay more permanently—hot meals at the end of the day notwithstanding.

* * *

In the end, Dimitri’s carriage went home from Shoreham one occupant short of what it had come with. Anna-Maria stood on the steps of Seacrest with Stepan waving them off, a curious loneliness rising in her stomach when the carriage was out of sight. It was silly, really. Dimitri and home were just an hour away. She could ride over whenever she liked, yet, as dusk settled, home might have been a thousand miles away. Stepan had not been glad to see them, at least not her. He’d been cold and stand-offish since their arrival. He and Dimitri had closeted themselves away, leaving her and Evie and the redoubtable Mrs Batten to their own devices. Those devices had involved meeting with the household staff—a staff far more elaborate than the five servants who helped Evie at home. They’d drawn up lists for foodstuffs and a weekly menu of meals. They’d gone over the linens and found most things to be in order. Preston’s wife ran a good house, anything that needing shoring up was due only to Stepan’s abrupt arrival.

‘Regretting your decision to stay already?’ It was the first direct comment Stepan had made to her all day. It seemed he was intent on ignoring not only the kiss, but her, too.

She shook her head. ‘No, I’m just thinking of other times I watched Dimitri drive away,’ Of the time he didn’t come back. He’d sent a letter instead informing her of his decision to give up his title, his life, and stay in England to marry the daughter of a baronet. Stepan had been with her then. Dimitri had entrusted Stepan and Ruslan with the details of their quiet departure from Kuban. Only that departure had not been so quiet. Nikolay had been arrested and Illarion would have been next. Stepan had suddenly found himself not only with one young girl and an old man to whisk off to safety, but also a gravely wounded cavalry officer and a poet wanted for libel. Stepan had never faltered no matter how difficult the duty.

Stepan sighed. ‘They all drive away one way or another.’ He must be thinking of the others: of Illarion, Ruslan and Nikolay. He missed them, she realised. He was always so strong, so stoic, it was hard to imagine he had softer feelings, as well. But she knew better now, didn’t she? Now that he’d kissed her. That kiss had exposed him to her as much as it had exposed her. He did feel, he did yearn, he did hurt. Beneath his hard shell, Stepan Shevchenko was human after all. Such a realisation should have made him less heroic to her, but in fact it did not. It only increased the mystery of him, a stark reminder of how much she didn’t know and how much there was yet to know.

Stepan gestured towards the open door. Somewhere deep inside, a servant was lighting the lamps. A warm glow beckoned through the dusk. ‘Come, Anna-Maria. Dinner will be on the table soon and we can discuss exactly what you’ve got yourself into.’

* * *

Did she understand that by extension whatever she’d got herself into she’d got him into, as well? Stepan poured himself another glass of wine, studying Anna-Maria in the candlelight of the dining table: the glossy dark waves of her hair, the fine line of her nose, the soft curve of her jaw, the stubborn point of her chin. She was a beautiful woman, empirically, a quality heightened when she smiled, putting the sensuality of her mouth on full display. She was smiling now as she motioned to his nearly untouched plate.

‘Do you not care for the venison pie?’

He’d only taken a few bites. ‘No, on the contrary, it’s quite delicious.’ It was the best meal he’d had since he’d left Dimitri’s and he knew it was thanks to Evie and Anna-Maria, who’d given Cook instructions and direction. He’d been too busy with the ships to pay attention to the house. As a result, he’d eaten cold meat and bread since he’d left Dimitri’s, or eaten at the tavern. But he wasn’t going to admit that to Anna-Maria. It would only give her justification for staying. He took a bite to pacify her. ‘Why are you really here, Anna-Maria?’