"Petroff—"
"Concerned for me, sweetheart?" He'd cut her off, the sarcasm in his tone saying he wouldn't believe it if she tried to pretend she was.
And that sarcasm had her hissing, "Certainly not," regardless of her true feelings.
"Then stay out of it. Whether I win or lose, you still get your horses back."
He said no more, stepped around her to enter the house, and promptly closed the door in her face. But if he thought that would keep her out, he should have known better. She'd want to see him lose the fight, to have something to gloat over. If Lazar hadn't followed her in, along with a half-dozen others, Vasili would have made an issue of it, insisting she leave. Now he merely shrugged mentally. Maybe she deserved this, too, for last night.
Pavel had removed his coat and was presently shoving the sleeping cots out of the way to clear an area. He was apparently going to remain shirtless. A prerequisite? Whether it was or not, Vasili supposed he ought to strip down himself, just to keep things sporting.
He had seen Pavel fight twice before with Stefan, and each time he had fought dirty. Vasili's advantage would have been that Pavel had never seen him fight. With whips, though, he had no advantage, and was really at a disadvantage. Why the hell had he agreed to this?
Killing Pavel would have been an ideal solution, because he didn't have Latzko's sense of honor and couldn't be trusted to stand by his word if he lost. But Vasili simply didn't feel like killing him, even if they were going to use normal weapons. The bandit was a bitter man, and a woman had made him that way. Vasili could certainly sympathize with him about that.
Knocking him out was another solution, since there was the possibility that if Pavel lost—for the third time to an aristocrat—and was still conscious at the end, he might be enraged enough to order them all shot. Some of the bandits wouldn't follow that order, but some might, and the risk wasn't worth the taking.
Since his skill with a whip wasn't likely to get him either of those solutions, it seemed his only other alternative, intentional or not, was to lose, let Pavel have his moment of glory, and get the hell out of there. And he'd already assured Lazar that he would concede if it looked like he couldn't win. But this option went against every instinct he possessed ...
"Finally," Pavel said.
Vasili turned to see a man coming through the door, holding a coiled whip in each hand. The whips seemed nearly identical, but they weren't. He didn't know how he recognized it, since he'd never given it more than a cursory glance when she'd worn it, but he knew which one was Alexandra's. A glance her way proved she had no trouble identifying it either.
Without questioning why he wanted it, Vasili stepped forward to say, "I believe the choice of weapons is mine again, and I'll take the wench's whip."
"What wench?" Pavel demanded, but his eyes sought out Alexandra even as he asked the question.
"You weren't told it was taken from her last night?" Vasili countered.
The frown was there before Pavel's suspicious gaze returned to Vasili. "Did you teach her how to use it, aristo?"
It was a toss-up between lying to benefit himself in the fight and lying to benefit his campaign against Alexandra. Vasili found the choice an easy one.
"Lucky for you," he told the bandit, "I haven't known the wench long enough to teach her anything—of importance."
It was a dig for Alexandra alone. Vasili didn't look at her again to see how she had received it, which was fortunate, because he might have made an ass of himself and apologized if he had.
To insinuate that what had passed between them was nothing significant was no more than Alexandra herself had done, yet to hear him say it struck her painfully, and her expression briefly revealed that emotion before she managed to conceal it beneath a mask of indifference.
Fortunately, no one else read anything into Vasili's remark, and when he added, "Shall we get this over with?" Pavel was quick to comply.
Whips in hand, uncoiled and dragging on the rough floor, they circled each other, Vasili waiting to be shown the rudiments by example, Pavel waiting for the ideal opening so that his first strike would be an excruciating one.
Neither got what he was after.
When Pavel finally released his first snap, Vasili was too busy dodging to notice how it was done. The crack of that whip was demoralizing, though, even with its only striking air. And his own first swing was laughable. His coil was dropping to the floor before it even got close to Pavel.
Vasili didn't know it, but he was holding his whip as if it were a sword, and also swinging it like a sword, which might have worked if his target had remained stationary. That wasn't the case, however. Apparently the object was for him to hit, and for him to avoid getting hit in return. So far he was managing to do one, but not the other.
Alexandra was disgusted, watching them dance around each other. Pavel didn't know much about wielding a whip, but he sure as hell knew more about it than Vasili, and it was only sheer luck and quick reflexes that had kept Vasili out of the whip's path thus far.
And then he was hit. It wasn't a solid hit. Pavel's coil curved over Vasili's back, around his side, and up his chest, where the worst damage was inflicted by the tail, leaving a red, diagonal streak to mar his golden skin. He barely winced, but Alexandra hadn't counted on what the sight of that mark would do to her.
The urge that came over her, nearly overwhelming her, was to snatch her whip from Vasili and make mincemeat out of the bandit. To do that would take her only a minute or two. She knew every place on the body that was most susceptible to pain, and her aim was unerring. Pavel would be writhing on the floor in seconds ...
She literally had to stuff her hands in her coat pockets and concentrate on keeping them there. She had to spare some of that concentration to remain standing where she was. But she was too angry to keep quiet.
"The snap is in your wrist!" she shouted at Vasili. "Hick it!"
Vasili heard her. He couldn't help but hear her. And it was galling to realize that if she were participating in this fight instead of him, it would probably be over already. Of all the weapons Pavel could have chosen, why did he have to pick her weapon, her sphere of expertise?
And Vasili had no idea what she was talking about.
The second strike snaked across his tender belly. He felt as if he'd been ripped open and his guts were about to spill out, but when he glanced down he saw no more than a red welt raised across his skin. Yet that was enough for him to put an end to this, more than enough.
He was about to tell Pavel just that when Alexandra shouted at him again. "That's not a sword, dammit! Don't use it like one!"
Vasili gritted his teeth and tried again. But his lash still did no more than brush teasingly against Pavel, like a worrisome gnat rather than a stinging bee. Pavel, of course, didn't have that problem, and he got in another two flashing, burning hot strikes, the one on the back of Vasili's shoulder drawing blood.
At that point, Alexandra yelled, "Give it up, Petroff—you can't win!" And at that point, Vasili decided to prove her wrong.
Not with a whip, however. He couldn't be expected to use the damn thing with any proficiency without the benefit of a few lessons first, and in the middle of a fight was no time to get them. So his whip coiled next to his feet and stayed there in supposed readiness, and when Pavel's next swing came at him, Vasili didn't try to dodge it. He caught it instead, gave it a hard jerk, dropped his own whip at the same time, and slammed his fist into Pavel's face.
Pavel's feet went up as he went down. His nose was definitely broken, but he wasn't aware of it at the moment. He was out cold, and Vasili felt completely vindicated, having downed the man with only one punch—at least he felt that way until he recalled his own throbbing aches.
"If you were going to do that, Petroff, why the hell didn't you do it sooner?"
Alexandra had come up behind him, and her tone was about as castigating as it could get. He didn't turn around, was
going to ignore her completely, but the words came out anyway when she appeared on his left side. "Shut up, Alex."
Lazar came around his other side. "The shoulder isn't bleeding bad, but you should have it cleaned and bandaged before we leave."
Alexandra had retrieved her whip from where Vasili had dropped it, and he knew it was too much to hope that she would have heeded his advice.
"And this is a flick," she said and demonstrated.
The coil flashed across the room, the tail curling around the leg of a chair, and the chair came sliding across the floor, to bump into Vasili's knees. His frown was turning thunderous, but she didn't seem to notice.
"Sit down and let your friend tend you," she told him, ordered was more like it, and still in that bossy, chastising tone.
"Shut up, Alex!"
She was treating him like a child again, and in front of Lazar and everyone else this time. And her angry advice during the fight might not have come only because she thought him so inept, as he had assumed at the time. It could also have come from concern, and the mere possibility, unlikely as it was, was making him panic, which didn't help him handle the situation at all well. If she showed the least bit of gratitude on top of the rest, he'd probably murder her.
Alexandra was experiencing her own emotional upheaval that was two-thirds panic, but hers had started last night, when she'd heard they were so close to Cardinia. What was turning her irrational and bitchy now was her actually having been afraid for Vasili during the fight, and that absolutely infuriated her. And it didn't help that she was definitely beholden to him now. Feelings of gratitude in connection with this man just didn't sit well with her. And that she was going to have to own up to it was galling.
But the worst of it was her knowing that he was in pain, and having the ridiculous urge to ease it for him somehow, not knowing how, and not daring even to try. All in all, her emotions were making her crazy, and she had about as much control of them as he did right now, which was none.
If it were otherwise, she might have noticed that he wasn't himself, that it wasn't the pain making him testy, but Alexandra herself. She really should have heeded him and said no more. Stubbornness definitely had its pitfalls.
"I have to thank—"
Vasili stopped her before she went any further. He knew one sure way to get rid of the gratitude he didn't want from her, and short of murdering her, as had been his earlier thought, he didn't hesitate to use it.
"Before you say something you'll regret, Alex, you should know that I didn't get those horses back for you. If the worst comes to pass and we end up married to each other, I wasn't going to lose the profit they'll bring me when I sell them."
She took that news exactly as he'd expected. For a moment, he was in danger of her using the whip in her hand on him, and with a skill he wasn't likely to appreciate. He knew it. Even Lazar knew it. Vasili had never seen her more furious.
Yet amazingly, she answered him with a degree of calm, for all that each word was gritted out. "You're not selling my horses."
"I don't believe you'll have any say in the matter," he replied.
The dam broke then, her voice raised to the rafters. "I'll see you in hell first!"
He responded in kind. "You'll be putting me in hell if you don't end this damn betrothal!"
"I told you, I can't. I made a promise!"
"Jesus, women break promises every day. What makes you so different?"
"Honor," she said acidly. "Something I'm not surprised you aren't familiar with."
Having delivered that deadly insult, Alexandra stalked off. Lazar had to pull Vasili back when his fury made him start after her.
"For God's sake, let it go, before you end up with worse welts than you've already got."
Vasili turned on him, demanding, "Did you hear what she said?"
"Yes, and you asked for it, if you want my opinion," Lazar said bluntly. "What the hell possessed you to tell her you'd sell her horses?"
"That was necessary, or didn't you hear her? She was about to shower me with gratitude."
"Well, heaven forbid."
"Gratitude and hate don't go hand in hand," Vasili said, trying to explain his reasoning, but then he sighed. He even sat down in the chair Alexandra had fetched for him, suddenly exhausted. "You know, Lazar, this damn feeling I have of being trapped isn't going away."
The change in subject and Vasili's sudden deflation made Lazar wary, yet he replied, "Possibly because you're depending on your mother to now settle this matter, and you don't quite trust her to react to Alexandra as you hope."
"No, she'll be horrified by Alex, I have no doubt, so it's not that. If s as if something's trying to tell me I'm never going to escape the wench."
28
The royal city of Cardinia was a jewel in a fog-shrouded valley, glittering brightly despite its present gloomy setting. That was how Alexandra saw it from afar, and the dismal weather on the day of their arrival matched her mood perfectly. Even when the fog lifted long before they reached the first cobbled streets, and the sun actually made an appearance, her mood didn't improve.
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't be 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 was of 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."
An
d 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 was going 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 this noblewoman 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, and that reason she shouldn't have learned about at all, at least not before the wedding.