Awakened By The Prince’s Passion. Bronwyn Scott
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would maintain a long acquaintance with that woman.
‘How much time do you suppose I have?’ Dasha asked bluntly.
The Prince did not pretend ignorance. ‘I would not wait long. Word could come from Kuban at any time, although I would not expect it for another month. Still, by the time news comes, it will be too late to start preparing. We’ll have to be ready to move at a moment’s notice.’
He allowed her to walk in silence beside him. She appreciated the conversational reprieve. He was giving her time to ponder that news, but there must be more. He was patiently holding back, perhaps recognising either decision was daunting. To reinvent herself meant to give herself up entirely, to stop seeking answers, to stop hoping she’d wake up one morning and remember. Instead, she would have to hope she would never remember. Remembering risked discovering she was wrong. What if she woke up one day and knew with a certainty she was Princess Dasha? She’d have thrown away a chance to lead her people when they’d needed her most. That guilt would haunt her the rest of her life. ‘It is an impossible decision,’ Dasha said. They’d reached the far corner of the park where a bench waited under a tree.
The Prince sat, dusting leaves off the seat beside him for her. ‘Not impossible, just difficult. Would you like to talk about it?’
Why not talk with him? Hadn’t he, too, decided to reinvent himself? ‘How did you decide?’ Dasha sat, arranging her skirts. There were some similarities between them. He was a prince, a man of status and wealth and family in Kuban. He’d known her brothers. He’d been close to the royal family. Of the two of them sitting on the bench, he knew her life better than she did herself. He knew precisely what reinvention would cost her.
Ruslan gave her a smile. She was learning to read him. It was one of his wry smiles, the sort where only part of his mouth curved upwards. She thought far too much about his mouth. Best to look elsewhere. ‘I didn’t think about it, I just did it. When the moment came, I just kept going and never looked back. My friends needed me and, I suppose, I needed them more than I needed Kuban.’ It posed a question, perhaps as he’d known it would. What did she need more than Kuban? What was she willing to do, willing to give up?
Dasha leaned forward, the intrigue of his statement irresistible. ‘Tell me.’
If reticence had a facial expression, Ruslan was sure his face was wearing it now. Tell her? The woman who was the daughter of the man who’d imprisoned his father and caused his friends to flee their homeland? Ruslan did not miss the irony. But, he could not bring himself to hate Dasha simply because of her relationship to the Tsar, any more than he’d been able to bring himself to despise his boyhood friends, the Tsar’s sons, for the actions of their father. Neither could he overlook the importance his story would hold for Dasha. It would influence her decision, depending on how he told it. Told one way, it would encourage her to stay; told another, it would encourage her to go back. As a man of honour, he could cross neither line. He must tell it with all neutrality possible. ‘It may be unpleasant, Your Highness,’ he warned. Unpleasant for them both.
‘Much in my recent life has been unpleasant,’ she countered. Then she went on the offensive. ‘You promised to help me, no matter what I chose to do. How can I choose wisely if I don’t have information?’ It was entirely unfair to use his own words against him. He saw the steel in her then, the strength that lay beneath her beauty and her youth. Being young did not make her naïve.
Ruslan held her gaze, letting her see his own resolve, his own warning. ‘It began as an attempt to smuggle Princess Anna-Maria Petrova out of the country. Like you, she faced an unwanted marriage, but it became so much more.’ It became the largest group of people he’d ever smuggled out of the country at one time, a group that contained everyone he cared for, everyone he loved. That alone had raised the stakes considerably. ‘The four of us, the Princes you met at dinner last night, plus Illarion Kutejnikov, who is on his honeymoon, had been friends since we met at school at the age of ten. Since then, I cannot remember a time when the four of us weren’t together. As we came of age and assumed our positions in the court, Nikolay and Illarion acquired a habit of speaking out against the Tsar’s restrictive policies regarding the ways in which the noble families may serve Kuban.’
Dasha interrupted him with a hard look. ‘You are being delicate. It is not necessary. I, apparently, know precisely what the Tsar was capable of. Even his own family was not spared the opportunity to marry well for the country. Have you forgotten Captain Varvakis’s mention of my own engagement?’
Ruslan nodded. ‘I had not forgotten.’
She gave him a sharp look. ‘Good. Then you needn’t be careful for my sake.’
Ruslan continued. ‘Illarion had written a poem called “Freedom”, and shortly afterwards, his friend, Katya, who had married General Ustinov, killed herself. The Tsar blamed Illarion. Nikolay protested quite vociferously and not for the first time. One night, the Tsar sent an assassin in the form of his cousin, Helena, Nikolay’s current mistress, to Nikolay’s bedchamber. She attacked and Nikolay killed her in self-defence, but he was severely wounded and arrested. The Tsar intended for Nikolay to stand trial for treason and he was in the process of having Illarion arrested for writing libel against the crown.’
He watched Dasha take in the news, letting her digest it before he continued. ‘It was apparent Nikolay would not get a fair trial. The Tsar meant to be done with him. Stepan arranged to have Nikolay taken home to recover from his wound, but we knew we had to leave immediately. I arranged our departure. We gathered the wealth we could carry and our fastest horses, strapped Nikolay to a saddle and left in darkness.’
Even with more than a year’s buffer between him and that fateful night, he could remember it with perfect clarity. Nikolay, burning with fever, barely able to stay upright as his father hugged him goodbye; Stepan on his huge black horse with Anna-Maria seated before him, a protective arm wrapped about her; her father, looking too frail to survive the journey, mounted on one of Nikolay’s Cossack-bred warhorses. Ruslan had ferried his friends through backroads and discreet mountain passes to the borders of Kuban, spending long nights keeping watch and nursing Nikolay. When the moment had come to go forward or go back, Ruslan had known they needed him. Stepan and Illarion could not manage caring for Nikolay, watching the company’s back and arranging the rest of the journey. Arranging was his specialty, so he’d taken that step over the border.
‘Until then, had you not known you would go?’ Dasha was studying him with her green eyes, lining his story up with hers, looking for parallels and guidance.
Ruslan shrugged, thinking of the substantial wealth he’d packed for the journey. ‘Maybe. I had brought supplies with me, like the others. Perhaps I knew in my heart there was a good chance I wouldn’t return. I was prepared for either eventuality.’ There’d been nothing to return for at that point, besides vengeance. His father was dead by his own hand in prison, his mother a few weeks later of a broken heart.
Dasha’s eyes flared and he knew she understood that parallel. ‘Then I should play the Princess a while longer, regardless of how I might choose in the end? Is that your advice?’ she divined.
‘Yes,’ Ruslan said. ‘I think that is the safest course.’
‘But a short one. It does not remove my choice.’ Those green eyes were piercing, alluring. They could look into a man’s soul.
Ruslan nodded at her astute assessment of the situation. ‘Nor does it delay it.’ He gathered his words. ‘There is something more I meant to tell you last night that might affect your decision. If you go public with your presence here, as the self-proclaimed Princess, a lone survivor of a royal massacre, the Rebels will know you’re here with a certainty they may not currently have.’ He shook his head. ‘I am not so worried about that. Kuban is far away, news takes time to travel and plans take time to make. I am more concerned about that news reaching the local émigré cells. The Union of Salvation, do you know it?’