You Belong to Me Read online

  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 seeing 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 i
s 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 traveling 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.

  12

  It was a long first day on the road, exceed­ingly so. The stallion in Vasili's party turned out to be his and was a high-strung animal that refused to keep to the sedate pace of the wagons, at least during the morning. Vasili was continuously forced to ride ahead of the group and back, though Alexandra was sure a few of those rides were merely to dem­onstrate his impatience with the slow prog­ress they were making.

  Her two stallions were much better behaved. They yearned for some brisk exercise them­selves, but when denied, they didn't make a fuss about it. Even when VasiH drew abreast of her in the early afternoon, to inform her that they wouldn't be stopping for lunch or even to rest, Sultan's Pride ignored the big roan he was riding, while Vasili had to fight to keep his horse from nipping at hers.

  As for their not stopping, Vasili had deliv­ered the news smugly, and Alexandra re­ceived it with a good deal of amusement, which she managed to keep to herself. She had been informed that they needed that ex­tra time to reach the first posting house. They should have arrived by early evening. As it was now, even without the stop for lunch, they wouldn't arrive until late that night.

  It wasn't difficult for Alexandra to figure out that Vasili thought he was getting even with her for the delay the wagons were caus­ing them, but she had planned for just such a contingency. All of her people had packed food that didn't require cooking, but Vasili's group hadn't been given the same. His own empty belly wouldn't let him keep up that ploy for more than a day or two, she didn't doubt.

  As far as Alexandra was concerned, she had won the first round hands down and was feeling pleased about that, which was fortu­nate, because she needed some positive feel­ings to counteract the tight knot of misery her leave-taking was causing. Her last glimpse of her father had been all too brief, but her mem­ory of it was engraved in her mind.

  She'd paused momentarily in front of the house, where he'd been standing on the porch, but only to give him one last opportu­nity to prevent her from leaving home. She hadn't even drawn close, had remained on the road, and when it was apparent that he wasn't going to say the words that she needed to hear, she said, "Good-bye, Papa," so softly that it was doubtful he'd heard. And that had been all she'd said, no hug, no kiss, no plead­ing for him to change his mind.

  Her father had been hurt by her unforgiv­ing attitude. She'd seen it in his face before she had ridden on, and it had brought such a tightness to her chest that she'd thought she would suffocate from it. But her own hurt had forbidden her to soften and bid him a proper good-bye.

  And her own hurt was making her decide that she would never see him again after to­day. She'd get the count to end the damn be­trothal in order to satisfy her honor, but she wouldn't go back home. She'd go to England instead. That was what she should have done three years ago.

  Alexandra was tired by the time they fi­nally reached the posting house. It was late at night, just as Vasili had predicted it would be, and although she was satisfied with the way the day had gone, she wasn't going to repeat the arduous pace tomorrow.

  The wagons were supposed to delay the trip, not keep everyone in the saddle longer to make up for lost time. Besides, she didn't like her animals traveling in the dark, where un­seen potholes might crop up to cause injury. If they couldn't reach the next posting house, town, or village before dark tomorrow, they would camp beside the road, with or without her betrothed's permission or presence.

  She didn't wait for his presence now before entering the posting house. She'd been there before on a trip west to purchase one of her mares, so she knew the proprietor and took it upon herself to order the necessary number of rooms for the night. She'd be sharing hers with Nina. The men could divide the remain­ing four however they liked.

  Since Vasili would be paying the bill, she would have ordered more rooms if they had been available. As it was, with twelve in her party, he had a lot more mouths to feed than he'd counted on, and she also took it upon herself to order food for everyone. She didn't go overboard there, because she couldn't see food going to waste. But how nice it would be if Vasili ran out of money before he got home.

  She waited for the others in the common room. Nina was the first to join her there. The maid had ridden on one of the wagons be­cause she was not as comfortable riding for long hours on horseback as Alexandra was. So they hadn't had a chance to talk all day, but Alexandra wasn't all that surprised by what was prominently on her friend's mind.

  "You didn't tell me he's the most handsome man you've ever seen in your life," Nina said accusingly as she sat down at Alexandra's ta­ble.


  Alexandra raised a brow. "How do you know I haven't seen better?"

  "Because no man can be more handsome than that," Nina said with absolute convic­tion.

  Alexandra had already drawn that conclu­sion for herself, so she didn't bother to argue about it. "Is that supposed to make some sort of difference?"

  "It would to me."

  Alexandra sighed. "Nina, the man is too handsome. If you haven't realized what signif­icance that has, then I'll be pleased to tell you. It's already got you looking on him favorably again, when last I heard, you were on my side. And it got one, two, or all three of the housemaids to sleep with him last night, even though they knew he was my betrothed."

  Nina gasped. "How do you know that?"

  "Because I found all three of them crawling all over him this morning."

  "Which doesn't mean he slept with them," Nina was quick to point out.

  "No, but it proves he's irresistible to women, at least to most woman. It also proves that even if he's married, women will still be chas­ing him. Am I supposed to live with that? I don't think so."

  Nina still wasn't convinced. "Chasing doesn't mean catching."

  "But it does mean constant temptation com­ing his way," Alexandra replied. "And I don't intend to turn into a jealous shrew for any man."

  Nina grinned. "You're saying you could love him if you gave it a try."

  "I'm saying no such thing, and be quiet, your brothers are coming."

  Stenka took the chair next to Alexandra and, like his sister, skipped a greeting in order to get straight to his own complaint. "It would have been simpler and less exhausting to beat him up and warn him off, Alex."

  Timofee arrived to catch only the end of that comment. As he took his seat, he asked, "Are we going to beat the Cardinian up? We should have done it this morning, before I de­veloped saddle sores."