Page 206 of Snowbound Surrender
Anne had not expected the words to be so difficult to say, but there was a ringing silence in the room after them.
Maxim rose to his feet. “Y-Your…”
She nodded. Well, she had come this far. “I was…seduced, I suppose you could say, when young. A soldier, passing through our town. My father has raised her as his own, and borne my disgrace with silence. Maxim, I was no innocent when you met me.”
CHAPTER 10
Maxim’s jaw fell open.
Had he heard those words correctly?
“Meredith is my daughter.”
Mind utterly overwhelmed, thoughts rushing around his brain, it was not possible to untangle them into rational understanding: but he could feel.
Dread, confusion, anger: they swept through his body like a cold winter wind. As Annika stood there, staring at him as though waiting for a response, he could do nothing but stare.
Everything that he knew – or thought he had known, more accurately – about this sweet, gentle, charming woman…
His eyes raked over her, looking for a sign that she was lying. But no; everything before this moment had been the lie.
“Daughter.” That was the only word he could manage, and it appeared that Annika was just as overwhelmed as he was. Without speaking, she nodded.
She was a mother! That caring, nurturing nature, of course it had to come from somewhere. Annika was a mother. Meredith was her child!
He could never have guessed, but now that he knew, there was a certainty in him that he should have guessed. They wereso alike. Neither of them had mentioned their mother, and…had Annika ever described Meredith as her daughter?
The realisation that he was not about to wake up from a nightmare came over him, and Maxim felt nausea rise in his stomach. Nothing but deep shock could feel like this. How was it possible to keep this from him, after all they had shared – after the passion they had experienced in the bed just feet from him?
True, he had his own secrets, but he had always said he had a hidden past. Nothing he could tell her would be as dramatic as this.
Annika’s eyes had not left his, and he watched her hands come together and clench nervously. She feared him, or at least, feared his reaction. And she was right to be. Only now did their conversation about Miss Emma Tilbury, the mistress of the Earl of Marnmouth, come into focus.
Of course, she had argued in her favour. Was there very much difference between them, really?
His gaze was caught by the bed in the corner of the room, and Maxim swallowed down the sadness that suddenly rose. He had not been her first. The pleasure he had given her had, perhaps, not even compared to what she had experienced with this, this,soldier.
“Wh-Why did you not tell me sooner?”
His splutter was genuine, but Annika narrowed her eyes as though he had attempted to accuse her of espionage.
“I did not have to tell anyone,” she said defensively. “And after all, ‘tis not purely my secret. It belongs – belonged to Meredith too. I have no wish for my child to be judged wherever she went, haunted by the mistakes of her mother.”
Maxim shut his eyes, as though not being able to see Annika would help him to understand her better. Child, mother, they were simply not words he could ever have imagined coming from her lips.
And then something struck him and his eyes snapped open. “She does not know?”
“Of course not,” Annika snapped, some of that fire returning to her voice. “What sort of monster do you take me for? I would not put that on a child, not an innocent who has known nothing but kindness and acceptance. I have allowed her to live an…an ordinary life. She has a much older sister. That is all she knows.”
“Much older sister?” Maxim blurted out, hardly able to take the mocking laughter from his tones. “Annika, you are…you are an unmarried mother! God knows where her father is, and you think that I, a Czar, could marry a ruined woman?”
Annika’s cheeks darkened, but her voice was forceful as she said, “I am not a ruined woman!”
Maxim laughed drily and threw up his hands, almost falling into the chair behind him. If she was going to be so unreasonable…
“I made a mistake!” Annika stepped forward, but stopped after a few steps, evidently unsure of herself. “A mistake that I am sure countless other women have made – and the mistake was thinking that he loved me. I do not regret Meredith, I could never regret her!”
A curl of regret tied itself around Maxim’s heart. “I did not say that – ”
