Page 21 of A Throne for the Taking

Missing you so badly that it’s eating me up inside.

‘I am supposed to be your fiancée!’ she flung back.

Alexei’s slow smile mocked the vehemence of her response.

‘And right now you are doing a wonderful job of sounding exactly like the jealous fiancée I would like you to be.’

‘Jealous of what—who?’

‘Of the time I spend with my new mistresses.’

It took her several moments to realise exactly what he meant. Not real women but the demands of the kingdom, the affairs of state.

‘It was inevitable that you would be so occupied in these first days,’ she acknowledged. ‘You have so much to do. But you were wrong, you know, you didn’t need any help.’

She had been impressed at the way he had taken charge since they had returned to Mecjoria. She’d watched him go through all the ceremony, the diplomatic meetings, seen the calm dignity and strength with which he’d conducted himself. He’d handled everyone, from the highest nobility to the ordinary commoner, with grace and ease.

‘You’ve done wonderfully well—never put a foot wrong.’

A slight inclination of his head acknowledged the compliment which had been nothing less than the truth.

‘I had a good teacher.’

Now it was her turn to frown. But then her expression changed abruptly as she met his eyes.

‘I’ve done nothing,’ she protested.

‘The people want to see you,’ Alexei countered. ‘They love you and so do the press.’

‘It’s the Romeo and Juliet element—our “romance”—’ She broke off abruptly as he shook his head almost savagely.

‘You’ve been at my side every day. You’re a link to the old monarchy and you’ve lived in Mecjoria all your life. People value that.’

Was he saying that he valued it too? Her heart ached to know the answer to that question.

‘Who else could I ask this of other than someone like you?’ His hand cupped her cheek, dark eyes looking down into hers in a way that somehow made this so personal between the two of them, not just a matter of state. ‘Someone who loves Mecjoria, who belongs here.’

‘You belong here now!’

Too late she heard that ‘now’ fall into a dangerous silence. One that came with too many memories, too much darkness attached to it. And she knew that he felt that way too when his hand fell away, breaking the fragile contact between them.

‘I know you never wanted to come back to Mecjoria.’

‘Ah, but there you couldn’t be more wrong,’ Alexei put in sharply. ‘Why do you think I was so furious when we got thrown out? Why I hated what had happened to us? This was my father’s homeland. I wanted to be accepted here. To belong here. And I grew to love the countryside—the lakes, the mountains.’

His eyes went to the windows where in the daylight those mountains could be seen, rising majestically against the horizon, so high that they were always capped with a layer of snow, even in the summer.

‘That was what got me hooked on photography. I wanted to capture the stunning beauty of Alabria. The wildlife in the forests. It was my father who gave me my first camera. That was the one thing I managed to take with me into exile.’

Exile. That single word spoke of so much more. Of love and loss and loneliness. Particularly when she was remembering those photographs on the walls of his office. The ones that had made him his fortune, built his reputation. Their stylised bleakness could not have been in starker contrast to the gentle beauty of the forests and lakes, the animals that had first made him want to capture their images.

‘Do you still have that camera?’

He didn’t use words to answer her. Instead he gestured to a heavy wooden chest of drawers that stood against the wall. Only now did Ria see the well-worn leather camera case that stood on top of it, its plain and battered appearance at odds with the old-fashioned ornate décor of the rest of the room. Her heart clenched, making her catch her breath.

‘Your father would have been proud of you.’

Something in what she had said made his mouth, which had relaxed for a moment, twist tightly, cynically.

‘Now,’ he said roughly. ‘He would have felt very differently about the son he had while he was still alive.’

‘You didn’t exactly get a chance.’ Honesty forced her to say it. ‘The court is hidebound by archaic rules and protocols. They can take years to learn if you haven’t grown up getting used to them. And it was so much worse ten years ago. Even now it’s bad enough.’

Alexei’s smile was wry, almost boyish, reminding her sharply of so many occasions from the past. ‘And have you any idea how many times I’ve checked you out at some moment this week when I’ve needed to know exactly what the protocol was?’

‘You have?’ She had never noticed that. And the fact that he would admit to it stunned her.

‘Like I said—I’ve had a good teacher.’

‘I wish I’d done more in the past. I could have helped you then.’

‘Your father made sure you had no opportunity for that,’ he commented cynically. ‘He had his plans for you even then and nothing was going to get in the way. Particularly not some jumped-up commoner from an inconvenient marriage he had thought was long forgotten.’

‘You think that even then...?’

She fought against the nausea rising in her throat. It was worse than she thought.

‘I know.’

Alexei’s nod was like a hammer blow on any hopes that things were not as bad as she had feared. A death blow to the dream that Alexei would not want to take the revenge that he was justified in seeking.

‘If it had not been Ivan, it would have been someone else. Whoever offered him the greatest chance at being the power behind the throne.’

‘Anyone but you.’ It was just a whisper.

‘Anyone but me.’

And there it was. The real reason why she was here. What was it people said—don’t ask the question if you can’t take the answer? She’d asked and so she had only herself to blame if the answer was not what she wanted to hear. And how could she want to hear that her place at Alexei’s side, the link to the old monarchy she brought with her, provided the perfect revenge for all that Gregor had ever done to this man, the inheritance he had deprived him of? The father. The homeland.

‘Tell me.’ Alexei’s voice seemed to come from a long way away. ‘Could you really have married Ivan?’

Even for the country? She had once thought that she could but now, in the darkness of the night, she couldn’t suppress the shudder that shook her at just the thought.

That was why her father was still in jail, Alexei acknowledged privately as he watched the colour drain from her face. All the investigations he had carried out since returning to Mecjoria had only proved even further just what sort of a slippery, devious cold fish Gregor Escalona still was. The man who had plotted his downfall and his mother’s ruin would sell his soul to the devil if the price was right. He was not about to let the bastard out of jail until he was sure that he had control of him in other ways. And that control came through Escalona’s daughter. With Ria at his side, as his wife, he had an unassailable claim to the throne. Surely even Gregor would think twice about staging a palace revolution when it would harm his daughter?

Though even that was something he still couldn’t be sure of. Gregor had always been a cold and neglectful father. That was one of the reasons why Ria had sought out his friendship back in the past. They had been—he’d thought—two lost and lonely youngsters caught in the heartless world of power struggles and conspiracies. The sort of conspiracy in which Gregor had shown himself to be quite prepared to use his daughter to his own advantage. Signing the treaty with Ivan was evidence of that.

Which was why he had to marry Ria—another reason why he had to marry her, he admitted. He wasn’t going to let Escalona near her until she was truly his wife. Only then could he protect her from being forced to marry Ivan in any counter-revolution to gain the crown. It was the thought of her married to Ivan that had pushed him into the proposal from the start—but now the thought that she might have been pressured into marrying a man she so obviously feared reinforced that already steel-hard resolve to make her his queen.

Whatever else Gregor had done wrong, the way he had raised his daughter had prepared her so well for the role she would fulfil. He had been sure she would be an asset to his claim to the throne and she had proved herself in so many ways.

But of course they weren’t married yet. And until they were he wasn’t going to let Escalona anywhere near his daughter.

But when an ugly little question was raised inside his head, demanding to know just what made him any different from the bullying father who would have pushed her into a forced marriage without considering her feelings, he was uncomfortably aware of the fact that he didn’t have an answer to give, not one that would satisfy even himself.

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