Page 15 of Innocent in the Prince's Bed

Illarion stopped behind her, close enough to catch the light spring lilac of her perfume. ‘This is naught but an empty building to the public.’

She shook her head. ‘But once it was someone’s refuge, a place they went for privacy, where the world could not touch them for a brief while.’

There was such longing in her voice and knowledge, too, about the value of such a place. Illarion could not help but ask, ‘Did you have refuge like this in Cornwall?’

She did not look at him. Her gaze remained riveted on the ignoble etching on the wall, but a smile quirked at her lips. ‘I did. We had an orangery. It was always warm, even in the winter. I would go there and draw. In the summers, I would open the doors and sit outside.’

‘Had?’ Illarion gave a laugh. She talked as if she’d never go back. ‘London isn’t the end of the world.’

Her grey gaze swivelled to him, her voice quiet in the empty space. ‘It may not be the end of the world, Prince Kutejnikov, but it is the end of the world as I know it. Lady Dove Sanford-Wallis will not go back there. When I return, it will be as someone’s Duchess if my father has his way. I will only return to visit, never to live, never to stay. My place will be with my husband. There is no question of if I will “take” this Season, or if I will wed. The only thing left to be decided is to whom.’

She moved away from him, her back to him as she spoke as the enormity of her realisation swamped her anew. ‘The stories, the fairy tales I’d been raised on about the Season, all grew my hopes. I was so excited to come and it distracted me from what coming here really meant.’

‘And what is that?’ Illarion asked carefully. He could feel the old anger begin to stir in him, the anger that had seen him exiled from Kuban, the anger that had earned the Kubanian Tsar’s displeasure.

‘That I have a duty to my family in marrying well, and that marrying “well” is not defined by finding someone with whom one shares a mutual affection, but by finding someone who’s bloodline and title and wealth are worthy of your own. My duty is to show up at the church, a beautiful symbol of my family’s part of the alliance. A symbol!’ she spat. ‘Not a person with any free will of her own.’ Her resentment was raw, palpably new and she was grappling with what it all meant.

Illarion was struck by the irony beneath her struggle. For all the liberalism of London, for all the modernity of England, some things had not changed. Even among the glittering ballrooms of the ton with its silks and jewels, women were still slaves. The hatred of such a system flooded back to him, a reminder of how dormant his passions had been in the year since he’d left Kuban, of how he’d tried to bury them, forget them. Life was easier when one did not trouble oneself with issues of social justice. It had also proven to be emptier.

Here, in the dimness of the Queen’s Temple, he felt himself coming to life. The poet-warrior in him waking after hibernation, old habits, old emotions surfacing. He closed the distance between them, wanting to touch her, wanting to give her reassurance, protection against the reality she’d glimpsed, the anger she felt over the betrayal and her own impotence, he wanted to remind her that she was a person, with free will and real feelings. ‘Perhaps it doesn’t have to be that way for you.’ He let his voice linger at her ear, let his hands rest at her shoulders as he whispered his temptation.

‘Of course it does. I cannot shame my family.’ He heard the resignation in her tone. Despite her anger, she was a loyal daughter. Did she even think of fighting it? Or like Katya, did she feel forced to accept her fate?

‘At the expense of your own happiness?’ he said softly, urging her to think about the cost of her acquiescence. He turned her then, moving her to face him, his hand tipping her chin up, forcing her eyes to meet his. ‘It’s easy to give up that which you don’t understand. You don’t fully know what you’d be missing.’ He wanted to awaken her, wanted to give her a reason to fight. He could show her and, if she drew certain conclusions from the demonstration, then so be it. He dropped his eyes to her lips in the briefest of warnings before he claimed them.

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