Page 57 of Innocent in the Prince's Bed

‘I don’t know.’ He held the door for her and gestured to the backstairs. ‘I suspect it depends on you.’ And it did. She’d wanted her independence and now she had it, if she was brave enough to claim it. She’d never understood until tonight how difficult it would be to do that. Taking responsibility for her decision meant accepting the consequences of it too. She could not blame her future happiness or disappointment on anyone else but herself.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The issue of what to do with Dove, what to do for Dove, had kept Illarion awake the rest of the night. The problem with virgins was that there was always a ‘next’. One could not make love to an innocent and walk away. Had Dove realised that yet? He could not walk away from her, even if he wanted to, which he most certainly did not. Did she understand how hard it had been last night not to give her advice? To keep from telling her to refuse Percivale? To choose him instead? If he had told her to after they’d made love, she would have done it. But that was not what he wanted for Dove. He didn’t want her to feel marriage to a man was her only choice. That cut against the grain of all he stood for and it made him a hypocrite. It also gave him extraordinary pause. He wanted to marry Dove? How had that slipped into his consciousness? He knew how. It was all Nikolay’s fault. Nikolay and Klara with their incessant hand holding and moon eyes showing him a different sort of marriage was possible.

Illarion headed downstairs to breakfast, hoping food would clear his mind. Nikolay and Klara proved that marriage could be more than alliance. Their happiness proved that he was right. Marriage could be about love with the right person. Lucky for them, they’d found the right person. Dove might be the right person for him, but that begged the question, was he the right person for Dove? Marriage to him might be more of a sacrifice than marriage to Percivale, depending on how one weighed the costs; one more reason why he didn’t want her to feel she had to choose between the two of them.

Illarion stepped into the breakfast room to find Stepan and Ruslan already there. He offered them a brief smile and turned to fill his plate with fresh blini and berries.

‘Sleep well?’ Stepan scowled over his coffee mug.

‘Good morning to you, too.’ Illarion helped himself to cold salmon and took his seat. Ruslan’s gaze slid between the two of them in anticipation and Illarion frowned. Oh, hell, Stepan knew.

‘I hear your muse was here.’

Illarion did not care for the implication in Stepan’s tone, that Dove was something less savoury than an inspiration. ‘I will thank you to keep a civil tongue in your head when you speak of Lady Dove.’

‘I will thank you to keep a civil cock in your trousers!’ Stepan banged a fist on the table. The china tea cups jumped. Illarion did not. ‘A Cossack may do as he likes, but he must take responsibility for his actions.’

Illarion met Stepan’s outrage with the blue steel of his gaze. He rose from his chair, hands braced on the table. ‘How dare you quote the Kubanian motto to me. I know it full well. Do I not take responsibility for Katya? Do you think I don’t take responsibility for Dove, never mind that it was she who came here?’ He was, however, going to have words with the footman. Dove deserved her privacy. ‘Do not sit there and act as if I played the rake.’

Stepan shook with barely contained fury. ‘You made love to a virgin, the daughter of a duke, in this house. Do you know how many rules you broke?’ All of them. He knew precisely how many rules he’d broken. He’d do it again.

Ruslan intervened. ‘No one knows, Stepan.’

‘The footman knows,’ Stepan responded tersely. ‘Do you know how this will look if word gets out? It won’t do our reputations any good. What do you mean to do about this? Are you willing to marry her?’

‘If she’ll have me,’ Illarion replied boldly. The words were as much of a surprise to him as they were to Stepan.

‘If she’ll have you? She’s already had you.’

‘She can’t marry him,’ Ruslan interrupted. ‘He’s not respectable. It’s all over White’s. Heatherly and Percivale have been talking.’ Ruslan shook his head. ‘It’s just rumours this time. But what they’re saying is not exactly untrue.’

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