‘Oh, my goodness. We could have been discovered,’ she was breathing in horror. ‘Anyone could have walked in at any time.’
Roman shook his head. He had been wondering how he could tell her what she needed to know—he just hadn’t been sure how to go about it. But now he was. There was a perfectly simple way of alerting her to the simple fact which was going to change her fate for ever. His, too. Yet wasn’t there a part of him which felt a kind of relief at the prospect that he would no longer need to marry her? No need to marry anyone.
‘Nobody would have walked in,’ he declared, with icy certainty.
She gave a nervous laugh. ‘You can’t possibly know that.’
‘Yes, I can.’
‘How?’
The stab of conscience he had all but eliminated made another brief attempt to unsettle him, but Roman quickly quashed it. Because surely her deception was far greater than his? He looked into her forest-green eyes and sucked in a deep breath.
‘Because my name is not Constantin Izvor and I am not the chief bodyguard to the royal household. I am—’
‘You are the King,’ she interrupted suddenly, her face growing as white as a summer cloud. ‘You are King Roman of Petrogoria.’
CHAPTER SIX
‘HOW THE HELL do you know who I am?’ he demanded.
Zabrina felt a flicker of pleasure that she’d taken him by surprise because surely her sudden realisation of the King’s true identity gave her back a modicum of control over this awful situation.
But only a modicum.
Keep cool, she told herself fiercely, as the train continued to rattle through towards the border which divided their two countries. Don’t let him guess at your thoughts or your feelings. Because if he does—if he does—that will give him even more power than he already possesses. If he realised, for example, that her primary feeling was one of hurt and betrayal, then wouldn’t that run the risk of making her appear even more foolish? She shuddered as she forced herself to recall her stupid imaginings. Had she seriously been considering renouncing her title and her life to live in a country cottage with him? She must have been out of her mind.
‘How long have you known my true identity?’ he questioned coldly.
She forced herself to glare at him instead of drinking in his steely beauty, which she had been doing until just a couple of minutes ago. Why, if she was capable of winding the clock back even by a minute, she would still be in that dazed place of sensual fulfilment, her body all glowing and tingly. And wasn’t it crazy that, even now, she was finding it difficult to remain immune to his physical allure? It was very difficult to concentrate on anything when she noticed he’d left the top button of his trousers undone. ‘You mean, how long is it since I found out that you’ve been deceiving me, since even before I boarded this royal train?’
‘You dare to talk to me of deception?’ he flared back. ‘When you were planning to arrive in my country to great fanfare and acclaim and then to marry me, having had sex with someone you believed was my bodyguard?’
Zabrina felt completely wrong-footed by his icy accusation, which was presumably his intention—because everything he’d said was true. She had done all those things. But it was all becoming much clearer now. When she had met the man who had introduced himself as Constantin Izvor, she had quickly noticed his autocratic bearing and had thought he was a little full of himself. Of course he was. He had been trying to behave like a commoner, when all his life he had occupied one of the most powerful positions in the region. No wonder he had struggled with humility. No wonder he had such strong traces of arrogance. She had thought that at times he seemed almost regal—because he was! Oh, why hadn’t she trusted her instincts and found out more about him, instead of taking everything he said at face value? Why the hell had she trusted him? Hadn’t she learnt ever since she was barely out of the cradle that men were selfish creatures who were not to be trusted?
‘You started it!’ she declared. ‘You started the whole seduction process!’
‘How?’
‘By telling me...’ Oh, how trite it sounded now and how gullible she had been. ‘By telling me that my skin was soft and silky—’
‘And do you respond to all men who compliment you like that?’ he snapped. ‘If, say, one of the servants had admired the colour of your eyes, would he have been allowed to put his head between your thighs and be in the position I now find myself in?’
‘How dare you?’
‘It’s a simple question, Zabrina. All it needs is a yes or a no!’
‘I shouldn’t even dignify that question by responding, because you know very well what the answer is. The answer is no, of course it is. Because I was an innocent,’ she elaborated, when he continued to look at her coldly.
‘What the hell,’ he iced out, ‘are you talking about?’
Zabrina had thought it couldn’t possibly get any worse than it already was, but she had been wrong. She looked at the contemptuous curve of his lips and a terrible truth began to dawn on her—one so awful that initially she wouldn’t allow herself to believe it. Surely he didn’t think...? ‘I was a virgin,’ she repeated—and wasn’t it another stupid side-effect of the situation she now found herself in that she should feel embarrassed about having a clinical discussion about something so personal, when in his arms she had behaved completely without inhibition?
‘Oh, please.’ His laugh was bitter. ‘We may have both committed the sin of deception, but that time has gone, and from now on perhaps we should agree to speak only the truth.’
‘That’s exactly what I am doing.’
‘I’m giving you time to think about what you’ve just said and to modify it accordingly. You were no virgin, Princess. So please don’t insult me by pretending that you were!’