‘According to you, I will need all the practice I can get,’ he shot back, the ice in his tone taking the temperature in the cabin down ten degrees or more. ‘A commoner jumped up from the gutter, with no true nobility to speak of.’
‘That was Ivan, not me!’ Ria protested.
‘Ivan—your prospective husband.’
She knew he was watching for her instinctive shudder but all the same she couldn’t hold it back in spite of knowing how much she was giving away.
‘But there is some truth in there—so there’s another reason why this marriage will work out,’ Alexei continued coldly. ‘I can give you the status and the fortune you want...’
Ria opened her mouth in a rush, needing to tell him that she didn’t want either. But a swift, brutal glare stopped her mid-breath.
‘And you—well you can be the civilising influence I need. You can teach me how to handle the court procedures—the etiquette I’ll need to function as king.’
He almost sounded as if he meant it. Was it possible? Could he really be feeling a touch of insecurity here—and being prepared to admit to it? There was no way it seemed possible. But that twist to his mouth tugged on something deep inside her.
‘But you grew up at court—for some years at least. You must have learned...’
‘The basics, perhaps. But most of it I have forgotten. I didn’t exactly see any use for it in the life I’m living now. And, as your father was so determined to point out, I was never really civilised.’ The bite of acid in the words seemed to sear into Ria’s skin, making her rub her hands down her arms to ease the burning sensation. ‘Not quite blue-blooded enough.’
‘Well, I’m sure you’ll remember it quickly—without any help from me.’
‘Ah, but I’m sure I’ll pick it up faster with you at my side—as my partner and consort. My wife.’
‘I won’t do it.’ She shook her head violently, sending her hair flying around her face.
Another lurch of the plane, more violent this time, made her stumble. She almost expected to hear the sound of shattering dreams falling to the floor as the movement coincided with the loss of all those hopes she had once had for the word ‘wife’ coming from this man.
‘You can’t make me.’
‘I won’t have to. You’ve done it to yourself already.’
As Ria watched in stunned disbelief, Alexei seemed to change mood completely, subsiding into his seat again and relaxing back against the soft, buttery leather.
‘Let’s see now—where shall I begin? Ah yes—the eruminium mines.’
She knew then what was coming, acknowledging an aching sense of despair as she watched him lift one long-fingered hand and tick off his points across it one by one. All the arguments she had ever brought to bear on the subject of his possible accession to the throne, all the reasons she had given why he had to take the crown, to prevent Ivan doing so, to protect the country and to avoid civil unrest. They were now all repeated but turned upside down, twisted back against her, landing sharp as poisoned darts in her bruised soul. Alexei used them to provide evidence of the fact that she had no choice. That she had to do as he demanded or prove herself a liar and a traitor to everything she had held dear.
And break her mother’s heart and health—possibly her mind too—if she left her father mouldering in his prison cell, as she had feared she was going to do when she had failed to bring Alexei back with her.
She had no choice. Or, rather, she did have a choice but it was between being trapped into this marriage and honouring the contract her father had made with Ivan. An arranged marriage to a man she loathed and feared. A man who made her skin crawl. Or a cold-blooded union to Alexei who would give her a marriage without love. A marriage with no heart. A marriage of shattered dreams.
‘Do I have to go on?’ Alexei enquired.
‘Don’t trouble yourself.’ She dripped the sarcasm so strongly that she fully expected it to form a pool at her feet. ‘I think I can guess the rest.’
She couldn’t see any way out of it. He had tied her up with her own arguments, left her without a leg to stand on. Looking at him now—at the ice that glazed his eyes, the cold, hard set of his face—the momentary hesitation, if that was what she had seen earlier, now seemed positively laughable. She had to have been imagining things.
‘Good, so now we understand each other. I said sit down, Ria.’ One lean hand pointed to the seat she had vacated.
Fury spiked, making her see sparks before her eyes.
‘Don’t order me around, Alexei! You don’t have the right.’
‘Oh, but I do,’ he inserted smoothly. ‘That is, I do if I am to do as you want. As king I can command and you...’
‘You’re not king yet.’
‘Perhaps not, but we are approaching Mecjoria.’ A nod towards the window indicated the way that the deep blue of the sea over which they had been flying had now given way to a wild coastline, a range of mountains. ‘Any moment now we will be coming in to land. You should sit down and fasten your seatbelt.’
Was that the quirk of a smile at the corners of his mouth? Knowing she was beaten, Ria forced herself forward, dumping down into the seat with her teeth digging hard into her tongue to hold back the wave of anger that almost escaped her. Focussing her attention on snapping on her seatbelt, she addressed the man opposite with her head still bent.
‘I had it wrong earlier, Alexei. You don’t need any practice, you have the autocratic tyrant down pat—absolutely perfect. No need for anyone at your side to support you or to instruct you in any of the etiquette needed.’
‘Perhaps so.’
His tone was infuriatingly relaxed, disturbingly assured.
‘But you know as well as I do that the one way to settle this accession situation once and for all and to bring peace to the country for the future is to have someone with an unassailable right on the throne. Mecjoria rejected me once—what’s to stop them doing it again? But you as queen will bring that unassailable right along with you. You can choose to give it to me—or to Ivan.’
Choose. There was the word that hit home, sticking in her throat like a piece of broken glass.
She didn’t have a choice. She had set out on this mission to make sure that Ivan didn’t become king—and that she didn’t have to marry him. She’d achieved one aim but only by painting herself into a corner to do it. Alexei would be king, if she married him. She could escape the loveless arranged marriage to Ivan only if she agreed to a different one with Alexei.
Out of the frying pan and into the fire.
The way that the plane swayed and jumped, turning into a new course, and the change in the sound of its engines brought home to her the fact that they were circling, ready to approach the airport and the runway on which the jet would land very soon.
This plane will land there, if only to let you off... Alexei’s words came back to haunt her. But that does not mean that I will disembark as well.
Marriage to Ivan or marriage to Alexei? She knew which one was better for the country—but right now she was thinking on a very personal level and that made everything so very different. The thought of both marriages made her shudder inside, but with very different responses.
One was a sense of cold horror of being tied to a bully like Ivan. For the other, the instinctive fear she was a prey to blended with a shiver of dangerous, treacherous excitement. The memory of last night and the rush of raw, carnal response that had flooded through her when Alexei had taken her in his arms, when he had kissed her, made it impossible to think beyond how it might feel to know that again.
The marriage would be a pretence but that would be real. She wouldn’t be able to hide the hunger she felt or even attempt to disguise it.
‘You call that a choice? You know I can’t let Ivan take the crown. The results for the country would be so appalling.’
‘And how do you know that I will not be as bad?’
She could only stare at him, asking herself the same question and finding no answer for it. She knew about Ivan’s alliances with dangerous governments, his profligate habits, his cold nature, but the reality was that she knew nothing about Alexei other than the reports in the papers she had read. But she did know that like her he wanted to make sure Ivan didn’t inherit.
‘For me or for the country?’
‘I thought we had agreed that we were largely irrelevant in this. It is the future of Mecjoria and her people that matters. It isn’t personal.’
But he had made it personal with this cold-blooded proposition.
‘It certainly isn’t personal. It’s dynastic necessity, pure and simple.
‘You don’t need to look as if you’re facing imminent execution, Ria,’ Alexei continued dryly. ‘I’m not a monster. I don’t expect you to take your marriage vows as soon as we land. For now all that I ask of you is that you take your place as my promised bride. My devoted fiancée,’ he added pointedly. ‘No one must doubt that this is a real relationship. A whirlwind romance perhaps, but very definitely real.’