She had frozen, all colour leaching from her face, staring at him as if he had suddenly turned into a hissing, spitting poisonous snake right before her eyes.
‘How the hell...?’ he began but she shook her head wildly, loosening the elegant hair style so that locks of it tumbled down around her face. He could see how her eyes shone, the quiver of her lips that seemed to speak of some powerful emotion only just held in check, but every inch of her slender body was tight with defiance—and rejection.
‘You may be king,’ she declared, focussing on him so tightly that it seemed as if there was no one in the room but the two of them. ‘And perhaps you can order people around—order their lives around for the fun of it! But you can’t control people’s hearts. You can’t dictate the way I think—the way I feel! You can’t force me to—’
But that was too much to take.
‘Force? What force have I used?’
But she wasn’t listening, launched on her stream of thoughts, flinging her fury into his face without a hint of restraint or hesitation.
‘You might be able to command that I do as you say and I will have to obey you with a “yes, Your Royal Highness. Anything you say, Your Majesty”.’
Her elegant frame dipped in the most flawless—and most sarcastic—curtsey ever delivered. That was, unless you remembered the one she had given him on the night she had come to his room, when the blue silk nightgown had billowed out at her feet, forming a perfect pool of silk on the floor around her. Alexei’s groin tightened at the memory of where that had led but he had to fight the impulse, knowing that it would distract him too much. And he didn’t need any distractions, not if he was to work out just where everything had gone wrong—and think of some way to put it right.
‘You can even make me marry you—but you can’t command my heart. You can’t force me to love you!’
Love.
Things might have moved rather faster than he had intended, the careful plan he’d decided on rushed and confused at the last moment, but he could swear that he had never said anything about... Why would she mention love? Why would it even be in her thoughts unless...?
‘Who the hell said anything about love?’
Her only response was a swift, startled widening of her eyes, the sudden sharp biting down of her teeth onto the softness of her bottom lip in a way that made him wince in instinctive sympathy.
They couldn’t talk like this, not with every ear in the place tuned to what they were saying, hanging on to every word. For a second he considered grabbing hold of Ria’s hand, taking her out of here—on to the terrace, into the garden—but one glance into her face had him reconsidering. She would fight him all the way, he knew that, and they had already created enough of a fever of interest to be the talk of the country for several years or more.
‘Everyone out of here.’ His hand came up to brush off the murmurs of concern. ‘Now.’
He might get used to this king business after all, Alexei reflected as everyone obeyed his order, moving out of the room at his command. Even though they all hurried to obey him, it still took far longer than he had anticipated to empty the room and shut the doors behind them. It seemed an age before he was alone with Ria, and she was itching to get out of here; he could see that in her eyes, in the uneasy way she moved from one foot to another, nervous as a restive horse.
But she had stayed, and he had to pin his hopes on that.
What the devil was he going to say that didn’t make her throw up her head and run? There was only one place to start. One word that was fixed inside his head, immovable and clear.
‘Love?’ he said, still unable to believe that he had heard her right. ‘Did you say love?’
Had she? Oh dear heaven had she actually made the biggest mistake ever and come out with it just like that—in front of everyone here? Ria could feel the colour flood up into her face, sweeping under her mask, and then swiftly ebb away again as she heard her own voice sounding inside her head.
‘You can’t make me love you!’ She flashed it at him in desperate defiance, fearful that he might take advantage of it, use it against her.
But somehow he didn’t look quite how she expected. There was none of the anger, none of the coldness of rejection, nothing of the withdrawal she had thought she would see in his face if she ever admitted to the way she was feeling.
‘I wouldn’t even try,’ he said and his voice was strangely low, almost soft. ‘You’re right, love can’t be forced. It can only be given.’
Was she supposed to find an answer to that? She tried, she really did, but nothing came to mind. Her brain was just great, big empty space, with no thoughts forming anywhere.
‘But you did try to force it.’
‘Is that what you thought I was doing?’
He raked both hands through his hair, pushing it into appealing disorder. The movement knocked the mask sideways slightly. And, as he had done earlier in her room, he snatched it off and tossed it to the ground.
‘I thought I was proposing. Let’s face it, I never really asked you to marry me—we just agreed on terms.’
We didn’t exactly agree, Ria was about to say, but something caught on her tongue, stopping her from getting the words out. She was looking again at that shockingly unexpected proposal. The sudden silence, the gaping crowds, and Alexei on his knee before her.
The man who had been so convinced that Mecjoria wouldn’t want him, that the nobility would reject him as they had once done ten years before, had taken the risk of proposing all over again, of opening himself up in front of everyone here tonight. He’d risked his image, his pride, his dignity—and what had she done? She had thrown the proposal right back in his face.
‘I tried to set you free tonight. I knew I couldn’t tie you to a marriage to me in the way that it was going to be. I couldn’t trap you like that, cage you—force you into sacrificing yourself for the country. I had to let you go, no matter how much I wanted you to stay. I had no right to impose those terms—any terms on you at all.’
‘But you reinforced those terms so clearly here tonight.’
‘Did I?’ Alexei questioned softly. His eyes were deep pools in his drawn face. She couldn’t look away if she tried. But she didn’t want to try.
‘My father...’
‘Your father was here tonight as a free man. Did you see any chains?’ he questioned sharply. ‘Any armed escort?’
‘No.’ She had to acknowledge that. ‘Then why?’
‘I wanted to give your family back to you. I know what it feels like to be without a family.’
It had happened to him twice, Ria remembered. When he had been brought to Mecjoria, supposedly to spend the rest of his life with his father and mother reunited at last, only to have his father die suddenly and shockingly and then to have his parents’ marriage thrown into question so that he was rejected by the rest of the royal family. Again when he had had his own family, with Mariette and baby Belle. That too had ended in tragedy.