Love Me Again (6 page)

“Do you know how much I would like at this moment to take that beautiful throat of yours into my hands and snap it?” His voice was a vicious whisper brushing her ear.

Again, she tried to push away from him, with as little success as before. He had no trouble controlling her. Despite the diminutive struggle between them, they moved together with faultless grace, no one being the wiser to the battle being waged on the dance floor. She bit her lips as she tried to blink her tears away. The feel of him, the scent of him, was suffocating her. She stumbled as the room faded out of focus for an instant. Christina was almost grateful as his arm immediately tightened about her, holding her steady and safe. She was going to faint; she just knew it.

Then she felt his smooth cheek against hers as he whispered into her ear, his low voice lulling her, “Steady, lark. I have you. You have never fainted in your life. Have you become so fainthearted, then?” And then those magical lips of his barely brushed her temple as he drew back.

Fainthearted?
She almost laughed out loud in bitterness.

Not about to let him see any weakness on her part, she mustered her age-old anger, and it helped to steady her once more. “You are so right, your highness. I have never been fainthearted. If I had, I would have stayed in Austenburg and been made an object of pity by your people. I would have let you make a whore of me. If I were
fainthearted
I would have shot you the day you forced me to sign those papers of divorce!”

“Damn you! You know I
had no
choice!” he gritted out between clenched teeth.

The sweep of a turn was taken with a bit more force than she could handle and she had to hang on to him or lose her balance and stumble.

“Everyone has a choice, your highness. You made yours. Then I made mine. How is the Archduchess Eugenia?”

“Dead,” he told her brutally.

She gaped up at him. “I'm sorry; I hadn't heard.”

“Why should you have? You haven't been in Austenburg in over six years.”

“How did she die?” She did not really want to know, but she didn't know what else to say.

“Childbirth.”

Her heart hammered. “And do you now have your heir?”

“A daughter.”

“I'm sorry.” He now had a child, but not by her.
He has given another woman his child, planted his seed deep into another womb and watched as it grew and grew. He has done this with another woman and not me!
Her thoughts had no coherence as she strove for some sense of stability in the room spinning around her.

“Why? She's beautiful and healthy. I could wish for no more.”

Christina stared at him, bemused. She didn't know whether or not to be hurt by this revelation. He had always wanted a son by her. Had he loved his late wife so much that he was satisfied with a mere daughter? Her throat burned on her next question. “Did you love her?”

“No. I love you.” He smiled coldly down on her, his eyes a wintry accusation. “Every time I looked at her I hated her because she wasn't you. Every time I fucked her I,” He snapped her back against him when she tried to push away. His breath rasping in her ear, he repeated slowly, viciously, knowing that his vulgar language was intolerable to her gentle sensibilities. His satisfaction was immense as he continued to distress her. “Every time I fucked her I thought of you. And I fucked her as often as I could, Christina, morning, noon and night. The day she was declared pregnant I never touched her again. I couldn't bear to touch any woman. All I wanted was you. Just to have heard your voice alone would have soothed me. But, instead, like the coward I never knew you to be, you ran when it became too difficult for you. Well, what about me, Christina? Where was I supposed to run when the nights were so bleak I wanted nothing more than to put a gun to my head and end my misery? Where were you then? Fucking Sergei? Fucking this stranger you now mistakenly call husband? If you had only trusted me! If you had only loved me enough to know that our love is forever, then all these wasted years would never have been. We would be together again. Married and complete in each other as we had always wanted. But you didn't trust me, did you, Christina? If only...” His voice cracked and faded away into a hostile silence.

Christina's whole body turned to ice.
If only.
But it could never be, not only because of this new life she had single-mindedly patched together for herself and the husband she was now sworn to, but because never would she trust Varek again. Their love had been too deep, too obsessive at times. He had owned her body and soul. And God help her but she secretly wanted it all back again! Held close in Varek's powerful arms, she could no longer fool herself, and it only made her angrier.

For the first time she looked him square in the eye and hissed, “No, I can't trust you, Varek! You say you had no choice in what you were forced to do. Very well, I understand this, and still I can hate you for it. Yes and yes again, I understand it! Is that what you want? Do you want my forgiveness, too?
That,
you will
never
have. Do you know why, Varek? Because
I
was given no choice in the matter! It was
my
life you were debating. Did it never occur to you that perhaps I would have preferred to take my chances and stay by your side? It should have been
my
choice, too, Varek. But I was just a piece of property to you that you didn't want damaged. Well, you got what you wanted. I am alive and I am whole and I am happy with my life. You can't have everything, Varek, no matter how powerful you think you are.”

His eyes were a blaze of conflicting emotion: rage, confusion, and fear. “So my failing is that I loved you too much? Is that what you are saying, Christina? That I should have told them all to go to hell and continue on in our own little fantasy world? And then what? When you were dead in my arms, I was just supposed to shrug and say, ‘Bring on the next bride!'” He gave a harsh, dry laugh. “God, how I wish to hell I had. It seems I should have been the selfish bastard and just cared about how much longer I could take you to my bed before the choice was taken out of my hands completely!” His fingers dug painfully into her side as he bent his face to within a mere breath's distance. His chilling glare stripped her soul bare. “And it probably matters not a whit to you, that when you were no longer sharing this world with me, I would have had no choice but to follow you? Is that where our selfishness should have taken us, Christina? Instead of the hope of a future together someday, we would have had nothing left to share but a grave?”

Christina just stared at him, her mouth open in horror. “You wouldn't have!” she gasped.

He looked down on her impassively. “As you just said, we all have choices. If anything had happened to you, I would have first tracked down the animal who had killed you, then I would have joined you, Christina. In life or death, we belong together.”

Christina found herself drowning again. She couldn't even imagine Varek dead, cold in the ground, his vibrancy snuffed out. “Varek, don't you see that you read our fates wrong? We weren't meant for each other or none of this would have happened.” She was almost stuttering, grabbing at straws now.

“Our fates are still intertwined, you little fool, don't you see that? Why else would you be here? Why else would I be here? But fate is a fickle bitch; I'll grant you that. After all, the most peculiar things can happen when you least expect it.” He sounded almost bored, his musing gaze studying Robert as they flashed past.

Having noticed whom he was watching, Christina couldn't believe what she was hearing. “Are you threatening my husband, your highness?”

Varek's eyes were anything but bored or impassive when he looked directly into her startled gaze.
"I
am your husband, Christina. Tell me that you don't see my face when he lies above you. How often do you have to convince yourself that you love him? That you are happy in your safe, dull little world? So, tell me, lark, who are you trying so strenuously to convince, me or yourself?” His smile was brutal as he stared her down, his whole demeanor as possessive as if he had thrown her down on the floor and claimed her body physically.

When she tried to pull away again, he jerked her flush against him and she shivered as his warm lips brushed her ear, his moist breath caressing the sensitive skin. Against all her will, her body responded.

She tried to shut out the feel of his voice as it whispered hotly in her ear. “Now that you've been in my arms again, do you really want to be anywhere else? You can't deny it because your body won't let you. Is your body weeping for me even now? If my fingers were in you right now, would they be dripping with your essence?” His cheek brushed her with a tender caress. “My God, lark, I need to come home.” This last anguished whisper was a stark testament to his pain.

Thankfully, the music ended and after a long, tense pause, he slowly let her go. His face was an impassive mask as he watched her, waiting for her decision. When she stumbled slightly his hand shot out to steady her, the warmth of his palm searing her through the thin silk of her glove. Almost blindly she shrugged him off, and reluctantly he released her. How she stood standing she would never know. Her life was disintegrating about her feet as he gave her a bow, his searing gaze compelling her. Just the sight of him, standing there before her, so beautiful and golden and powerfully lithe, almost brought her to her knees. Her eyes slid closed as the room tilted under her feet. When she opened them again, he was gone.

Christina looked around in a daze and when Robert materialized at her side, she was barely aware of him. Varek's insidious words were all too true. She had always belonged to Varek, ever since she had first seen him when she had been an ungainly child of eight. It was still indelibly fused on her memory how he had taken her hand and kissed it so gallantly, his gaze even then a force that could not be denied. From that moment on she knew no one would ever take his place in her life. She had loved him with an unswerving devotion that had years later turned into a consuming passion, and she had been one of the fortunate few whose love had been returned with equal fervor.

The love of a lifetime. A love such as the celebrated troubadours through the ages had glorified. And it had ended just as all those fabled legends had, in tragedy.

But, she wasn't that same person anymore. She didn't belong to Varek anymore,
or did she?

Reaching out blindly, she grabbed hold of Robert's arm. Her anchor in a world gone suddenly insane. Without a word spoken, they turned as one and headed for the nearest escape, ignoring the curious stares following them.

Sergei hung back and studied Varek as he watched Christina disappear, the archduke's steady gaze narrowed and resolute. Sergei could tell by the tension radiating like heat from his body, that letting her go, again, was the hardest thing he had ever done in his life.

When Varek soon followed the fleeing couple out into the night with a leisurely stride at odds with his stiff posture, Sergei sadly wondered what fates his old comrade was planning to tilt at next.

Robert stared at his wife's back as she sat at her dressing table, brushing her waist-length hair. She had barely spoken a word to him since they had left the ball. He swallowed his trepidation and finally broke the silence.

“Do you want to tell me about it?”

Their gazes met in the mirror. Her eyes were huge with shadowed secrets. After a moment she slowly shook her head. “I can't,” she whispered. “Not right now, Robert.”

He clung tightly to his patience. He was scared as hell and she wasn't helping by not sharing this with him. He could tell she was deeply shaken by what had happened tonight. Girding himself, he asked with an unaccustomed harshness, not knowing if he really wanted to hear her answer, “Do you still love him?”

Christina set her brush down with deliberate care, carefully avoiding his intent perusal. “No,” she lied, resentful that this was happening. She wasn't good at dissembling, no matter how important it was. She just prayed Robert wouldn't demand that she look him in the eye and repeat it.

Feeling the tension in the air behind her, she turned around and faced him. Both were strained to their respective limits of endurance as they stared at each other, both pairs of eyes shuttering their innermost thoughts from the other. Christina felt a stab of pain, for Robert did not deserve this from her, but she was afraid that if she spoke to him of Varek she would confess everything, even of the muddled feelings battering at her disoriented mind and body at this very moment.

The reserved front he was struggling to hold on to slipped, and Christina saw the pain beneath the mask. When he turned away from her to sit on the edge of the bed, she stood up and wandered, with hesitant steps, to her side of the bed. The mattress lay between them like a battlefield. “I do love you, Robert.”

His back was still to her as he asked stiffly, “Do you? Truly?”

She hesitated for the merest second, before answering quickly, “Yes.”

Was she in love with Robert? Compared to what she had shared with Varek, the answer was a resounding no. But, that wasn't the only kind of love that existed between two people. There was the love of sharing, the love of ... friendship ... of companionship. The love that two people shared with their child. As if in a daze, she leaned over and blew out the candle on the bedside table.

Pulling the covers down on their bed, Robert climbed in then held out his hand to her. Her smile expressed her relief as she slid in beside him, sighing with contentment when his arms pulled her close. There were no words spoken as they lay together, her head pillowed on his shoulder. Her eyes drifted closed and her roiling emotions soon became a distant hum as his fingers hypnotically stroked her temple, soothing her exhausted emotions into a deep, dreamless sleep.

Breathing in her subtle scent, Robert stared up into the darkness as he continued to stroke her brow. The only sound in the room was the soft whisper of her breath, a mere sigh in the moonlit stillness. His arms tightened about her when he remembered the sight of her in her former husband's arms. Over his many years in the King's Regiment, serving as an aide to Wellington, Robert had fought in many a campaign, losing some and winning most; however, he knew he was now facing the greatest battle of his life. Hell, if he was Varek, he would fight without honor to get her back and keep her. Unfortunately he knew that the archduke already had a very major advantage in this battle.