Royal Renegade (34 page)

Devlyn wasted no time getting to Sherbourne House, but the butler told him stiffly that Her Highness was out. All day. And all night. Behind the butler, however, was Devlyn's favorite greedy footman, grimacing in quite a horrible way and pointing toward the mews behind the house. A few minutes later the panting footman met him in the alley. He wouldn't speak, however, until his breath was restored by a couple of guineas.

"She really is gone, Your Lordship. She's staying the night at the countess's place in Surrey. A party in the pavilion there. The royal duke is in attendance."

Another sovereign produced the direction of the manor house and the footman's fervent good wishes. "And if you and the princess have need of a head footman, your lordship, you remember me, will you?"

Only after locking up all the silver, Devlyn thought. He stopped at his home only long enough to saddle Ciardi, then headed out of town. His head was whirling in quite a dizzying manner, and he couldn't get hold of his thoughts enough to develop a proper speech. He'd never really expected to get to this point, and of course he'd never proposed to anyone before. But surely Tatiana would make it easy on him, throwing herself into his arms in her impetuous way, telling him with kisses just how happy he had made her.

Such thoughts warmed him, but were not entire proof against the early snow that started falling before he reached the outskirts of London. He hunched down into his fur-lined coat and surprised himself by longing for Lisbon, where the winters were mild. At least Tatiana would feel at home tonight.

Dusk came early to this overcast day, and as he approached Sherbourne he could see lights blazing in the pavillion attached to the back of the house. It was too early for the dancing to have begun. The guests were doubtlessly preparing themselves sartorially for the evening as the servants prepared the hall. But, after he settled his horse in the stables, he rejected the enticement of the warm house and crossed back to the formal gardens behind. The countess would not welcome him to her party, but a maid might be bribed to take a message to the princess.

But even as he was testing the French doors leading to the conservatory, Devlyn heard behind him the soft tread of boots on snow. With the telepathy of a lover, he knew only Tatiana would be out on this snowy evening. Even as he turned, she whispered, "Michael," and he heard the anguish in her voice and crossed the distance between them in a few strides to catch her in his arms.

Chapter Twenty

Turnip oil, Tatiana had assured her maid, was an old Russian manicure secret. So Monique hied off to the kitchens, ready to try anything to mend the princess's once elegant nails, now bitten nearly to the knuckle. But as soon as the maid rounded the corner of the hall, Tatiana snatched up a dark green Kashmir mantle and escaped down the backstairs to the garden. Only solitude could give her the resources she needed to face the next few days—and the rest of her life.

In the shadowy garden, snowflakes settled on the late-blooming orange and yellow mums lining the path to the lighted pavilion. Tatiana drew a great tingling breath, almost missing Russia and the austere cleansing winters she'd so long lamented. Well, at least she had done her part for Russia, although she knew better than to expect anyone there to thank her for her sacrifice.

Unobserved, she stopped beside one long pavilion window to watch the servants prepare for the rout opening the long weekend of celebration of the royal betrothal. The officious caterer stood in the center of the parquet dance floor, his posture slumped, his hand laid dramatically across his forehead. As servants bustled about him with displays of flowers and brimming punchbowls, his mouth moved in an inaudible but no doubt tragic soliloquy about the impossibility of catering a royal ball out here in the backwoods.

The travesty of celebration to begin in a few hours was for her, the renowned Princess Tatiana. Like the virgin selected as a sacrifice to the angry gods, tonight she would be honored; tomorrow she would stand alone at the edge of the volcano. .

At least the agonizing debate was done, and she knew some relief that she couldn't turn back. Now Tatiana just had to live the rest of her life with the memory of what she had given up. Renouncing Michael might have been the only moral choice. But when she recalled the despair in his eyes at the realization that she was lost to him, she knew she would never forgive herself.

As she turned back to the house, she saw him: a man, just on the edge of the light spilling from the pavilion, testing the latch of the French door to the conservatory. For a burglar, he was distinctively attired, with a dark blue cloak flung back from his fine shoulders. She wondered dizzily if she had conjured him up out of pure longing, for surely Michael would not have risked all to come out here, not on the eve of her betrothal to the royal duke. But in the reflecting candlelight, the snow glinted so on his dusky curls. "Michael," she whispered, and he let go the latch and turned. She saw joy dawn in his eyes, the same joy that dawned unwanted in her heart. Then he crossed that separation and caught her up in his arms.

Tatiana tasted the texture of him: the rough wool under her cheek, the slide of his leather glove against the back of her neck, the reassuring solidity of his chest. She could not breathe. His cloak fell over her and she was in the circle of his warmth, just as on that distant day in the balloon, when he had kissed her with this same fever. Her treacherous lips opened under his, and her eyes closed, for the love in his cloudy eyes left her dizzy.

It took all her resolve to twist away, so she had none left to fuel her flight. As if he sensed her ambivalence, Michael kept a possessive hand on her arm as he brushed the snow off a low stone bench and guided her to a seat. She drew herself up straight, clenching her fists at her sides, trying at least to appear brave until her bravery could return.

But Michael undermined her meager resources with a shake of his dark head. "No bonnet, no gloves. Tatiana, you court death by frostbite," he chided, capturing her hands between his own. He looked lighthearted, as she had never seen him, as if all his problems were solved. He must have decided to toss his principles to the wind and become her
cher ami
after all. But the realization left her bleak. Couldn't he accept that their destinies were always to be alone? Now she would have to hurt them both by refusing the little bit of love he could offer her.

"So you wish to recant." Her voice sounded curiously flat in the crystalline twilight, and some of the light left his eyes.

But he distracted them both by unclenching her fists, finger by finger, and then rubbing some warmth into her hands. "Recant? As a heretic does? Oh, I've committed a raft of sins of late, but heresy hasn't been one of them." Michael's voice was wry, tinged with laughter. She glanced up at him through her lashes, unwillingly intrigued by his mention of sin. Encouraged, he bent his head closer to hers, so that she could feel his words stir her hair. "Tatiana, I've come to take you away."

"Away?" she repeated. She had a vision of their proud balloon carrying them away to that little French cottage, where they could cobble shoes and make cider and no one would pay them any mind at all. "It's just a dream," she whispered, for her nights had been filled with exactly that longing vision.

The touch of leather glove on her cheek was smoother than his hand would have been, a caress tormenting in its tenderness. "Not so far away as a dream, my love. Just home."

Home. Her mind could do nothing but echo those lovely, impossible words—away, home, love. Such impossible hopes he inspired with his heartbreaking words. She tensed under the inadequate armor of her mantle and edged away from his touch. But she could feel his inquiring gaze. He must be puzzled, she thought distractedly, for he wouldn't expect resistance after her shameless proposition last night.

She closed her eyes, searching within herself for that center of strength that had sustained her since she left the Tower. But she found only an aching awareness of his nearness, his quiet breathing, his sudden wariness. "Tatiana, look at me."

With a gentle hand, he tilted her chin up and regarded her steadily. She tried to shutter her expression but knew she had failed. From their very first encounter, Michael could read her heart in her eyes, and now he would search out all her secret dreams and hopes and offer her every one.

Tenderness led his hand to cup her cheek, and he traced her lip with his thumb. "Are you frightened? You needn't be. I just want to ask you to share your life with me. For I need you to share mine, you know, or I'll have no life to share."

Her breath caught in her throat. She could not look away from his loving eyes, but she couldn't answer him either. She was paralyzed with longing, with dread. The longing she understood, the dread she could not explain.

Then, in the resonance of that snowy evening, she heard other seductive pledges—her father's promise, "We'll send for you in the summer;" Peter Korsakov's whisper, "I'll speak to your uncle;" her own brave prediction, "I shall be free!"— pledges creating visions of love and liberation that flickered as she approached and then vanished altogether like the mirages they were. Share your life with me

"I can't," she whispered. She remembered Buntin's unspoken warning—if you speak the words you'll never be able to call them back. "You know what you want can't be. I won't have you ruin your life, and I won't give Napoleon more ammunition against my nation and yours. So stop plaguing me."

"Plaguing you? By loving you?" Confusion made him brisk; he tugged her hood up over her hair, tied the trailing ribbons under her chin, folded her hands in her lap, and tucked the mantle edges under her legs. When she was swaddled like a baby, he kissed a snowflake off her cheek and murmured, "Don't you know, my darling, how much I love you? And if you love me too, and I know you do, my life will be complete."

"I do love you," she said in a broken whisper, "too much to destroy you."

"Ah, Tatiana, if you knew how I've longed to hear those words—"

"Michael, listen to me!" She had to struggle to get her hands free of the enfolding mantle, but finally, breathing hard, she pushed at his chest until he withdrew a few inches. Only then could she complete the declaration that broke her heart. "I have considered this endlessly. Endlessly. And there's no answer but to give you up. I can't ruin your career and your reputation and force you into exile—and I can't let the alliance founder at this critical point, just for my own happiness. And so it's because I love you so much, so"—her voice faltered here, and she closed her eyes tight to hold back the tears—"so very much that I can't let you do whatever it is you are planning to do."

"I am planning to marry you."

As those words penetrated Tatiana's awareness, she was obscurely glad that his intentions were as honorable as he. And she had to wrench her refusal like a dagger from her heart. "I wish—oh, you know I wish that we could. But the whole world—" The thought was too inchoate to complete, but she shivered, hearing the stomp of hobnail boots on snow, the thunder of cannons across the vast steppes.

"My brave darling." She couldn't resist anymore the comfort of his arms, and rested her aching head against his chest. "Those damned politicians, putting an innocent girl in the center of a war. What a time you've had of it, with me twisting one arm and Bonaparte and Wellesley the other." His voice was soft, muffled against her hair. "But it's all over. We can be married immediately. The regent has offered his chapel for the wedding."

Pulling away, she had to repeat the words out loud to translate them into meaning. "The regent has offered his chapel for a wedding? He has given his consent? But—Cumberland is here—the announcement will be made official tomorrow!"

"I'm afraid it won't." An unfamiliar mischief danced in his eyes. "Though the dreary duke doesn't know it yet, he has just jilted you."

Hope flickered through her like a flame, chased by an extinguishing draft of fear. "Don't, please." She covered her eyes with her fists, for otherwise he would see how he had frightened her with his seductive visions.

"You don't understand, Tatiana. I've taken care of everything. Everything is fixed." His voice was gentle, the hand that slipped under her mantle to touch her shoulder caressing. "You have only to say yes, and we can be together always."

He was so loving, so tender, that she almost forgot all her brave resolutions to forgo his love. But the memory of her struggle brought with it a fierce anger, the only emotion that could conceal her sudden fear. She dropped her fists to the level of his chest and glared at him. "What do you mean, you've taken care of everything? That's so like you, Devlyn, to—to manage everything without even asking me first. As if I were an idiot, as if I have nothing to say about my own future. Can't you see I've had enough of being ordered about and dictated to? Well, I won't do it. I won't say yes to your bullying."

Her unexpected assault succeeded where her brave refusals had failed. Instinctively he drew back, and raised that invisible guard that he had dropped when he fell in love with her. She knew him too well; she could feel him holding his breath, then slowly letting it out. He rose from the bench and brushed the snow off his cloak, his motions deliberate and his expression opaque as he studied her. He'll leave me in peace now, she realized with a tangle of anguish and resignation. But he didn't leave. His restless hand kept brushing at his wool sleeve although it was bare of snow now.

Then, suddenly, he dropped to his knees before her, disregarding the dusting of snow on the flagstones. Catching up her hands, he brought them both to his lips. He knelt there for a moment, his dark head bowed as if in prayer. Then finally he said softly, "No, Tatiana, I won't go. You can try and try, but I won't go away. For I love you, and I know you love me, and I know you have been through the same hell I have. I don't understand entirely what you are afraid of, but I won't let it drive us apart.