WindBeliever (8 page)

“He got a conk on the noggin’ and a raging headache, Lottie,” her husband reminded her.

“Nothing more. The physician says he’s perfectly fine except for the headache.”

“Which he deserved for insulting me,” Catherine told her mother.

The Tzarina threw up her hands. “I give up!” she hissed. “The two of you seem to think this is a game!” She spun around and pointed a long, narrow finger at her husband. “This man is the heir to the kingdom of Serenia, Thomas! He is the most powerful man in seven kingdoms. Your people need him. His presence here is of vital importance to us. Will you have him insulted and abused by this slip of a girl?”

“Mother …,” Catherine began in an exasperated tone, but her mother turned on her in such a way the young woman took a step back.

“We need him, Marie Catherine!” her mother shouted, eyes flaring. “He is our future. Your future!”

“The hell he is!” Catherine hissed right back. “You will never force me into marrying that son-of-a ....”

“Who said anything about you marrying him?” her father demanded, coming out of his chair in a bound. “Who told you that?”

Catherine swung her own angry glare to her father. “He told me!” she snapped. “Just before he informed me he would rather marry a sludge pig than marry me!”

“He said that?” her mother gasped.

The young woman’s lip thrust out in a pout. “Something to that effect.”

“He knows?” her father groaned, sitting down again.

“Obviously he does,” her mother sighed. A frown marred her loveliness. “Wasn’t he supposed to know?”

The Tzar shook his head. “No.” He glanced at his wife. “Not yet, anyway.”

“It’s true?” Catherine gasped.

“Now, Catherine …,” her father began only to have his daughter fix him with a livid stare.

“You were going to try to force me to marry this bastard? How could you?”

“Force is not the right word,” her mother reasoned.

Catherine’s head jerked toward her mother. “Then what would you call it, Mother?”

“It was to be only a suggestion, Marie Catherine,” her father answered. “An alliance between the two kingdoms, the two houses.”

A violent trembling took over Catherine’s body as she walked to her father’s chair and stared down at him. “Father,” she said, her voice quivering, “I would rather die a fat old spinster than WINDBELIEVER

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be shackled to that vicious, pompous, ugly excuse for a man. If you try to pair me with him, I will ...,” she looked about her, finally lifted her head and stared into her father’s worried face. “I will slit my wrists!”

“Marie Catherine!” her mother gasped.

“You find him that repulsive?” her father asked.

“I find him beneath contempt,” she informed her father. At his bleak silence, her mother’s shocked stare, the young woman lifted her chin, straightened her shoulders. “May I go now?”

The Tzar nodded, unable to speak as his daughter curtsied and turned to walk away. He followed his daughter’s straight back procession from the room.

“What now, Thomas?” his wife asked.

He shook his head. “We hope we can bring him to our way of thinking, then let nature take its course.”

“And if nature balks at the union?”

The Tzar sighed heavily. “Don’t even consider such a thing, Lottie.”

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“I’ve questioned him, Your Grace, and I find he has had such headaches since childhood.

Migraines, they are called,” the Physician informed his Tzarina. “I have given him some laudanum for the pain although he begged me not to. But I thought it best since this pain has lasted well over two days, now. He will sleep for a few hours, then hopefully the pain will have fled.”

A relieved sigh escaped Charlotte’s lovely mouth. “I was so afraid this had been caused by his fall.”

The Physician shook his head. “No, although hitting his head on the step didn’t help matters any. My guess is he would have acquired the headache in any case, Your Grace. Such maladies are usually brought on by stress and he does not appear to be in a settled state of mind at the present.”

“Stress?”

“He seems, well, agitated. Even with the extremity of his pain he seems to be fixating on some problem or another.” A slight smile touched the elderly white-haired gentleman’s lined face. “He asked if the Tzarevna was going to come back to see him.”

“Marie Catherine?” The lady’s brow lifted in surprise. “Does he want to see her?”

“He didn’t say as much, but I gather he wishes to for each time I enter his room, I find him looking up anxiously. When he sees it’s me, he appears to sigh with disappointment.”

The elegant old physician had no way of knowing Conar was sighing with relief. He had no desire to ever see the bloated cowarevna, as he had nicknamed her, again.

“Then I shall send her to sit with him and be there when he wakes,” Charlotte said, smiling.

Maybe things would work out the way they wanted them to after all?

Yuri Andreanova watched his wife hanging laundry on the line which ran from their cottage to a tall oak tree. He smiled lecherously as the pull of her arms dragged the bodice of her gown tightly over her straining bosom.

“Have you nothing better to do than ogle me, Yuri?” his wife, Raina, asked, casting him an amused look as she stooped down to lift another garment from her wicker basket.

“It’s been so long since I’ve had the chance to do so, love of my life, that I find I can not tear my eyes from you,” he answered honestly.

Raina smiled. “Did not last evening satisfy your lust, my husband?” She pinned a flannel gown to the line and then placed her hands at her hips and leaned back, stretching, aware of how the fabric covering her chest pulled even tauter across her breasts. Looking at Yuri, she saw how his face burning with desire.

Yuri pushed himself from the ground where he was sitting, his back against the aging oak, and dusted the seat of his breeches. With slow, purposeful steps, he walked to his wife and stared down into her smiling face.

God, he thought, a lump in his throat, how he loved this fragile-looking, petite woman. Her height was barely enough to reach him at mid-chest, her waist so small he could nearly span it with one hand, and this after three children, he thought with some measure of pride. Her pretty gray eyes were innocent, her coral mouth so tempting he had trouble keeping his eyes from straying to the luscious, moist flesh. Her silky black hair hung free to her small hips and her dusky complexion glowed with vitality and health.

“Do you know how much I have missed you, my lady?” he asked as he put out his hands to WINDBELIEVER

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draw her to him. “How often I dreamed of holding you in just this way?” He molded her to his huge frame and rested his chin on the top of her head. “I ache with want of you.”

Beneath the coarse material of his uniform blouse, Raina could hear the slow, steady beat of her husband’s heart, a heart so tender and gentle for a warrior of his size, she had feared for his safety every day he was away.

Her arms encircled his lean waist and she nuzzled her cheek against his chest. Tears of love and gratitude for his safe return filled her.

“The clothes can wait,” she murmured and felt his heart thud with a leap of passion. She craned her head back and looked up into his smoldering eyes. “When do you have to be at the palace?”

He grinned. “After I make love to you.”

Conar looked up to see Yuri standing in the doorway. There was a smug, satisfied grin on the warrior’s beefy face, and a cocky strut to his walk as he came to the bed.

“How are you, Your Grace?” Yuri asked.

A snort pushed its way from Conar’s mouth. “Obviously not as well as you,” he answered.

“You look like a fox who’s been set free in a hen house.”

“Or a husband well sated from an afternoon of lusty tumbling about the sheets,” came an amused voice from the direction of the bathing chamber.

Yuri glanced around, saw the Tzarevna Catherine, and his face lost its smile. His look went to Conar. He wondered at the bland expression on the Prince’s face, wondered even more when the young man’s words came out in a bored drawl.

“The cow was here when I woke up.”

“At my mother’s command,” Catherine qualified. She flung the wet washcloth that she had been told to obtain at Yuri. “Here,
you
cater to his perverse whims from now on, Andreanova.”

Her glower raked Conar. “My duty is done with your arrival.”

“And here I was just beginning to enjoy your subservience,” Conar yawned.

“Bastard,”

she

snarled.

“Bitch,” he said in a pleasant voice.

Catherine glared at Yuri. “Did you have to bring him here?” she grumbled under her breath.

“Couldn’t you have left him at the Sinisters?”

“He didn’t want to deny me the unique experience of seeing the bovine population in the Outer Kingdom,” Conar said sweetly.

“Bastard!” she gasped.

“Bitch!” he breathed out in a sweet sigh.

Yuri looked to the ceiling, flinching as the door slammed shut behind his Tzarevna. When he looked down at the Serenian prince, he found Conar McGregor grinning maliciously.

“She doesn’t like me very much, does she?” Conar chuckled.

“Like you?” Yuri snorted. “Your Grace, she can’t stand the sight of you. I’ve never seen her take such a disliking to anyone as she has you.”

“Wait ‘til she really gets to know me,” came the enigmatic reply.

Yuri’s

brow

lowered.

“What does that mean?”

“You love her, don’t you?” Conar asked, changing the subject.

“The Tzarevna?” Yuri smiled. “Everyone loves her.”

“Not everyone,” Conar reminded him.

A blush stole over Yuri’s broad face. “Can’t you at least TRY to get along with her, Your WINDBELIEVER

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Grace? You’ve already made it clear you don’t wish to marry her ....”

“I’d rather marry a hedgehog!” Conar snorted.

Yuri ignored the remark. “Trading insults is rather childish, don’t you think?”

Conar’s face narrowed. “Are you calling me ‘childish’, Andreanova?”

“If such behavior is not child-like, what would you call it?”

“Self-preservation,” was the immediate reply.

A gleam entered Yuri’s eye. “So the two of you try to outdo the other?”

Conar sniffed. “I give as good as I get.”

Yuri nodded. “I know that, Your Grace.” He shrugged. “I’ve seen you in action.”

“But she hasn’t.” Conar folded his arms over his chest. “She’s going to find herself outclassed.”

It was on the tip of Yuri’s tongue to tell the Prince it might well be the other way around, but he said nothing, instead nodding sagely at the young man’s words. It might be best to let the two of them, Prince and Tzarevna, settle the differences between them in their own way and in their own time. The outcome would prove to be most interesting.

“So,” Conar said, “what is on the agenda for today?”

Yuri looked down at the wet washcloth in his hand, seeming to see it for the first time. He looked back at Conar, lifting a brow in inquiry. When Conar shook his head, Yuri laid the wet cloth on the bedside table.

“If you are up to it, I will order a bath for you and have your clothes pressed and ready to wear when you are finished with your bathing. Then, if you like, I will escort you down to His Highness. If you are still feeling a bit under the weather ....”

“I feel fine,” Conar answered, flinging the cover back. “Against my wishes and better judgment that Healer of yours gave me laudanum for the headache.” He saw Yuri frown.

“Exactly,” Conar remarked. “It wasn’t enough to cause any harm, but I really didn’t want it.”

“I will speak to him if you’d like, Your Grace,” Yuri promised.

Conar growled with just enough anger to get Yuri’s immediate attention. “Don’t call me that, Andreanova! I detest being called that! If you can’t speak my name then get the hell out of my sight and send me someone who will!”

Yuri’s face turned white. “I could never call you by your given name, Highness!”

“Then don’t speak to me again and go find someone who can!” was the rigid reply.

“But I have been assigned as your personal bodyguard!” Yuri protested. “I know you well, Your ....”

“Don’t say it!” Conar warned, pointing a finger. “I mean it!”

Yuri groaned. Why did royalty have to be so perverse? “It is an insult for me to call you anything but your title.”

Conar glared at him. “I look upon it as an insult when you call me by that title, Andreanova!”

What was a man to do? Yuri moaned to himself. He knew better. Such familiarity would cause trouble for him with his own royalty, but if the Prince was going to be so stubborn about it....

“Conar.” The word nearly choked Yuri, but he got it out.

“See?” Conar grinned, “that wasn’t so bad, now, was it?”

“Conar.” Repeating it wasn’t quite as hard.

“Isn’t that easier to say than all that Your crap?”

“Conar.” It was a friendly name, Yuri thought.

“Don’t wear it out, Andreanova,” Conar mumbled.

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Yuri nodded. He thought he could say it without flinching too badly. He looked at his companion and saw laughter.

“You enjoy putting people on edge, don’t you?” Yuri asked. “It truly gives you pleasure, doesn’t it?”

“Living on the edge is the only way I know how to live,” Conar answered.

Yuri smiled. “The only way you
want
to live, eh?”

“Same

difference.”

Conar rummaged through the armoire where his clothing had been hung upon his arrival. He took out one shirt, frowned at it and dropped it to the floor.

The Outer Kingdom warrior shook his head. Not for the first time did he wish the Serenian Prince’s lady were still with him.

Catherine moved away from the door where she had been shamelessly listening to the Serenian speaking to Yuri.