‘What makes you sure I’ll come back?’ She let her eyes linger on his face, her voice low. She was flirting with him as he’d flirted with her, with private words and lingering glances.
‘You didn’t quite get what you came for, Miss Grigorieva. You’ll be back. Did you want to wait until next Thursday or perhaps you’d like to try again sooner? I have an opening on Monday.’
‘Monday? That’s three days away,’ she answered the challenge with a bold confidence she didn’t feel. This man had a way of pushing her off balance at the most unlooked for moments. What did he think she was hunting? She hardly knew herself. ‘How about Saturday in the park?’ she countered. ‘We will ride. You can bring Balkan. Call for me at two.’ She paused. ‘Unless you’re worried I might get the rest of what I came for.’
He grinned, a wicked warrior’s smile that sent a most unladylike tremor all the way to her toes, despite her usual dislike of arrogant men. He seemed to be an exception. ‘I’m not the one who should be worried, Miss Grigorieva. Two o’clock Saturday it is.’
* * *
‘You should be worried, Nik. I don’t like the sounds of this at all,’ Stepan counselled at dinner that night. The four of them—Illarion and Ruslan, Stepan and himself, all royal expatriates of Kuban—were pushed back from the table, enjoying vodka and sampling some of Stepan’s latest samogon—the Russian version of an Englishman’s John Barleycorn. Drinking together was their nightly ritual, an attempt to recreate something from their old life in Kuban, to create something of their own, something comfortable in this new world they were learning to navigate.
Nikolay shoved his glass forward for more. Klara Grigorieva had disturbed him on more than a political level. She disturbed him on a sensual level, too, something, he might add, which had not happened in the time since they’d left Kuban. He thought his last, nearly fatal run-in with a woman had resolved his susceptibilities to feminine charm. Apparently not. The man in him wanted to pursue her, but the warrior in him counselled caution, as Stepan did. For now, he was happy to let his friends debate the issue for him.
To his right, Illarion, always the romantic, argued leniency. ‘We might just be paranoid. The girl’s not Russian, for one, not really. She was raised here. Nik says she doesn’t even speak the language. It’s hard to believe she’s invited into her father’s counsels or that she has any interest, like most of these English girls.’
‘Unlike most English girls—’ Stepan tendered his rebuttal ‘—her father is indisputably Russian. He’s an ambassador. It is his job to represent Russian interests in England.’ Stepan had become their unofficial adahop during the months they’d been in London, the one they all turned to for advice. ‘If anyone is supposed to be loyal to one’s country, it’s the ambassador.’
Therein lay the true concern. Perhaps the ambassador would be loyal enough to see a renegade prince, wanted for royal murder, returned home.
This had always been the risk; that Kuban would want him back and that the Kubanian Tsar would not be willing to settle for having his number-one troublemaker out of the country. Nikolay was starting to regret the group’s decision to not learn more about the Russian situation in London. The four of them had decided it would be better to simply go about their lives and let the ambassador come to them if he was interested in London’s four newest Russian citizens. It had been an easy choice. There had been much to do in resettling.
The strategy had worked. To date, the ambassador had been uninterested. Today, that had potentially changed. Unless Klara was only what she seemed: a riding pupil, another English girl looking for ways to fill her long, empty days until she married. But the scenario didn’t suit the woman he’d seen in the riding house. In his gut Nikolay knew that wasn’t a legitimate assumption. She had not ‘seemed’ only a riding pupil today. Whatever she’d wanted from him, she’d wanted it badly enough to swallow her pride. He’d not missed how much it galled her when he’d shouted to keep her heels down, or to check her pacing. She might be there to ride, but she was there for something else as well.
Across the table, Ruslan, always the diplomat, seconded Stepan’s advice. ‘You have to admit it looks strange; the Russian ambassador’s daughter, who is already an exceptional rider, shows up asking for lessons? Why? Especially given your circumstances.’ Ruslan looked around the table at each of them. ‘We are all awkward expatriates.’
They were indeed, especially if a condition of expatriation was ‘voluntary’ relocation. Nikolay wasn’t convinced even a loose definition of voluntary applied to him. His choice to leave hadn’t been much of a choice at all when his other option was facing imprisonment and trial for a murder that could be couched as treason, a trial he might not win. He’d argued against the traditions of the kingdom once too often. Whether the charges against him held was not the issue. The Tsar had reason to make sure that they did. There’d been plenty of occasions when he’d clashed with the traditional-minded Tsar, but this last time, blood had been spilt. When his friend, Prince Dimitri Petrovich, a man who had abdicated his title in Kuban in order to claim a bride forbidden to him under Kubanian law, had written asking him to see to his sister’s safe passage to England, Nikolay had jumped at the chance as much out of the deep bonds of friendship as for his own personal benefit.
Dimitri’s request had come at a time when Kuban was no longer safe for him, as it was no longer safe, in varying degrees, for the other three men who sat at the table with him. Stepan Shevchenko; who had helped him escape the Tsar’s dungeons in a very literal and perhaps unforgivable sense; Illarion Kutejnikov, whose only claim to fame before he’d used his poetry to protest Kubanian marriage practices was that a cousin had been a general during the recent wars; and Ruslan Pisarev, who might or might not have been involved in a questionable underground operation to help people leave the country. Ruslan’s knowledge in escaping Kuban without detection certainly indicated he might be guilty as charged. They could make no claim to Kuban now, except for perhaps Ruslan, who might be the one who found a way to return some day.
For now, all four of them were homeless princes abroad in a strange land, living off Dimitri’s good graces. The first months they’d arrived in England, they’d stayed in the country with Dimitri and his English wife, Evie. But they did not want to overstay their welcome, not with Evie expecting a baby. Their friend had a family of his own. They needed to strike out for themselves. But even that bit of independence was a misnomer. The four of them had come to London, thanks to the generous loan of Dimitri’s London residence, Kuban House, a loan they were all keenly aware couldn’t last no matter how much Dimitri insisted it could. Eventually, they would have to find homes of their own. But for now, it was all they had, a very new concept to Princes who had once owned palaces and summer homes that far exceeded their need.
Former Princes, Nikolay supposed. He had to get used to thinking of himself that way. Or perhaps not? Could one ever be a ‘former’ prince? The term ‘Prince’ was nothing more than an honorific now. They had no palaces, no land, none of the trappings that made them princes. They’d left it all behind in the hopes Kuban would make no claim on them.
The question was whether or not Kuban had let them go. Would Kuban come after them, or was London far enough to outrun the arm of Mother Russia? That was the question he saw mirrored in the eyes of his friends as he looked around the table. Was the lovely, sharp-witted Klara Grigorieva the advance scout for a larger scheme to drag the Princes home? If so, was that net truly after all of them, or just after him? He was the only one with official charges against him. Until he knew for sure, how he chose to handle Miss Grigorieva could affect them all. For the sake of his friends, he needed to know what he was up against.
Nikolay swallowed the samogon and pushed back from the table. ‘I’ll ride with her on Saturday. If she’s truly setting a trap, then cancelling the appointment