“Whyever would I do that?”
“To relieve his mind. For a while after I disappeared, he thought I was dead.”
“You mean… I’m sorry, dear, I had no idea. I was aware of your absence from England but not that George had no clue to where you were. It was assumed you had gone on a tour of Europe. But wasn’t that rather thoughtless on your part? I realize Dimitri is quite the ladies’ man, but to just run off with him—”
“I beg your pardon,” Katherine interrupted sharply, “but I didn’t happen to have a choice in the matter.”
The Duchess actually blushed. “Then I truly am sorry, my dear. And it appears I have come here under the wrong impression. I thought—rather I assumed—that you had had an affair with my grandson and that the son you came home with might be his. You see, I have heard about the child, and I had hoped, actually I still do… What I mean to say—”
“Alek is not Dimitri’s son!”
Lenore sat back, surprised by the emphatic denial. “I didn’t mean to imply… Well, yes, I suppose I did. Forgive me. But considering most women find my grandson rather irresistible, it was natural to assume… Oh, dash it all, Kate, I would like to see the boy.”
“No. I mean, he’s sleeping and—”
“I don’t mind waiting.”
“But he hasn’t been feeling well. I really don’t think it would be a good idea to disturb him.”
“Why are you putting me off? This is my great-grandson we are talking about.”
“He isn’t,” Katherine insisted angrily, not at all liking this corner she was backing into, but quite unable to think clearly in her anxiety. “I told you Dimitri isn’t his father. Why, he left me at Novii Domik for months. Do you know how many men there are at Novii Domik? Hundreds. Need I say more?”
Lenore smiled. “All you needed to say, my dear, was that you had never been intimate with Dimitri, but you didn’t say that, did you? No, and you won’t convince me you are the type to go flitting from one man to another either, so don’t bother trying. The boy doesn’t know, does he? Is that what you’re afraid of?”
“Your ladyship, I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” Katherine replied stonily.
“Very well, my dear, you win for now.” Lenore’s voice was still pleasant. She didn’t succumb to emotion the way the young so often did. Yet she was quite firm in her added prediction. “But I’ll see your Alek eventually. I won’t be denied my first great-grandchild, even if I have to bring his father here to settle the matter.”
“I wouldn’t advise that,” Katherine replied, exasperation taking over. “Do you realize how furious he would be if you brought him here for nothing. And it would be for nothing.”
“Somehow I doubt that.”
Chapter Forty
“Well?” Dimitri demanded.
Vladimir entered the dining room with considerable reluctance. “She wouldn’t accept the flowers, my lord, or your letter. Both were returned to me, the letter unopened.”
Dimitri slammed his fist down, spilling his wine and knocking over the candelabrum in the center of the table. A footman rushed forward to grab it before a fire started. Dimitri didn’t even notice.
“Why won’t she see me? What have I done that was so terrible? I asked her to marry me, didn’t I?”
Vladimir said not a word. He knew the questions weren’t being asked of him. He had heard them asked a hundred times before. He had no answers anyway. He didn’t know what the Prince had done, unless it was the same thing he had done, and Sweet Mary, how often he had asked himself how he could have been so stupid, so blind, so incredibly perverse in his judgment. How Marusia had rubbed it in and gloated, because she had known all along, while he had doggedly stuck to his misconceptions about Lady Katherine.
“Perhaps if you—”
Vladimir got no further, the footman at the door interrupting with the announcement: “The Dowager Duchess—”
That fellow got no further either, as Dimitri’s grandmother pushed him aside and entered the room. That she was quite out of sorts was obvious, though Dimitri, rising swiftly, didn’t notice in his surprise.
“Babushka!”
“Don’t you ‘Babushka’ me, you thoughtless, irresponsible man,” Lenore said tartly, slapping away the arms that tried to embrace her. “Do you realize what an embarrassment it was for me to be asked what you were doing back in London so soon when you had been here only a few months ago, and I didn’t know you were here now or then? What do you mean by coming to England and not paying me a visit, not even telling me you are here, not once, but twice?”
Dimitri had the grace to flush. “I owe you an apology.”
“You owe me more than that,” she retorted. “You owe me an explanation.”
