“Concern, little one? You will understand if I find that difficult to—”
“Dimitri! What did he do?”
He shrugged. “He was responsible for my being stranded in a snowstorm, which cost me a month and a half in bed. During which time, I might add, you conveniently left the country.”
“Is that all?” she asked in relief. “He didn’t wound you or anything?” At his black scowl, she smiled weakly. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to make light of… A month and a half? That must have been a dreadful cold.” His scowl grew worse. “Well, if you must know, I didn’t leave the country, not until this summer anyway.”
“The devil you didn’t. I had people looking for you everywhere, woman. I had the Embassy watched, the Ambassador followed, his servants bribed—”
“But he was telling you the truth, Dimitri. He hadn’t seen me. Oh, I did go to the Embassy when I left your house, but before I could see the Ambassador, I met Countess Starov. She is such a nice woman and so easy to talk to. When I mentioned that I was in need of a place to stay for a while, she very generously opened her home to me.”
“You don’t think Vladimir was so lax that he didn’t have you followed that day, do you?”
“On the contrary,” she retorted. “That was exactly why the Countess suggested I exchange clothes with her maid. I left the way I came in, with no one the wiser, and I spent the remainder of the winter with Olga Starov. Do you know her? She’s such a dear lady, if a trifle on the eccentric side, and—”
“Why did you feel you had to hide from me? Do you know I nearly went out of my mind worrying about you traveling in that weather?”
“I didn’t hide,” she protested, only to correct herself. “Well, perhaps at first I did. I was—” No, she wasn’t going to admit that she was afraid that if she saw him again, all her firm resolutions would fall by the wayside, not to mention that her condition would have been exposed. “Let us say I was still quite angry over—over—”
“Yes? My using you? My lying to you? My being in love with another woman?”
The caustic derision in his tone scalded her. Hot color seeped into her cheeks. Had she really believed all of that? Hadn’t she suspected on the day he had shown up at Brockley Hall, making her panic and race off to London, that he wouldn’t have been there if he loved another woman?
Think about it, Katherine. You haven’t been able to face him these last weeks because you knew you might have been wrong. You also knew he would be furious with you for keeping Alek from him. You were afraid, pure and simple.
But not once had she thought he might love her. She had relegated that possibility to the realm of make-believe. Could such dreams come true? But she was forgetting his reaction when he had learned the truth about her identity.
“You didn’t want to marry me, Dimitri. You were enraged when you thought you would have to. You were so angry you left the city. Do you know how that made me feel?”
“For an intelligent woman, Katya, you show a marked lack of sense sometimes. I was angry with myself, not you. That very night, before I knew who you were, I told Vasili I had decided not to marry anyone if I couldn’t marry you. And the irony is that less than a month later, Misha came home with a wife and a son.”
“But I thought—”
“We all did. But he wasn’t dead. And his return freed me from my obligations. I could have married you then, Katya, regardless of who you were. But that night of the ball, all I could think about was how I had wronged you and how you couldn’t possibly forgive me. I was appalled by my own behavior, especially since I had seen the truth in Nastya’s portrait of you but stubbornly ignored it just so that I could retain a measure of control over you. To admit who you were was to risk losing you, and I couldn’t bear that. But I lost you anyway.”
“Dimitri—”
“Lady Katherine, Alek’s cheeks are turning pink,” Alice interrupted. “Do you want me to move to the shade, or should I take him home now?”
Katherine groaned inwardly, glaring at the woman, wanting nothing more than to throttle her for bringing Alek this close to his father. But Dimitri barely spared the nurse and child a glance. He simply looked at Katherine questioningly, as if he assumed—what, she didn’t know. However, before she could say something, answer the nurse, give him some lie or even the truth, Dimitri must have thought over the nurse’s question and reached the truth on his own.
He turned sharply, fixing his eyes on Alek with an intensity that paralyzed Katherine. Then he took the boy away from the nurse, staring at him, noting every little detail, and Alek stared back quietly, fascinated as always by something new. And his father was certainly new to him.
“I’m sorry, Dimitri,” Katherine said in a small voice. “I was going to tell you when I joined you in St. Petersburg. I really was. But after what you said on that first day, I decided to wait, and then…after the ball, I was too upset, angry, and—and hurt. I wanted to marry you, but not if you felt youhadto marry me. And—and I wasn’t hiding from you. After several months had passed and you didn’t find me, I went out often. I even passed your house. But I suppose you had already left the city.”
He glanced up at her only then, to remind her, “Looking for you.”
“I realize that now. But at the time, I gave up, deciding it was for the best that we didn’t see each other again. So I came home as soon as Alek was old enough to travel. You have the right to know about him. I’m not denying that. And I would have written to you to tell you. But you showed up here so quickly. I was only just settled in, home only a month.”
“When I couldn’t find you here, I returned to Russia. And when I still couldn’t find you there, I came back here. I could think of nothing else to do. But you have had ample time to tell me since I arrived. I have called on you daily.”
“I know, but—I was afraid.”
“Of what? That I would take him from you? That I would be angry? Katya, I am overjoyed. He is—he is incredible! The most beautiful baby I have ever seen.”
“I know.”
She couldn’t help smiling at the pride in his eyes as he put his cheek to Alek’s and gently squeezed him close before handing him back to the nurse. “Take him home,” he told the woman. “My man will escort you, and your lady will return shortly.”
