‘Where’s Tate? Shouldn’t this be the butler’s job, Anna-Maria?’
‘I beat him to it, and it’s Anna, as I’ve told you before,’ she reprimanded him with a smile that she knew made the most of the dimple to the right of her mouth. The few boys in Kuban she’d been allowed to meet had thought her smile was her best quality. She hoped the young gentlemen in London would, too.
Stepan didn’t. Perhaps he didn’t even notice it. ‘Your name is Anna-Maria and has been since the day you were born.’
Anna shrugged and gave a toss of her dark curls. ‘I prefer Anna, it sounds more English.’
He noticed that. His dark eyebrows winged upward at her reasoning. ‘Why ever would you want to be more English?’
She put her hands on her hips and faced him squarely. ‘Perhaps for the same reason you cut your hair.’ In Kuban, he’d worn his hair longer like Nikolay and Illarion. They had kept theirs, but Stepan had cut his immediately upon arrival. It had now grown to the point where he could pull it back as he did today.
‘What would that reason be?’ Stepan’s grey eyes narrowed. He did not like being challenged or forced to reveal anything private.
‘To fit in, of course,’ she answered honestly. Then she grinned. ‘And because it’s more exciting. Anna-Maria is a nun’s name. Anna is more sophisticated.’ She pronounced it with a short A—Ahnnah. It sounded foreign, but not too foreign, she thought.
Stepan gave her censorious look. ‘Being more exciting is hardly what your brother wishes for you.’
She made a face. She knew that all too well. Dimitri, well meaning as he was, would keep her hidden in the country for ever if he had his way.
Stepan made to move past her to the stairs, his wet greatcoat draped over one arm. ‘If you will excuse me, I will go and clean up before supper.’
‘No, I don’t think so.’ She stepped in front of him, her skirts brushing his leg. ‘You’re not going upstairs until I have a smile from you.’ Did she imagine he stepped back? She pressed forward again, her hands playfully gripping the lapels of his jacket. ‘I’ve decided, you must pay a toll,’ she teased.
Stepan’s jaw tightened. ‘What might that be?’
She tried another smile. ‘You must answer my question.’
‘And if I don’t answer?’
‘Then I get to guess.’
‘Very well, you may guess. Quickly, though, I don’t want to catch a chill. A few minutes ago you were concerned about that.’ He was impatient in his barely restrained intolerance.
Anna forged on. She wasn’t oblivious. He was dismissing her, swatting her out of the way as if she were no more than an irritating fly. The sentiment sat poorly with her. She wanted to shock him into paying attention to her, to prove she wasn’t an annoying fly. She said the most outrageous thing she could think of. ‘Were you with your mistress?’
His grey eyes went flinty, his expression stern with reprimand as he removed her hands from his lapels. ‘That is hardly a ladylike guess,’ he scolded.
‘I know you all had them in Kuban. I’m not a child,’ she protested.
‘I know,’ Stepan growled. There was something dangerous in his tone as he made to move around her, but she was entrenched now. This had become about more than goading a smile from him. She would have his acknowledgment and she would have it now. Determined, she countered his move, blocking him at the foot of the stairs.
‘You have to answer. Am I right?’ she challenged, although a piece of her didn’t want to be right.
‘Where I was is none of your business and you’re wrong. I never agreed to answering. That was your rule alone.’ He moved again. This time she let him pass. She wasn’t in a mood to play any more. Anna watched his departing back march up the stairs, shoulders as straight and as unyielding as ever. Her mind worked over its own answer. Did Stepan have a mistress? The others had taken lovers by the scores in Kuban. Their affairs had been legendary. She’d used to overhear them talking with Dimitri late at night when she was supposed to be tucked up in bed, safely out of earshot. None of them would have dared to mention anything of that nature to her directly. But Stepan? If he’d had a mistress, he’d kept it very quiet.
She preferred not having abject proof of such a liaison. Stepan was hers, had always been hers in a way the others had not. Any one of them would have fought for her, but it had been Stepan who had come for her the night they escaped. It had been Stepan who had taken her up before him on his big horse and wrapped his cloak and his arm about her and galloped off into the darkness. She had not been afraid. There was never a need to be afraid when Stepan was with her. He was her constant fixture, always there.
Anna wandered into the library. Not much had changed since Kuban in that regard. Stepan was with her still. The others had married and gone their own ways; Nikolay was in London with his riding school, Illarion and Dove still away on their never-ending honeymoon travels, and Ruslan was who-knew-where. She suspected Stepan knew, though. He was their unofficial adahop, their leader. He knew everything. She stared absently at the fire, her thoughts focused inward. It had not bothered her to lose the others. She’d been happy for them, she’d been swept up in their romances and their weddings. Her dashing ‘uncles’ deserved true love in the new lives they’d fashioned for themselves. But in all fairness, she didn’t feel that charitable towards Stepan. She’d never thought about losing him that way, that one day he’d find someone.
It wasn’t that she didn’t want Stepan to marry and have a family of his own, it was simply that she’d never thought of him doing it, of leaving her. Perhaps he already had. Who did he see in London when he wasn’t here with them? How did he spend his days? His nights? Did a pretty Englishwoman already hold his heart and his attentions? Anna wished she had not spoken those hasty words out loud on the stairs. They’d conjured up a host of new, unsettling thoughts and she couldn’t stop thinking about their implication: one day Stepan would leave her.
He should leave. It was the one thought Stepan returned to time and again over the excellent roast beef supper that night. He could rent a house of his own—perhaps he could even contact Preston Worth about renting his house with the caves beneath it in Shoreham. Wouldn’t that be convenient, to smuggle vodka from a prevention officer’s own home? The risk-taker in him rather liked the idea. But then, he’d be dining alone and these suppers at Dimitri’s would disappear.
Stepan took another swallow of the wine, an exquisite, full-bodied burgundy, and surveyed the table. These were occasions he loved to hate or was it hated to love? Each night Dimitri and his wife, Evie, served a piece of paradise; warmth and security presented in a delicious, hot meal and comfortable conversation with local guests. Every aspect of the meal was a reminder of what his life would lack without Dimitri. This was not a scene he could replicate on his own. He had no family other than the one Dimitri had adopted him into two decades and one year ago. Ever since he was ten, he’d basked in the borrowed light of Dimitri’s familial glow. To walk away from that was no small thing, but neither was his sanity.
Tonight, dining with the Squire’s family was no exception. Perhaps he even felt that glow more keenly given the direction of his thoughts. While there was a price for leaving, there was also a price for staying: watching Anna-Maria dazzle the table every night, constantly bracing himself for her sudden appearances like the one in the entrance hall today, a feminine ambush of smiles and silk coming down the stairs or popping into a room at any time, conjuring up reasons to spend hours a day away from the house, knowing that Anna-Maria was oblivious to all of it.
Stepan filled his glass again. Why shouldn’t she be oblivious? He was twelve years her senior. He’d known her since she was born. He’d seen her skin