gone on over the inheritance of the throne once old King Leopold had died. First Leopold’s son Marcus had inherited, but only briefly. A savage heart attack had killed him barely months into his reign. Because he had died childless, his nephew Felix should have inherited the crown, but his wild way of life had been his undoing, so that he had died in a high-speed car crash before he had even ascended to the throne. Now there were several factions warring over just who was the legal heir to follow Felix.
‘And then when Felix died … My father is currently seen as an enemy—as a threat to the throne.’
She wasn’t telling the full truth, Alexei realised. There was something she was holding back, he was sure of it. Something that clouded those amazing eyes, tightened the muscles around her delicate jawline, pulling the pretty mouth tight, though there was no mistaking the quiver of those softly sensual lips.
Lips that he wished to hell he could taste, feel that trembling softness under his own mouth, plunder the moist interior …
‘It will all work out in the end.’
Once again his own burning inner feelings made the words sound abrupt, dismissive, and he saw her blink slowly, withdrawing from him. Her head came up, that smooth chin lifting in defiance as she met his stare face-on.
‘You can promise that, can you?’ Ria asked, her tone appallingly cynical.
And where her unexpected weakness hadn’t beaten him now, shockingly, her boldness did. There was a new spark in her eyes, fresh colour in her cheeks. She was once more the proud Grand Duchess Honoria and not the strangely defeated girl who had reached out to something he had thought was long dead inside him. This Ria was a challenge; a challenge he welcomed. The sound of his blood was like a roar inside his head, the heated race of his pulse burning along every vein. He had never wanted a woman so much as he wanted her now, and the need was like an ache in every nerve.
‘How would you know? You were the one who turned your back on Mecjoria—haven’t even been back once in ten years.’
‘Not turned my back,’ Alexei growled. ‘We weren’t given a chance to stay. In fact it was made plain that we were not wanted.’
And who had been behind that? Her father—the very same man who was now, according to her story, locked in a prison cell. Did she expect him to feel sorry for him? To give a damn what might happen to the monster who hadn’t even waited to allow him and his mother time to mourn their loss, or even to attend the state funeral, before he had had them escorted to the airport and put on the first plane out of the country?
First making sure that every penny of his father’s fortune, every jewel, every tiny personal inheritance, had been taken from them, leaving them with little but the clothes they stood up in, not even the most basic allowance to see them into their new life in exile. Worst of all, Gregor had taken their name from them. The name his mother had been entitled to, and with it her honour, the legality of her marriage into the royal house of Mecjoria. He must have done it deliberately, hiding away the document that showed the old king’s permission. The document that Ria had been commissioned to bring here so unexpectedly—because it now suited her father. Was it any wonder that he loathed the man—that he would do anything to bring him down?
But it seemed that Gregor had managed that all on his own.
‘And I don’t have to be in the country to know what is going on.’
‘The papers don’t report everything. And certainly not always accurately.’
Something new had clouded those clear eyes and turned her expression into an intriguing mixture of defiance and uncertainty. There was just the tiniest sheen of moisture under one eye, where a trace of an unexpected tear had escaped the determined control she had been trying to impose on it and slipped out on to her lashes.
Unable to resist the impulse, he reached out and touched her face, letting his fingers rest lightly on the fine skin along the high, slanting cheekbone, wiping away that touch of moisture. The warmth and softness of the contact made his nerves burn, sending stinging arrows of response down into his body. He wanted so much more and yet he wanted to keep things just as they were—for now. It was a struggle not to do more, not to curve his hand around her cheek, cup that defiant little chin against his palm, lift her face towards his so that he could capture her mouth …
And that would ruin things completely. She would react like a scalded cat, he had no doubt. All that silent defiance would return in full force, and she’d swing away from him, repulsing the gesture with a rough shake of her head. She was still too tense, too on edge. But like any nervous cat, with a few moments’ careful attention—perhaps a soothing stroke or two—she would soon settle down.
So for now it was enough to watch the storm of emotions that swept over her face. The response that turned those citrine eyes smoky, that darkened and deepened the black of her pupils, making them spread like the flow of ink until they covered almost all of her irises. The way that her mouth opened again to show the tips of small white teeth was a temptation that kicked at his libido, making it hungrier than ever. The clamour in his body urged him to act, to make his move now, when she was at her weakest, but for a little while at least he was enjoying imposing restraint on himself, letting the sensual hunger build—anticipating what might come later—and watching the effect his behaviour had on her.
‘So tell me the rest.’
She didn’t know if she could go through with this. Ria struggled to find some of the certainty, the conviction of doing the right thing, that had buoyed her up on her journey here, held her in the room in spite of the frantic thudding of her heart. So much depended on what she said now and the possible repercussions of her failure, personal and political, were almost impossible to imagine. The image of her mother, too pale, far too thin, drifting through life like a wraith, with no appetite, no interest in anything slid into her mind. Her days were haunted by fears, her nights plagued by terrifying nightmares.
Her father was the cause of those nightmares. Since the night that the state police had come to arrest him, taking him away in handcuffs, they had never seen him for a moment. But they knew where he was. The state prison doors had slammed closed on him and, unless Ria could find some way of helping him, then behind those locked doors was where he was going to stay. She had wanted to help him—wanted to return him to her mother—and it had been because she had been looking for some way to do that that she had found the hidden documents, the ones that proved Alexei’s legitimacy and the others that had revealed the whole truth about what had been going on.
The full, appalling truth.
CHAPTER THREE
IT WAS WHAT she had come here for, Ria reminded herself. To tell him the story that had not yet leaked into the papers. The full details of the archaic inheritance laws that had come into play in the country since the unexpected death of the man they had believed to be the heir to the throne. But that would also mean telling him how those laws involved him, and his reaction just a moment before had made it plain that he harboured no warmth towards the country that had once been his home.
But when he had touched her—the way he still touched her—just that one tiny contact seemed to have broken through the careful, deliberate barriers she had built around herself. It was so long since she had felt that someone sympathised; that someone might be on her side. And the fact that it was someone as strong and forceful—and devastating—as this particular man, the man who had once been a special friend to her, stripped away several much-needed protective layers of skin, leaving her raw and disturbingly vulnerable.
He
