with me.’ He waved a hand when she tried to protest. ‘Admit it, Anna-Maria, you’ve been cutting your teeth on me all winter and why not?’ Stepan growled. ‘There’s very little appropriate male society to practise on in these parts.’ He was rewarded with a slight flush creeping up her cheeks. The little minx didn’t like being caught out. ‘Be warned, Anna-Maria, I am no green ham-handed boy like the Squire’s son, willing to be led about by the nose because a pretty girl smiled my way. Neither am I a dissipated gentleman with finer clothes than manners who would not have stopped this evening.’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘Is this your way of saying I should be thanking you for the experience?’ She was far too saucy for a girl who’d just been delivered her comeuppance.
‘It’s my way of alerting you to the lesson that desire is power—a sword to be wielded, a currency that can be bartered by any man or woman. Be careful, Anna-Maria, you are a beautiful woman and a susceptible one. You are not fully aware of the weapon you possess in your face alone.’ To say nothing of her body, of the passion that coursed through her.
Stepan’s hands fisted at his sides. He was deuced uncomfortable with the direction of this conversation. This was why young girls needed their mothers. Mothers were supposed to teach those lessons, not nominal uncles. Least of all him. What did he know of family? Of mothers and daughters and preparation for marriage? He knew nothing even of fathers and sons. His own father had decided he wasn’t worth raising well before he’d reached adulthood.
Anna-Maria gave him a wry smile. ‘I think there might be a compliment in there somewhere for me. I will pretend there is. I will pretend you called me beautiful and that my beauty wasn’t an insult or a plague to be protected against as my father suggests.’ She laughed harshly. ‘Would you prefer it if I went around veiled so that I would not be a Jezebel enticing men to their doom?’
‘I was being honest.’ Which, apparently, he couldn’t be without having his words come back to haunt him. He’d not meant to imply she was to blame for a lack of male self-control. Nor had he meant to align himself with the cruel opinions of her father. He owed the old man a debt of gratitude. The man had been nothing but gracious to him, treating him as a second son, yet Stepan could not condone the way the man treated his daughter. He’d had the nagging suspicion over the years that if Anna had been born male her mother’s death would have been forgiven.
‘I thought we’d left such old-fashioned nonsense behind us in Kuban,’ Anna-Maria argued. ‘I thought you believed a woman should have the same freedoms in society a man had?’
‘I do,’ Stepan protested.
‘Unless that woman is me?’ She pierced him with a stare. He knew impending defeat when he heard it. He wasn’t going to win this.
‘You should talk to Evie about these things.’ He stepped back, looking to retreat the field.
‘Evie doesn’t know about “these things”,’ Anna-Maria snapped. ‘How could she? She has two parents who raised her. She’s lived the entirety of her life in Little Westbury surrounded by safety and love. Her parents saw to it, her friends saw to it and now my brother sees to it. Their child will grow up with the same.’
‘Lower your voice,’ Stepan cautioned. ‘You’ll wake the house.’ The warning was inadequate and frankly a non sequitur. He chose not to address the wistful envy behind her words. It was an envy he knew well. How many times had he held Dimitri’s infant son and thought the same? Dimitri’s boy would grow up never knowing a lack of affection, never doubting his worth, his acceptance.
Anna-Maria did not heed his request. She was angry now and she was exacting revenge for his madness over the kiss. ‘Evie is not like us. She knows nothing of being raised without parents, without a family, of being looked upon as an inconvenient nuisance by one’s own father.’
‘You had Dimitri,’ Stepan reminded her. He would not tolerate his friend being maligned. At twelve, Dimitri had taken on the responsibility of caring for a newborn and he’d never laid down that burden. Nor did he like the reminder of those painful similarities between them.
‘But for the single variable of my brother, both of us would have been entirely alone,’ Anna-Maria said sharply. ‘Why won’t you admit that we’re more alike than the others? That we’re both lost souls, surrounded by people who have found theirs.’
‘You are not lost, Anna-Maria,’ Stepan countered argumentatively even as the words caught him by surprise. Was that how she saw herself? He’d not once thought the vivacious Anna-Maria, the beloved centre of her brother’s life, a girl who had everything, felt lost. The very image of Anna-Maria being lost cut at him. He and the others had joined Dimitri in that fight years ago to protect Anna-Maria from the cruelties of their world, from the hurt of a father who did not acknowledge her existence because her life had stolen the life of the woman he loved. For her to feel lost implied their efforts had been for naught, that the fight had been lost along with her—a fight for which Stepan had fought harder than the others because he knew first-hand what awaited her if they were not victorious. He had a twelve-year head start on her. He already knew what it was to grow up empty, passed from nanny to nanny, tutor to tutor, valet to valet, growing up with the trappings of wealth and physical security, but not real security—the security of knowing one had love and a family and a place where one would always belong.
‘Don’t be a selfish bore, Stepan. You’re not the only one who gets to be lost.’ Anna-Maria huffed and pushed past him. ‘It’s late and I’m going to bed. You can stay down here and wallow in your “lostness” or whatever else it is you spend your time doing.’
He wanted to shout after her that if he was staying up it was her fault. He’d planned to come home and seek his own bed, but she’d been lying in wait, baiting him. His honour would not allow her to bear all the blame for his detour. A real gentleman accepted his own complicity in such things. He was as much to blame for his own wakefulness as she was. He’d been fighting the urge to kiss her for weeks. Tonight had supplied an exigence and an excuse for his behaviour. Now, that kiss would always be between them.
Stepan helped himself to brandy in a decanter at the sideboard and poked the fire Anna-Maria had forgotten to bank. He took a chair and rested his boots on the fender of the fireplace. Tonight’s incident and yesterday’s meeting with Captain Denning were further proof he needed to move out. Leasing Preston Worth’s home in Shoreham was looking like a better option by the minute. He’d sent a message to London two days ago after he’d mentioned the idea to Dimitri. With luck, he might hear back tomorrow. Distance wouldn’t erase the kiss, but distance could mitigate it.
Stepan sighed and took a long swallow. Even brandy couldn’t sweeten the taste of regret. He should not have done it. He’d kissed his best friend’s sister! What the hell was wrong with him? Yet in those moments, she’d not been Dimitri’s sister, but a woman of her own identity and free will. She’d kissed him back with a wildness that matched his own. Perhaps that was the real source of his guilt. He ought to fully regret what he’d done and he didn’t. There. He admitted it. He did not entirely regret it.
With any other woman, he’d be asking himself the question of what next? Now that they’d opened negotiations, so to speak, what was his next overture? But this was Anna-Maria. She was not one of Kuban’s sophisticated women of the court. The question of what next was moot. There was no ‘what next’ beyond moving to Seacrest, moving away from her and the temptation that there might be another kiss, that he might be tempted to create a ‘what next’ scenario. One kiss could change everything, but only if he let it. He wouldn’t let it.
He drained his glass, his conscience mocking him.
