it was always safe—and useful—conversation and that’s what she was here for: useful conversation with Prince Baklanov. Men gave hints away all the time, in their words if she was lucky, but in other subtle ways, too: the tone of their voices, the gestures they made, the way they held their bodies.
‘I keep three, actually.’ He smiled at the mention of his horses and the result changed his face entirely, translating the strong, stoic planes of his warrior’s face into breath-taking handsomeness. Zvezda was cool and they led her out into the aisle towards a stall. ‘We’re passing them now.’ He nodded to the left, a hand going to the pocket of his coat to retrieve a treat as they came up on the first stall. ‘This is Cossack. He’s a Russian Don by breed.’
‘He must be your cavalry horse.’ Klara ran her eyes over the muscled chestnut, taking in the horse’s shiny coat. ‘He’s magnificent,’ she complimented, but she could tell her comment, her knowledge, had surprised him.
‘Yes. I brought him with me when I left Kuban.’ She heard the wistfulness as his voice caressed the words. Perhaps he would rather not have left? The Prince moved on to the stall beside it. ‘This is Balkan, my stallion.’ He ran a hand affectionately down the long neck of a horse so dark, he was nearly black.
‘Let me guess.’ Klara took in the short back, the height of the withers. ‘He’s Kabardin, perhaps Karachay.’
‘Very good!’ He flashed her another handsome smile. ‘You do know something of the Motherland then.’
It was her turn to be uncomfortable with his display of insight. ‘I know something of horses and their breeds,’ Klara replied, leading Zvezda to her stall. She grabbed the blanket hanging beside the stall and stepped inside. ‘How did you know?’
The Prince lounged outside the stall door, arms crossed, eyes studying her as she tossed the blanket over Zvezda’s back. ‘You didn’t know what Zvezda meant when I told you. You don’t speak Russian and I would guess that your mother is English.’ He pushed off the wall and stepped inside to work the chest fastenings of the blanket. ‘I would go so far as to say you’ve never lived in Russia.’
‘You’re almost right.’ Her hands stilled on the blanket straps. What would this prince think of such a woman who had no knowledge of her heritage? ‘I haven’t lived there since I was a little girl. It’s true, I don’t remember much of it. We lived in St Petersburg for three years when I was four. We spent the summers in the countryside at an estate near Peterhof. That’s what I am told. What I remember are the grasses around the estate, how they were as tall as I was and I could hear the wind pass through them.’ She loved those memories. She’d lain for hours in those grasses looking up at the sky, happy and unaware how sadly the sojourn in St Petersburg would end.
No one paid much attention to her in those days—she would only understand why much later. In the moment, she’d been pleased. She could go where she willed, do what she wanted. She’d had grand adventures. Returning to England had been the end of those adventures, except for her horses. She might have gone crazy if it hadn’t been for them. England had been the start of special tutors, then special schools, the very best for a girl who was expected to grow up to marry a duke, to become a complete Englishwoman, her Russian heritage nothing more than a novel characteristic to be put on display the way one displays a parlour trick. Something interesting and entertaining, but not to be taken seriously, not even by her, although this was ground on which she and her father disagreed. She wanted to know about her Russian heritage, hungered for it, even against her father’s promises to her dying mother to raise an English rose.
‘St Petersburg is a long way from the Kuban Steppes,’ the Prince said neutrally and she had the sense that she was the one being vetted, quite the reverse of her intentions for this meeting. It made her nervous. What had she given away? What secrets had she inadvertently revealed?
She tried for a smile and a bit of humour. ‘We can’t all be patriotic cavalry officers.’
The effort failed. Her remark had been meant as a compliment, but it evoked something darker. The openness of his expression shuttered. ‘Who said anything about being patriotic? Come, you haven’t seen my other horse, she’s a Cleveland Bay. I acquired her when I arrived. I have hopes of breeding her with my Kabardin stallion.’ Any chance to follow up on his comment was lost in his rambling talk of a breeding opportunity. Klara was certain it was quite purposely done. The comment about patriotism had made him edgy. She had skated close to something with that remark.
They petted the Cleveland Bay and made conversation about mares and horses in general—safe ground for them both. But she was aware the atmosphere around them remained charged with wariness. They were both on their guard now, protecting themselves, cautious of revealing too much by accident to a stranger. She didn’t want him to see any more of her and her lack of ‘Russianness’. It was embarrassing to her that he should see it so clearly and on such short acquaintance. Would he be as disgusted by it as she if he knew the reason—that she’d been groomed to be an expensive pawn in a dangerous game she couldn’t escape? Would he even care? Disgust implied the pre-existence of caring. He was her riding instructor, nothing more. And as for the Prince—what was it he didn’t want her to see? What was he protecting? Why? More importantly, why did he think a diplomat’s daughter would care about his secrets? In his case, caring assumed his secrets contained something of value he was not willing to share with another. Which was precisely what her father suspected.
A stable hand came to announce the arrival of her father’s carriage and Nikolay gave her a formal incline of his head. ‘It is time to say do svidaniya, Miss Grigorieva.’ He leaned close and she smelled the scents of man and beast on him, not an unpleasing fragrance to a woman who preferred horses over the dandified fops of the ton. ‘That means “until we meet again”.’
‘What makes you sure I’ll come back?’ She let her eyes linger on his face, her voice low. She was flirting with him as he’d flirted with her, with private words and lingering glances.
‘You didn’t quite get what you came for, Miss Grigorieva. You’ll be back. Did you want to wait until next Thursday or perhaps you’d like to try again sooner? I have an opening on Monday.’
‘Monday? That’s three days away,’ she answered the challenge with a bold confidence she didn’t feel. This man had a way of pushing her off balance at the most unlooked for moments. What did he think she was hunting? She hardly knew herself. ‘How about Saturday in the park?’ she countered. ‘We will ride. You can bring Balkan. Call for me at two.’ She paused. ‘Unless you’re worried I might get the rest of what I came for.’
He grinned, a wicked warrior’s smile that sent a most unladylike tremor all the way to her toes, despite her usual dislike of arrogant men. He seemed to be an exception. ‘I’m not the one who should be worried, Miss Grigorieva. Two o’clock Saturday it is.’
* * *
‘You should be worried, Nik. I don’t like the sounds of this at all,’ Stepan counselled at dinner that night. The four of them—Illarion and Ruslan, Stepan and himself, all royal expatriates of Kuban—were pushed back from the table, enjoying vodka and sampling some of Stepan’s latest samogon—the Russian version of an Englishman’s John Barleycorn. Drinking together was their nightly ritual, an attempt to recreate something from their old life in Kuban, to create something of their own, something comfortable in this new world they were learning to navigate.
Nikolay shoved his glass forward for more. Klara Grigorieva had disturbed him on more than a political level. She disturbed him on a sensual level, too, something, he might add, which had not happened in the time since they’d left Kuban. He thought his last, nearly fatal run-in with a woman had resolved
