chairs near the fire, taking comfort in the warmth. She was so very cold. Cold and empty, as she had been for weeks. The fire could do something about the one, but not the other. It seemed nothing could. Not even the information Captain Varvakis had given her filled the void. The Prince was looking at her with his steady blue gaze and something akin to hope leapt in her. Did he know her? Had he known her family? Was there something he could tell her that would help her remember again?
She wouldn’t ask him here in front of the Captain. He might feel compelled to give a certain answer. She would wait and get him alone, where he could only tell her the truth.
The tray arrived and the next few minutes were spent pouring drinks and making little plates of toast and jam and hot sausages. The Prince’s gaze never left her for long. He was gathering his thoughts just as she was gathering her resources. Her body and mind were tense in anticipation of defending themselves. He would want to question her, to prod her about her memories, and then, when she failed to recall anything, he would condemn her. But the Prince did none of that.
‘I know a doctor, a specialist who can perhaps help you,’ the Prince said when the servants had gone. ‘After the Peninsular Wars, many of our soldiers suffered memory loss from the trauma of battle. I’ll arrange for a visit today, if you’d like. I will also arrange for a lady’s maid and some clothes until we can get you to a dressmaker. I already have my footmen preparing a hot bath for you in your chambers.’
* * *
Embarrassing tears stung Dasha’s eyes. How silly it was to cry now over a bath and clean clothes and brandy-laced milk when there was so much loss to mourn. Her home, her country, her mind, her family. She’d not cried when Varvakis had told her. She’d been numb with horror, not only at the nature of their deaths, but at her lack of memory. She couldn’t remember them, she could only mourn them as an outsider mourned the inherent wrongness of a tragedy. She’d not cried when the boat they’d journeyed in from Ekaterinodar foundered in the Black Sea. She’d been brave for weeks. She’d not broken down once, but Prince Pisarev had managed to reduce her to tears in a matter of sentences over the smallest of kindnesses. She willed the tears away with a fierce determination.
‘Thank you for your hospitality, Prince Pisarev. It means more than you know.’ She rose to leave, knowing they would discuss her when she left. But it was either stay and fall apart in front of the Prince, or leave and preserve her dignity.
The Prince stood with her, capturing her hand in his. She felt the warm strength of him again flowing into her. ‘It is my pleasure. Please ask for anything you need. We will speak again later, when you’re settled.’ What a courtier he must have been. He was the sort of man who was able to arrange things for others without making them feel small or dependent. The sort of man who knew how to take charge without diminishing people. That could be dangerous. She would do well to remember how easily he wielded that power. She wanted to be under no man’s thumb. But that was a problem for later. At the moment, she could afford to bask fully in his generosity. Only a foolish woman turned down the offer of a hot bath after weeks of travel and, whoever she was, Dasha was no fool.
‘The Princess is here. Congratulations, Captain. You’ve made it this far. Now we need to talk about why. Why me? Why London when there are places of safety far closer to Kuban?’ Ruslan put the long-forgotten glass in Captain Varvakis’s hand and picked up his own, taking charge of the conversation and its direction. Now, he really did need a drink. The Princess was a woman who could take a man by surprise and not let go. Even as bedraggled as she was from travel, there was beauty to her wildness: the ash-blonde hair, the sharp emerald depths of her eyes, the willowy strength of her body, slim and strong like Damascus steel when she’d fought him. But her most appealing attribute was her courage, her confidence. She’d not hesitated to speak for herself, or to challenge him with the truth—that she was a broken princess, a woman with no memories. It was a formidable circumstance for her to be in, and for him, given his family’s rather recent, rather tragic relationship to the throne.
‘What do you expect me to do with her?’ Ruslan mused out loud. Surely, Varvakis was not entirely oblivious to his severed connection to the royal family—a relationship his family had not chosen to sever, but one that had been deliberately cut off by the Tsar himself, disgracing the House of Pisarev. It was a disgrace Ruslan would erase if given the opportunity. Ruslan had his own plans, his mind was already whirling through options, but it would be interesting to see what Varvakis’s intentions were.
‘We keep her safe for Kuban,’ Varvakis said without hesitation, ‘until it is time to return and guide the country to peace.’ It was what one would expect from a man like Varvakis, a reliable officer with his country’s best interests at heart, a patriot to the core.
Ruslan made a mental note to confer with Nikolay, who’d been a captain in the Kubanian cavalry. Perhaps Nikolay knew of Varvakis and his reputation for the truth. ‘Well, then, it’s no wonder you came looking for me.’ Keeping a princess safe was no simple matter. ‘Safety’ could take a variety of forms.
‘As to why we’re here; you are the best. Your work in the underground is legendary among those who know.’ Captain Varvakis complimented deferentially, aware that he addressed his superior. ‘If there is anyone who can keep a fugitive alive, it’s you. Allow me to say, your reputation precedes you.’ Varvakis did not refer to his reputation as a prince, a man known for his royal arrangements, although he had a reputation for that as well. If the Tsar wanted a grand entertainment, or a hunt organised, Ruslan had seen to it. Everyone knew Ruslan was an expert organiser and an expert organiser had an exquisite network of connections.
As impressive as that accomplishment was, it was not the one Varvakis alluded to, but his other reputation as part of the Union of Salvation, the liberation underground. He helped certain people, who might otherwise find it unhealthy to stay, to leave Kuban. People like Prince Dimitri Petrovich’s sister, Anna-Maria, who needed to escape an unwanted marriage; people like his friends, Nikolay, who would have been tried for treason and found guilty, or Illarion, who’d committed lèse-majesté with a poem. He was known to those who faced danger.
And now he was to help the woman upstairs. Fugitive, future Queen, daughter of the man who’d cast his family into disgrace after generations of loyal service. Dasha Tukhachevskenova lived life in the extreme, at once both a woman with and without a country, a woman with a history and without, a woman with and without power. It was something Ruslan knew a little about. He, too, was a prince without a country. He’d chosen to vanish and, in doing so, he’d given up his claim to all he knew and, for the most part, all he had. The only difference between him and the Princess was that he remembered it.
Ruslan swirled his glass, watching a centrifuge form in the centre. ‘She remembers nothing at all?’ It was a question he’d not wanted to ask her. It seemed too intrusive. But he had to know if he was going to plot accordingly. It would be difficult to persuade others to follow a woman in her condition.
‘Nothing of merit,’ Varvakis admitted. ‘She remembers snatches of what happened. She dreams of the fire. It’s what gives her the nightmares, but she recalls nothing substantial.’
‘Except what you’ve told her?’ Ruslan asked pointedly. That was an interesting angle to consider. Her memories would come from Varvakis’s telling. He was the keeper of what she understood to be true. A Latin phrase ran through his head from John Locke: tabula rasa. A blank slate in the hands of the wrong man was a dangerous and powerful weapon. The Princess would believe what she was told. She had no alternative, no base to check the knowledge against. It was more important than ever to meet with Nikolay and determine if Varvakis could be trusted. Already
