Prince of Dreams

by Lisa Kleypas

  There was a flash in his eyes, like cold fire. “And what, pray tell, am I supposed to be afraid of?”

  “You're afraid of caring for someone. And you're absolutely terrified of someone caring for you in return. But a lack of feelings isn't strength, Nikki. Just the opposite.” Emma sensed rather than saw the light quiver that ran through his body, of nerves pulled as tight as a hunter's bow.

  Nikolas shoved back from the table. “I've had enough of this for one evening,” he muttered.

  “If you give Jacob away, I'm going to find him! He deserves better than that. He's an innocent little boy who's been robbed of his birthright. And if this is your notion of being a father, I hope I never bear your children!”

  “Keep him, then,” Nikolas invited with a sneer. “I should have expected this, knowing of your taste for adopting strays and mongrels. Just make certain he's kept away from me.” He left the room while Emma stared after him in speechless fury.

  The battle over Jacob was interrupted the next day by the arrival of Mr. Robert Soames. The middle-aged artist had rapidly gained a reputation for his miraculous restorations of artwork that had been damaged by age and mistreatment. Emma liked Soames immediately. He was gentle and unassuming, without any of the pretensions that she expected of people who belonged to the world of art. His lean, pale face was pleasant but unremarkable, except for a pair of piercing blue eyes. The decaying landscape seemed to interest Soames very much, and he accepted the job of uncovering the hidden painting with apparent eagerness.

  “It may be nothing very noteworthy,” he told Emma with a pragmatic shrug. “Or it may be something quite special. I suspect within a fortnight we'll have a good idea of what lies underneath the landscape, Your Highness.”

  A guest room was prepared, and Mr. Soames moved a few personal belongings into the manor for the duration of his labor. Emma and Jacob came to visit his workroom every day to catch glimpses of the emerging picture. They never stayed for long, because even with the windows opened wide, the fumes of the solvents Soames used made the air sharp and pungent.

  “The trick is in removing the top layers without disturbing the bottom ones,” Soames told them, working on the canvas with delicate brushes. “One can't help but lose a bit of the original, even if it's only the smallest fraction of one layer of paint. I must be careful not to rob the portrait of the texture the artist intended.”

  “Is it a portrait?” Emma asked.

  “Oh, without a doubt. See this corner? That is definitely a section of a gentleman's hand.”

  “I hope it's an Angelovsky ancestor,” Emma said, and patted Jacob's small shoulder as he came closer to inspect the painting. “One of your relatives, Jake. Wouldn't that be interesting?”

  The boy responded with a noncommittal grunt. He either didn't understand or didn't care for the concept of being an Angelovsky descendant.

  “Yes, it would be,” Emma said firmly, answering her own question. She wandered over to a nearby window, then half sat on the ledge. “Really, Jake, you're about to talk my ears off. You must try to keep your mouth from running away with you.”

  Her teasing brought the smallest twitch of a smile to Jacob's lips, and he answered in his gruff country accent. “I can't say nothing when you're always talking.”

  Emma laughed, swinging one long leg. “It's not polite to tell a lady she talks too much, Jacob.”

  “Ladies don't wear trousers,” he countered, glancing at her outfit of a man's white shirt, charcoal-colored trousers, and shiny black shoes.

  “But I'm a princess, and a princess can wear whatever she wants. Isn't that right, Mr. Soames?”

  The artist looked up from his work with a smile as he witnessed Emma's success at drawing the boy into a conversation. “I would say so, Your Highness.” His gaze remained on Emma for a moment as she lounged casually at the window with her coltish legs crossed. The sunlight played over her skin until her golden freckles seemed to glitter. With her flashing smile and the tied-back mane of copper curls, she was a magnetically appealing figure.

  “Princess Emma,” Soames said hesitantly, “if I might make a remark of a personal nature…”

  “By all means, do. It may liven up my morning.”

  “You're an extraordinarily attractive woman, Your Highness. I would be honored to paint you someday. Exactly as you are now.”

  Emma laughed at the notion. “And what would you title the painting? ‘The Madwoman’? ‘The Eccentric’?”

  “I am sincere, Your Highness. You have a rare and original beauty that any artist would want to capture.”

  Emma smiled skeptically. “I could show you a hundred women more beautiful, beginning with my own stepmother.”

  Soames shook his head. “Conventional faces and forms are easily found. They are of little interest to me. But you…” He paused as a shadow fell across the doorway, and he saw Nikolas standing there.

  “I agree,” Nikolas said, having overheard the last remarks. “I'd like a portrait of the princess to be painted by someone who appreciates her beauty. The commission is yours, if you can show me some satisfactory examples of your own work.”

  “Of course I—” Mr. Soames began.

  “I don't want my portrait painted,” Emma said, scowling at her husband.

  “But I want it.” Nikolas happened to glance at the small boy, now standing beside Emma, and his smile dimmed. Abruptly he turned and approached the landscape painting. “I came to view your progress, Soames.”

  “The work will go more quickly now that I've found the most effective way of dissolving the top layers,” Soames explained. “So far all I've uncovered is part of a man's left hand.”

  “So I see.” Nikolas stared at the fragment of the portrait, suddenly mesmerized. His own left hand began to tingle and burn. He flexed his fingers and crossed his arms over his chest. A touch of dizziness came over him, and he wrenched his gaze away. “We'll discuss the portrait of my wife later,” he muttered to Soames. “For now, don't let them keep you from your work.”

  “They are no trouble…” Soames's voice trailed off lamely as Nikolas strode abruptly from the room. The artist threw a questioning glance at Emma, who answered with a sardonic smile.

  “A gracious soul, my husband…don't you agree?”

  But she left the workroom before Soames could reply, the little boy trotting after her.

  It was on the following night that Nikolas was finally forced to speak directly to his son. He was drinking alone in his suite, sipping chilled vodka in a slow, contemplative way, hoping with each glass that it might numb the uneasiness inside him. Nothing was right anymore. Everything had been knocked off-kilter, and for the first time in his life he felt too slow to adapt to the changing circumstances around him. He hadn't visited Emma's bed in weeks, and his desire for her was beginning to gnaw at him. He wanted to touch her, to kiss her skin and crush her soft red curls in his hands, and feel her slender body quiver in passion as he thrust inside her. But he didn't want her to know how much he needed her, craved her, for she might find a way to use it against him.

  It infuriated him that Emma had maneuvered the discovery of his illegitimate child so adeptly, first by playing the role of betrayed wife, then by deciding she wanted the boy to stay. She had no real power to keep Jacob, of course. Nikolas could have him shipped off tomorrow, if he chose. The hell of it was, he was almost grateful—grateful—that Emma was so determined to keep the child. Often Nikolas found himself staring at the boy, yearning to talk to him, and at the same time he was tormented by Jacob's likeness to Mikhail.

  A strange, soft noise broke into his thoughts. Nikolas set his vodka down and listened intently. It was the muffled sound of crying.

  “Misha,” he whispered in horror, instinct taking precedence over reason. It was not his brother…but the sniffling and tears…a little boy's sobs…

  Nikolas rose to his feet and stumbled from the room, gripped by a sense of anguished fear he hadn't felt since childhood. He followed t
he quiet sobbing along the hall, around the corner, until he saw a small figure huddled by the door of Emma's suite.

  “Jacob,” Nikolas said with difficulty. The name felt strange on his lips.

  The boy looked up with a startled jerk, his face unhappy and tear-streaked. His shimmering gaze reached inside Nikolas to a place of indescribable pain.

  “What is it?” Nikolas snapped. “Are you hurt?”

  Jacob shook his head and huddled more tightly against the doorjamb, tucking his feet beneath his nightshirt.

  “What do you want? Are you hungry? Thirsty?”

  Just then the door opened to reveal Emma swathed in her white gown and robe, her face soft and groggy with sleep. She saw Nikolas first, and a question formed on her lips. Her gaze fell to the miserable bundle at her feet. “Jake?” She sank to the floor, pulling the child into her lap, then shot an accusing glare at Nikolas. “What have you done to him?”

  “Nothing,” Nikolas growled. He watched, his feet stuck to the floor, as Emma wrapped her long arms around the boy.

  “What's the matter, Jake?” she asked. “Tell me what's wrong.”

  Jacob struggled with words, his mouth quivering. A flood of tears welled from his eyes. “I w-want Mama!” He threw his arms around Emma's neck, his small hands knotted in her hair.

  “Of course you do, darling,” she murmured, holding him tightly. “Of course.” She rocked him in her lap, heedless of his runny nose and wet face.

  The sight of a woman—especially one of Emma's class—comforting a child was rare for Nikolas. His own mother had abandoned the care of her children to servants and tutors, wanting no responsibility for their upbringing. There had never been an opportunity for Nikolas to share in the private moments of other families, except for occasional visits to the Stokehurst household. The discovery that Emma could be so maternal was unexpected, and it filled him with yearning and unreasoning anger. If only there had been someone like her fighting for him and Mikhail. She would never have allowed anyone to abuse a little boy. She would have comforted and protected Misha.

  Nikolas fought a crazy urge to kneel beside her on the floor, to put his arms around his wife and the crying child, to somehow make himself part of the scene. The coldness of his isolation made him shiver. Just then Emma looked up at him as if he were an intruder. Her thoughts were unspoken but clear. You can do nothing for us…you're not wanted.

  Nikolas left without a word, making his way down the hall and around the corner. He stopped there and leaned against the wall, shaking, consumed by memories. He thought of the night in Russia when he had been called away from his mistress's bed and given the message about Misha. “Your brother was murdered tonight, Your Highness. Stabbed in the throat…” And the long search for justice, culminating in his revenge on Count Shurikovsky. No, don't think about that—but the memory came back in a searing flash, and he saw himself walking toward Shurikovsky's drunken form stretched out on a rumpled bed. There had been a peculiar stench in the room, of liquor and stale sweat, and Nikolas's heart had thundered with fear and bloodlust until he couldn't hear anything else above the pounding, not even Shurikovsky's cry as he had beheld the face of his murderer.

  Keeping his back against the wall, Nikolas slid down until he sat on the floor. Dazedly he wondered what he had thought about during the time of his arrest, the interrogations, the hours of torture and pain. He couldn't remember much of it. They had asked him about Misha's love affairs, particularly the one with Shurikovsky. It hadn't mattered to Nikolas that his brother had slept with men. After the miserable experiences of Misha's childhood, he had deserved to take his pleasure wherever he could find it.

  Nikolas yanked up his sleeves and stared at the scars on his wrists, where restraining ropes had torn open layers of skin and muscle. It had made the government interrogators angry when he wouldn't respond to their taunts about Misha's sexual preferences. “Perhaps you see nothing wrong in liking boys,” they had said. “It must be that you have the same sickness. Do you lust after other men, you perverted bastard?”

  Nikolas had shaken his head, unable to push words through his quivering lips. His whole body had been cold from shock and loss of blood. No, he had never lusted after men; he had always loved the grace and softness of women, the comfort of pillowing breasts, the perceptiveness of a female mind. Older women were always best, for they were less inclined to make demands, they understood about the complications and realities of life, and they were by far the most passionate.

  But he had never considered marriage to anyone, until Emma. He had waited seven years to have her, never doubting that she would belong to him. He had wanted her in a way that he defined not as love but as a basic need, like breathing and eating and sleeping. The problem was, she had now become a weakness. He would have to cut her out, or lose himself entirely.

  Nikolas rose to his feet and went downstairs, speaking curtly to Stanislaus and a waiting footman. “Have a carriage brought around.” He would be going out now, to gamble and drink, and to find a woman. Anyone would do, as long as she wasn't Emma.

  After comforting Jacob, Emma carried the boy piggyback to his bed in the third-floor nursery. Covering him with the soft linen sheet, she knelt by the bed and smoothed a cowlick in his dark hair. “I know how it feels to lose your mama,” she murmured. “Mine died when I was even younger than you. Sometimes I used to cry because I missed her, and I couldn't even remember her.”

  Jake rubbed a fist over his eyes. “I want her to come back,” he said tearfully. “I don't like it here.”

  Emma sighed. “Sometimes I don't either, Jake. But Nikolas is your father, and this is where you belong.”

  “I'm going to run away.”

  “And leave me and Samson? That would make me very sad, Jake.”

  He was silent, settling deeper into his pillow, his eyelids trembling with exhaustion.

  “I have an idea,” Emma continued. “Why don't we run away for a little while tomorrow, and take a basket lunch with us? We'll find a pond to splash our feet in, and we'll hunt for frogs.”

  “Ladies don't like frogs,” he said drowsily.

  “I do. I also like bugs, worms, mice…everything but snakes.”

  “I like snakes.”

  Emma smiled and leaned over to kiss his hair. It smelled fresh and sweet, after the vigorous soaping she had insisted on that morning. She had never felt so protective of a child, not even her own brothers. But they had a loving family, and this little boy had no one in the world, except an indifferent father. “Good night, Jake,” she whispered. “Everything will be all right. I'll always take care of you.”

  “‘Night, Emma,” he murmured, dropping off to sleep.

  Emma turned down the lamp and left his room quietly. She headed toward Nikolas's suite. A rush of energy filled her. It was time to confront him about the child once and for all. She would make it clear that Jake was going to stay, and Nikolas would be expected to have some sort of communication with him. It wasn't fair that the boy should have to suffer for his parent's past indiscretions. Jacob was an Angelovsky. He was entitled to all that that implied. An education, an inheritance, some knowledge of his heritage…those were things he needed and deserved, and Nikolas had no right to withhold them.

  She was chagrined to discover that Nikolas was not in his suite. She searched the wing and went down to the first floor, asking Stanislaus if he had seen Nikolas.

  No expression registered on the butler's face. “The prince has left for the night, Your Highness.”

  “I see.” Emma turned away, hiding her confusion and hurt. It was late…the only reason Nikolas would have left at this hour was to visit another woman's bed. Even with their petty arguments and distances, he had never been unfaithful to her before. Suddenly she felt like crying. If only she could go after him, and tell him—tell him what? If Nikolas wanted someone else, some other woman's body, there was no way she could stop him. Evidently he was tired of her. She hadn't satisfied him. His Highness was bo
red with visiting his wife's bed. “Damn you, Nikolas,” she whispered. “I'm going to end up hating myself as much as you.”

  She paced in her own room for hours, until the servants had retired and the manor was dark and shadow-filled. It was finally dawning on her that marrying Nikolas had been a tragic mistake. Their marriage would never get better than this. In fact, it was almost guaranteed to become worse. Nikolas's infidelities would humiliate her, and there would be more arguments, more bitterness, unless she found a way to become as hard and emotionless as he was. Her family had been right about Nikolas, but her pride would never allow her to admit it. She longed for a friend to confide in, someone to turn to.

  Making her way to the grand staircase, Emma sat on the steps near the bottom, hugging her knees as she waited for her husband to come home. All she needed was one glance at his face, and she would know if he had been unfaithful to her.

  Just before dawn, the sounds of carriage wheels and jangling harnesses awoke her from the half sleep she had fallen into. She sat up on the stairs, wincing at the soreness of her muscles. Blinking hard, she stared at the front entrance. Her spine was stiff with apprehension.

  Nikolas came inside, looking disheveled and pale, his golden splendor muted by the darkness. The mingled odors of liquor, perfume, and sex reached Emma across the several feet that separated them. So he had done it, she thought, and flinched at the sudden pain in her chest.

  Nikolas didn't see her until he had started for the stairs. He stopped suddenly, a shadow of sullen defiance crossing his features. “What do you want?”

  “Nothing from you.” Her voice trembled with disgust and outrage. “Nothing at all. I'll try to be sophisticated about this, Nikolas. You don't have to remind me that this sort of thing goes on all the time in upper-crust marriages. But you'd better get used to visiting other women's beds, because it will be a cold day in hell before you're welcomed back to mine!”