Royal Renegade, a Regency Romance Novel
By Alicia Rasley
Published by Midsummer Books
Copyright 2011 Alicia Rasley
ISBN: 978-1-4660-5880-4
Chapter One
April 1811
Winter Palace, St. Petersburg
"Napoleon will hardly stay home just because I marry a murderer!" Tatiana put her whole small body into slamming the schoolroom door, but Prince Dmitry inserted a booted foot and pushed through. His gaze swept over the chaos, taking in and then dismissing the tumble of books on the table, the cache of toys in the corner, the shabbily dressed children in the center. Finally he focused coldly on his niece.
"The Duke of Cumberland is a royal prince and now your future husband, young lady. He deserves greater respect than that." As Arkady, an undersize tot with oversize voice, clung to Tatiana's leg and screamed, Dmitry's thin face twisted in distaste. "We shall discuss this when your brats have left for their feeding."
The Princess Tatiana kicked the door shut behind her uncle, but that only made Arkady cry louder. So she crooned as she carried him back to the rug where six other children played. Depositing the boy unceremoniously in the middle, Tatiana shook her head at Anne Buntin's attempt to pick him up and comfort him. The frail English governess always strained herself trying to keep up with their charges. Now Buntin let Arkady go and looked up, her prim lips mouthing a question.
Tatiana could always speak more eloquently with her expression than her voice. She lowered her brows and set her mouth militantly, declaring, "Prince Dmitry is a—" Then, with unusual tact, she remembered the children. "I shall tell you later."
She joined Leo, the budding architect, in building towers with scarred wooden blocks. Leo was painstaking, his tongue caught between his teeth, his fingers delicately edging the block into place. Tatiana was not so careful. Haphazardly she piled block on block, then just as her tower was about to fall, she knocked it down. If only Dmitry were so easily vanquished, she thought, Dmitry and his murderous English prince.
"No hit, Tania," remonstrated Darya, the tiny daughter of a chambermaid. When she first came to the palace school, Darya could not speak, for she had been left with a deaf-mute neighbor while her mother worked. Now Darya was the self-appointed class disciplinarian, and especially enjoyed chastising her disobedient teacher.
As the children chattered, Tatiana imagined her uncle skulking outside in the great stone hallway, his teeth gritted. He hated her involvement in this school for servants' children, but then he hated everything about her. That was why he wanted to marry her off to a mad prince in an alien land.
Suddenly she could stand the tension no longer. "Time for luncheon," she announced, pulling Leo to his feet, in the process knocking down his proud tower. He set up a howl, but she diverted him with a well-placed tickle. When he was helpless with laughter, Tatiana pushed him gently toward the door.
Buntin's fair eyebrows rose, for this was earlier than their usual mealtime. Still she lined up the children to lead them out. Tatiana protested, "They're just babies; they don't need to march like soldiers." She tugged Leo out of the formation to make her point, for he was rather too careful as it was. "I'm sorry, Buntin. But do let's get on. Prince Dmitry will be coming in a moment and"—for the children she made a horrible face—"and he's such an ogre! And Buntin, ask one of the maids to watch the children this afternoon, and come back quickly."
Dmitry pushed the door open as soon as the children were past. He was gaunt as a monk, but without any suggestion of godliness in his icy green eyes. Once his hair had been dark red like Tatiana's, but had long since grayed, as if frosted by his wintry temperament. He no longer bore any resemblance to her gentle mother. "As I said, your wedding has been set for Christmastide. In London."
Tatiana turned away, hiding her trembling hands in front of her full skirt. She could never let him know that he frightened her, for he would enjoy that too much. So sweetly, as if declining a dinner invitation, she only said, "You'll have to give them my regrets then, for I shan't be able to make it."
As imperious as their feudal Romanov ancestors, Dmitry replied, "You have no choice in the matter, my dear niece. We have already decided."
Rage shuddered through her and left her weak. She put one hand on the children's table as if to straighten the books, but actually to give herself the support to continue standing. His malicious endearment—"my dear niece"—echoed in her mind. "Who has decided? My dear uncle? You are so eager to rid yourself of your sister's child. But then, you were just as glad to get rid of your sister!"
Dmitry kicked a toy soldier out of his path and advanced on her. He stopped short a few feet away, as if repelled by her slight figure in the dusty-blue kerseymere frock, and his voice grew silky with threat. "Count yourself lucky that you won't be following your parents to Siberia, my dear. In fact, this is a quite an achievement, a misbegotten child like you wedding the son of a king."
Tatiana stood her ground, though Dmitry's face loomed like death above her. "Misbegotten, am I? You forget, my father was also the son of a king! And I am no pawn to be wed at your whim." Her rebellion was mostly automatic, as she sought feverishly for a way out. She knew other princesses were married off for political purposes—Anastasia Romanova had just this winter gone off to wed a Montenegrin prince she'd never laid eyes on. And before Napoleon had married his Austrian, several of Tatiana's cousins had been imagining "Empress" in front of their names. But Tatiana had neither desired nor expected to receive the dubious privilege of royal marriage.
Indeed, the Romanov court seemed to have forgotten about her, shut off in a distant wing of the Winter Palace with her companion Buntin. Oh, occasionally Tatiana would do something outrageous, like starting the school for servants' children or sneaking into the convoy of princesses going to Paris to meet Napoleon, just to prove that she was still alive. But most of the time, she was as invisible as the maids who emptied the royal chamber pots. She was a cast-off princess, considered unworthy of any marriage, much less one to save the nation. Now, finally, her family had remembered her, just in time to send her away forever.
"This is no whim, my dear. Or if it is, it's the whim of the tsar." At this reference to his patron, Dmitry permitted himself a thin smile. "Of course, I was happy to assure him that a marriage between the two royal families would cement a new alliance in this troubled time."
"The alliance would not need cementing," Tatiana observed acidly, "if we hadn't spent so much of the war in Napoleon's pocket."
Dmitry had been an advocate of the Franco-Russian alliance, tenuous now in the face of Napoleon's eastward aggression. An overture to England—with his niece as bait—could restore Dmitry as a palace advisor. "I told Alexander that of all the princesses underfoot in this nation, you were the obvious choice. You are, as you say, the granddaughter of a king, although Saraya Kalin was a meager sort of kingdom even before it was annexed. You learned English well from your governess, and your looks won't offend the duke."
"And my closest kin will be happy as can be to send me off to the other side of the world."
Prince Dmitry smiled in grim amusement. "Just so. Of all the princesses in this palace, you're the one we'd all like to send to the devil."
Tatiana inquired with real interest, "What did the tsar say to that?"
"I shouldn't be so proud of your notoriety, Tatiana Nicholevna." Dmitry's smile vanished. "Had you been more biddable, you'd already be rearing your own children instead of training servants' brats. Your only hope is that the English haven't heard of your wildness and won't object to your advanced age. For no man in Petersburg would have you."
Tatiana thought of her cousin Peter, exiled for the crime of soliciting her hand, and she was provo
ked into rashness. "I like to think I livened up this dull pile. Since the Tsarina Catherine died, there's been so little excitement—except for a strangling or two."
Dmitry paled to a deathly shade, and indeed, Tatiana was frightened by her impulsive words. Dmitry declared rigidly, "You of all people should discount that scurrilous rumor."
Once again, passion overcame Tatiana's limited good sense. "If it's only a rumor, why was my father sent away? Why does Alexander refuse to acknowledge me? It's guilt, that's what. He prays and prays and attends mass and takes confession, and never admits his own guilt. Instead he blames Papa, and even me, though I was just a child and knew nothing of it. That is why I am shut away here like some bastard when I am more Romanov than Alexander. And why you have deserted me—" Tatiana's words piled up like Alexander's sins. But it was no use reaching out to her uncle. He had abandoned her long ago, when he stood by as the tsar sent her father to his death.
Now Dmitry refused to meet her eyes, muttering his self-serving version of recent Russian history. "Your father was an impetuous fool, who liked to boast of his importance. And your mother was no better, loyally following him off into exile and just as loyally dying with him." Dmitry's twisted features made clear his view of such fealty; his only allegiance was to power.
He kept talking, his voice raspy with cruelty, but the princess hardened her heart to the pain. She knew better, after all, and so did he, and so did Alexander. The only one to take advantage of her father's impetuousity was Alexander himself.
Dmitry might pretend that her own rash behavior had isolated her from the rest of the Romanovs. But Dmitry had spent years distancing himself from his brother-in-law's specter, and even had she been the perfect niece, Tatiana would have shamed him. He—and Alexander— must have seen this arrangement with England as an opportunity to send Tatiana and her long memory far away.
"As far as you are concerned," Dmitry went on, one hand inserted into his gray waistcoat in unconscious imitation of Napoleon, "you are fortunate that Alexander let you live here in the palace instead of pensioning you off to a convent somewhere. Now you can repay the great debt you owe him with the only value you have— your title and your Romanov blood."
Her Romanov blood as repayment to Alexander—it was too ironic for comment. Tatiana, at least, really was a Romanov, blood-linked to Peter the Great through both parents—more than Alexander could claim. And she recognized no debt, just the opposite, in fact.
"Well, you may tell our great leader that I prefer to go my own way, in marriage as well as in this palace." With all the dignity she could muster in her paint-spotted frock and stockinged feet, she started for the door. "And I wouldn't marry Cumberland if my life depended on it."
"What if the life of your country depended on it?" Prince Dmitry intercepted her, shooting out a hand and grasping her arm. "When Napoleon marches across the steppes, and England feels no obligation to help her, then perhaps you'll regret that vow ... if Bonaparte lets you live, that is. Surely you remember what the French did to their own royal family. Do you think they will treat us any better?"
As his bony fingers tightened on her wrist, she caught her breath to keep from crying out. She turned her head, but she could feel his words hot on her bare neck. "You haven't any choice, after all. For your alternative is exile. Yes, we'll send you to Siberia, where no doubt you'll meet the same fate as your stupid parents. And we'll deport that silly governess of yours. Think about it. I am sure you would prefer Cumberland Palace."
With her free hand, she grabbed his thumb, bending it back until he cursed and released her. "I'll praise the day I'm shut of you and your wicked tricks. Let the English have the taming of you. I hear the duke is a master disciplinarian." Dmitry's face, grim as an executioner's, clenched into a smile. Then he turned on his heel and strode out of the room.
Tatiana was shaken by her uncle's threat of Siberia, the wasteland that haunted her nightmares. But she turned that fear into anger, picking up a block and hurling it, hitting the door just as it closed behind him. "Damn him! I've half a mind to go to England, just to get away from him." Then she clapped a hand over her traitorous mouth, for if Dmitry heard her declaration he would find some way to use it against her.
When her uncle did not burst triumphantly back into the room, Tatiana retrieved her block and opened the door. Buntin, who had been hiding behind a marble pillar, slipped into the schoolroom. She had mussed her gray coiffure with her agitated hand. "You made him so angry. I could see from the way he stalked out of here. What did you say to him?"
"I suppose I shouldn't have mentioned strangling," Tatiana replied, kicking sullenly at the table leg. "But he made me so furious, pretending that I had disgraced myself, when all along it's been Alexander who has shamed our family."
Buntin, a vicar's daughter, had lived in the Winter Palace for nearly a decade but had never gotten used to the violent intrigue of the Russian court. In fact, she generally tried to ignore it, almost preferring to believe that it was all a figment of Tatiana's imagination. "Oh, Tatiana, when will you learn to think before you speak? You harm only yourself with such wild talk. I thought teaching children would have made you a little more responsible, but instead you seem to be getting more childish yourself. If only you could see yourself now. You are pouting just like little Arkady."
Tatiana gritted her teeth with frustration. With her red hair and elfin features, she was always taken to be a willful child. However justified, her anger was regarded as pique, her resolve dismissed as obstinacy. Even her companion refused to take her seriously. She still loved Buntin, for she'd had no one else all these years. But she suspected that her companion believed what Dmitry said, that Tatiana's wildness was all that kept her from being accepted by her relations.
But she had no other confidant in this vast palace, so she retorted, "Well, I have reason to be agitated, Buntin. I'm supposed to marry your mad prince, Cumberland. And if I don't they'll exile me to Siberia and send you away, and the children will have no one to care for them while their mothers work."
Buntin raised frail hands to her trembling mouth. "Of course you must do what your uncle wants. He is your closest kin."
"Uncle?" Tatiana repeated, glaring at the door whose only offense was to admit Prince Dmitry to the room. "He's no kin of mine. He sees me as an obstacle, one he can marry off to a madman." She paced to the window, gazing out at the dingy snow four stories below, slowly receding from the courtyard as spring advanced into summer. The horrid winter had confined the children to their schoolroom and kept Tatiana from her daily rides through the nearby park. She had longed for summer, for the chance to teach the children about the glorious march of nature. But she would not see any riot of blooming in Siberia, where summer never took hold.
"Cumberland is a royal duke." Buntin recalled her to the subject at hand. "I hardly think he would be mad."
Tatiana received this with a world-weary sigh, for Buntin's innocent notions of royalty were absurdly at odds with palace life. "I know the Hanovers are your royal family, but you must not be so naive. King George talks to trees as if they were his advisors. Cumberland slit his valet's throat. The whole family is utterly crack-brained."
"Those are only rumors."
"And if they've reached us here in Petersburg, they must have merit." Actually, she knew of Cumberland's unsavory reputation only from the scandal rags Buntin's sister sent every month from Kent. But those journal were lavish in detail and speculation: Cumberland had cuckolded his valet and then murdered him, Cumberland had impregnated his own sister—if half of it was true, Tatiana was in deep trouble. "Oh, Buntin, what am I to do?" Like a child, she dropped to the floor and buried her head in the governess's lap, her body tight with fear.
Buntin smoothed back Tatiana's tangled red hair, her fingers brushing her temple. Finally she replied, "Is it all bad, dear? I wonder if you are reacting out of dislike for your uncle. But you may be cutting off your nose to spite your face."
This was a f
requent lament of Buntin's, that Tatiana reacted rebelliously to any perceived domination. Perhaps there was some truth to it after all, for Tatiana did savor defying her uncle. Buntin, sensing some weakening, persisted in her gentle way. "Think on it. You'll be away from Dmitry and the court that you say you hate. You'll meet people your own age and go to dances and parties. No one there will know about your—your father, and with your beauty, you might be the toast of town, if only you are careful."
"With my beauty?" Tatiana echoed, startled out of her anguish. "What beauty? Who ever heard of a redheaded princess? Of course," she added thoughtfully, "Napoleon himself called me 'that flaming flower' and he's a noted connoisseur, isn't he?"
"Don't speak of Napoleon, dear, please," Buntin said faintly. For Tatiana was never meant to meet nor to attract the emperor, and if the tsar ever learned about that escapade, they'd both be packed off to Siberia in a winking. "Think instead of leaving this place, and of having the life you were meant to have, a palace of your own, a highborn husband and children, your freedom."
Tatiana sat back on her heels, her eyes unusually cloudy with thought. Oddly, it had never before occurred to her that she might have a life outside the Winter Palace. In fact, with her usual disregard for the morrow, she had assumed that, were she ever allowed to marry, she would wed poor Cousin Peter and move to a larger apartment in the palace. She knew no other life; however unloving, the palace was the only home she had ever known. What happiness she had made in life, she had made here.
"But I would be leaving behind our little school." She gestured around the room she had commandeered for the children of servants. "And it's been such fun, stealing all those desks from the other palace school—the headmistress must seethe whenever she thinks of nonroyal bottoms in them. And all the children's paintings put up to relieve the gloom—I daresay this is the cheerfullest room in the palace." She stopped to draw a breath, but plunged on almost immediately. "And the children's mothers are so grateful to visit their children while they work. Count Nevski might have been angry at first, but now even he might admit his staff works better when their children are safe. I daresay he was glad to get me out from underfoot also."
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