by Merry Farmer
“Thanks,” Malcolm said, reaching into his pocket to find a coin for the man.
As soon as the blacksmith was paid, Malcolm took Katya’s hand and marched off to find the cottage. Bianca and Natalia followed.
“Are you certain you two don’t want to wait in the carriage?” Katya asked them.
“No,” they answered in unison, far too suspicious for Malcolm’s liking.
The cottage was farther outside of town than Malcolm anticipated. Katya started to cough from exertion before they reached the fallen tree. Deep concern bubbled up in him and he slowed down, but Katya didn’t seem to be in the mood to pause for a rest. She soldiered on valiantly, filling Malcolm with a sense of pride that he was no longer sure he had a right to.
“There it is,” Bianca called out, running ahead when they spotted the quaint cottage near a bend in the river.
“We’re here, we’re here,” Natalia ran after her, disappearing around the corner of the house.
“Do you get the sense we’re walking into a trap?” Katya asked as they approached.
“Yes,” Malcolm answered. He squared his shoulders and marched on, determined not to be bested. “Cece, if you and Rupert are there, come out at once,” he shouted.
There was a brief silence before a clatter and thumping. Malcolm led Katya to the cottage door and knocked. More rattling followed.
“We’re inside.” Cece’s voice sounded distant.
“Are you there as well, Mama?” Rupert called, sounding distant as well.
“I’m here,” Katya shouted. “And you’re about to wish you weren’t.”
“Come in, then,” Cece said.
Malcolm tried the doorknob, finding it unlocked. He pushed the door open and stormed in, Katya right behind him. “The two of you had better be decent,” he said, squinting in the cottage’s dark front room. The windows were shuttered and the only light came from the cheerfully crackling fire and the open front door.
“And you’d better not be married,” Katya said, turning in a circle to get her bearings.
All at once, the front door smacked shut, and there was a thump and clatter outside. Malcolm whipped around and marched over to open the door, but the handle wouldn’t turn and the door was stuck tight.
“What the devil is going on here?” he bellowed, pounding on the door.
“You’re sealed in,” Rupert announced from the other side of the door. “All of the doors and windows are fastened shut. You won’t be able to open them from the inside.”
“So help me, Rupert,” Katya roared, marching toward the door. “Earl or not, I will tan your backside as soon as I get out of here.”
“Behave yourself, Mama,” Bianca answered. “It’s time you and Lord Malcolm sat down and talked things through.”
“Yes,” Cece agreed. “We’re not letting the two of you out until you’ve said all the things that you haven’t been saying to each other, starting with admitting that you’re in love and you can’t live without each other. Do I make myself clear?”
Malcolm wasn’t sure whether he was more surprised or angry at the children’s plot. It galled his pride to no end that he’d fallen for their trick so handily. “Let us out of here at once,” he growled, banging on the door for good measure.
“No,” all four of them shouted.
“The little shits,” Katya hissed, turning and walking away.
Malcolm turned to watch as she searched for and found lamps and matches to light them. A lump formed in his stomach that pulsed its way up to his chest. He had a horrible feeling he might have to do what the children wanted him to do.
Chapter 17
“Let us out of here,” Malcolm shouted, continuing to bang on the door.
Katya rolled her eyes and searched for more lamps. If she was going to be stuck in a tiny, two-room cottage with Malcolm in a rage for an indeterminate amount of time, the least she could have was light. As soon as the lamp on the counter in the kitchen area was blazing, she carried the matches she’d found around the room to light all the candles she could find.
“I don’t hear you talking to Lady Stanhope, Papa,” Cece scolded Malcolm from the other side of the door.
“If you don’t let me out of here this instant, young lady, I’ll—”
“Let it be, Malcolm,” Katya snapped from the other side of the room as she peered into the cottage’s small bedroom. “They nabbed us fair and square.”
As Malcolm pounded on the door one last time—more out of frustration, by the sound of it, than any real conviction—Katya stepped into the bedroom to search for a lamp. Her tired face dropped into an irritated frown at the sight of the room. The bed was freshly made with flower petals strewn across the pillows. A vase of flowers sat on the bedside table, along with a lamp. Did the children really think a few words would end with her and Malcolm in bed?
She huffed and snatched the lamp off the table, beginning to believe everyone who had told her she was far too liberal with her girls’ education had been right.
“This is insufferable,” Malcolm growled when she returned to the main room. He was pacing, running his hand through his hair as he did. Tension rippled off him.
Katya lit the lamp and set it on a tiny table near one of the windows that she supposed was the nanny’s dining room table. “Stop acting like a caged animal,” she said, sitting in one of the dining room chairs and crossing her legs. “You’ll only wear yourself out.”
“What am I supposed to do?” Malcolm bellowed, marching toward her.
“You’re supposed to talk to Mama,” Natalia’s voice came from the other side of the window, a mere foot from where Katya sat.
Katya clenched her jaw and narrowed her eyes at the window. “I won’t say a word if I know the lot of you are listening.”
Her threat was followed by a squeak and a rustle that Katya assumed was Natalia moving away from the window.
“They’ll just creep back up to the windows again,” Malcolm groused, returning to his pacing.
“Not if they know what’s good for them,” Katya said, directing the comment over her shoulder.
All the same, she got up and moved to the lumpy, old sofa closer to the fireplace, in the middle of the room. She was determined not to let a passel of young people get the better of her. As she sat, she crossed her arms, ready to wait as long as it took to prove to them her will was stronger than theirs.
“Sit down, Malcolm,” she ordered after a few minutes silence.
“I don’t want to sit down,” he grumbled. “I want to get out of here and wring their necks.”
“They’re not going to let us out unless they think we’ve talked things through,” Katya argued. “And they’re not going to believe we’ve talked things through unless some time has passed. So quit fussing like an old hen and sit down.”
Malcolm turned to her, the glare he sent her fading fast into a look of bitter resignation. He strode to the sofa and sat at the far end, crossing his legs and twisting away from Katya.
“That’s a fine posture,” she said, full of sarcasm. “Shut me out and behave like a child. You’re very good at it.”
“I’m good at shutting people out?” He shifted to face her, incredulity widening his eyes. “This from the queen of secrets.”
“There’s a vast difference between secrets and discretion and you know it,” Katya snapped, settling into her corner of the sofa. She knew Malcolm well enough to know the children were about to get exactly what they’d hoped for. Malcolm was less than ten seconds away from exploding like an overheated jar of jam.
“So it was discretion that kept you from telling me I had a child all these years?” he demanded.
Katya would have grinned over her ability to predict his actions if she hadn’t been so exhausted by his rage.
“As I told you,” she said, “Natalia is my daughter. I could no more have told you the truth of her paternity when she was born than I could have run to the moon and back.”
“Balderdash.
You could have sent me a letter or sought me out in person to tell me,” he argued. “I had a right to know.”
“Your memory is appalling, Malcolm. Don’t you remember what things were like in those days?” Katya leaned slightly toward him.
“It shouldn’t have made a difference,” Malcolm said, but he couldn’t hold her gaze.
Katya laughed and shook her head. “Robert was still alive when Natalia was born, but just barely. Or do you not remember how his health declined over that last year before his heart failed?” When Malcolm didn’t answer, she went on with, “Of course, you must remember. The entire reason you abandoned me was because you suddenly decided you couldn’t carry on with a sick man’s wife behind his back.”
“I didn’t abandon you,” Malcolm insisted, pink flooding his cheeks. “I had business to take care of and Cece to raise.”
“You ran faster than a thoroughbred the moment your conscience pricked you,” she said bitterly. “You left me with an indifferent, ailing husband, two toddlers, and a baby on the way.”
“Well you didn’t waste any time finding someone else to warm your bed,” Malcolm said with renewed anger.
Katya tutted and shook her head. “You always have had an overblown idea of my promiscuity.”
“Are you denying the fact that you’ve had a whole stable of lovers?”
Katya paused, glancing toward the fireplace. “No,” she answered at last.
Malcolm made a victorious sound and leaned back, crossing his arms.
Katya turned her head to glare at him. “You don’t know what it was like back then.”
“It must have been a true hardship to have so many men between your legs, servicing you every night,” he snorted.
If she’d been close enough, Katya would have slapped him. “I was forced to marry Robert when I was barely eighteen,” she said, her voice raised, instead. “I was younger than Cece is now. My parents arranged the whole thing without my knowledge. I was informed less than a fortnight before the wedding that not only would I not get a season or two, like every one of my friends and other girls my age, but I was condemned to marry a man fifteen years older than me whom I’d never met.”
“So you took revenge on them all by becoming a tart,” Malcolm grumbled, though Katya could see uncertainty beginning to form in his expression.
“I was no such thing,” she told him, the pain of that time in her life returning. “I was a child myself, but I tried to be the best wife I could be to Robert. He wasn’t a bad man, just indifferent. The only reason he wanted me was because of my family’s connection to the Romanovs. He wanted his heir to have royal blood. I did my duty and gave him an heir within a year of our marriage.”
“Good for you,” Malcolm said. “And once you’d done your duty, you opened shop for every other man who wanted a taste of something royal?”
Katya bit her lip, the young, lost woman she’d been crying through the hard layers life and age had built up within her. “It was Robert’s idea,” she said at last.
Malcolm’s brow knit in confusion, but he remained silent.
“It was Robert’s idea,” she repeated, as if justifying everything that happened next in her life. “After Bianca was born, he had what he wanted. It was clear Rupert was healthy and would live, so he didn’t feel the need to keep trying for another boy. He had a mistress at that point who he cared about far more than me. He styled himself a man of modern attitudes, and during one of the numerous house parties he threw in the summers, he encouraged me to bed whoever I wanted.”
“He didn’t,” Malcolm said, more an exclamation than a contradiction.
“He didn’t just encourage it, he made suggestions, introductions.” Katya glanced down to her hands in her lap. “I was terrified at first. I didn’t want to be an adulteress, but I was only twenty at that point and too terrified to contradict my husband’s wishes to say no. I shook like a leaf the first time a man who wasn’t my husband took me to bed.” Her mouth pulled into an ironic twist, but she continued to stare at her hands. “Robert was beyond clever, though. I think he made sure that first lover was young, attractive, and highly skilled. I felt things Robert himself had never made me feel.”
“Who was it?” Malcolm snapped, his tone thick with jealousy.
Katya sent him a flat stare. “Under no circumstances will I ever tell you, so don’t even try. The point is, Robert set me on a path that I felt helpless to resist, particularly as it provided me with so much pleasure. But as delightful as my nights were, my days were bitter with regret. I could barely meet my own eyes in the mirror, and I couldn’t look at Robert at all. Until you came along.”
Malcolm blinked in confusion. “Me?”
There didn’t seem to be any point in holding back anymore. Too much water had passed under the bridge. “I’d been had by half a dozen men by the time we met, Malcolm, but I never loved anyone until I met you.”
He opened his mouth, but no sound came out.
“You were fiery,” Katya pushed on, unwilling to let silence fall between them. “And grieving. You touched my heart along with my body. You were the first man to talk with me as though my opinion mattered, to tell me ribald jokes and laugh along with me instead of at me. I knew you were mourning Tessa, and I wanted to be the one to heal your heart.”
“You were,” he said, though the words came out with stilted reluctance, making Katya question whether he meant them or whether he was humoring her.
“My young heart thought it had found its match at last,” she said with a sigh, remembering how beautiful and innocent the feeling had been. “I knew that you were the father as soon as I fell pregnant again. I hadn’t been with anyone else for months before you, not even Robert.”
“So Robert knew he wasn’t Natalia’s father either?” Malcolm asked.
“He knew,” Katya said, more emotions she thought were long dead pinching her insides. “He didn’t care. He told me he’d claim the child as his, but he knew it wasn’t. I think he suspected that his illness was more than a lingering pain by that point anyhow. He died less than a month after Natalia was born.”
“You should have told me,” Malcolm said, though this time the words held an entirely different kind of regret. “I would have been by your side in a heartbeat.”
Katya swallowed, pressing a hand to her stomach at the memories of the worst days of her life. “Everyone and their brother was by my side, and every one of them wanted a piece of the pie that had fallen into my lap. Robert’s brother Henry tried to sail in and take over control of the title and the estate, saying he would act as a sort of regent until Rupert came of age. My father tried to use me as a way to drain the Stanhope wealth as well. I had solicitors at the house every day, Robert’s seedier friends stepping forward with offers to ‘comfort’ me in my time of trial. I had at least ten proposals of marriage, including one from a man who went so far as to corner me in a sitting room in an attempt to rape his way into marriage.”
“I’ll kill him,” Malcolm growled. “Whoever he was, I’ll kill him.”
Katya sighed and rubbed her forehead. “He’s been dead eight years now, so be my guest.”
“You should have sent for me, I would have—”
“Joined the legion of men offering to protect me and organize my affairs for me?” Katya asked, then huffed a laugh. “No thank you. I beat the man who tried to rape me off with a candelabra, and in the process, I realized a hard truth. If I was going to be anything other than a pawn in some man’s game, I had to learn to fight for myself, to fight for my children. I had to be smarter than every man in the room. I had to know more about running an estate and about politics and about the world than anyone I came across. I had to claim what was mine and hold onto it with an iron fist. I had to take lovers the way that men did to stop them from seeing me as a fragile flower who could be plucked and controlled.”
Malcolm gaped at her. “Don’t tell me that you didn’t want to take all those lovers. That would be a bald-faced l
ie.”
“I took the men I wanted as lovers and rejected the ones I didn’t want, which is far, far more than most women have the luxury of saying. I made friends with people I trusted, which, as you will recall, is how our paths crossed again.”
“Was it Basil?” Malcolm asked, his jaw tight. “Was he your lover?”
Katya kept her lips pressed tightly shut.
“Were any of the others your lovers too?”
She met his eyes and held them tight. “You know I would never betray the confidences of my true friends.”
“It was—” Malcolm stopped, then sighed and rubbed a hand over his face, sinking back into the sofa. “So what was I, then? Another way to prove you had power over men?”
“You were my reward,” she admitted, lowering her eyes.
Malcolm snorted. “Fantastic. I was a prize in your game.”
“Not a prize.” She met his eyes. “My reward. For establishing myself as I wanted to be.”
He frowned. “I don’t understand.”
“I had gained control of the Stanhope title and estate. Every man who had tried to take what rightfully belonged to my children had been set in his place. My reputation as a powerful woman was established. I had nothing left to prove to anyone.”
“So you celebrated by inviting me to your flat in St. John’s Woods for supper and sin?” he asked, trying to sound tough but clearly confused.
“Yes,” Katya answered with a shrug. “For me, that night was a way to mark the end of the war I’d been waging and the beginning of the rest of my life.”
He studied her with narrowed eyes, clearly delving into his memories to recapture that night. “All I remember was that I was so happy to be back in your arms again that, well, I outdid myself.”
“You certainly did,” Katya agreed, a wicked grin playing at her lips.
“But that was just one night,” Malcolm went on, shaking his head. “You were still the catch of London in those days. You had men lining up for the chance to be seen with you.”
