From Governess to Countess (Matches Made in Scandal)

by Marguerite Kaye

  He still struggled to believe that Elizaveta had taken a lover. What kind of a man would dare to bed her? Who was he? Where might he find the answer to that question? Why in a magpie’s nest of course!

  He jumped to his feet and was halfway across the room before pulled himself up short, recalling Allison’s warning. Catiche must not be made to feel she had done any wrong. He would tell her that he wanted to get to know her mother better through her keepsakes—yes, that was it, and dammit, it was the truth too! There was a chance, just the tiniest chance, that Catiche unwittingly held the answer to the final question.

  * * *

  It was late afternoon when Aleksei sent for Allison. He was in his study, in formal dress, motioning her to take the chair on the opposite side of the desk. ‘What is it? What has happened?’

  He handed her a cup of sweetened tea and sat down. ‘You would not believe—I still cannot believe it myself.’ Drinking his own brew in one gulp, he set down the plain china cup. ‘After you left, I got to wondering what else Catiche had appropriated from her mother’s rooms. Do not worry,’ he added hastily, ‘I promise you, I did not accuse her of anything save missing her mama. Which she does, just as you told me, much more than I had realised.’

  ‘Your relationship with your own mother was so very different, Aleksei.’

  ‘As was yours, yet you understood. I have much to learn.’

  ‘So you have decided...’

  ‘I am beginning to think that I have no option. Hear me out. You will understand why soon enough. Amongst other trinkets, a handkerchief, a bottle of scent, a few buttons, Catiche had this in her little collection of memorabilia.’

  He pushed a leather-bound scrapbook towards her. Inside there were sketches of the children, cuttings of their hair, ribbons, little childish notes, all pasted into the pages with annotations in French, in what Allison assumed must be Elizaveta’s handwriting. If ever any doubt had been cast on the extent of the Duchess’s love for her children, this touching testimony would put her feelings beyond question. ‘No wonder that Catiche took this,’ Allison said. ‘It is right that she should have it, to share with Elena and Nikki.’

  ‘I agree. But the book does not only contain keepsakes of her children,’ Aleksei said, looking very grim. ‘If you turn to the last page.’

  She did as he bid her. Another lock of hair was pasted there, dark blond, and much coarser than the others, and beside it, what looked like a name, though unlike the rest of the book, the script looked to be Russian. ‘What does it mean?’

  ‘Vezuchiy,’ Aleksei said. ‘It means lucky.’

  Allison frowned. ‘You mean this lock of hair was meant to bring luck? It did not come from one of the children. In fact it looks like yours, though why Elizaveta...’

  ‘Michael’s hair was the same colour. It is a trait in the male line of my family.’

  ‘I’m not sure where this is leading.’

  ‘I have a male relative with similar colouring.’

  ‘Your cousin Felix? But why—?’ She broke off, staring at Aleksei in horror. ‘Felix. It is from the Latin, isn’t it? It means...’

  ‘Lucky,’ Aleksei said with a pronounced sneer. ‘And well named! It is extremely lucky for Felix that I did not call him out when I confronted him earlier this afternoon.’

  ‘Aleksei, you did not hurt him?’ Allison said urgently.

  ‘There was no need. The pain was self-inflicted and he is a broken man. I doubt he will ever recover.’ He took the keepsake book from her, closing it over. ‘Felix is not a murderer, Allison, but he was, inadvertently, the cause of my brother’s death. I will explain, but for once, I feel the need to fortify myself with something stronger than tea.’ He took the stopper from the decanter which was set on the desk, with two glasses. ‘Will you join me in a cognac? You need not fear, it is the proper French vintage, not gut-rot from Michael’s cellar.’

  ‘Thank you. Since you seem to think I will require it, then I will.’ She took the heavy crystal glass, holding it in readiness, watching with a sense of dread as Aleksei, who seemed to be almost as abstemious as his brother had been reputed to be, swallowed a large measure, and immediately poured himself another. Her mind was wanting to race ahead, but she forced herself to stay calm, for it was clear that was what Aleksei needed most from her.

  ‘Where to start?’ he said, twisting his glass around and around on the desk.

  She articulated the terrible, shockingly obvious conclusion, to save him the pain of saying it aloud. ‘Felix was Elizaveta’s lover?’

  ‘My first cousin! The man Michael would have entrusted with the care of his children. The change of the will is explained now. It proves that Michael must have known about their treachery, though my cousin...’ His jaw clenched. ‘The man whom I used to call my cousin, Felix Golytsin, believed Michael was oblivious. He ended it, he tells me, precisely because he was terrified that Michael might find out. The night before my brother died, Golytsin told Elizaveta that their affaire was madness, that it could not continue. The guilt was eating him up, he said. Though I suspect he was more concerned about saving his scrawny neck.’

  ‘So on the night she was absent from the palace, Elizaveta had been with her lover, just as Anna Orlova suspected and we concluded. He summarily ended the liaison, which would explain her highly distressed state of mind the next day.’

  ‘She did not recognise her mistress,’ Aleksei said. ‘you remember, that’s what the Orlova woman said, and Golytsin said the same. Elizaveta was like a madwoman, he said, talking wildly about them eloping and taking the children with them, and when he pointed out that the outcome would be to destroy all their lives, she simply wouldn’t listen. He went to Peterhof, he says, to give her time to come to her senses, to realise that there was no future for them, to accept it was over. I’ve never seen a man so broken or so consumed by guilt. There is no doubt I think, no matter how wrong it was, that he loved her. Her death added to the remorse he felt, for cuckolding my brother, his nearest relative.’ Aleksei thumped the desk with his fist, but with a supreme effort regained his self-control.

  ‘Do you think he suspects foul play?’ Allison enquired tentatively.

  ‘He concedes that Michael must have found out somehow, there is no other explanation for the change of will. As to whether he suspects Elizaveta took Michael’s life—no, I don’t think so. He confessed that he had considered the possibility that she had taken her own after Michael’s apoplexy, a case of severe guilt and repentance, but like me, he dismissed the notion. Whatever else Elizaveta was, she loved her children. They had already lost their father...they would need their mother more than ever.’

  Allison set down her untouched drink, letting her hand lie on the keepsake book. ‘So when she murdered Michael, she was not thinking that she was taking their father from them.’

  ‘No. She was deluding herself into thinking that Golytsin would take Michael’s place.’

  ‘And her death—it seems it was an accident after all.’

  ‘It seems so, just as you surmised.’ Aleksei finished his cognac. ‘One thing we need not fear, is that Golytsin will talk. My discovery of the affaire was the final straw for him. He intends to resign all his positions at court and retire to the countryside. I can think of no better punishment for a man whose life centred around the Imperial court, than to be exiled from it because of his own actions. It’s ironic, isn’t it? I knew that such a murder must have had the strongest of motive. I knew that custody of my wards was the strongest of all motives. But I never guessed that love rather than money or power could be at the root of it. A warped kind of love it was, but there is no denying that is what it was all the same.’

  ‘Oh, Aleksei, I don’t know what to say.’

  He leaned across the desk to clasp her hand. ‘You don’t have to, Allison, I know your thoughts without you having to speak them.’

  That is one of the many things that I love about you. Dear heavens, she sincerely hoped he could not read her every t
hought.

  He stood up, pulling her to her feet to wrap his arms around her. ‘It has been, as your grandmother would say, a bit of a day.’

  She hugged him tightly. ‘You must be exhausted.’

  ‘I’m certainly tired of thinking.’

  ‘We have established a remedy for that. Why don’t we meet tonight and I can administer the cure?’

  * * *

  ‘Light every candle,’ Allison said some hours later, turning the key in the lock of the State Bedchamber. ‘I want to see you in all your glory.’ To see him, to etch the memory in her mind, and to imprint herself on him. She wanted to demonstrate her love for him by truly making love to him. She wanted to show him what she could never allow herself to say.

  Light flickered from every sconce, every candlestick in the huge chamber, reflecting the rich gold and blue hues of the furnishings in the gilded mirrors. As she stepped into Aleksei’s arms, Allison could see their entwined figures reflected too, his dark-blond head, her auburn, bending towards each other, and then their lips met, and she forgot about their reflection, and concentrated on the reality.

  Their lips clung, their kisses not yet passionate but the kisses of two people seeking to banish the world, to forget themselves, to find succour in each other. Sweet kisses that went on and on and on, making her head spin, making her body pliant, bending and shaping itself into him. Her hands fluttered over the short, rough hair at the back of his head, down to the breadth of his shoulders, the length of his back, to rest on the firm slope of his buttocks. How she loved this man. How very much she loved him.

  He tangled his fingers in her hair, scattering pins, combing through her curls as they cascaded free. His hands caressed her, flattening over her back, the dip of her waist, the curve of her bottom, back up to her breasts. And all the time their lips clung. Deep kisses. Licking kisses. Soft kisses. And then kisses that became darker. Their breath became shallow. Desire leapt inside her, a sudden flame, an aching tension, but when Aleksei began to unfasten her gown, she stopped him.

  ‘Wait. You first.’ She smiled up at him, a smile that was deliberately teasing, sinful, confident of her effect, rewarded with an answering, dark gleam in his eyes.

  He cast off his coat, and at her behest, his breeches, boots and waistcoat too. Allison shivered in anticipation as she untied his stock, leaving only his shirt to cover his modesty. But only just. She slid her hands under the soft fabric to cup the taut muscles of his buttocks, pulling him against her, arching herself into the hard length of his erection, then kissing him again. A different kiss. A heated kiss, that he responded to with heat, but she slowed him, leading him through the strange little gate that guarded the bed, easing him on to it, standing between his legs. More kisses. The hardness of him against her belly, through her gown, was the sweetest ache.

  ‘Your shirt,’ she said, watching him, letting her desire show blatantly on her face as he lifted it, watching the ripple of his muscles, belly and chest, as he raised it over his head, then watching, simply staring for a long moment as he sat before her naked, while she was fully dressed. Even this was shockingly arousing.

  He waited, sensing that that was what she wanted. No need to tell him. Another one of the things she loved about him. He waited while she removed her gown, slowly peeling it down her body, enjoying the way he watched her, registering the sharp intake of his breath as it slid to the ground. She turned around, and he unlaced her corsets, kissing her neck, his hands smoothing over the fullness of her breasts, circling her nipples through her chemise, making her moan, arch backwards against him.

  And then she turned, pushing him back on the bed, discarding her chemise, now dressed only in her stockings and garters, to straddle him. More kisses. His mouth. His eyes. His mouth. She could never have enough of his mouth. Then his throat. His chest. His nipples. Did he like to have her do what he did to her? Sucking. Licking. Circling. Undoubtedly.

  More kisses. Slowly easing herself down his body, licking and kissing her way from the dip of his rib cage to the rippling muscles of his belly, then back again, shuddering as her nipples grazed his skin, aware all the time of his bright blue gaze fixed on her, waiting, watching, taking his cue from her, stoking her confidence and her desire. She loved him so much. So very much.

  She hesitated only briefly as she came to the soft line of dark-blond hair arrowing down from his navel. Kisses. She remembered the shocking delight of the kisses he had given her, and though her only clue was to echo that, her desire to make tonight unique, and to know all of him, gave her the confidence to continue. Sliding down from the bed between his legs, she felt the shock of his response in the way he said her name, and feared she had made a mistake. ‘Did I—don’t you want me to?’

  ‘I want only what you want. You don’t have to...’

  ‘Oh, but I want to,’ she said, sure now, very sure. ‘I want to.’

  Kisses. The sleek muscles of his thighs. Then between. Kisses. And touch. Trailing fingers, making him contract, the lightest of kisses, making him shudder, and then her tongue, licking, eliciting a deep, feral groan. Kisses, along the satiny length of him, and then deeper kisses, daring to do what she had never dreamed of, aroused by his pulsing, throbbing arousal to more, until he cried out, begging her to stop because he didn’t want it to be over, not yet. And because she didn’t want it ever to end, she did stop, kissing her way back up his body to meet his mouth once more.

  Their passion had never been like this. Not so feverish. Not so all-consuming. And not so desperate, as if there was a clock ticking down the hours. How she loved him. She loved him. She loved him. Hands and mouths clinging, skin to skin. When he slid his hands between her legs to stroke her, she ignited, tipping into a climax that shook her to her core, and still they kissed. But she wanted more now, urging him, crying out with surprised delight when he wrapped her leg over his, still lying side by side, and slid into her, pulling her tight around him.

  Different frissons, as he began to rock against her, inside her, a gentle, slow, pulsing movement that set her pulsing too once more, her muscles clenching around him. She watched her own arousal reflected on his face, in the dilation of his pupils, in the slashes of colour on his cheeks, the way his eyes finally fluttered closed, and the thickening inside her, the deep, guttural moan of his that she had come to know presaged his own climax. She clung, lost to the consequences, digging her fingers into the muscles of his back, her heel on his buttock, she clung as he pulsed, rocked, and with a deep shudder and a cry his release took him, but not before he pulled himself free.

  Honourable to the very last, she thought, kissing his chest, twining herself back around him. She kissed him again, burrowing her face in his chest, where it seemed to her she could smell the very essence of him.

  Chapter Thirteen

  It was very late. Aleksei stared out of his bedchamber window at the dark garden. Tonight, they had made love again in the State Bedchamber they had claimed for their own, as they had for the last three nights. Their passion had an increasingly desperate edge to it, an intensity that left him feeling stripped bare, raw, and strangely complete. He had never before surrendered himself so absolutely in this way, never lost himself so utterly. He’d never felt like this before and never imagined that he could feel like this. It was as if their lovemaking merged more than their bodies.

  Though they never spoke of it. There was no need to, he’d thought. Until three nights ago. Day one of the countdown to her departure. It had been different that night. Allison had been different. Not only what she’d done—by all the stars, what she had done!—but—he couldn’t explain it.

  Aleksei frowned out at the darkness. It wasn’t only the intensity, it was the intimacy. He’d never felt so close to anyone, while making love and in the aftermath. He wanted to hold her, so close there was no space between them, so close that their skin stuck like glue, but Allison—afterwards, it was as if she withdrew from him. Though he liked to believe he could read her every thought, ther
e were obviously some she kept from him.

  He leant his forehead against the cold window frame. Dammit, wasn’t it simple enough? They had agreed, hadn’t they, that they were already in too deep! It was why she was leaving sooner rather than later. Their affaire had always been just that, an affaire. He would miss her like the devil, wouldn’t he? So it was safe to assume she would miss him. He knew that, of course he did, though he couldn’t bear the thought of causing her pain. He’d do anything to spare her hurt, no matter the cost to himself. It was why he was letting her go, when what he wanted...

  Aleksei cursed furiously and fluently in Russian. What he wanted was entirely irrelevant. Duty, that was what had always driven him, though fortunately for him, it had coincided with his love of the army. Now his duty lay here, with his wards. It was what his brother had wanted, and since he’d done with the army, and unlike Allison, had no other future mapped out, then his duty was what he would do. Even though it meant giving up...

  Once again, he swore long and viciously. No point in thinking such things. No point in imagining a place where his and Allison’s worlds could collide because such a place did not exist. If it did, though, if there was, what a glorious place it would be. And oh, how he ached with the wanting of it.

  Cursing again, unable to imagine sleeping, Aleksei quit his chamber, heading as he had done so many times in the past, for the boathouse, and the rowing boat, and the peaceful solitude of St Petersburg at night. His St Petersburg. The rhythmic splash of his oars working hard against the flow calmed him. It was a cold, crisp autumn night, presaging the arrival of winter, earlier than usual. Above him the sky was a canopy of stars. He’d never have an opportunity now, to row Allison all the way up river, to show her the magical view of St Petersburg, like an island rising out of the mist. They would never race through the snow in his troika. They would never glide along the frozen canals on skates. He loved her so much. So very, very much.