Secret Fire

  “Thank you, Marusia, but you can take that away. I won’t accept anything in this house, including food.”

  “It’s not good that you don’t eat. You are so small.” Marusia said this with awe.

  “I am small because… I am small,” Katherine said stiffly. “It has nothing at all to do with food.”

  “But the Prince, he is so big. See?”

  She practically shoved a little picture beneath Katherine’s nose, so she couldn’t possibly avoid looking at it. The man in the miniature was…impossible. No one could really look like that.

  Katherine pushed the woman’s hand away. “Very amusing. Is this little ruse supposed to make me change my mind? Even if that really were your Prince Alexandrov, my answer would still be no.”

  “You are married?”

  “No.”

  “You have a lover then that you love very much?”

  “Love is for idiots. I am no idiot.”

  Marusia frowned. “Then tell me, please, why you say no. This is truly my prince.” She tapped the picture. “I would not lie, since you will meet him tonight. If anything, this picture does not do him justice. He is a man full of life, energy, and charm. And for all his size, he is gentle with women—”

  “Stop it!” Katherine snapped, her control slipping. “My God, you people are incredible. First that brute who abducts me, now you! Can’t your prince find his own women? Do you realize how disgusting this is for you to pander for him, as if I were for sale? Well, I am not, and there is no amount of money that can buy my affection.”

  “If it is the money you object to, you need only consider a man and woman enjoying each other’s company. And my master does usually court his own women. There is just no time today. He is at the docks, seeing that everything is in order with the ship. You see, we sail tomorrow for Russia.”

  “I am delighted to hear it,” Katherine said dryly. “The answer is still no.”

  Vladimir was right. The wench was worse than stubborn. She was impossible. Sweet Mary, she had the disdain of a princess but the stupidity of the lowest serf. No one in their right mind would turn down a night with Dimitri Alexandrov. There were women who would pay for such a privilege.

  “You still have not said why you refuse,” Marusia pointed out.

  “You people have made a mistake, that’s all. I am not the type of woman who would even remotely consider going to bed with a perfect stranger. I am simply not interested.”

  Marusia let out a string of Russian words as she left the room, shaking her head. In the hall she met her husband, who was waiting expectantly. She hated to disappoint him, but she had no choice.

  “It is no use, Vladimir. I think she is either frightened of men or she does not like them. But she will not change her mind. This I can swear to. You might as well let her go and inform Prince Dimitri so he can make other arrangements for tonight.”

  “No, he will have his first choice,” Vladimir said stubbornly, handing her a little string-tied pouch. “Mix some of this in the food for her dinner.”

  “What is it?”

  “Bulavin’s magic potion. From what he claims, the Prince will be most pleased.”

  Chapter Six

  The bath was delivered late in the afternoon, or was it early evening already? There was no clock in the room. And the little watch Katherine always carried in her pocket was still in the morning gown she had tossed to Lucy so many hours ago.

  She had watched warily as a trio of servants had come and gone. They had carried in the porcelain tub and filled it with steamy water and oil from a small vial, which permeated the room with the scent of roses. No one had asked her if she wanted a bath. She certainly didn’t. Not a stitch of clothes was she going to remove in this house.

  But now Vladimir Kirov came into the room. He tested the water, smiled. Katherine did her best to ignore him. She sat stiffly in a chair, her fingers sounding an angry tapping on the arms.

  He came to stand in front of her, his bearing as commanding as his tone. “You will bathe.”

  Katherine slowly looked up at him, and then in the most condescending way, glanced away again. “You should have asked before going to all this trouble. I do not bathe in strange houses.”

  Vladimir had had enough of her arrogance. “It was not a request, wench, but an order. You will make use of the bath on your own, or the men outside this room will assist you. While they might enjoy that, I do not think you would find it a pleasant experience.”

  He was pleased to see how quickly he had regained her attention. Her eyes, large and oval, flared enormously. They were her best feature by far, brilliant in color. Beautifully unique, they dominated her small face, giving her a look of quaint innocence. Could that be what had appealed to Dimitri? But no, he couldn’t have noticed the eyes at such a distance.

  The unbecoming dress would have to go. Its severe black washed out her coloring, leaving her face a sickly white. The pink tinge suffusing her cheeks at the moment was an improvement, but it wouldn’t last. She had good skin, smooth and unblemished, almost translucent, but she could benefit from a little makeup. He would order it if he didn’t think she would have to be restrained to have it applied. He wanted no bruises on her body that the Prince would object to.

  The soft lighting and the lime green bed sheets would have to be her only enhancements. Vladimir was satisfied he had everything in order. The woman perfumed from her bath, drugged from her dinner soon to arrive, and left vulnerable without her clothing.

  “Avail yourself of the water while it is still hot,” Vladimir continued with his orders. “I will send in a maid to assist you. Your dinner will arrive shortly, and this time you will eat, or you will be helped to do so. It is not our intention you go hungry while you are here.”

  “And how much longer must I be here?” Katherine said through her teeth.

  “When the Prince leaves you, I will have you taken wherever you wish to go. It would be unusual for him to require your company for more than a few hours.”

  It would take only a few minutes for her to upbraid the lecher, Katherine thought furiously, and then she could go. “When will he come?”

  Vladimir shrugged. “When he is ready to retire for the evening.”

  Katherine lowered her eyes as warm color stained her cheeks again. She had heard sex discussed more today than in all her twenty-one years, and all in such a natural, unembarrassed way. These servants of Alexandrov’s must do this sort of thing all the time to have no shame whatsoever. It was as if they saw absolutely nothing wrong in kidnapping an innocent woman off the streets to serve up to their master.

  “You do realize, don’t you, that what you’re doing is criminal?” she asked quietly.

  “But such a little offense, for which you will receive recompense.”

  Katherine was too stunned to answer, and he was gone before her temper had a chance to explode. They thought they were above the law! No, perhaps not. They simply thought she was of the lower classes, and the law favored the gentry here, no doubt in Russia too. As far as they were concerned, abusing her was nothing, for what could she do against a powerful prince? But she hadn’t told them they were mistaken. She hadn’t told them who she really was and that it was quite a different matter to abduct an earl’s daughter.

  She supposed she should have made a clean breast of it. But the thought of confessing to such a foolish charade was just too embarrassing. And it wouldn’t be necessary to secure her freedom. Showing Alexandrov her antipathy would be enough.

  It was a young maid who came in to help her with her bath. Katherine didn’t want any help, but the girl obviously spoke only Russian, for she ignored all of Katherine’s protestations and chatted away in her own language as she folded each piece of clothing Katherine dropped on the floor in her haste to get her ordeal over. And then the moment she stepped into the tub, the girl walked out of the room with every stitch of Katherine’s clothing, including her shoes.

  Blast and damn! They thought of ev
erything! And there was nothing in the room, save the bedding, to cover herself with. It was the last straw! She had tried to be calm. She had tried her best to overlook each offense and treat the whole thing as a simple mistake. In the end she would have been civil to the Prince when she explained his servant’s highhandedness. But not now. No, by God, now he would suffer her wrath.

  Katherine scrubbed herself with a vengeance until every inch of her skin was glowing pink. It was the only way she could immediately let off a little steam. Before she was done, her dinner arrived, delivered by Marusia again.

  “I want my clothes back!” Katherine demanded immediately the door opened.

  “All in good time,” the woman replied calmly.

  “I want them now!”

  “I must warn you not to raise your voice so, little one. The guards have their orders—”

  “To hell with them, and to hell with you! Oh, what’s the use?”

  Katherine stomped out of the tub, whipped a towel around her, and marched to the bed before they thought of removing even those coverings from the room. The heavy spread was too thick and bulky to do, so she threw it back and yanked off the top sheet, tossing it around her shoulders like a cape. The green satin quickly soaked up the moisture from her skin.

  Marusia was more than a little surprised. Such a little bundle of fury, all glistening pink from her bath. Anger made her eyes sparkle, her cheeks bloom, and her body…la, such perfection had been hidden beneath that ugly black dress. The Prince would find no fault there.

  “You eat now, yes, and then perhaps you have time for a little nap before—”

  “Not another word!” Katherine interrupted sharply. “Leave me. I will speak to no one but Alexandrov.”

  Marusia wisely left. There was nothing left to do anyway except wait and hope that there was some truth to Bulavin’s bragging.

  Visions of those burly guards holding her down and shoving food down her throat forced Katherine to the table. The fact that she had been experiencing hunger pangs for the last three hours had little to do with it. But the food was delicious: chicken in a creamy sauce, boiled potatoes and carrots, little honey cakes. The white wine was excellent too, but she was really too thirsty to appreciate it, having drunk nothing all day, and had finished off two glasses before the young maid returned with another tray. This one held a pitcher of iced water, too late, since she had already quenched her thirst, as well as a large decanter of brandy and two glasses. It was set by the bed.

  So was the time finally approaching when the great prince was going to show himself? Obviously. Good, let him come while she was still at the height of her outrage. But he didn’t come soon, and the time continued to drag by as it had all afternoon.

  Katherine finished the meal, then began pacing again. But after about a dozen circles around the room, when every moment she expected the door to open on the elusive prince, she felt her skin begin to tingle where the satin rubbed against it. Nerves. Imagine that! She, who was always steady as a rock, experiencing nerves.

  She stopped beside the brandy and poured herself a glass. The great fortifier, brandy. She gulped it down, unwisely, but there was no time to waste. He would be here any minute, and she needed to relax, to be in control. She sat down, willing herself to calmness. Her method didn’t work. The tingling continued, in fact was getting worse.

  Katherine leaped up and poured another brandy. This one she sipped. She wasn’t foolish enough to get drunk over a case of nerves. She began to walk again, but the satin, the blasted satin sheet, was so irritating where it brushed against her legs. And yet she couldn’t throw it off, as she had the urge to do. It was her only claim to modesty.

  She stopped in the middle of the room, standing perfectly still. That didn’t work either. It was as if every nerve in her body screamed with energy, urging her to move, to do. Standing still was impossible.

  She began to fidget, to stretch—God, she had never in her life felt such restlessness. And then there was something else. She thought she could actually feel the blood rushing through her veins. Impossible, and yet she felt so strange and—warm.

  The door opened, but it was only the young maid, come to take the dinner tray away. No point in talking to her when the girl couldn’t reply in anything but Russian. God, she needed another drink. She went to pour another one as soon as the girl left, but stopped herself. She didn’t dare. She already felt a little light-headed, when she definitely needed to keep her wits about her.

  She sat down on the bed, then heard herself groan. Her eyes flared wide at the sound. What was wrong with her? It had to be the blasted sheet. She had to get rid of it, if only for a few moments.

  Katherine let the sheet fall, then shivered as it slid down her arms and back to pool around her hips. Reflexively she crossed her arms over her bare breasts, then felt a shock clear down to her toes. She gasped. Her breasts had never been so sensitive. But the shock had been pleasurable. She had never felt that before either.

  When she looked down at herself, she was amazed to see her skin flushed to match the warmth she was feeling. And her nipples were hard little nubs, tingling, the tingling was everywhere. She rubbed her arms, then groaned again. Her skin was sensitive everywhere too. Something was definitely wrong. She hurt, no, not hurt—she didn’t know what it was, but it was rushing through her in waves and culminating in her groin.

  Unconsciously Katherine fell back on the bed, squirming restlessly. She was sick. She must be sick. The food. And then she realized, suddenly, horribly, that something must have been put in the food.

  “Oh, God, what have they done to me?”

  But they couldn’t have wanted her to be sick. She must be having a bad reaction to whatever drug they had given her. It was almost funny. For her to be consumed with fever certainly couldn’t be the effect they wanted to produce. But what else could be making her so hot and so furiously restless, so much so that she couldn’t seem to control the movements of her own body?

  She curled up on the bed in a moment of frightful despair. The sheet was cool against her burning skin. She stretched out on her stomach, and for a few blessed moments she felt some relief. A pleasant lassitude enveloped her, and she started to hope the crisis was over—but it didn’t last. She could feel hot surges of sensation beginning again, building in strength, and an insistent throbbing in her groin, an ache. Oh, God!

  She twisted over onto her back in the middle of the bed, her arms thrown out at her sides. Her head tossed back and forth, her breath came in little gasps. She was losing control completely, her body arching, twisting, thrusting, and she didn’t even realize she was doing it. She had no conception of time. Her nudity, the situation she was in, all were forgotten in the raging fever consuming her.

  Twenty minutes later, when Prince Alexandrov entered the room, Katherine was beyond thinking about anything except the burning heat in her body. She didn’t hear him come in. She didn’t know he stood watching her, dark, velvet eyes fascinated by her every movement.

  Dimitri had been arrested by the erotic picture she presented. Her body, undulating and arching, gyrating on the bed, seemed in the throes of sexual passion. He had always been aware of these motions in his more passionate bed partners, had felt such movements under him, delighted in them, but never had he observed them from a distance. The scene was immediately effective. He could feel his manhood springing to life beneath the loose robe that was all he wore.

  What had this little English rose been doing to herself to bring about this feverish pitch of excitement? What a surprise she was! And here he had been regretting all evening the impulse that had sent Vladimir after her. After all, there was really nothing about her to arouse his passion. So he had thought until now.

  When Katherine finally became aware of his presence, he was standing at the foot of the bed, leaning casually against the bedpost.

  That picture… Adonis come to life. Impossible. He couldn’t be real—she was delirious. But no, this was flesh and blood.
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  “Help me. I—I need—” Her throat was so parched from the heat that she could barely get the words out. She ran her tongue slowly over her lips. “A doctor.”

  Dimitri’s half-smile turned to a frown. He had been shocked when he finally looked into her eyes. Another surprise. Such color, and smoldering with passion. He had been so certain she had meant to say she needed him. A doctor!

  “You are—ill?”

  “Yes…a fever. I’m so hot.”

  His frown turned into a black scowl. Sick! Damnation! And after she had made him want her.

  Unreasonable anger shot through him. He started for the door. He would have Vladimir’s head for this. Her voice stopped him.

  “Please…water.”

  The pathetic plea stirred his compassion for some reason. Ordinarily he would have left her in the care of his servants. But he was at hand, and to give her water would take only a moment. It wasn’t her fault that she was ill. Vladimir should have informed him before he had come to her. She should have been taken to a doctor immediately.

  He didn’t consider the possibility of contagion and that getting near her might postpone his sailing tomorrow. He poured the water and lifted her head to bring the glass to her lips. She took a few sips, and her cheek turned toward his wrist and rubbed against it. Then her whole body turned toward him, as if drawn by the contact.

  He let go of her, but she groaned at the loss of his cool skin. “No…so hot…please.”

  She was trembling. With cold? he wondered. Her cheek hadn’t been hot. He put his hand to her forehead; it was cool. Yet she acted as though she was burning with fever. What kind of sickness was this? And damned if he still didn’t want her!