She made herself speak around the lump in her throat. “The mutation thing?”
“Don’t joke about it.”
“I’m sorry. It’s just so unbelievably—” Stupid. It was stupid, but she bit back the word. As long as he believed he couldn’t love, she would only set up his defenses by arguing with him about it. Unless it was true. The unhappy thought trailed through her mind. What if he was right and his bleak, violent childhood had scarred him so badly he could never love? Or what if he merely couldn’t love her?
The rain began to hammer on the roof of the cab. She looked down at her wedding band. “Tell me what it would be like? If you loved me?”
“If I loved you?”
“Yes.”
“It’s a waste of time to talk about something I can’t make happen.”
“You know what I think? I don’t think it could be much better than it is right now. Now is very good.”
“But it’s not going to last. When our six months are over, so is this marriage. I couldn’t live with myself if I had to watch you grow bitter because I can’t give you what you deserve. I can’t give you love. I won’t give you children. These are things you need, Daisy. That’s the kind of woman you are, and you’ll wither without them.”
His words set off small detonations of pain inside her, but she wasn’t going to punish him for his honesty by attacking him because of her hurt. She also knew she couldn’t take any more at the moment, so she changed the subject. “Do you know what I want?”
“I’d guess a few weeks at a pricey resort and a manicure.”
“No. I want to be a kindergarten teacher.”
“You do?”
“Silly, isn’t it? I’d have to go to college, and I’m too old for that. By the time I graduated, I’d be past thirty.”
“How old will you be if you don’t go to college?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“The years are still going to pass, whether you go to college or not.”
“Are you seriously telling me you think I should do it?”
“I don’t know why not.”
“Because I’ve had enough failure in my life, and I really don’t want to go through any more. I know I’m intelligent, but my schooling’s been slipshod at best, and I’m completely undisciplined. I can’t imagine competing in a college classroom with a lot of bright-eyed eighteen-year-olds who’ve had conventional educations.”
“Maybe it’s time you stopped selling yourself short. Don’t forget that you’re a lady who can tame tigers.” He gave her a mysterious smile that made her wonder exactly which tiger he was talking about—Sinjun or himself. But, no, Alex was too arrogant ever to think of himself as tamed.
She spotted a series of arrows stapled to a utility pole. “There’s a turn ahead.”
Finding circus routing arrows was as natural to Alex as breathing, and she suspected he’d already seen them, but he nodded. The rain was coming down harder, and he flipped the windshield wipers to high speed.
“I don’t suppose we’re lucky enough to be performing on a nice asphalt surface today,” she said.
“Afraid not. We’re in a field.”
“I guess I’m going to learn firsthand why circuses like Quest Brothers are called mud shows. I just hope the rain doesn’t upset the animals.”
“They’ll be fine. It’s the workers who’ll suffer most.”
“And you. You’ll be right out there with them. You always are.”
“It’s my job.”
“A strange job for the man who would be czar.” She gave him a sideways gaze. If he thought she’d forgotten about this particular subject, he was dead wrong.
“Are we back to that again?”
“Just tell me the truth, and I won’t mention it again.”
“Is that a promise?”
“I swear.”
“All right, then.” He took a deep breath. “There’s a distinct possibility it’s true.”
“What!” Her head whipped around so fast, she nearly threw her neck out.
“I definitely have Romanov ancestry, and from what Max has been able to piece together, I’d say there’s a good chance that I’m the great-grandson of Nicholas II.”
She sagged back into the seat. “I don’t believe this.”
“Good. Then we don’t have to talk about it anymore.”
“You really are?”
“Max has some fairly convincing proof. But since I’m not going to do anything about it, there’s no point in discussing it.”
“You’re the heir to the Russian throne?”
“Russia doesn’t have a throne. In case you’ve forgotten, it isn’t a monarchy.”
“But if it were—”
“If it were, there’d be Romanovs coming out of the woodwork claiming to be the heir.”
“And from what my father told me, you’d have a better chance than any of them at making the claim stick, wouldn’t you?”
“Probably. But so what? The Russians hate the Romanovs even more than they hate the communists, so it’s not as if they’re going to put the monarchy back in place.”
“What if they did?”
“Then I’d change my name and hide out on a tropical island somewhere.”
“My father would hate that.”
“Your father is fanatical.”
“You know that’s why he arranged this marriage, don’t you? I thought he was trying to punish me by finding the most unlikely husband he could come up with, but it wasn’t that at all. He wanted the Petroffs and Romanovs united, and he used me to do it.” She shuddered. “It’s like some Byzantine plot. The whole thing gives me the creeps. Do you know what he wanted to talk to me about yesterday?”
“Probably the same thing he talked to me about. All the reasons we should stay married.”
“He told me that if I wanted to hold on to you, I needed to curb the excesses of my personality. I’m also supposed to meet you at the door with your slippers.”
Alex smiled. “He told me to overlook your excesses and concentrate on your cute little body.”
“He said that?”
“Not in so many words, but that was the general idea.”
“I don’t understand. Why would he go through all this for a six-month marriage?”
“Isn’t it obvious? He’s hoping we slip up and I get you pregnant.”
She stared at him.
“He wants to insure the future of the monarchy. And he wants the baby to have Romanov and Petroff blood so he can take his place in history. Your father has it all planned. You give birth to this mythical baby, and he doesn’t even care if we stay married. In fact, he’d probably just as soon I disappeared so he could browbeat you into letting him take charge of the kid.”
“But he knows I’m on birth control. Amelia took me to her own doctor. She even filled the prescription herself because she said she didn’t trust me to do it.”
“Apparently Amelia’s not as anxious to have a little Petroff-Romanov running around the house as your father is. Or maybe she just doesn’t want to be a grandmother. My guess is that he doesn’t know, and I doubt your stepmother will get around to mentioning it to him.”
She stared glumly out the window at the four-lane highway lined with strip malls. A Taco Bell flashed by and then a Subaru dealership. She experienced a sense of unreality at the contrast between these modern signs of civilization and talk of ancient monarchies. And then a terrible thought occurred to her.
“Prince Alexei had hemophilia, and it’s hereditary. Alex, you don’t have the disease, do you?”
“No. It’s passed only through females. Even though Alexei had it, he wasn’t a carrier.” He moved into the left lane. “Take my advice, Daisy, and put all this out of your mind. We’re not going to stay married, and you’re not going to get pregnant, so my family connections don’t have anything to do with you. I only told you all this so you’d stop nagging.”
“I don’t nag.”
He slid his ey
es over her body and gave her a lascivious look “That’s like saying you don’t—”
“Stop right there. If you say the f-word, you’ll be very sorry.”
“What word is that? Whisper it in my ear so I know what you’re talking about.”
“I’m not whispering it in your ear.”
“Spell it.”
“I’m not spelling it.”
He teased her all the way to the lot, but he still couldn’t make her say it.
By early afternoon, the rain had turned into a deluge. Although the slicker Daisy’d borrowed from Alex kept the top part of her dry, by the time she’d finished checking on the menagerie and visited Tater, mud covered her jeans from her knees to her ankles, and her sneakers were so caked they felt like concrete weights.
That evening, before the first performance, all the performers came up to talk to her. Brady apologized for his rudeness the day before, and Jill invited her on a shopping trip later that week. The Toleas and Lipscombs made a point of congratulating her on her bravery, and the clowns gave her a paper flower bouquet.
Despite the foul weather, the publicity surrounding Sinjun’s escape had generated a decent audience, and the two o’clock matinee went well. Jack played the story of Daisy’s heroism to the hilt, but she spoiled the effect somewhat by yelping when Alex wrapped her wrists with the whip.
When the performance was over, she changed back into her muddy jeans in a makeshift dressing area set up for the performers by the back door so they wouldn’t get their costumes wet. Fastening her slicker around her, she ducked her head and plunged out into sheets of driving rain. Although it wasn’t even four o’clock, the temperature had dropped rapidly, and her teeth were chattering by the time she reached the trailer. She stripped out of her jeans, turned on a small space heater, and switched on all the lights because it was so dreary.
As the trailer warmed up and the soft light fell on her decorating treasures, the interior had never seemed cozier. She pulled on a fuzzy peach-colored sweat suit and some woolly socks, then set to work in the small kitchen. They usually ate before the last performance, and for the past few weeks she’d taken over most of the cooking, something she enjoyed as long as she didn’t have to follow a recipe.
She hummed as she sliced an onion along with several limp pieces of celery and began sautéing them in a small skillet, adding garlic and a touch of rosemary. She found a boxed mixture of wild and white rice but threw away the seasoning packet and added her own herbs. A portable radio sat on the counter, and she turned it to a classical station. Homey cooking smells filled the trailer, along with the lush strains of Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C-Sharp Minor. She made a salad, placed chicken breasts on top of the onion and celery mixture, and splashed in some white wine from a bottle they’d opened several days ago.
The insides of the windows began to steam, and condensation trickled along the panes. The rain drove against the metal shell, while the soft music and cozy cooking smells enclosed her in a warm cocoon. She set the table with her chipped blue willow china, earthenware mugs, mismatched crystal goblets, and an old honey jar containing some red clover she’d picked in the field yesterday before everything had happened. As she gazed around at what she’d done, she found herself thinking that none of the beautiful homes she’d lived in were as perfect as this battered little trailer.
The door swung open and Alex entered. Water streamed from his yellow slicker, and his hair was plastered to his head. She grabbed a towel as he closed the door and handed it to him. A clap of distant thunder rocked the trailer.
“It smells good in here.” He gazed around at the warmly lit interior, and she saw something that seemed like yearning in his expression. Had he ever had a home? Not when he was a child, certainly, but as an adult?
“Dinner’s nearly ready,” she said. “Why don’t you get changed.”
While he put on dry clothes, she filled each of their wine goblets halfway and tossed the salad. The music on the radio switched to Debussy. By the time he returned to the table in jeans and a gray sweatshirt, she’d ladled out the chicken and rice.
He waited until she was seated before he took his own chair, then he picked up his wine glass and raised it to her in a silent toast.
“I don’t know if the meal’s any good,” she said. “I just used what we had.”
He took a bite. “It tastes great.”
For a while they ate in companionable silence, lulled by the food, the music, and the snugness of the trailer in the rain. “I’m going to buy you a pepper mill when I get my next paycheck,” she said. “That way you’ll have something better to use than that awful stuff from a tin.”
“I don’t want you spending your money on a pepper mill for me.”
“But you like pepper.”
“That’s not the point. The point is—”
“If I was the one who liked pepper, would you buy me a nice pepper mill?”
“If you wanted one.”
She smiled.
He seemed puzzled. “Is that what you want me to do? Buy you a pepper mill?”
“Oh, no. I’m not much of a pepper fan.”
His mouth curved. “I’m ashamed to admit this, Daisy, but I’m actually starting to follow these convoluted conversations of yours.”
“I’m not surprised. You’re really quite bright.” She gave him a mischievous smile.
“Lady, you are a crackerjack and a half.”
“Sexy, too.”
“That goes without saying.”
“Would you please say it anyway?”
“All right.” His expression grew tender. Reaching across the table, he took her hand. “You are, without a doubt, the sexiest woman I’ve ever known. And the sweetest.”
A lump formed in her throat, and she lost herself in the amber depths of his eyes. How could she ever have thought they were cold? She ducked her head before he could see the tears of longing form.
He began talking about the show, and soon they were laughing at a mishap between one of the clowns and a well-endowed young lady in the front row. They shared small details of their day: a problem Alex was having with one of the workers, Tater’s impatience at being tethered in a tent. They planned a much-needed trip to a laundromat for the next morning, and Alex talked about changing the oil in the pickup. They might have been any married couple, she thought, going about the business of daily life, and she couldn’t suppress a feeling of hope that everything would work out between them after all.
He told her he’d clean up the dishes as long as she stayed where she was to keep him company, then he complained good-naturedly about the number of utensils she’d used. While he teased her, the glimmer of an idea took shape in her mind.
Although Alex had been open about his Romanov heritage, he wouldn’t reveal anything about his present life, which was far more important to her. Until he told her what he did when he wasn’t traveling with the circus, there would never be any real communication between them. But she couldn’t think of any way to get the truth out of him except by using deception. Maybe there wasn’t anything wrong with a little deception, she decided, when their happiness was at stake.
“Alex, I think I might be getting an ear infection.”
He immediately stopped what he was doing and regarded her with so much concern that her conscience suffered a guilty twinge. “Your ear hurts?”
“A little bit. Not much. Just a little.”
“We’ll get you to a doctor as soon as the show is over.”
“All the offices will be closed by then.”
“I’ll take you to a hospital emergency room.”
“Oh, I don’t want to do that. I’m sure it’s not serious.”
“I’m not going to have you running around with an ear infection.”
“I suppose you have a point.” She hesitated, knowing this would be the tricky part. “I do have an idea,” she said cautiously. “Maybe—would you mind taking a look at it yourself?”
He went very st
ill. “You want me to look at it?”
Guilt seeped through every one of her pores. She ducked her head and toyed with the edge of a crumpled paper napkin. At the same time, she remembered the way he’d grilled her about having a tetanus shot and the number of times she’d seen him give first aid to one of the workers. She had a right to know the truth.
“I assume that, regardless of your speciality, you’re qualified to treat a simple ear infection. Unless you really are a veterinarian.”
“I’m not a vet.”
“Well, then . . .”
He didn’t say anything. She held herself tensely while she rearranged the wilting clover and lined up the salt and pepper shakers. She forced herself to remember that this was for his own good. They couldn’t make their marriage work as long as he insisted on keeping so many secrets from her.
She heard him move. “All right, Daisy. I’ll look at it.”
Her head shot up. She’d done it! She’d finally trapped him! Using all her cunning, she had gotten to the truth. Her husband was a doctor, and she’d just forced him to admit it.
She knew he’d be angry when he examined her and saw that she didn’t really have an ear infection, but she’d deal with that when it happened. Surely she could make him understand she’d only done it for his own good. It wasn’t healthy for him to be so secretive.
“Go sit on the bed,” he said. “Near the light where I can see.”
She did as he asked.
He took his time drying his hands at the sink before he set the towel aside and approached her.
“Don’t you need your doctor’s kit?”
“It’s in the locker in the back of the truck, and I’d rather not get wet right now if I don’t have to. Besides, there’s more than one way to diagnose an ear infection. Which ear is it?”
She hesitated for a fraction of a second, then pointed to her right. He brushed her hair back and leaned down to examine it.
“The light’s bad. Lie back.”
She lay down on the pillow. The mattress sagged as he sat next to her and curved his hand around her throat. “Swallow.”
She did.
He pressed a bit harder with his fingertips. “Again.”
She swallowed a second time.