Once a Princess

Chapter 31

Tanya might have lost her interest in learning about Stefan's scars the day before, but it was the first thing she asked Lazar the next morning when he and Serge joined her for breakfast in her cabin.

"Stefan's scars? That is a touchy subject, Princess," Lazar began.

"One Stefan wouldn't like us to discuss," Serge added with a warning look at his friend.

"Well, heaven forbid you do something he wouldn't like," Tanya said with just enough scorn to goad them.

But Lazar merely grinned at her, aware of what she was doing. "That tactic won't work. If you knew how unpleasant it is to have Stefan annoyed at you—"

Serge wasn't amused, and he broke in, grumbling, "She knows. But like most females, she doesn't care how she goes about getting what she wants."

"That isn't so," Tanya retorted. She tried to look offended, couldn't manage it, so settled on a shrug. "Never mind. I suppose I can just ask Stefan, even though it's sucha touchy subject."

Both men were now scowling at her. "From one tactic to another—"

"Women always fight dirty—"

"Oh, for crying out loud." Tanya cut them both off in disgust. "You'd think it was a secret that could topple your whole country." And then she tossed out a challenge. "Or is it something Stefan is ashamed of?"

"Ashamed?" Lazar stood up to lean across the table so she couldn't mistake how angry she'd made him. "Stefan risked his life to save another's. There was no shame in that, your Highness."

"So why couldn't you just say so?" Tanya retorted, annoyed with herself now for pushing them. "It sounds like he was a hero."

"Tell her, Serge," Lazar said as he sat back down. "Maybe she'll be wise enough not to mention it again — at least not to him."

Serge began grudgingly, but soon he was merely relating the incident. "He was heroic, or foolhardy — depending on how you look at it. But he was only twentyone that year, with no important duties weighing on him yet, no worries other than his studies, which, unlike for some of us, were incredibly easy for him, and his every wish granted—"

"Stick to the story," Lazar complained. "She doesn't have to know how wonderful his life was up to that point, when her own life has been so deprived. "

Tanya blinked in surprise. Serge flushed with embarrassment. But she suddenly remembered Stefan's impassioned speech about what she'd suffered through fate when she was supposed to have been reared gently, with a fortune at her disposal. He'd been angry for her, not at her, though she hadn't seen it that way at the time. Did these two think she was resentful, perhaps, for not having had the privileged life that her birth should have guaranteed?

She hadn't even thought about it, but it was hard to feel resentment for lacking something she'd never expected to have in the first place. If she resented anything, it was how easily they all assumed she was tarnished goods just because of where she'd been raised, when one of the major concerns of her life, every day for the past eight years, had been how to stay out of men's beds.

"I'm sorry, your Highness," Serge told her with touching sincerity.

The man was apologizing for the wrong thing as far as she was concerned. But she would just get angry if she tried pointing that out to him.

"Don't be absurd," she said instead. "Stefan doesn't strike me as a man who feels very privileged right now, so what do I have to be envious about? The fact that he isn't allowed to choose his own wife?"

"There is no one else he wants to marry," Serge assured her, then added, "Not anymore."

"Serge!" Lazar admonished incredulously.

Tanya was amused by his objection. "What, am I supposed to be shocked that he wanted to marry someone else? He's thirty years old or thereabouts, isn't he? I'd be amazed if he hadn't wanted to get married at least once by now."

"I'm no older than he is, and I've never wanted to get married," Lazar said.

"Nor have I," Serge put in.

"But he did, and my oh my, that must have really set a fire under the royal temper when he was reminded he already had a betrothed. Is that about the way it went?"

Lazar nodded reluctantly. "But he found out he was better off without her. She was nothing but a…"

The fact that his face suffused with color told Tanya she didn't have to ask what the woman was. "I see. Another whore," she said evenly as she stood up, then with more heat, "Get out, both of you."

"Now, Princess, I wasn't comparing—"

"Like hell you weren't, or you wouldn't have stopped and turned ten shades of red! And to think I thought you two, at least, could contain your contempt. "

"If the word is so objectionable to you, Princess Tatiana," Vasili said from the open doorway, his voice expressly dispassionate, "then you should have found some means of preserving your virtue."

She stared at him furiously for a moment until she realized he was actually scolding her for becoming upset over what they all considered a fact set in gold and minted. And he was right, of course. Until she denied the charges, she had no business getting angry over their allusions to them. Sasha had told her the same thing. And if she looked at it from their point of view, her offended sensibilities must seem very hypocritical.

The trouble was, it was hard to make her feelings be logical or tolerant. She supposed she was hoping the men would judge her by her behavior since they'd known her, not by their assumptions, but she was forgetting Vasili's first encounter with her, when he'd found her sitting on Stefan's lap. And she doubted Stefan had ever bothered to tell him that he had put her there. She was also forgetting the things she had said in her anger, lies to get back at them, but which they took as the literal truth.

But even knowing all that, accepting it, being ashamed for her part in it, she still couldn't exonerate them, not all of them. Lazar had blundered into offending her. Vasili did it deliberately every time.

So she sat back down and said curtly, "You're not welcome in here. They are, but you aren't. "

Typically, he completely ignored her statement and sauntered further into the room. "We have been ordered to keep you company, occupied, and amused. I see we are doing splendidly well in the matter of amusement, but I doubt Stefan will appreciate the topic under discussion."

"She asked about Stefan's scars," Lazar explained, his voice uneasy. "Were we supposed to let her broach the subject with him?"

"Morbid curiosity doesn't deserve to be appeased," Vasili replied, and for once, he got angry. His amber eyes were glowing nearly as bright as Stefan's could when they came back to light on Tanya. "Was it too much to hope you might overlook a few minor flaws? You women are all alike, concerned only with appearance. You never look beneath the surface to what is inside a man, do you?"

She stared at him incredulously, unable to believe she was actually being accused of this, too. "Now there you happen to be very wrong. With you, Vasili, all I see is what's beneath the surface." She didn't elaborate. She just gave him a look so full of disgust, he couldn't help but understand her meaning perfectly.

His smile was so brittle, it should have cracked. "So you want to cross swords with me, Princess? I'd have you in tears in a matter of minutes."

"I don't doubt it. That is your specialty, isn't it, belittling anything you deem unworthy? And, of course, I am beneath your contempt, a whore who must be constantly reminded that she is a whore, because I'm so dense I somehow keep forgetting it. But tell me something, Vasili, just out of morbid curiosity. What would you do if you found out you had misjudged me, that I'd learned at a young age how despicable men could be, and so I wanted no part of them, not even to better my life with a few extra coins?"

"Is this merely a supposition, Princess, or are you saying you had no choice in the matter, that you were forced to lead such a life?"

She wasn't sure what had prompted that question from Lazar, curiosity or indignation on her behalf, but she wished he could have contained it a little longer, until she'd had her answer from Vasili. The peacock was merely looking scornfully dubious. And how the devil had they drawn this new conclusion from what she'd said?

"Forced? I didn't wear that knife on my hip for decoration, Lazar," she reminded him. "Any man who tried to force himself on me ended up losing a lot of blood for his trouble." Except for Stefan, but since he'd never managed to finish what he started, he didn't count. "Now how about an answer, Vasili? Just use your imagination and picture me as chaste as the day I was born. What would you do?"

Vasili refused to cooperate. "I'm afraid my imagination is not that—"

"Never mind," she interrupted, losing her patience and temper. "I know what you would do. Nothing — except maybe find something else to condemn me for."

"Your opinion of me has sunk rather low, Princess," he said with some surprise.

"I assure you it didn't have far to sink."

He looked mildly annoyed. "Very well, we will play your silly game. If you are found to be virginal, Stefan will be furious because you never once proclaimed your innocence. I would have apologized profusely, probably on my knees, but Stefan will insist on a grander gesture to atone for us all, myself being the likely offering."

He wasn't being the least bit serious, so neither was she. "Your head?"

"My tongue, delivered personally. "

"And of course you do everything he asks?"

"Certainly."

"Then start hoping he doesn't ask, Vasili. For that alone I'd be willing to give up my virginity."

"You better hope you don't have any to give up, Princess, because when I said Stefan will be furious, I meant with you. If you're going to turn into a virgin on your wedding night, miraculously, you damn well better make sure Stefan isn't surprised by it."

That had come out so seriously, it sent a chill up Tanya's spine. But all she replied was, "I see you have a splendid imagination after all, Vasili."