Prince of Hearts (35 page)

"Now," she said, rising, "if I don't leave soon, I shall miss my departure."

Christiana and the Earl accompanied her to the steam carriage waiting outside. The servants finished loading her things, and she climbed inside, her heart sinking at the long, solitary journey ahead.

"Are you sure, Aline?" Christiana said again. "It is a terribly far distance to go alone. Perhaps you could at least wait until I can travel with you."

Aline gave her friend a determined smile. "I am quite set on leaving. Don't fret so. I'm hardly the fragile creature I was. I believe I shall manage just fine. In fact, I am looking forward to it."

The Earl, who had never been comfortable around her since learning of her condition, cleared his throat. "My dear Miss Finch, perhaps remaining with us for the time being would be prudent. I am certain I shall run Romanov to ground soon."

Aline tried to contain her exasperation … and heartache. "My Lord, as I have said before, please do not concern yourself. I don't want anyone run to ground. What's done is done. If he doesn't wish to be found, I certainly don't wish to find him. We both agreed that this is what is best."

"That was before you were discovered to be in a delicate condition," the Earl pointed out.

She fixed him with a stern glare. "Please stop trying to find him, my Lord. I am perfectly happy as things are."

The Earl was incredulous at this statement, which was quite obviously a lie, but he dropped the matter. After a few more parting farewells, the steam carriage pulled out into traffic. She settled into her seat with a sigh. The old-fashioned Earl meant well, with his dogged mission to locate Sasha. Perhaps a small part of her had secretly hoped Rowan would succeed in finding him.

However, despite what had happened on the airship, and Sasha's decision to Bond her rather than let her die, nothing had changed between them. At least
he
seemed to think so. She was not so sure any more. But if Sasha had gone to such lengths to disappear, she would not seek him out. She didn't want him on those terms.

She was becoming very good at lying to herself.

A familiar profile and the glint of metal on the street corner brought her miserable thoughts to a crashing halt. She pressed her nose to the glass of the carriage window and surveyed the busy intersection. Her heart lurched at the sight of Fyodor staring after the carriage, attempting to look inconspicuous in a bowler hat.

She rapped on the roof, calling out for the driver to stop, and before the vehicle had completely slowed, she'd jumped to the street. By the time she made it to the street corner, Fyodor had disappeared into the crowd. She cursed in frustration, struggling to pick up his trail. This was the first hint of hope she'd had in months, and she was not about to give up.

At last, she saw a man with Fyodor's distinctive height and ridiculous bowler hat turn a corner to the right. She pushed her way against the pedestrians, murmuring her excuses. She rounded the same corner she'd seen the man take and stopped up short, frowning her disappointment. She faced an empty alley.

She nearly jumped out of her skin when a hand landed on her shoulder. She spun around and looked up. And then up some more, her heart lightening. She'd never been so glad to see anyone in her life.

She threw her arms around the giant Abominable Soldier, unable to restrain herself. Fyodor stood rigid, awkwardly enduring the moment. When she drew back from him, she saw his human side was scarlet with embarrassment. Remembering his manners, he doffed his hat, as somber as always. But she could detect a glimmer of a smile at the edge of his lip.

"Have you come back with the Professor?" she demanded.

His ghost of a smile faded completely and he shook his head.

Aline's hopes plummeted. "Why are you here?" But she knew the answer to that. "He sent you to watch over me, didn't he?"

Fyodor nodded unhappily.

Her heart twisted for Sasha. She was furious at him for leaving her, even though she'd agreed to it at their last proper interview, but the fact that he was totally alone now made her worry for him. What was the foolish man thinking?

But sending Fyodor to guard her from afar meant that he was worrying about her too. A part of him couldn’t let go, and that meant all hope was not lost. She felt a hundred pounds lighter already. She'd not known until she saw Fyodor today how heavy of a cloud hovered over her. For the first time in two months, with just this glimmer of hope, she felt alive. Wonderfully, horribly alive. As mad as she was at Sasha, as uncertain of their future together as she was, she knew in that moment she could not run away from the truth any longer.

Sasha may have given
her
up to protect her from himself – stupid, noble, bumbling male – but she’d
let
him go, because she was a coward. She was afraid she was not strong enough to love him. But she had been wrong. The truth was she wasn't strong enough to live without him.

She didn't want to go to bloody Paris. Not without him.

Not without him.

She wanted him, all of him, with no barriers between them – no stupid words, no secrets, especially no clothes. And she no longer wanted to fix him. She didn't need to. She wanted him as he was: a contradictory, emotionally damaged Russian Prince from the 16th century. Who thought he wasn't good enough for her.

Her!

She looked up at Fyodor, her heart quaking. "I suppose he told you never to tell me where he is."

Fyodor nodded sadly.

"But you're not going to obey him, are you? You were standing on that street corner on purpose, weren't you?"

This time, Fyodor's nod was a bit bashful.

Aline couldn't contain her relief. She tugged on Fyodor's forearm. "Take me to him, Fyodor. I love him, and I mean to have him." She touched her stomach. "
We
mean to have him."

When Fyodor puzzled out what she meant, his eye went wide, and for the first time in their acquaintance, he gave her a true smile.

WHEN Aline learned of their destination, she knew she'd made the right decision. Fyodor procured them transportation aboard a slightly-illegal dirigible, the
Lucky Lady
, piloted by a slightly-dissolute privateer with a Welding leg and red kerchief by the name of Thaddeus Fincastle.

Aline learned this was the same man who had picked Sasha up outside of Paris, and piloted the dirigible that had intercepted Salerno’s airship. He was every bit the character she had suspected him of being. It appeared Sasha had done him a service long ago, rendering him permanently in Sasha's debt. For the length of their journey north, he regaled Aline with tales of the outlandish places he'd taxied Sasha and Fyodor to over the years.

He'd been baffled by Sasha's current destination.

"Can't figger that one out, Miss," he called out over the whirl of the propeller. He had a wad of American tobacco stuffed into his bottom lip, which caused him to spit with some frequency over the railing into the clouds. Thankfully, it was into the wind. "Been from Borneo to Timbuktu with that man, had tea with the King of bloody Nepal, chased lions across the Africa bush, but he wants to go to a cold Scottish island, in the middle of bloomin' nowhere."

Aline adjusted her round, glass-lensed traveling goggles against a gust of wind and smiled at the old salt. "Grimsay is where I grew up, Mr. Fincastle."

He raised a busy brow beneath his goggles and cocked his arms at his hips. "Is that right, Miss F? He's been pining for a woman, has he?" He grinned, his lower lip jutting out over the tobacco. "'Bout time he be laid low by Cupid's bow."

"Oh, I plan on laying him quite low when I see him again, Mr. Fincastle. Now, tell me, is it possible to deliver me directly to the old cottage?"

Mr. Fincastle's grin deepened. "Just down the beach from it. Wondered why he bought that old heap with all his blunt. I s'pose that's where you lived?"

Aline's smile wavered a little bit with the force of her emotions. "I never took him for such a maudlin old fool, Mr. Fincastle. I don't know whether to be touched or disgusted." But she was touched, down to her toes. Sasha had run away, all right, straight into her past. He couldn't bear to part with her any more than she could part with him.

When they at last arrived at the small island she'd called home for twelve years, she had Fincastle put her down a short walk up the beach from the cottage in which she'd grown up. She'd sent the old pirate and Fyodor back to the mainland with orders not to come back for a week. She wasn't certain how long it was going to take to convince Sasha she belonged by his side, but she wasn't giving him any quick escape routes.

Her stomach filled with butterflies as she walked along the familiar path across the cliff's edge. She wasn't about to give up on him. How could she, when imagining any life without him filled her with despair? Her chances of succeeding were perhaps very slim, considering that Sasha was as stubborn as she was. But she had to try.

She'd always loved long odds, after all.

The roses her mother had planted were in full, riotous bloom in the garden behind the cottage, a small ramshackle structure, a few hundred meters up from the cliff's edge. The sun beat down from a rare blue, cloudless sky, dappling the ground with patches of light through the thick boughs of the old trees that stood sentinel over the garden.

The air was so thick with the sea air and the fragrance of the roses and wild mint that had overgrown everything else, that it could have been cut with a knife. Insects buzzed, and pollen danced like little fairies in the twinkling sunlight.

It was even more beautiful than she remembered.

And empty.

She picked her way through the garden, her heart growing heavier with every footstep she took. Fyodor and Fincastle assured her he was here, but there was no sign of human occupation anywhere. Perhaps he had left the island somehow without a word to his friends, which meant she could be farther away than ever from finding him, not closer.

She cursed, then swatted a bee away from her face, which had broken out into a very untidy sweat. She didn't remember it ever being so hot. Perhaps it wasn't so beautiful here after all.

She sighed and turned back to retrace her steps, perhaps peek inside the cottage, but she froze, catching sight of something out of the corner of her eye. She trudged through a patch of mint and looked over a wall of roses. Her breath caught in her throat at what she saw, and silly tears pricked the back of her eyes. He was here, after all, spread out before her like some enchanted prince in a fairy tale.

Well, he
was
an enchanted prince. And he was all hers. He was in his shirtsleeves and waistcoat, reclining on his jacket, napping among the roses. Sunlight shifted over his dusky complexion, catching in his long, thick black lashes. He looked young in his slumber, and at peace. And so delicious she wanted to eat him up. Or lick him. Perhaps both at once.

She couldn't speak. She didn't want to break this strange spell. He had always been in a near perpetual state of movement over the past five years of her employment. In retrospect, she suspected he'd spent the better part of his long life in such a state, always running from the demons that chased him. That he was now so relaxed, so at his ease, filled her heart with even more joy. The battle she'd expected to face was already half-won, in her opinion.

Carefully gathering up her courage, she started to climb over the roses.

Familiar growling stopped her cold. She hadn't awakened her prince, but she had awakened the dragon that guarded him. She heard rustling in the foliage coming at her. She dropped her skirts and turned to flee, but it was too late. Before she could draw her next breath, she was on her back, staring up through the trees, being licked to death by a hellhound.

"Oh, for heaven's sake!" she cried, trying to push Ilya's head away.

Then she heard a sharp command, and Ilya bounded away with a few excited barks. Her heart felt near to bursting at the sound of that familiar, arrogant voice. She squeezed her eyes shut, then slowly opened them again as a shadow fell over her. Sasha loomed above, his black curls at sixes and sevens, frowning, his lovely amber eyes glittering in the sunlight.

She struggled to sit up. "Hello," she said, trying to contain her grin, since she was certain she'd frighten him away with its brilliance.

"What are you doing here?" he demanded.

Well, at least he was talking to her. And despite his frown, he was drinking in the sight of her with his eyes. "At the moment, rutting around in the dirt." She held out her hand, but he looked reluctant to touch her.

She took that as another positive sign, but she'd make him pay later for leaving his pregnant lover in the dirt. She clambered to her feet and dusted her hands off.

"How did you get here?" he barked.

"Mr. Fincastle graciously gave me a lift."

He crossed his arms over his chest, glaring at her. "You rode in a dirigible with a notorious pirate?"

"He claims to be a privateer, and he's your friend. And one of the lovely benefits of my transformation is that I no longer get airsick. The trip was lovely, thanks for asking."

He'd grown pale at the mention of her Bonding. "I shall kill that old man. And Fyodor. He sent you here, didn't he?" he growled and stalked away, back towards his jacket.

She followed after him. He was not going to make this easy. He stooped to retrieve his wireless from the pocket of his coat and began to tap out an urgent message, jaw tight. She decided to put an end to this problem immediately.

"Oh, my God, Sasha! It's a vampire!" she cried, pointing to the right.

Sasha tensed and turned towards the imaginary threat. While he was distracted, she ripped the device out of his hand, threw it on the ground, and stomped it with her boot heel.

He stared at her, jaw slack. When his initial shock wore off, anger suffused his features. "Have you gone mad, Finch? What are you about?"

"I still have my wireless, Sasha," she said, patting her pocket. "But if you want it, you'll have to touch me."