"I wash once a month — when I feel like it," she said brazenly, smiling so there'd be no doubt that that was a lie she intended to stick to. "And I've got at least three weeks to go before I get anywhere near water again."
"So you intend to defy Stefan?"
"Absolutely."
Serge groaned behind her. Lazar chuckled. Tanya tried slipping out from between them while they were both distracted, but was chagrined to have an arm slip around her waist from behind in what she would swear was no more than reflex.
"It's not funny, Lazar," Serge grumbled over her head, totally ignoring the small hands prying at his arm. "She's going to make Stefan even angrier than he is now, and right now he's too angry to be around."
"He knows it. That's why he left." Lazar tipped her chin up to study her face now that at least half of her haggardness had been rubbed off. "But I have a feeling his mood won't improve either way," he added thoughtfully. "We expected to find a beauty, and it looks like that is what we may have here after all."
"Yet he seemed to like her better when he thought she wasn't," Serge concluded with another groan.
"My thoughts exactly. But I wouldn't worry about it," Lazar said with blatant cheerfulness now. "For a change, he's not going to take his black mood out on us — he's going to take it out on her."
If that was said just to make Tanya rethink her stubborn position, it didn't work. But that didn't mean she liked hearing it. And she definitely didn't like the way they continued to talk around her.
She jabbed Lazar in the chest with a pointed finger, demanding, "If I'm to marry your king, why is Stefan the one giving me orders?"
That had Lazar grinning again for some reason, a joke shared with Serge obviously, since he glanced at him before answering. "Because until you are wed, you have been placed in Stefan's care — at our king's insistence. So it would be to your benefit, Princess, to pacify him rather than antagonize him, don't you think?"
Lord help her, they had an answer for every little discrepancy in their scheme that she tried to point out. "What I think hasn't mattered one bit so far, so why should it now? But answer me this. Does my being placed in Stefan's care mean that he can take liberties with me?"
If everything they had told her was true, that she really was to be married and all the rest, then that question should have angered Lazar, or at least disturbed him. But his grin didn't even falter.
"Stefan can do whatever he likes, Princess," he said offhandedly. "He is answerable only to the king. "
"And Vasili couldn't care less." She pointed out the obvious.
"Vasili frequently defers to Stefan. They are cousins, after all, and Stefan is older."
"But Vasili is king."
Lazar shrugged, as if to say it was all in the family, but he asked, "Would you rather Stefan were king?"
"I would rather Stefan dropped dead."
"Unfortunately for you, Princess" — Stefan's frigid tones drifted toward them from the top of the stairs—"I haven't yet."
Chapter 12
Tanya would have avoided facing Stefan — or, to be more exact, letting him see her face — for as long as possible, but she didn't have much choice in the matter. When Serge turned around at the sound of Stefan's voice, he took her with him, his arm still firmly around her waist. In fact, that put her in the forefront to receive the full blast of those devil eyes. And if her words hadn't made them glow, then her unwashed face definitely set fire to the coals.
But when he moved slowly forward, it was his friends he addressed. "You two were not, by any chance, trying to persuade her — gently — to do as she was told, were you?"
"Certainly not," Lazar assured him. "We were merely discussing responsibilities and the like."
"And keeping her from leaving on her own," Serge added.
"Ah, so we have that to watch for, do we?"
Tanya's boot-heel came down hard on Serge's toe to thank him for his big mouth. He grunted, but not until Stefan stood before her did Serge release her. This he did with a little shove that sent her careening off balance into Stefan's chest. That one's arms came around her to catch her, and stayed there like a steel cage, tangling in the hair at her waist and keeping her pressed to his length. She imagined she could actually feel the vibration of his anger, surrounding her in waves.
"Let go of—"she began, only to be cut off with an emphatic "No." Ominously, for her ears alone, he added, "You will wish to God you had not defied me, Tatiana."
She turned white under the gray pallor of her makeup for about ten seconds. By then her conviction that to them she was a commodity worth a certain price reasserted itself. Accordingly, they wouldn't deliberately damage the goods, no matter how angry one of them was with her. Stefan had to be referring to the spanking he had promised, and as far as she was concerned, that was nothing to worry about.
In the meantime, she heard that there was a carriage now waiting below, that someone named Sasha had been instructed to meet them at the docks with their trunks, that they considered it fortuitous that their quarry had been found in time for them to leave on The Lorilie. But there was no time to waste. The riverboat was to depart within the hour.
And then they were silent, and Tanya felt they were all three looking down at her, though to be sure she'd have to crane her neck to see, pressed so close to Stefan as she still was. Were they waiting for her to react to what she'd just heard? She wasn't dense.
They intended to get her on that boat with them. But perhaps it had finally occurred to them to wonder just how they were going to accomplish that when they didn't have her cooperation.
Apparently she'd read the situation correctly, for Stefan's very next words were, "A crate, I think."
Tanya stiffened, and was about to protest heatedly, but surprisingly, Lazar beat her to it, reminding Stefan, "She is a royal princess."
The royal princess would have snorted in derision that the pretense was still being played out, except Stefan's casual rejoinder was the last straw.
"When she begins to look like one, she may be treated like one."
Tanya twisted around then, no easy feat in her steel cage, to demand of Lazar and Serge, "Are you going to let him get away with that just because he's angry at me?"
Serge wouldn't meet her eyes. Lazar looked chagrined at being put on the spot and said, "I believe it was explained who has authority over you, Tatiana. Whether you are transported or escorted is his decision, but perhaps if you ask him sweetly... "
The thought was allowed to trail off, for her to interpret as she would. Sweetly? No chance in hell would she be sweet to the devil at her back, who was even now turning her around again so she couldn't tempt his friends to her aid with eye contact or a pity stirring expression. As if she would…. Of course she would! How else was she going to escape? Certainly not stuffed in a crate, and one probably from her own storeroom, none of which were big enough to offer her any degree of comfort.
She dropped her head back so she could finally look up at Stefan. He seemed to have been waiting for her to do just that, for she met his gaze directly for a heart pounding moment. And then his eyes moved slowly over her face, so she couldn't doubt that the only thing he was thinking about right now was her gray-smudged complexion, and how it should have been roses and cream.
"You surprise me, Princess," he said in a voice that was merely conversational in tone.