Johanna Lindsey - Once a Princess

"It isn't as bad as all that, Tanya."

"You don't know what you've done!"

"I've made it possible for you to walk away from this life without any regrets."

She stiffened. His arms tightened. She pushed away from him anyway, and the look she gave him, awash with tears, was incredulous.

"You destroy the life I had planned for myself and I'm not supposed to regret it? For as long as I can remember, I have worked like a slave in this tavern, and not once, ever, was I paid for it other than with food, a bed, and a slap every time I turned around. Even my clothes were Iris' and Dobbs' castoffs. But finally, and only because that old bastard couldn't care for himself anymore, I was going to be compensated. And you take that away from me on an arbitrary whim?"

"Not arbitrary. Your continuous attempts to return here left us with only two options. To eliminate your reasons for coming back here, or to see you married immediately to settle the matter."

"What happened? Wouldn't that jackassed peacock you call a king volunteer to marry me sooner than he had to?" she sneered, telling him how little she believed him. "Not that it would settle any matter, because I'd take a leaf from that tale you told the captain of The Lorilie and leave him in a minute."

"I see," he said tightly.

"No, you don't. You'll never comprehend what you've stolen from me, my dreams, the one thing I wanted more than anything — control of my own life. Only rich widows achieve the kind of independence I craved, but I'm not willing to marry first to become a widow. I could have had it without that—"

She broke off, overwhelmed again by her loss — and the need to strike out at the cause. She gave in to the need.

He caught her fists this time. "Enough!"

"Never!" she cried. "I can never hurt you enough for what you've done. And as soon as I get my hands on a gun, I'm going to shoot you, you son of a bitch!"

To her utter fury, he smiled at that. "You will have to remain with us, won't you, to await that opportunity?" And he picked her up and carried her out of The Seraglio for the last time.

She fought all the way.

Tanya's second riverboat ride wasn't as pleasant as her first would have been. The cabin wasn't as large or as nice, nor was she allowed out of it. And whether she would have been forced to share that other cabin with Stefan on The Lorilie, she didn't know and didn't ask. But that she had to share this one with him was of little concern to her.

She slept in the bed. He slept on a pallet on the floor. She wouldn't talk to him, wouldn't answer him, wouldn't even look at him. She totally ignored him as if he were merely another object in the room. The amazing thing was that he let her.

For the most part she had the cabin to herself, and without participating in any conversation when it was offered, she had little else to do but think. Of course, it wasn't hard to conclude that she had once again been far off the mark in her estimation of what was happening to her. Too much money had been spent, in the purchase of horses, in the purchase of tickets on two riverboats — in the purchase of a tavern. God, she still couldn't believe they had done that, and not even to make a profit, because they had turned around and sold the tavern at a loss.

Their action defied reason. It said money was of no account to them. It said they did it just for her benefit, as Stefan had claimed, to eliminate what kept drawing her back to Natchez. And she couldn't even hold out the hope that he might have been lying about it, because she had made so much noise that night when he carried her out of the tavern that Bertha and one of her girls had come out on their porch to investigate. And Tanya couldn't resist asking the damning question.

Actually, she'd screamed it. "Did you buy The Seraglio from this devil?"

"Sure did, honey," Bertha had shouted back, not even recognizing Tanya without her camouflage, and no more than amused by her struggles. "I'm gonna fill it with bedrooms. Care to occupy one of them?"

The madam had laughed and gone back inside. Tanya had stopped struggling to get out of Stefan's arms. She hadn't spoken a word to him since.

But she knew now how wrong she'd been in trying to secondguess Stefan and his friends. More money had been spent than could ever be regained by selling her to a brothel, so she was forced to let go of that idea as their motive. Yet their story of kings and lost princesses was still too fantastical for her to accept. The trouble was, now she couldn't think of a single other plausible reason for her abduction, unless... Maybe her family was alive and had sent these men to find her. Maybe they had been warned not to tell her about it for some reason. Maybe... maybe she ought to stop driving herself crazy worrying about it.

After all, there were a number of other things to worry about, like what she was going to do with the rest of her life, now that her one chance at independence had been sold out from under her. She would have to find work. She would actually get paid for it, at long last, but she would be following orders again, forced to please, to do things the way someone else wanted them done, not the way she did. She'd been so close to never having to answer to anyone again... damn Stefan to hell.

Her rage over what they'd done wouldn't go away. And it centered solely on Stefan, even though buying the tavern might have been a collective decision for all she knew. Revenge crossed her mind, but getting even was a new concept to her. She was so used to taking everything dealt her, with no recourse, that she wouldn't even know how to go about retaliating in kind, hurt for hurt. She had promised to shoot Stefan, but of course she hadn't meant that.

She thought about delaying the men some more. Time did seem to be important to them, even though she doubted the reasons given her. She also considered causing dissension among them, though she wasn't sure how that would work when she had yet to see them angry with each other — only with her.

But she couldn't do anything as long as she was locked away with only Stefan. He wouldn't even rise to the bait of her indifference. Not that she wanted him to; fighting with him never gained her anything but frustration.

"If you will change into one of the dresses we acquired for you, you may join us in the saloon for dinner tonight."

Tanya had been pacing and hadn't heard Stefan enter. She stopped now, but she didn't turn toward him. She hadn't even looked at the two dresses he had given her that night in the hotel. She had told him once that she wouldn't accept clothes from them, and she had meant it. She had been washing her own clothes, one item a day so she wouldn't have to strip down completely.

"I will need an answer this time, Princess, or I will assume that you prefer to eat alone again."

She wouldn't prefer that at all. She hadn't even seen the others since they had left Natchez for the second time. And she couldn't very well cause any trouble among them, if that was even possible, when she was kept isolated.

"All right," she said tonelessly, still without looking at him.

"And you will change?"

She glanced at the small trunk that contained the two dresses as well as a number of new items that Stefan had bought for himself in Natchez.

"Why must I?" she asked.

"Because we do not care to be embarrassed again by your mannish attire."

Tanya stiffened. Was he actually back to insulting her? Or was that the kindest way he could express the fact that she looked ridiculous in his waistcoat and shirt? That shouldn't bother her, since she had never in her life dressed to look attractive, but it did coming from Stefan.

"Show me a man wearing a skirt before you call my clothes mannish," she said merely to be disagreeable. "Never mind. I'll wear one of your dresses, but I hope to hell it doesn't fit."

"That is a possibility, in which case you may use your discretion to choose whichever is the least inappropriate."

So this order wasn't set in steel? Then, remembering that Stefan didn't like her to look pretty, she hoped she ended up looking downright beautiful. But that wasn't very likely, considering she hadn't been fitted for either dress, and men weren't very knowledgeable about such things as sizing.

"How much time do I have?"

"Thirty minutes."

"I will need some hair bobs."

"You will have to do without."

"You expect miracles?"

"Just something halfway presentable."

She detected amusement in his answer, but wouldn't look at him to be sure. "Then leave me to it."

"Will you require help with buttons and such?"

"Not from you. But you can send Vasili to escort me. If I do need help, as my betrothed, he can provide it.

The slamming of the door was her answer to that. Tanya smiled for the first time in days. She had forgotten how easy it was to provoke Stefan. She wouldn't forget again.

It was Vasili who showed up to escort her to dinner. But Tanya had made sure she wouldn't need any help with her dress, nearly straining her shoulder muscles twisting about to do up the buttons herself. They could have chosen dresses easier to get in and out of, but she wasn't going to complain. She was too amazed by her appearance to do other than smirk when Vasili looked her over with some amazement of his own.

The two dresses she had to choose from were the same size, one a beige plaid, the other a bright lemon satinet with bishop sleeves and matching shoes. The shoes were a bit small, but both dresses fit her better than she could have hoped, except for one small area— right across her breasts. Obviously the dresses had been bought already made, and for a woman of smaller proportions than she.

The necklines of the dresses were in the favored boat shape, which exposed shoulders, neck, and a great deal of upper chest, sloping to a point just over the breasts. In this case, the point was rather deep on both dresses. A chemisette could have added some becoming lace to the area, but Stefan had said he would forget to include underclothing when he bought her clothes, and whether he actually forgot or intentionally forgot, there was none included with the dresses.

Under normal circumstances, Tanya would have been so selfconscious, she wouldn't have worn either dress. She'd always hidden her breasts under highnecked shirts in thick materials, so they were nearly invisible. Here she was exposing all, so to speak, or at least the upper curves of her breasts, made worse since they were squeezed together because of the tightness of the material in that area. But these weren't normal circumstances. In fact, her first look at herself in the large mirror above the dressing table in the cabin made her think of only one thing. Stefan would see her like this and wouldn't like it at all. And that made her determined to wear the dresses exactly as they were.

She settled on the bright lemon yellow for tonight, simply because its color was so opposite her usual dull ones and went well with her dark hair. Even her dancing costume wasn't as flattering to her figure. And this without benefit of a corset. Tanya was pleased, more than pleased. She'd never known that she could look like this.

There wasn't much she could do with her hair, however, other than tie it back. But she did remove the wide, lace-trimmed ornamental bow at the back of the dress to tie it at her nape instead. She could, of course, have tucked that strip of yellow into her deep décolletage to make the dress a bit more demure. But with Stefan's reaction uppermost in her mind, she didn't even consider it.

She had a few second thoughts about it, however, when Vasili stared overlong at her chest. But the rest of her also underwent a thorough inspection, so she let it pass.

"You look lovely, Princess."

Her brows shot up. "A compliment from you? Are you feeling well, Vasili?"

He laughed and remarked, "You are amusing if nothing else. Now, don't stiffen up on me when I have gone to so much trouble on your behalf." He held out his hand, which contained about a dozen hairpins in several different styles, then confided, "Two women on board now assume I am interested in them, although I regret that I am not. You can't imagine the difficulty that might entail tonight. "

"I wonder why I can't dredge up any sympathy for you," Tanya replied.