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The bearded man frowned for one second longer, and it felt like the longest second of my life. Then he nodded quickly.
I turned back to Ivan. I wanted to fall gracefully and submissively to my knees in front of him, but I had to keep the coat around me with my self-hugging arms. I felt sure I would simply fall over if I tried to kneel that way. I had to settle for looking up into his gorgeous, puzzled-but-still-absolutely-dominant face, my arms clasped across my chest in an ancient attitude of prayer.
“Gospodin,” I said, speaking softly and rapidly, “I love you.”
I couldn’t help casting a tiny glance over at the man I felt certain must be a Pretorian Guardsman. I felt certain also that the hand he had in his pocket held a gun, and that he had just readied it somehow—releasing a safety catch, or cocking it, or whatever they did in the movies when you hear that ominous clicking sound.
I looked at the Guardsman right after I said Gospodin, though. My eyes had returned to Ivan when I said, in his own beautiful language—the tongue of my heritage—I love you.
For an instant, I saw disbelief in those cool blue eyes—even a suspicion that I had just lied to him. My heart felt like it would break. My gospodin’s love for me—I could see that in his face, too, just beginning to come out from the wall behind which he had hidden it—had come to pass in the certainty that it could never be requited… that a girl whose obedience he could secure with the touch of a silver wand could never feel for her criminal master the same affection he felt for her.
“I…” he started.
“We don’t have time for this,” the Guardsman interrupted. “Heather, do you have a plan? If not I have orders…”
My attention remained fixed on Ivan. His brow, open with love for me only for a moment, had closed again in confusion and the beginnings of hostility.
“I do,” I said.
I didn’t, but I kept talking, hoping beyond hope that something would come to me even as I spoke, or maybe that something or someone would come to my rescue if I just kept the Guard agent from killing Ivan for long enough.
“Gospodin, you have to listen to me. I can help you… we can help you make things better, for… for everybody.”
I glanced over at the agent again. His eyes narrowed. I thought furiously.
Ivan looked from me to the Guardsman.
“Who is we?” he asked, his own face set and almost angry. “How is your Russian so good?”
“You don’t need to know that,” I said, my voice pleading with him just to go along with me. “You… you need to send me to Belkonov and…”
Ivan looked at me as if I had lost my mind. That simple idea sparked something in my—yes, okay—half-crazed brain.
“And tell him to use me and then kill me. But we’ll… I’ll kill Belkonov instead.”
CHAPTER 20
Heather
“No,” the Guardsman said. For a moment I thought he had decided my ghost of a plan had so little merit he would just go ahead and kill Ivan. Wild thoughts of putting myself between the bullet and my gospodin flooded my mind.
Then the bearded man spoke again.
“We’ll disappear Belkonov, and Ivan will tell his rivals that you killed him, Heather.”
I looked from him to Ivan, starting to work out what the Guard agent meant and wondering whether Ivan would understand and, if he did, would find this beginning of a plan workable. On my master’s face I saw a moment of assessment, and then to my joy a look of appreciation, as if he had figured out in an instant exactly what must be going on.
“You’re an agent,” he said to me, his mouth quirking up into a smile at the left corner. He turned to the Guardsman. “Working for whom?”
Ivan’s eyes narrowed a little.
“Wait. I know. You’re the Pretorian Guard. You’re not supposed to exist. You’re a figment of the Western weakness for conspiracy theories.”
“That,” the agent said, “is the point of view I hope you’ll make sure continues to prevail, Mr. Antonov. All you need to know is that if you take Heather here as your trusted adviser as well as your concubine, you’ll have all the support you need in keeping your territory safe—and gradually growing it into something that can protect its citizens for the foreseeable future.”
Ivan nodded, his brow a little cloudy as his mind very clearly began to calculate all the different options and outcomes. He looked at me, and the cloud vanished: a real smile broke out in his eyes and even on his usually severe mouth.
“Is this what you want, Heather?” he asked softly.
“With all my heart, Gospodin,” I replied.
“Alright,” the Guardsman said, his voice grim. “Let’s make a plan.”
