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‘I am hugely insulted,’ she said, her voice shaking, ‘that you have made so many negative assumptions about me and should believe me capable of such terrible behaviour. What makes you think so badly of me, Roman?’
There was a long pause before he answered, his voice seeming to draw each word out reluctantly. ‘I told you. Rumours about you had started reaching me a few months ago—rumours which ignited my curiosity.’
‘You mean that I was occasionally guilty of voicing my own opinion?’
‘Yes, that.’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘But I find that trait is not as unappealing as I imagined it would be.’
‘Wow,’ she said sarcastically. ‘This is progress indeed. But much as I would like to applaud your sudden emergence from the Dark Ages, I’m more interested to know what else it was you heard about me.’
He shrugged. ‘That you had a habit of disappearing. That the Princess Zabrina would sometimes ride out at first dawn with her groom and not return until the noon sun was high in the sky.’
‘And so you came to the conclusion that Stefan and I were galloping off together to enjoy some sort of illicit encounter?’
‘Something like that.’
‘How dare you? How dare you accuse me of such a thing, Roman?’ All pretence at light-heartedness now abandoned, her voice had begun shaking with rage. ‘Do you really think I could be so duplicitous that I would agree to marry one man, while being intimate with another?’
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‘Of course I can!’ he flared. ‘Because you had sex with Constantin, didn’t you, Zabrina? You weren’t thinking about Roman then, were you? So how can you explain that?’
She spoke without thinking. She spoke from the heart. ‘I can’t,’ she said simply.
There was a pause. ‘Neither can I.’
They stared at each other in silence and all Zabrina could see was the gleam of the moon in his shadowed eyes.
‘I tried to resist you,’ she said quietly. ‘Or rather, I tried to resist Constantin, because I had never met anyone like him before. Surely you must have noticed how deliberately rude and abrupt I was towards you at the beginning?’
‘I thought that was a game you were playing.’ He gave a short laugh. ‘Don’t you realise that a headstrong and stubborn woman is exceedingly attractive to a man?’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t know what happened to me that night and I don’t really want to think about it now. But I hold my hands up—I did used to ride out with Stefan. If you really want to know what I was doing, then I’ll tell you—but we certainly weren’t having sex.’
‘Really?’ He spoke carelessly, but Roman could do nothing about the sudden punch of hope to his heart, even though he despised his visceral reaction to her words.
She nodded and in the moonlight he saw her face assume an expression of fierceness. ‘In my country I had a list of charities of which I was patron and which my sister Daria is going to take over, now that I’m no longer there. I was obviously invested in all those charities but there was one in particular which was very close to my heart. It was...’ She hesitated. ‘It was a refuge on the outskirts of the city. A refuge for women who have suffered domestic violence.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘So why all the cloak-and-dagger stuff?’
She nodded, as if this was a topic with which she was familiar. As if she was used to accusation.
‘My parents didn’t approve of my involvement with these women. It was something else they turned a blind eye to. To admit that women suffered at the hands of men and were made impoverished if ever they chose to escape from abusive relationships—well, they were both of the opinion that the women didn’t try hard enough to save their marriages!’
‘Good heavens,’ said Roman faintly.
The look she threw him was challenging. ‘What, is that a bit hardcore old-fashioned, even for you?’
He didn’t like being held up as someone completely out of touch with the modern world, just as he didn’t like the way she was looking at him. It made him feel...uncomfortable. Kings were rarely forced to say they were sorry but Roman knew he needed to say it now. ‘I shouldn’t have leapt to those conclusions,’ he said gruffly. ‘Will you forgive me?’
Her absolution wasn’t instant. She waited just long enough for him to entertain a little doubt in his mind—and didn’t part of him admire her for her strength of character?
Eventually, she nodded. ‘Yes, I forgive you,’ she said. ‘But, going forward, I’d prefer it if you didn’t just leap to conclusions. And that it’s probably better if you don’t just brood about something, but ask me outright.’
She smiled then and the deepening dimple in her cheek drew his gaze, so that suddenly it looked like the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
Roman swallowed. Her lips were gleaming irresistibly and looking unbearably kissable. He knew what he should do. Escort her back to her suite and bid her goodnight. Just as he knew what he wanted to do, which was to pull her into his arms and then lay her down in one of the dark corners of the stables and make love to her over and over again. And then he thought of all the reasons why he shouldn’t—but the one which dominated them all was duty.
Duty.
