Page 72 of Lost with a Scot
“You’re all right?” he asked.
She managed a nod. Alexei looked past her to Aiden, who’d kept his distance.
“Thank you for saving my sister, Mr. Kincade.”
“It was my honor, Your Majesty,” Aiden replied.
Anna’s throat constricted as powerful emotions warred within her.
“Anna, we must talk,” Alexei said.
She turned to Aiden, but he waved a hand. “Go on, lass, I need to see to this.” He held a hand against his abdomen, which was still bleeding. She didn’t want to leave him, but the stubborn look on her husband’s face told her he didn’t want her to see whatever a surgeon would likely have to do to him. Not that a stubborn Scot could stop her from doing anything, but she did need to speak to Alexei soon.
“I don’t want to leave you. You’re hurt—” she began.
“Go, lass. I’ll be fine.” He gave her a gentle smile of reassurance before he walked toward Ashton and his brothers. Anna reluctantly followed her brother inside the castle. She’d speak to Alexei quickly, and then she’d go find her husband and see that he was all right.
“Where is Yuri?”
“Dead.”
“Did you...”
Alexei gave a curt nod. “After you and Fain left, the executioner turned out to be a friend of yours—Godric, he said his name was. Apparently, the fellow and his friends won over the castle servants, and they assisted in the battle, along with William and my guards who’d snuck into the courtyard without being recognized. We had quite the fight. Yuri fled into the castle, and I chased him down. We fought and I won. The man is dead.” Alexei didn’t seem to want to say more than that, and Anna could feel her twin’s grief at having to take a life. He was and always would be a kind and compassionate man, and while courageous, he did not like to kill.
She leaned in and curled her arms around her brother’s neck and held him for a long moment. Alexei breathed a soft sigh as they broke apart.
“I’m so glad you came back, Anna. So damned glad,” he confessed. “I couldn’t have survived this without you.” They walked in silence until they reached the great hall.
The hall was empty now yet felt strangely full of ghosts. Alexei sat at one of the long tables that had been pushed against the wall for Anna’s ill-fated wedding to Fain, and Anna sat beside him. Alexei took her hands in his, holding them as he studied her.
“I plan to create a change in the royal charter and establish a constitutional monarchy. I would love for you to stay, to see our people through the coming days with me.”
Anna held her breath, knowing she would soon face an uneasy choice.
“I will stay,” she assured him, but in her heart she worried about Aiden. She knew he would stay with her, but this life, the life of a prince consort, would break his heart. To be away from his brothers, away from his wild Scottish mountains and glens, it was like taking his very soul away.
“Kincade told me all that befell you since we last parted.” Her brother changed the subject, startling her. Aiden had told her brother everything that had happened, the good and the bad?
Anna’s eyes burned. “He did?”
“We shared alongnight in the dungeons together.”
“Did he mention that we are married?”
“He did. But, Anna, he said he would not hold you to the vows if you choose to marry someone else, like Lord Erich. He said he saw you dance with Erich in London and that, well... the pair of you would make a strong alliance by marriage between Ruritania and Prussia. I don’t think he wishes to stand in the way of your duty. The choice is yours. He won’t demand you return to Scotland.”
My duty...Those two words had been on her shoulders since the moment she and Alexei had been born. Unlike her brother, she wasn’t destined to be queen, but if Alexei died without an heir, any sons she had would be next in line for the throne. Even if she returned to Scotland, there would still be that knowledge that her children might one day rule Ruritania. But that didn’t answer the question that Alexei had presented to her. Should she do the right thing for her country and marry Erich, or should she do the right thing for herself and uphold her vows to Aiden? And if she did... should they leave or should they stay?
Anna’s shoulders dropped slightly. “What would you do?” she asked her twin.
Alexei’s smile was rueful. “WhatIwould do and whatyouwould do are perhaps for the first time in our lives as twins very different answers. I accepted my role as king the moment I first fought against Yuri, the day the Summer Palace burned. That means I must always put this country first. But you... you don’t have to.
“Just think on it. No decisions must be made until we settle the matter of Ruritania’s future.” Alexei squeezed her hands, smiling sadly before he looked down the hall at the unoccupied throne and the empty space where a second should be. “It will never be the same without them, will it?” He sounded almost like a lost child, but the vulnerability he showed only to her was quickly buried beneath a kingly composure.
“No, it won’t. Sometimes I think perhaps it’s all a bad dream and that I’ll wake up tomorrow and everything will be just as it once was.” A tear rolled down her cheek and dripped off her chin onto her sullied wedding gown. “But we cannot live in such fantasies.” She’d never really understood what it would mean to face such a choice between duty and desire and that the weight of that choice would affect so many lives.
“I suppose we should get back. There’s much to do,” Alexei said.
