The Princess and the Rogue (Bow Street Bachelors #3) - Kate Bateman Page 0,97

clarify the mind.” His fingers closed over hers. “I came to realize that nothing really matters except people. Not things. Not possessions. People. Life is worth living because of relationships. With family. With friends. With lovers.” His gaze caught hers. “What really matters is love.”

Anya felt tears prick her eyes at his fervent honesty. He was right. How simple it was.

A sudden urgency seized her. “Yes. I love him,” she said fiercely in Russian, knowing Sebastien wouldn’t understand, even if he was listening outside the door. “I don’t know when it happened, but it’s true.”

Dmitri’s smile lit up his whole face. “I can’t say I’m surprised. Not after seeing the way he’s been with you. He’s been like a man possessed.”

Anya frowned and glanced at the window. “I can’t have been asleep for that long. It’s still dark.”

Dmitri shook his head. “You’ve slept for a whole day and a night. And Lord Mowbray has never left your side. He’s been here watching over you, forcing you to drink water and milk for hours.”

Anya gaped at him.

“I think he loves you too,” Dmitri said with a smile. “He’s sent away every caller—and there have been many—Elizaveta, some dowager duchess, a woman named Charlotte—and tended you himself.”

“I would marry him,” Anya confessed. “But I don’t think he wants to marry me. He asked me once, but it was only to protect my reputation. I told him it wasn’t necessary.”

She frowned down at the sheets at her waist, pleating them absently with her fingers. “I think he thinks I should marry someone better than him. Someone with a loftier title or a fatter purse. But Dmitri, there is no one better than him. Not for me. He’s everything I ever wanted in a husband. He’s loyal and fierce, protective and kind. He makes me laugh,” she added with a sigh. “Even when he doesn’t mean to.”

Dmitri gave her hand another squeeze. “That sounds like an excellent start. You have my full support. If there’s anything I can do to help, I shall do it.”

Anya’s heart expanded with love. She was so grateful that he was back in her life.

He stood. “Now, if you don’t mind, I think I shall go and eat some of Monsieur Lagrasse’s excellent blini and get some sleep. I’ll leave you in Lord Mowbray’s excellent hands.”

He waggled his eyebrows, and Anya laughed at the roguish twinkle in his eye. Honestly, he was as bad as the dowager duchess when it came to unsubtle matchmaking. “Good night.”

Chapter 39.

Seb stood staring out of the window, one forearm braced against the wooden frame as he tried to make sense of the host of emotions swirling in his chest.

Relief was easy to identify, the relief of having Anya finally wake up and smile at him again. Frustration was there too, and restlessness, and a low-level anger that should have been extinguished along with Petrov’s life, but still seemed to persist with no particular target.

He let out a huff of air. God, Anya had probably shaved ten years off his life. His hair would doubtless turn prematurely grey from the combination of worry and shock of almost losing her. Despite all his experience of battle, he couldn’t think of a time when he’d ever felt so desperate or so frightened as when he’d discovered her being held hostage, with Petrov’s gun to her head. Or when he’d thought she might not recover from the sleeping draught.

He scowled at the view in front of him, not really seeing it. It was because he’d never felt for anyone else what he felt for her. True, he’d worried for his friends during the war, but Alex and Ben had been highly skilled and as capable as himself of getting out of trouble. Anya had been defenseless.

Seb let out another huff. Well, almost defenseless. She’d stabbed Petrov in the arm with a map pin. And drugged him too. Brave girl.

The mews yard beyond his window was dark, the cobbles and rooftops of St. James’s silvered with moonlight. The stars looked as if some slapdash baker had flung a handful of flour across the night sky. Seb glared upward. Those stars were an illusion. From this distance, they looked cold and insubstantial, but up close, each was its own fiery sun.

Anya was like that—cool and unattainable from afar, blindingly attractive when you got close.

Not that he’d have the chance to get close to her ever again. Now that her brother was back in her life, she’d doubtless be going