his attention to it. “Tell me about the Khazarian woman.”
“She’s a noblewoman of some sort. They call her dvoryanin, a lady’s rank. Something like a countess. Outside the line for the throne, should something happen to Irina or Ivanova, but close to it in politics and friendship. She’s the most dangerously beautiful woman I’ve ever seen,” Javier said, so frankly it made Belinda smile. “All sharp angles and dark eyes. She looks like a witch.”
Belinda’s eyebrows shot up and her hand tightened on Javier’s arm. He glanced at her and smiled, brief and faint. “I know,” he murmured. “Of all the people to say that. But I don’t know. I don’t feel anything from her, but you were the one who named us alike.”
“Is that why you really wanted me here?” Belinda asked, just as quietly. There was no censure in her question and after a moment to ascertain that, Javier dropped his head in a nod. “What’s her name?”
“Akilina Pankejeff. She goes through love—are you all right?” Javier caught Belinda’s weight as she stumbled, a moment of clumsiness, of losing control, unlike anything she’d felt in years. Her heartbeat soared and she fought down heat in her cheeks, knowing a blush could damn her. Golden witchpower seared through the back of her mind, seeking a channel for use. Belinda seized it, dominating it with her will and wrapping it around herself in stillness that shivered under the onslaught of shock.
“My ankle,” she said, the lie coming easily to lips numb with cold. “Forgive me. I’m all right now. Alikina…?”
“Akilina,” Javier corrected, but his description of the woman was lost beneath Belinda’s own knowledge.
She had only seen the woman once, briefly, in the early-morning hour before she escaped Count Gregori Kapnist’s country estates with the help of a lusty young coachman. Akilina Pankejeff had been the latest in Gregori’s stream of high-born lovers, just as he’d been the latest in hers. There was almost no chance Akilina would know her: she had not demanded to see the harlot serving girl whose sensuality had driven Gregori to his grave. Had Belinda stayed even an hour longer, with nasty-minded Ilyana waiting to make trouble, she might well have come face-to-face with the noblewoman, but as it was the raven-haired, hard beauty hadn’t so much as glanced at the help.
And Belinda was now Beatrice Irvine, a provincial noblewoman from Lanyarch, hundreds of miles away from Khazar. Lutetia was as far as Beatrice had ever travelled, or ever would; to connect her with the Rosa at Gregori’s estates was simply impossible. “I’ll do my best,” Belinda heard herself promising, and had to cast her mind back over Javier’s lecture to learn what she’d agreed to. Ah: overtures of friendship with Akilina. The Khazarian ambassador, if that’s what Akilina was, would have very little reason to be friends with Beatrice Irvine, but if Javier’s favour lay on the Lanyarchan girl, then friends Akilina would make. “Why is she here, my lord? Does Gallin treat with Khazar?” That, above all, was a question that needed answering: Gallin’s navy wasn’t well-endowed, but the Essandian navy to the south was. A treaty made with Sandalia could very easily sway Rodrigo, and that triumvirate was a dangerous combination for Aulunian prospects.
“Don’t worry about it,” Javier murmured. “Those are politics outside your concern, for now. We’ll discuss it later. For now, be charming, Beatrice. Be charming.”
A few steps ahead of them, doormen opened the way to the dining hall. Belinda, on Javier’s arm, swept into warmth and light and between a double-row of Khazarian honour guards, who, like everyone in the room, turned their gazes on the new arrivals. Training made her offer a brief, breathless smile at the guards; friends in low places were always good to have. None of them changed expression, save one, whose breath caught audibly beneath the sound of Belinda and Javier’s footsteps. Belinda’s curious gaze went to that one, and for the second time in as many minutes, a lifetime of control deserted her, sickness lurching in her belly. Vassily, Vlad, Valentine, sang through her mind.
Viktor.
12
She should have killed him.
The stress of running in tight corsets came back to her even now, breathlessness that had nothing to do with the rising illness in her belly. She had turned from the coachman, moving with decorum, and then gathered her skirts and run through the carefully laid-out halls of Gregori Kapnist’s estates as fast as she could. She was young and healthy and running for her