The Most Coveted Prize(9)

"This is my favourite starter,' she admitted.

Of course it was, Kiryl thought inwardly with cynical satisfaction. He  had left nothing to chance about this lunch. He knew exactly what her  favourite dishes from the restaurant's menu were.

"You mentioned your own mother when I asked you what had drawn you to my  mother's charity,' Alena reminded him, having told herself yet again  that this was a business lunch-no matter how intimate it might seem.  Talking about the charity would help her to focus on that reality. So  she wasn't asking him about his mother because she desperately wanted to  know more about him. She wasn't.

"Yes, I did,' Kiryl agreed, reaching into the second ice bucket and  removing a bottle of white wine, telling her, "Try this. I discovered it  the last time I stayed here and I rather like it.'

Wine on top of the vodka she had already had to drink; was that really a  good idea? For a moment Alena hesitated. It was very flattering to be  asked her opinion on a bottle of wine. She wasn't a big drinker-her  mother hadn't been, and Vasilii deplored the growing modern trend for  young women to drink heavily.

Quickly she placed her hand over her empty wine glass and shook her  head, telling him, "No, thank you. I'm not much of a drinker, I'm  afraid.

Especially at lunchtime.'

Kiryl put down the bottle and gave her another of those searching looks that seemed to probe the depths of her being.

"Was that decision your own or your brother's?' Kiryl asked.

He was smiling at her again. His smile said that she could feel safe  with him, but his words had sliced to the heart of her own growing  awareness that a byproduct of Vasilii's protection of her was a certain  immaturity when it came to experiencing the things that other girls her  age had experienced. Was that how he saw her? As someone immature and  inexperienced? A girl rather than the fully sensual and adult woman a  man like him was bound to prefer?

"My own,' she answered him. "Vasilii does not make my decisions or choices for me-nor would he want to do so.'                       
       
           



       

"So why not allow me to convince you that this wine will greatly enhance your enjoyment of our time together today?'

Her heart was skittering around inside her chest. Another, more  experienced woman would know whether or not Kiryl was indulging in  flirtatious banter with her with words that were mundane on the surface  and yet somehow held a teasing note of a deeper sensuality, but she did  not. So surely it would be better to play it safe and assume that it was  merely her own over-active imagination that was deepening them with a  sensual promise that did not exist?

No sooner had she made that decision than the calming effect it had had  on her was ripped away, when Kiryl stood up and came to her side, gently  lifting her hand away from her wine glass and continuing to hold it  whilst he poured her the merest half a glass of pale straw-coloured  wine, before filling his own glass and then returning the bottle to the  ice bucket. All the while he continued to hold her hand. And not just  hold it. He was touching her fingers, stroking them lightly and almost  absently.

"You're trembling,' he told her.



Of course she was. He was touching her. No, not just touching her,  caressing her, and because of that she was trembling-from head to toe

-her heart thudding frantically.

"Your brother must be a very stern protector if the thought of having  half a glass of wine without his approval can have this effect on you.'

He thought she was trembling because she was afraid of Vasilii? By  rights she ought to defend her loving halfbrother and tell him  truthfully that never once in their lives together had she ever, ever  had any need to fear him, that it had always been Vasilii to whom she  had run with all her troubles, to be comforted by his big-brotherly love  for her. But if she did tell him that then he might ask her exactly why  she was trembling-

and she couldn't possibly tell him that. All she could do was make a  mental apology to her brother and try to control the jagged exhaled  breath of relief that shuddered through her body when Kiryl let go of  her hand and returned to his own chair, lifting his own wine glass to  his lips.

"So, tell me more about your mother's charity,' he said.

"You were going to tell me about your mother,' Alena reminded him.

For a moment Alena thought he hadn't heard her. He seemed to be looking  past her into some dark place that only he could see, a fixed expression  on his face.

Was that merely a shadow darkening his eyes, or was it really the ice cold look of anger it seemed?

"I'm sorry,' she apologised uncomfortably.

"For what? Asking about my mother?' Kiryl gave a small shrug, his gaze  hardening still further. "There is no need to be. It is no secret, after  all. The reality of my mother's life has been well documented by those  who do not thinking it fitting that the son of a homeless Romany should  become successful, because that challenges their prejudiced belief in  their own superiority and the inferiority of those they choose to label  in such a way.'

And that labelling, that rejection and cruelty, had hurt him badly.  Alena could tell. Her tender heart immediately ached for him, and for  his mother.

"It is true that as a child she did not receive the education afforded  to the more privileged in society, but that was not her fault. My father  was happy to sleep with her-the beautiful gypsy girl he had seen  dancing in a café in Moscow frequented by the wealthy-but the minute she  told him that she was pregnant, carrying me, he deserted and denigrated  her, saying that she was lying about their relationship and that he had  not fathered me. He told her he would rather smother me at birth than  acknowledge that he had fathered a child with Romany blood.'

Alena couldn't hold back her gasp of emotion.

"Your mother told you about your father's cruelty to you both?' she asked.

A shuttered darkness claimed the light from Kiryl's eyes.

"No. She died when I was eight years old. But prior to that she told me  that she wanted me to know how important love was and how much she loved  me. How love could bring the greatest happiness life could hold and the  sharpest pain. She wanted me to be proud of what and who I was, even  though we were living in the meanest kind of poverty.'

His mother had been a fool-too weak to stand up to his father and demand  that he did the right thing by them both. All her talk of love and  being proud of himself had meant nothing in the real world-the world  that was ruled by men like his father, successful, wealthy men who  controlled their own destiny and made the rules by which others had to  live. As far as Kiryl was concerned it was far better to focus on that  reality than to follow his mother's advice about the importance of love.  Look what it had done to her, and through her to him. No, there was no  place for love in his life. Love only weakened those who were foolish  enough to allow it into their lives.                       
       
           



       

"So how do you know-I mean about how your father felt about your  mother?' Alena asked, wondering if perhaps he had misunderstood the  situation. After all, surely no father could ever be so cruel to his  child?

"How do I know? I know because my father told me himself, when I finally  tracked him down after the woman who fostered me told me the story my  mother had told her before she died. My father was a rich man-a powerful  and respected man. He told me the truth and then he threw me out on the  street outside his grand mansion-like unwanted rubbish, to be swept  away out of his sight. I swore then that one day-'

Kiryl stopped speaking, frowning as he recognised how much he had said  to Alena. He had never intended to say it, and certainly had never said  to anyone else. It was because he wanted to draw her into his plan by  eliciting her sympathy towards his mother and making her believe that he  had a genuine reason for choosing her charity for his donation, that  was why. It certainly wasn't because something in her expression and  that shocked gasp she had given had somehow unlocked a door within him  he had thought safely barred against the burned-out ashes of the pain he  kept caged behind that door. It was impossible for any living human  being to re-ignite those ashes. They belonged to the promise he had made  himself when he had lain in the gutter outside his father's house-that  he would prove his superiority by becoming more successful and more  powerful than his father had ever been.

His father was dead now, his empire squandered by the second husband of  the young wife he had married to provide him with the son she had never  conceived for him-the son he had told Kiryl would be the only son he  would ever acknowledge.