Outside in the other room, Alena was still unable to move. How could Kiryl be doing this to her? If anyone had told her what he was saying she would have refused to believe them, she knew. But, having heard him herself, she could not. The pain was all-consuming, tearing viciously at her and threatening to destroy her completely.
Angry with himself for allowing his unwanted emotions to sidetrack him from his purpose in being here, Kiryl delivered his ultimatum.
"As yet no one other than Alena and myself-and now, of course, you-knows of our relationship. You are an intelligent man. I don't have to tell you that once she is known publicly as my mistress her value as your pawn will decrease a very great deal. However, I am prepared to renounce Alena and to walk away from her, leaving you free to arrange whatever marriage for her you ultimately decide upon, if you agree to drop out of this contract race. Furthermore, I will never speak of our relationship to anyone and no one will ever need to know that it existed.'
Kiryl gave a dismissive shrug. "We both know it will be either as a bribe or a reward that you will give her in marriage, and to the highest bidder. For that to happen her value must not be diminished-as it could be if I choose to do it.'
Alena felt as though her heart had stopped beating-as though her whole world was standing still. And then it came. The most intense emotional pain she had ever experienced. Her heart was pierced by it and filled with it. Like winter striking swiftly and cruelly deep in St Petersburg, she could feel the unbearable pain of the destruction of her dreams.
"Winning this contract is obviously very important to you,' Vasilii told Kiryl.
"It is the most important thing in my life.' As far as Kiryl was concerned there was no need for him not to make that admission. "With this contract I shal finally create a business empire greater than my father's and do something he himself could not achieve. In doing so I shal prove myself the greater man, despite my mother's blood. I have thought of nothing else since the day he left me in the gutter outside his house.'
Kiryl knew his father had boasted about the way he had treated him quite openly, so Vasilii was bound to have heard the story. There had been plenty of occasions during his long climb to where he was now when those he had been doing business with had enjoyed reminding him of it, only realising too late their mistake when he punished them for their amusement at his expense.
And yet, incomprehensibly, the images forming inside his head now weren't of his father, or even of his triumph. Instead they were of Alena.
Alena lying in his arms, looking up at him with eyes silvered with love. Alena laughing as they stood watching children playing in the snow, her arm tucked through his as she leaned into him. Alena clinging to him in the back of the troika he had hired as it raced across the snow. Alena so proud and happy when she talked about her mother's work and her own plans to build on what she had created. Alena looking from the malachite columns in the Malachite Room to his eyes, her gaze melting with love for him. Alena wanting him, and loving him, and talking of their future together.
What was happening to him? He shouldn't be thinking about her now-and most certainly not in such emotional terms. He forced himself to focus on Alena's half-brother instead.
Vasilii had walked over to the window and was standing there with his back to him. There was no doubt in Kiryl's mind that Vasilii would accept his ultimatum, but instead of being filled with anticipatory triumph there was a feeling of flat emptiness inside him.
Alena's brother turned back to him and said evenly, "I am prepared to withdraw from the contest between us for the contract,' he told Kiryl.
"But only if instead of giving up Alena you marry her.'
CHAPTER NINE
"MARRY Alena?'
Kiryl stared at the other man, too stunned by his words to be able to conceal his shock. And yet beneath that shock his heart was leaping with such an almighty bound against his chest wall that it felt as though somehow he had suddenly and unexpectedly been thrown a rope to save him from a deep pit of darkness and loss. As though he had been offered something he had secretly ached for in the very depths of his being. As though miraculously at the last hour he had been saved from himself.
"You're saying that you want me to marry Alena?' Had he perhaps misheard or misunderstood what the other man had said? Apparently not, because Alena's half-brother was now speaking calmly.
"Yes, that is what I am saying. In the circumstances I think it would be for the best. Your agreement to a speedy marriage in return for mine not to challenge you for the contract.'
Marriage to Alena. Alena who loved him, who had given him herself and something so sweet and lost to him that … .
But, no. He must not think like that. The old habit of rejecting his emotions was fighting fiercely for control inside him-reminding him, warning him, of how much he had suffered before he had learned to exclude the desire to give and receive love from his life. How much stronger he had been since doing that. How much safer, how much more free to concentrate on the really important things in life-like besting his father. It would be madness for him to weaken now and allow himself to have feelings for Alena. He could never allow himself to have that kind of emotional need for anyone. No. If his spirits had lifted at the thought of taking Alena as his wife, then it was simply because of the commercial benefits marriage to her would bring. As Vasilii Demidov's half-sister she was-as he had already told himself-a valuable asset.
Logically, and from a practical point of view, marriage to Vasilii Demidov's half-sister would be advantageous to him-but recklessly, and dangerously, there was still that feeling in a deep and complex place within him that would not go away.
It was that, Kiryl knew, that was responsible for him saying unsteadily, "Very well,' and then taking the hand Vasilii extended to shake on their agreement.
Outside in the other room, Alena made a small agonised sound of protest and denial. This could not be happening. To listen whilst Kiryl revealed the truth about their relationship and his plans for her had been bad enough, but now to hear her beloved brother offering her to him in marriage was more than she could cope with. Vasilii couldn't mean what she had just heard him say. He couldn't.
Released from her frozen immobility, Alena rushed into the other room, oblivious to the shock her appearance caused both men.
"Alena.'
They both spoke at the same time, but it was Kiryl's voice that was raw and ragged with emotion.
" No. You can't mean it, Vasilii. I won't marry him,' Alena burst out passionately, and all the horror she felt at what she had heard was clear in her voice as she continued, before either of them could say anything, "I heard everything, Vasilii.' She was deliberately keeping her back to Kiryl, unable to endure the thought of looking at him. "All of it. Every single word.'
From somewhere she managed to drag out of her pain a lifeline of anger to cling on to, to stop herself from being submerged in her own grief. Only that frail fragile thread of anger enabled her to turn towards Kiryl, pain darkening her eyes to the dark grey of stormy seas.
"You might think that you have succeeded in your plan to use me to blackmail Vasilii into letting you win the contract, but you haven't,' she told him fiercely. "That plan depended on me loving you and … and being blind to what you really are. But I'm not blind to reality now. Now the only thing I feel for you is contempt-for you and for myself, for being stupid enough not to see you for what you really are.' Despite her best efforts, the pain of her true emotions at the cruel destruction of her dreams made Alena's voice shake slightly. "I never want to see you again-ever.'
Bravely she told him, "I didn't love you. I loved someone I created inside my own head and heart-someone I now know never existed. That was weak and foolish of me. I made it easy for you to deceive me, but I shal never make that mistake again. And as for marrying you. I'd rather stay single all my life.'
"I'm sorry, Alena, but I'm afraid that you must marry him.'
Alena stared up at her brother.
"What? Vasilii, you can't mean that. I know what he is now. He doesn't have the power to force you to give up the contract because he doesn't have me any more.'
"The situation isn't as simple or as clear-cut as that. I'm afraid there is no other choice for you, Alena. Not if what I have been told about the intimacy of your relationship is true.' Vasilii paused before continuing, "Of course, if it is not … '