Vasilii meant if they had not been lovers. Alena's heart sank. If only she could be more like Kiryl and lie without any compunction. But she wasn't and she couldn't.
As the reality of what Vasilii had said started to sink in, involuntary tremors of distress and misery shook her body. To her shock she saw that Kiryl had taken a step towards her. Immediately and instinctively she stepped back. She couldn't let him touch her. She couldn't. Because even after what she had heard she was still afraid that if he did touch her he might find some rebel ious cell within her body that would defy her and respond to him. No, of course not. That would never happen now. No, she was stepping back because the thought of him touching her revolted her-nothing else.
But as she struggled to come to terms with what was happening, her half-brother's grim words had her switching her attention to him with growing disbelief. "You might not see it that way at the moment, but by brokering a deal that includes marriage to Kiryl for you I am trying to protect you and our family's good name.'
She shook her head, pleading with him in an anguished voice, " No, Vasilii.'
""I'm sorry, Alena, but you must marry him. However, the marriage need not last long,' Vasilii told her. "If it helps, try to think of it as a coat that will give you the protection of respectability when you most need it.'
Was that supposed to reassure her? Marriage to Kiryl would be more like a shroud wrapped so tightly around her self-respect that it would destroy it.
"Vasilii, please,' she pleaded.
"Believe me, you will find it much easier to live your future life as a respectable divorcee than as a discarded mistress. We are all judged by our circumstances, no matter how little we may like that fact. We are accorded or denied respect according to how others judge us. I would not like to see you become the kind of woman who is passed from man to man for pleasure before being discarded-and that is what I fear could happen.'
"I would never let that happen to me,' Alena protested, fresh shock filling her as she listened to her half-brother's unvarnished home-truths.
"You might not have any choice. Should Kiryl choose to make the details of your relationship public, then you will automatically be judged by other men to be equally available to them. As your husband, though, it will be his duty to protect your reputation as his wife. This is a business arrangement-a bargain in which we all lose something just as we all gain something-and it is as necessary for the honour of our family name as it is for Kiryl's desire to win the contract. If you had told me before getting involved with him things might have been different, of course. But since you did not … '
It was all her own fault. That was what Vasilii was saying to her. And deep down inside herself Alena knew that she agreed with him. If she hadn't created that silly fantasy inside her head about Kiryl then perhaps she would have thought more logically and carefully about his motives when he had actually approached her. And what about when he had taken her to bed? Would she have been capable of thinking logically about his motives then?
How easy he must have found it to make use of her own vulnerability to him. She had been so naïve, thinking that he wanted her as much as she had wanted him, that his feelings for her were the same as hers for him. He had been able to dupe and deceive her because she had wanted to believe him. And now she must pay for that lack of judgement.
Had their father still been alive things might have been different. He had often gently teased Vasilii about the traditional paternalistic ideas he had absorbed from the time he had spent with his maternal grandparents after the death of his mother. The fusion of Arab and nomad blood within his mother's tribe meant that, for all he was a twenty-first-century citizen of the world, her half-brother could be rather old-fashioned when it came to certain moral issues. She had never imagined, though, that it would ever impact on her own life in the way it was doing now.
"Kiryl and I have already shaken hands on our agreement,' Vasilii told her. "Your marriage to him will take place as soon as it can be arranged.'
"But not until Kiryl has secured the contract,' Alena couldn't resist putting in, her voice brittle with all that she was feeling as she looked directly at Kiryl for the first time. "After all, that is what all this is about for you, isn't it, Kiryl? This is what it has all been about for you right from the start.'
She was trembling from head to foot, Kiryl could see, her emotions spilling past her self-control and into her voice so that he could hear her pain. Pain where such a short time ago there had been joy and happiness. He was responsible for that pain.
Something unfamiliar and previously unknown was growing into life inside him. Remorse? Guilt? Kiryl didn't know. He only knew that it made him want to reach out to Alena, to hold her and comfort her, to tell her that it wasn't too late for him to stop things. He could pull out of the deal-
tell Vasilii that he had changed his mind.
What? What on earth was happening to him? He couldn't really be thinking about throwing away everything he had worked so hard for and risk losing the contract that was so vitally important to him just because of Alena's pain. She meant nothing to him, and that was the way he wanted things to stay.
"This marriage is for the best, Alena. I promise you that.'
"The best for whom?' Alena challenged her brother bleakly. "Certainly not for me.'
Was that a sigh she could hear from Vasilii? Hardly. She was just imagining it-just as she had imagined that look of torment she thought she had seen briefly in Kiryl's eyes.
"You are both as bad as one another,' she told them tonelessly. "Two businessmen for whom I am simply a bargaining tool, like a slave to be bought and sold to suit your purposes.'
She couldn't bear what was happening. She really couldn't. Unable to trust herself to say any more, she turned and fled to the sanctuary of her own bedroom, locking the door behind her.
She might feel that she couldn't bear the situation she was now in, but Alena knew that she would have to. She had no other choice.
Financially she was totally dependent on Vasilii. She had nothing of her own other than what was in her bank account and a wardrobe full of clothes. She had no training she could fall back on, no qualifications, and she knew her half-brother well enough to know that, having made up his mind about her future, he would not change it. If she tried to escape her unwanted marriage he would track her down and find her. The only solace she had was what Vasilii had said to her about the marriage only needing to be of short duration.
Standing alone in her bedroom, looking out of the window onto the windswept London rooftops below her, Alena made herself a promise.
The two men she had trusted absolutely, whom she had thought loved her as much as she loved them, had betrayed her cruelly and call ously, destroying not just her belief in them but her ability to trust and her belief in love itself-at least for her. Some people like her mother, her parents, were lucky-they found true love. But she was obviously not one of them. Not worthy of being loved. Only worthy of being used.
She pushed that thought away. She might have to marry Kiryl, but hopefully her sentence would be a short one and then she would be free.
And from the searing pain of what she had endured Alena vowed that a new Alena would be created, rising from the ashes of what she had once been like the legendary phoenix, to be stronger, better, wiser-an Alena who would never again allow anyone to hurt her. This new Alena would control her own life and make her own choices, and those choices and decisions would not include allowing any other man into her life to hurt her as both Kiryl and Vasilii had. She would use the time during which she was forced to be married to Kiryl to forge her own future. And that future would be her mother's charity. Her future and the focus of her life.
A new sense of purpose filled her, and with it a steely strength. Her reward for agreeing to this marriage that Vasilii was insisting upon would be the right to control the charity. Kiryl and her brother would have to learn that they were not the only ones who could issue ultimatums and strike bargains.
Kiryl. The pain she had been holding at bay ever since she had realised the truth about him surged through her, making her want to cry out in agony against its savaging of her emotions. But Alena wasn't going to give in to that raking clawing pain. It must be endured, suffered-