The Most Coveted Prize(22)

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-