The Ice Swan полностью

“His lack of manners was the only assault to me. It was not the first time I’ve deflected boorish attacks.”

“This isn’t some fancy salon where a rap on the man’s knuckles with your fan will do the trick. Men like him don’t stop at the word no.”

“You know this how?”

“Work in enough hospitals and it’s easy to learn the type when you’re patching them up from pub fights.” Shifting a parcel under his arm, he popped open his umbrella and angled it over Svetlana’s head. The drizzle had turned into a mist that thickened the air with a cloying dampness.

“What is this pub?”

Wynn released a gusty sigh that loosened the tense line between his eyebrows. “A public house. A tavern, barroom, saloon. A place where drink inflates men’s egos and they duke it out in the back alley defending said ego.”

“I would never dare step foot into a place of debauchery.”

“Good. That rules out half of Paris the next time I’m forced to find you out wandering on your own.”

This man and his high-handed ways. As if he held the right to intrude on whoever and whatever he pleased. She had more important matters to occupy herself with than wondering when he would next show up. Or what color the light would turn his eyes. Today, touches of brown.

Svetlana plucked at the shawl clinging to her head to ward off her study of him. “No one has forced you to do anything. I do not understand why you are here in the first place.”

“The chemist a block over was able to secure a specially made stethoscope for me.” He jostled the package under his arm. “Upon picking up my order, whom should I see but Your Serenity making new friends.”

“I did not realize that upon our brief acquaintance I am required to provide a list of names of whom I should be conversing with. Might I also note that these persons were not sought out but came to me. Most uninvited.”

“Does that include me?”

“Increasingly so.”

His mouth cocked up at one corner and he rocked back on his heels. The amused reaction felt far more intimate than the generated distance suggested.

“Why is that? As far as I know, I’ve been nothing but polite and helpful, yet you’re determined to make a nuisance of me. Some might call that ungratefully snobbish.”

The barb hit quick, its defiance slicing past years of defense erected against its sting. All her life she’d stood apart, followed every rule and protocol for the sake of propriety, never once accepting an offering that was said to be beneath her. It was the expected nature of a princess. It had served her well, but she was not immune to the whispers behind drawing room doors: cold, conceited, condescending. She’d taken them in stride as petty jealousies, but the man before her had no reason for spite. If she’d learned anything about him in their short association, she knew he was not a bluffing man.

She turned away. “I will not stand here and be insulted on the street.”

His hand locked around her elbow, halting her departure. “Before you get on that high prancing horse, let me stop you there, Princess.”

“I do not require your halting, marquee.”

“It’s marquis, but let’s not get tangled on semantics. I said some people might call you that. I would call you a woman who’s had the path ripped out from under her slippered feet and has fallen back on old world habits. The problem is, this is a different world and old habits won’t survive here. We have to adapt else we lose the fight.”

Svetlana flushed hot. His blatant philosophy insulted the very essence of tradition her life had been built upon. The foundation of who she was. Without it there was no purpose. She had no purpose. And he had the gall to make a point of it.

She wrenched from his grasp. “Who are you to speak to me thus? No one speaks to me in this manner.”

“A shame because they’re doing you a disservice.”

“And you think you’re the one in service, do you?”

“If it weren’t for me, you’d be having pickle juice ladled down your royal neck to cure a leg injury. Babushka showed me a jar of mushrooms.” He shook his head. “I never realized how many things can be pickled.”

He shifted topics quicker than a tiara on wet hair. Could he not allow her righteous outrage to simmer longer?

“Peasants pickle everything. It lasts longer.”

“Do they pickle humor? There seems to be a shortage of it.”

“Unlike Englishmen who abound with the sentiment.” She spiked her eyebrows in pointed disapproval.

“The English? No, dry as a peat bog in a drought, that lot. My charm comes from pure Scottish roots.”

“I believe your roots may have hit bedrock.”

Glancing up and down the street at the people hunkered into their collars against the wet, he leaned down close to her ear. “Careful, printsessa. Your humor is unearthing itself.”