27 #2
It was a toss-up between lying to benefit himself in the fight and lying to benefit his campaign against Alexandra. Vasili found the choice an easy one.
“Lucky for you,” he told the bandit, “I haven’t known the wench long enough to teach her anything—of importance.”
It was a dig for Alexandra alone. Vasili didn’t look at her again to see how she had received it, which was fortunate, because he might have made an ass of himself and apologized if he had.
To insinuate that what had passed between them was nothing significant was no more than Alexandra herself had done, yet to hear him say it struck her painfully, and her expression briefly revealed that emotion before she managed to conceal it beneath a mask of indifference.
Fortunately, no one else read anything into Vasili’s remark, and when he added, “Shall we get this over with?” Pavel was quick to comply.
Whips in hand, uncoiled and dragging on the rough floor, they circled each other, Vasili waiting to be shown the rudiments by example, Pavel waiting for the ideal opening so that his first strike would be an excruciating one.
Neither got what he was after.
When Pavel finally released his first snap, Vasili was too busy dodging to notice how it was done. The crack of that whip was demoralizing, though, even with its only striking air. And his own first swing was laughable. His coil was dropping to the floor before it even got close to Pavel.
Vasili didn’t know it, but he was holding his whip as if it were a sword, and also swinging it like a sword, which might have worked if his target had remained stationary.
That wasn’t the case, however. Apparently the object was for him to hit, and for him to avoid getting hit in return.
So far he was managing to do one, but not the other.
Alexandra was disgusted, watching them dance around each other. Pavel didn’t know much about wielding a whip, but he sure as hell knew more about it than Vasili, and it was only sheer luck and quick reflexes that had kept Vasili out of the whip’s path thus far.
And then he was hit. It wasn’t a solid hit.
Pavel’s coil curved over Vasili’s back, around his side, and up his chest, where the worst damage was inflicted by the tail, leaving a red, diagonal streak to mar his golden skin.
He barely winced, but Alexandra hadn’t counted on what the sight of that mark would do to her.
The urge that came over her, nearly overwhelming her, was to snatch her whip from Vasili and make mincemeat out of the bandit.
To do that would take her only a minute or two.
She knew every place on the body that was most susceptible to pain, and her aim was unerring.
Pavel would be writhing on the floor in seconds…
She literally had to stuff her hands in her coat pockets and concentrate on keeping them there. She had to spare some of that concentration to remain standing where she was. But she was too angry to keep quiet.
“The snap is in your wrist!” she shouted at Vasili. “Flick it!”
Vasili heard her. He couldn’t help but hear her. And it was galling to realize that if she were participating in this fight instead of him, it would probably be over already. Of all the weapons Pavel could have chosen, why did he have to pick her weapon, her sphere of expertise?
And Vasili had no idea what she was talking about.
The second strike snaked across his tender belly. He felt as if he’d been ripped open and his guts were about to spill out, but when he glanced down he saw no more than a red welt raised across his skin. Yet that was enough for him to put an end to this, more than enough.
He was about to tell Pavel just that when Alexandra shouted at him again. “That’s not a sword, dammit! Don’t use it like one!”
Vasili gritted his teeth and tried again.
But his lash still did no more than brush teasingly against Pavel, like a worrisome gnat rather than a stinging bee.
Pavel, of course, didn’t have that problem, and he got in another two flashing, burning hot strikes, the one on the back of Vasili’s shoulder drawing blood.
At that point, Alexandra yelled, “Give it up, Petroff—you can’t win!” And at that point, Vasili decided to prove her wrong.
Not with a whip, however. He couldn’t be expected to use the damn thing with any proficiency without the benefit of a few lessons first, and in the middle of a fight was no time to get them.
So his whip coiled next to his feet and stayed there in supposed readiness, and when Pavel’s next swing came at him, Vasili didn’t try to dodge it.
He caught it instead, gave it a hard jerk, dropped his own whip at the same time, and slammed his fist into Pavel’s face.
Pavel’s feet went up as he went down. His nose was definitely broken, but he wasn’t aware of it at the moment. He was out cold, and Vasili felt completely vindicated, having downed the man with only one punch—at least he felt that way until he recalled his own throbbing aches.
“If you were going to do that, Petroff, why the hell didn’t you do it sooner?”
Alexandra had come up behind him, and her tone was about as castigating as it could get. He didn’t turn around, was going to ignore her completely, but the words came out anyway when she appeared on his left side. “Shut up, Alex.”
Lazar came around his other side. “The shoulder isn’t bleeding bad, but you should have it cleaned and bandaged before we leave.”
Alexandra had retrieved her whip from where Vasili had dropped it, and he knew it was too much to hope that she would have heeded his advice.
“And this is a flick,” she said and demonstrated.
The coil flashed across the room, the tail curling around the leg of a chair, and the chair came sliding across the floor, to bump into Vasili’s knees. His frown was turning thunderous, but she didn’t seem to notice.
“Sit down and let your friend tend you,” she told him, ordered was more like it, and still in that bossy, chastising tone.
“Shut up, Alex!”
She was treating him like a child again, and in front of Lazar and everyone else this time.
And her angry advice during the fight might not have come only because she thought him so inept, as he had assumed at the time.
It could also have come from concern, and the mere possibility, unlikely as it was, was making him panic, which didn’t help him handle the situation at all well.
If she showed the least bit of gratitude on top of the rest, he’d probably murder her.
Alexandra was experiencing her own emotional upheaval that was two-thirds panic, but hers had started last night, when she’d heard they were so close to Cardinia.
What was turning her irrational and bitchy now was her actually having been afraid for Vasili during the fight, and that absolutely infuriated her.
And it didn’t help that she was definitely beholden to him now.
Feelings of gratitude in connection with this man just didn’t sit well with her.
And that she was going to have to own up to it was galling.
But the worst of it was her knowing that he was in pain, and having the ridiculous urge to ease it for him somehow, not knowing how, and not daring even to try. All in all, her emotions were making her crazy, and she had about as much control of them as he did right now, which was none.
If it were otherwise, she might have noticed that he wasn’t himself, that it wasn’t the pain making him testy, but Alexandra herself. She really should have heeded him and said no more. Stubbornness definitely had its pitfalls.
“I have to thank—”
Vasili stopped her before she went any further. He knew one sure way to get rid of the gratitude he didn’t want from her, and short of murdering her, as had been his earlier thought, he didn’t hesitate to use it.
“Before you say something you’ll regret, Alex, you should know that I didn’t get those horses back for you. If the worst comes to pass and we end up married to each other, I wasn’t going to lose the profit they’ll bring me when I sell them.”
She took that news exactly as he’d expected. For a moment, he was in danger of her using the whip in her hand on him, and with a skill he wasn’t likely to appreciate. He knew it. Even Lazar knew it. Vasili had never seen her more furious.
Yet amazingly, she answered him with a degree of calm, for all that each word was gritted out. “You’re not selling my horses.”
“I don’t believe you’ll have any say in the matter,” he replied.
The dam broke then, her voice raised to the rafters. “I’ll see you in hell first!”
He responded in kind. “You’ll be putting me in hell if you don’t end this damn betrothal!”
“I told you, I can’t. I made a promise!”
“Jesus, women break promises every day. What makes you so different?”
“Honor,” she said acidly. “Something I’m not surprised you aren’t familiar with.”
Having delivered that deadly insult, Alexandra stalked off. Lazar had to pull Vasili back when his fury made him start after her.
“For God’s sake, let it go, before you end up with worse welts than you’ve already got.”
Vasili turned on him, demanding, “Did you hear what she said?”
“Yes, and you asked for it, if you want my opinion,” Lazar said bluntly. “What the hell possessed you to tell her you’d sell her horses?”
“That was necessary, or didn’t you hear her? She was about to shower me with gratitude.”
“Well, heaven forbid.”
“Gratitude and hate don’t go hand in hand,” Vasili said, trying to explain his reasoning, but then he sighed. He even sat down in the chair Alexandra had fetched for him, suddenly exhausted. “You know, Lazar, this damn feeling I have of being trapped isn’t going away.”
The change in subject and Vasili’s sudden deflation made Lazar wary, yet he replied, “Possibly because you’re depending on your mother to now settle this matter, and you don’t quite trust her to react to Alexandra as you hope.”
“No, she’ll be horrified by Alex, I have no doubt, so it’s not that. It’s as if something’s trying to tell me I’m never going to escape the wench.”