Love Me Again by Wendy M. Burge Page B

eyes shut, she again prayed he would just go away.
    “I'm sorry,” his words whispered over her.
    She tensed; then, shifting about, she raised up onto an elbow and looked up at him. He was a dim silhouette in the moonlight. “Did you recant your challenge?”
    “No.”
    She fell back down, and again turned away from him.
    It had all been for nothing, she thought with a deadened sense of finality. She had broken Varek in the cruelest way, hoping that it would make him come to his senses about the hopelessness of any future together. But the duel was still on. Neither had recanted. She couldn't even summon a modicum of guilt for Robert when she heard the door open and close softly behind him.
    With dry, aching eyes, she waited for the dawn.
* * * *
    Sergei was admitted into the archduke's presence later that night, unsure what his mood would be. He found him sprawled in a massive armchair before the fire, brandy snifter in hand. Sergei eyed the brandy speculatively.
    “Well, well,” Varek drawled, his voice just slightly slurred, his mood apparently mellow. “Here representing my beloved wife's husband?”
    Sergei's shoulders stiffened. Not so mellow, after all. Slowly he approached the lazing man, tensed for anything. However, Varek just lounged there, smiling cynically at him.
    “At least you are finally admitting the truth of it, the fact that Christina does, indeed, have a husband.”
    The hand swirling the brandy glass, paused. “But not for long,” Varek softly pointed out, his smile derisive. Of course it was a hollow promise, echoing back at him with mocking frequency. But what the hell. It was his bloody fantasy.
    Still unsure as to Varek's mood, Sergei sat uninvited across from him. After a long minute of indecision, he finally said, “There is something I should tell you about your nemesis, whether you want to hear it or not.”
    Varek simply took a sip of brandy and ignored him.
    “A year after we left Austenburg, Christina was sunk into such a depression that I was at a loss as how to reach her. No matter what I did, or where we settled, nothing could spark her interest. Then one day, it just became too much for her, and...” Sergei's voice trailed off and he sadly shrugged as he recalled those hellish months. When he looked up he noticed that Varek's bloodshot eyes were watching him with an intensity that froze him to his seat. Having Varek's undivided attention only made it harder to continue; but he did, dragging each word out under the unblinking weight of Varek's silent hostility. “She tried to kill herself, Varek. One night she wandered out into a snowstorm. It was the middle of the night and I didn't see her go. She had on nothing but her nightgown.”
    Sergei couldn't even detect a flicker of an emotion in the unblinking, frigid eyes bent upon him. Just the mere stillness of Varek's lounging body was more powerful than any form of an explosive rage vented upon him.
    Wetting his lips, Sergei told him. “It was Robert who thankfully found her. He saved Christina's life, Varek. Whether I like that man or not does not refute the fact that if not for him, Christina would not be here today. And it is just one more thing that holds her loyal to him.”
    The silence that followed was deafening, and Sergei began to wonder if Varek had even heard him as there was not so much as a flicker of an emotion in the deadened gaze turned on him. It was like staring into a death mask, the soul long departed.
    Admitting defeat, Sergei finally stood up and walked to the door. He paused with his hand on the latch and glanced back over his shoulder, murmuring, “I just thought you should know.”
    When Sergei was gone, Varek finally blinked as he looked up at the large portrait above the mantel. A youthful, laughing girl smiled down on him. During the sitting of this portrait Christina had just found out she was pregnant with their first child. Despite the weight of royal disfavor bearing down upon them because of