Scoundrel's Honor (Russian Connection 3)

“Besides, if you were involved in their ghastly business you would hardly be eager to bring them to justice.”

“Not justice.” A terrifying anger burned in his golden eyes. “I want them destroyed. I want their foul deeds exposed to the world so that they flee to the wilds of Siberia to hide from their shame. I want them to die alone and in complete despair.”

Emma shivered at the stark pain that she sensed beneath his fury. “They hurt someone you love. Your sister?”

His jaw hardened and she thought he intended to ignore her question. Then, with a sharp movement, he turned away to gaze out the small window overlooking the nearby fountain.

“My mother.”

Her heart squeezed with sympathy. “They abducted her?”

“There was no need. My mother was the daughter of a simple cobbler.” His voice was as hard and frigid as the Siberian winter. “One day Count Nevskaya walked into my grandfather’s shop and had his servant collect my mother and carry her to his waiting carriage.”

“He just…took her?”

“He tossed a few coins on the counter in payment.”

She swallowed the bile that threatened to rise in her throat. “And your grandfather did nothing to stay him?”

“It was a different time and the count was a close friend to Emperor Paul.” The lines of his shoulders were rigid, his hands clenched at his sides. She had obviously stirred his deepest demons. “My grandfather could not risk the wrath of a nobleman when he had several other children to support.”

Emma wrapped her arms around her waist, feeling cold to her very soul.

“How old was she?”

“Just turned fifteen.”

It was worse than Anya. Dimitri’s mother had been taken as if she were no more than an object that had been bought by a handful of coins.

“Where did he take her?”

“He owns a home near Novgorod. He kept her there for near six months, then…”

She unwittingly moved to his side, studying the bleak lines of his profile.

“Then what?”

“It became obvious she was with child so he dismissed her.”

Her breath tangled in her throat as she abruptly realized she had been absurdly blind. She should have suspected the truth from the moment she had caught sight of his lean, noble features. Or at least after he’d attempted to bully her. That sort of arrogance had to be bred into a man.

“You are that child?” she asked softly.

He slowly turned to face her, his expression guarded. Emma sensed how difficult it was to speak of his past, as if the wounds were still raw and bleeding.

“I am.”

She hesitated, unwilling to further his pain, and yet needing to know what happened.

“Did your mother return to her family?”

“They refused to take her back into their home. She was, after all, ruined in the eyes of the world. They could not hope to marry her off with a bastard child in tow.”

Her cheeks heated with outrage. “But she was taken against her will.”

Leaning against the fresco painted on the stone wall of the grotto, Dimitri studied her flush beneath his half-lowered lashes.

“You are not that naive, Emma.”