Well, to hell with him. She was glad he didn't want her anymore. She had enough to contend with without letting his or her lust get in the way. She turned and headed for the door.

He sighed, then said, "Don't make me chase you again, Tanya."

She stopped, infuriated that he sounded so damn patient. Was he never going to lose his temper with her again? she wondered.

"I'm just going across the hall to bathe and change my clothes. Then I'm going to get something to eat, or were you planning on leaving town tonight?"

"You may clean up at the hotel. We have rooms there—"

"I prefer my own room, thank you," she said crossly, then swung around to give him a frosty smile. "But there's no reason for you to wait for me. You can come by to fetch me in the morning."

"Enough!"

"Oh, my." She widened her eyes with feigned innocence. "I haven't made you angry, have I? No, of course not. I'm still standing."

He really didn't like being reminded of what had passed between them as a result of his temper. Her taunts had made his eyes glow again, but he was exhibiting remarkable control. He didn't even take a step toward her.

His voice, however, cut like steel through her rancor. "It was Sandor's death wish that you be found and brought home to assume your rightful place on the throne. All of these delays you have caused could mean that he will die before we return. If that is the case, Tanya, then you can be assured that you will experience my full wrath... and my pain."

She wished he hadn't put it quite that way. "Who is Sandor?"

"Our beloved king these last twenty years."

"But you said Vasili—"

"Because of Sandor's ill health, he abdicated in favor of his only son just before we set out to find you."

More fairy tales again. Did he continue them to provoke her temper?

"Why don't you save that for someone a little more gullible than I am? I'm going to take my bath now, Stefan. Wait if you must."

She turned again, only to be stopped again. "You cannot make free with this place any longer, Tanya. "

"Like hell I can't. This is my home, and before long it will belong to me outright."

"I don't think so."

She was beginning to really hate that particular phrase of his. "Look, Stefan, I've been pretty even-tempered, considering what you've put me through. No screaming, very little crying, no fainting. I didn't even go berserk when I found you here again. And do you know I could have cut all of your throats the other night while you were sleeping? But I didn't, did I? Because I hoped — stupidly, I now realize — that you would have sense enough to give up on a lost cause. So you go ahead and take me wherever it is you're taking me. But once you're out of it, I'll come back here. There isn't anything that will keep me from coming back here."

"Madam Bertha — I believe that is your neighbor's name? — would probably welcome you with open arms, but I don't intend to give her the opportunity. "

Tanya frowned. "What is that supposed to mean?"

"It means that you will not be allowed to return to this country again. It also means that I bought this tavern from Mr. Dobbs for enough money to keep him in the lap of luxury until his demise. And rather than burn it down, and possibly the town with it, which was my first inclination, I then sold it to the brothel next door — at a considerable loss."

"You're lying! You couldn't have had that kind of money with you! Nor would you go to such extremes!"

"Any extremes, Tanya. Anything deemed necessary to fulfill Sandor's last wish," he said in a hard tone, only to add matteroffactly, "Our letter of credit was waterstained, but still legible and more than sufficient to meet Mr. Dobbs' exorbitant price. But if you still doubt me, then I will take you next door this minute so that you may ask Madam Bertha exactly who owns this property now."

Lord help her, she believed him. He was too blasé about it, too ready to offer proof. The effect on her was awful. Pain pressed at her chest. Her face drained of color. And if she hadn't gone berserk before, she did now.

She didn't know how she reached him, but her hands began to hurt, drawing her to an awareness that she was pounding on his chest with both fists, and he was letting her, making no move to stop her, letting her shriek at him and call him every foul name imaginable. And then his arms wrapped around her and he was holding her while she cried her heart out.

"It isn't as bad as all that, Tanya."

"You don't know what you've done!"

"I've made it possible for you to walk away from this life without any regrets."

She stiffened. His arms tightened. She pushed away from him anyway, and the look she gave him, awash with tears, was incredulous.

"You destroy the life I had planned for myself and I'm not supposed to regret it? For as long as I can remember, I have worked like a slave in this tavern, and not once, ever, was I paid for it other than with food, a bed, and a slap every time I turned around. Even my clothes were Iris' and Dobbs' castoffs. But finally, and only because that old bastard couldn't care for himself anymore, I was going to be compensated. And you take that away from me on an arbitrary whim?"

"Not arbitrary. Your continuous attempts to return here left us with only two options. To eliminate your reasons for coming back here, or to see you married immediately to settle the matter."

"What happened? Wouldn't that jackassed peacock you call a king volunteer to marry me sooner than he had to?" she sneered, telling him how little she believed him. "Not that it would settle any matter, because I'd take a leaf from that tale you told the captain of The Lorilie and leave him in a minute."

"I see," he said tightly.

"No, you don't. You'll never comprehend what you've stolen from me, my dreams, the one thing I wanted more than anything — control of my own life. Only rich widows achieve the kind of independence I craved, but I'm not willing to marry first to become a widow. I could have had it without that—"

She broke off, overwhelmed again by her loss — and the need to strike out at the cause. She gave in to the need.

He caught her fists this time. "Enough!"

"Never!" she cried. "I can never hurt you enough for what you've done. And as soon as I get my hands on a gun, I'm going to shoot you, you son of a bitch!"

To her utter fury, he smiled at that. "You will have to remain with us, won't you, to await that opportunity?" And he picked her up and carried her out of The Seraglio for the last time.

She fought all the way.

Chapter 24

Tanya's second riverboat ride wasn't as pleasant as her first would have been. The cabin wasn't as large or as nice, nor was she allowed out of it. And whether she would have been forced to share that other cabin with Stefan on The Lorilie, she didn't know and didn't ask. But that she had to share this one with him was of little concern to her.

She slept in the bed. He slept on a pallet on the floor. She wouldn't talk to him, wouldn't answer him, wouldn't even look at him. She totally ignored him as if he were merely another object in the room. The amazing thing was that he let her.

For the most part she had the cabin to herself, and without participating in any conversation when it was offered, she had little else to do but think. Of course, it wasn't hard to conclude that she had once again been far off the mark in her estimation of what was happening to her. Too much money had been spent, in the purchase of horses, in the purchase of tickets on two riverboats — in the purchase of a tavern. God, she still couldn't believe they had done that, and not even to make a profit, because they had turned around and sold the tavern at a loss.

Their action defied reason. It said money was of no account to them. It said they did it just for her benefit, as Stefan had claimed, to eliminate what kept drawing her back to Natchez. And she couldn't even hold out the hope that he might have been lying about it, because she had made so much noise that night when he carried her out of the tavern that Bertha and one of her girls had come out on their porch to investigate. And Tanya couldn't resist asking the damning question.

Actually, she'd screamed it. "Did you buy The Seraglio from this devil?"

"Sure did, honey," Bertha had shouted back, not even recognizing Tanya without her camouflage, and no more than amused by her struggles. "I'm gonna fill it with bedrooms. Care to occupy one of them?"

The madam had laughed and gone back inside. Tanya had stopped struggling to get out of Stefan's arms. She hadn't spoken a word to him since.

But she knew now how wrong she'd been in trying to secondguess Stefan and his friends. More money had been spent than could ever be regained by selling her to a brothel, so she was forced to let go of that idea as their motive. Yet their story of kings and lost princesses was still too fantastical for her to accept. The trouble was, now she couldn't think of a single other plausible reason for her abduction, unless... Maybe her family was alive and had sent these men to find her. Maybe they had been warned not to tell her about it for some reason. Maybe... maybe she ought to stop driving herself crazy worrying about it.

After all, there were a number of other things to worry about, like what she was going to do with the rest of her life, now that her one chance at independence had been sold out from under her. She would have to find work. She would actually get paid for it, at long last, but she would be following orders again, forced to please, to do things the way someone else wanted them done, not the way she did. She'd been so close to never having to answer to anyone again... damn Stefan to hell.