BVC Announces Royal Renegade by Alicia Rasley
Royal Renegade
Lords of the South Coast Book 1
by Alicia Rasley
On the war-torn Mediterranean, behind enemy lines, and in glittering London ballrooms, two young lovers battle duty, royalty, and their own passion to find their way to freedom.
A traditional Regency romance. It is 1811, and the Prince has just become Regent, and Wellington has just retaken Portugal, and Napoleon has just started his secret plans to invade Russia. And Tatiana, the long-forgotten princess in the Winter Palace, becomes the unwilling pawn to further all their aims.
Lords of the South Coast, Book 1
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Rita-Award-winning author Alicia Rasley is a college writing teacher from Indiana. She writes Regency romances, contemporary mysteries, and non-fiction books about travel and writing.
Buy Royal Renegade at BVC Ebookstore
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Chapter One
April 1811
Winter Palace, St. Petersburg
“Never! I’ll never marry that murderer!” Tatiana put her whole small body into slamming the schoolroom door, but Prince Dmitry inserted a booted foot and pushed through. His gaze swept over the chaos, taking in and then dismissing the tumble of books on the table, the cache of toys in the corner, the shabbily dressed children in the center. Finally he focused coldly on his niece.
“The Duke of Cumberland is a royal prince and now your future husband, young lady. He deserves greater respect than that.” As Arkady, an undersize tot with oversize voice, clung to Tatiana’s leg and screamed, Dmitry’s thin face twisted in distaste. “We shall discuss this when your brats have left for their feeding.”
The Princess Tatiana kicked the door shut behind her uncle, but that only made Arkady cry louder. So she crooned as she carried him back to the rug where six other children played. Depositing the boy unceremoniously in the middle, Tatiana shook her head at Anne Buntin’s attempt to pick him up and comfort him. The frail English governess always strained herself trying to keep up with her charges. Now Buntin let Arkady go and looked up, her prim lips mouthing a question.
Tatiana could always speak more eloquently with her expression than her voice. She lowered her brows and set her mouth militantly, declaring, “Prince Dmitry is a—” Then, with unusual tact, she remembered the children. “I shall tell you later.”
She joined Leo, the budding architect, in building towers with scarred wooden blocks. Leo was painstaking in his efforts, his tongue caught between his teeth, his fingers delicately edging the block into place. Tatiana was not so careful. Haphazardly she piled block on block, then just as her tower was about to fall, she knocked it down. If only Dmitry was so easily vanquished, she thought, Dmitry and his murderous English prince.
And Napoleon and all his armies.
“No hit, Tania,” remonstrated Darya, the tiny daughter of a chambermaid. When she first came to the palace school, Darya could not speak. She had been left with a deaf-mute neighbor while her mother worked. Now Darya was the self-appointed class disciplinarian, and especially enjoyed chastising her teacher.
As the children chattered, Tatiana imagined her uncle skulking outside in the great stone hallway, his teeth gritted. He hated her involvement in this school for servants’ children, but then he hated everything about her. That was why he wanted to marry her off to a mad prince in an alien land.
Suddenly she could stand the tension no longer. “Time for luncheon,” she announced, pulling Leo to his feet, in the process knocking down his grand tower. He set up a howl, but she diverted him with a well-placed tickle. When he was helpless with laughter, Tatiana pushed him gently toward the door.
Buntin’s fair eyebrows rose, for this was earlier than their usual mealtime. Still she lined up the children to lead them out. Tatiana protested, “They’re just babies; they don’t need to march like soldiers.” She tugged Leo out of the formation to make her point, for he was rather too careful as it was. “Do let’s get on. Prince Dmitry will be coming in a moment and”—for the children she made a horrible face—”and he’s such an ogre! And Buntin, ask one of the maids to watch the children this afternoon, and come back quickly.”
As soon as the children were past, Dmitry pushed the door open. Once his hair had been dark red like Tatiana’s, but had long since grayed, as if frosted by his wintry temperament. He was gaunt as a monk, and no longer bore any resemblance to her gentle mother. “As I said, your wedding has been set for Christmastide. In London.”
Tatiana turned away, hiding her trembling hands in front of her full skirt. She could never let him know that he frightened her, for he would enjoy that too much. “You’ll have to give them my regrets then, for I shan’t be able to make it.”
As imperious as their feudal Romanov ancestors, Dmitry replied, “You have no choice in the matter, my dear niece. We have already decided.”
She put one hand on the children’s table as if to straighten the books, but actually to give herself the support she needed to continue standing. “Who has decided? You? My dear uncle?”
“Yes. Your uncle. Your guardian.”
“You are so eager to rid yourself of your sister’s child. But then, you were just as glad to get rid of your sister!”
Dmitry kicked a toy soldier out of his path and advanced on her. He stopped short a few feet away, as if repelled by her slight figure in the dusty-blue kerseymere frock, and his voice grew silky with threat. “Count yourself lucky that you won’t be following your parents to Siberia, my dear. Instead, you will have a triumph—a misbegotten child wedding the son of a king.”
Tatiana stood her ground, though Dmitry loomed like death above her. “Misbegotten, am I? You forget, my father was also the son of a king! And I am no pawn to be wed at your whim.” Her rebellion was mostly automatic, as she sought a way out. She knew other princesses were married off for political purposes—Anastasia Romanova had just this winter gone off to wed a Montenegrin prince she’d never laid eyes on. And before Napoleon had married his Austrian, several of Tatiana’s cousins had been imagining “Empress” in front of their names. But Tatiana had neither desired nor expected to receive the dubious privilege of royal marriage.
Indeed, the Romanov court shut her off in a distant wing of the Winter Palace with her companion Buntin. Oh, occasionally Tatiana would do something outrageous, like starting the school for servants’ children or sneaking into the convoy of princesses going to Paris to meet Napoleon, just to prove that she was still alive. But most of the time, she was as invisible as the maids who emptied the royal chamber pots. She was a cast-off princess, unworthy of any marriage, much less one to save the nation. Now, finally, her family remembered her, just in time to send her away forever.
“This is no whim, my dear. Or if it is, it’s the whim of the tsar.” At this reference to his patron, Dmitry permitted himself a thin smile. “I was happy to agree that a marriage between the two royal families would cement a new alliance in this troubled time.”
“The alliance would not need cementing,” Tatiana observed acidly, “if Alexander hadn’t spent so much of the war in Napoleon’s pocket.”
Dmitry had been an advocate of the Franco-Russian treaty, tenuous now in the face of Napoleon’s eastward aggression. An overture to England—with his niece as bait—could restore Dmitry as a palace advisor. “I told Alexander that of all the princesses underfoot in this nation, you were the obvious choice. You are, as you say, the granddaughter of a king, although Kalin Pol was a meager sort of kingdom even before it was annexed. You learned English well from your governess, and your looks won’t offend the duke.”
“And my closest kin will be happy with me on the other side of the world.”
Prince Dmitry smiled in grim amusement. “Just so. Of all the princesses in this palace, you’re the one we’d all like to send to the devil.”
Tatiana inquired with real interest, “What did the tsar say to that?”
“I shouldn’t be so proud of your notoriety, Tatiana Nicholevna.” Dmitry’s smile vanished. “Had you been more biddable, you’d already be rearing your own children instead of training servants’ brats. Your only hope is that the English haven’t heard of your wildness and won’t object to your advanced age. For no man in Petersburg would have you.”
Tatiana thought of her cousin Peter, exiled for the crime of soliciting her hand, and she was provoked into rashness. “I like to think I livened up this dull pile. Since the Tsarina Catherine died, there’s been so little excitement—except for a strangling or two.”
Dmitry paled to a deathly shade, and for a moment, Tatiana was frightened by her impulsive words. Dmitry declared rigidly, “You of all people should discount that scurrilous rumor.”
Once again, passion overcame Tatiana’s limited good sense. “If it’s only a rumor, why was my father sent away? Why does Alexander refuse to acknowledge me? It’s guilt. That is why I am shut away here like some bastard when I am more Romanov than Alexander. And why you have deserted me—” But it was no use reaching out to her uncle. He had abandoned her long ago, when he stood by as the tsar exiled her father.
“Your father was an impetuous fool, who liked to boast of his importance. And your mother was no better, loyally following him off into exile and just as loyally dying with him.”
He kept talking, his voice raspy with cruelty, but the princess hardened her heart to the pain. She knew better, after all, and so did he, and so did Alexander. The only one to take advantage of her father’s impetuosity was Alexander himself.
Dmitry had spent years distancing himself from his brother-in-law’s specter. He—and Alexander— must have seen this arrangement with England as an opportunity to send Tatiana and her long memory far away.
“As far as you are concerned,” Dmitry went on, one hand inserted into his gray waistcoat in unconscious imitation of Napoleon, “you are fortunate that Alexander let you live here in the palace instead of pensioning you off to a convent somewhere. Now you can repay the great debt you owe him with the only value you have— your title and your Romanov blood.”
Her Romanov blood as repayment to Alexander—it was too ironic for comment. Tatiana, at least, really was a Romanov, blood-linked to Peter the Great through both parents—more than Alexander could claim. And she recognized no debt to the tsar, just the opposite, in fact.
“Well, you may tell our great leader that I prefer to choose my own way.” With all the dignity she could muster in her paint-spotted frock and stockinged feet, she started for the door. “And I wouldn’t marry Cumberland if my life depended on it.”
“What if the life of your country depended on it?” Prince Dmitry shot out a hand and grasped her arm. “When Napoleon marches across the steppes, and England feels no obligation to help us, then perhaps you’ll regret that vow … if Bonaparte lets you live, that is. Remember what the French did to their own royal family. Do you think they will treat us any better?”
As his bony fingers tightened on her wrist, she caught her breath to keep from crying out. She turned her head, but she could feel his words hot on her bare neck. “You haven’t any choice, after all. Your alternative is exile. Yes, we’ll send you to Siberia, where no doubt you’ll meet the same fate as your stupid parents. And we’ll deport that silly governess of yours. Think about it. I am sure you would prefer a London palace.”
With her free hand, she grabbed his thumb, bending it back until he cursed and released her. “I’ll praise the day I’m shut of you. Let the English have the taming of you. I hear the duke is a master disciplinarian.” Then he turned on his heel and strode out of the room.
Tatiana was shaken by her uncle’s threat of Siberia, the wasteland that haunted her nightmares. She picked up a block and hurled it, hitting the door just as it closed behind him. “Damn him! I’ve half a mind to go to England, just to get away from him.” Then she clapped a hand over her mouth. If Dmitry heard her declaration, he would find some way to use it against her.
But her uncle did not burst back into the room, so Tatiana retrieved her block and opened the door. Buntin, who had been hiding behind a marble pillar, slipped into the schoolroom. She mussed her gray hair with her agitated hand. “You made him so angry. I could see from the way he stalked out of here. What did you say to him?”
“I suppose I shouldn’t have mentioned strangling,” Tatiana kicked sullenly at the table leg. “But he made me so furious, pretending I was a disgrace, when all along it’s been Alexander who has shamed our family.”
Buntin, a vicar’s daughter, had lived in the Winter Palace for nearly a decade. But she had never gotten used to the violent intrigue of the Russian court. In fact, she almost preferred to believe that it was all Tatiana’s imagination. “Oh, when will you learn to think before you speak? You harm only yourself with such wild talk. I thought teaching children would have made you a little more responsible, but instead you seem to be getting more childish yourself. If only you could see yourself now. You are pouting just like little Arkady.”
Tatiana gritted her teeth. However justified, her anger was regarded as pique and her resolve dismissed as obstinacy. Even her companion sometimes suggested that Tatiana’s wildness was what kept her from being accepted by her relations.
But she had no other confidant in this vast palace. “Well, I have reason to be angry. I’m supposed to marry your mad prince, Cumberland. And if I don’t, they’ll exile me to Siberia and send you away, and the children will have no one to care for them while their mothers work.”
Buntin raised her frail hands. “Of course you must do what your uncle wants. He is your closest kin.”
“He’s no kin of mine. He sees me as an obstacle, one he can marry off to a madman.” She paced to the window, gazing out at the field of snow four stories below, slowly receding from the courtyard as spring advanced. The horrid winter had confined the children to their schoolroom and kept Tatiana from her daily rides through the nearby park. She longed for summer, for the chance to teach the children about the glorious march of nature. But she would not see any riot of blooming in Siberia, where summer never took hold.
“Cumberland is a royal duke.” Buntin recalled her to the subject at hand. “I hardly think he would be mad.”
Tatiana sighed. Buntin’s notions of royalty were absurdly at odds with palace life. “I know the Hanovers are your royal family, but you must not be so naive. King George talks to trees as if they were his advisors. Cumberland slit his valet’s throat. The whole family is utterly crack-brained.”
“Those are only rumors.”
“And if they’ve reached us here in Petersburg, they must have merit.” Actually, she knew of Cumberland’s unsavory reputation only from the scandal rags Buntin’s sister sent every month from Kent. But those journals were lavish in detail and speculation: Cumberland had cuckolded his valet and then murdered him, Cumberland had impregnated his own sister—if half of it was true, Tatiana was in deep trouble. “Oh, Buntin, what am I to do?” Like a child, she dropped to the floor and buried her head in the governess’s lap, her body tight with fear.
Buntin smoothed back Tatiana’s tangled red hair. “Is it all so bad, dear? I know you have reason to dislike your uncle. But you may be cutting off your nose to spite your face.”
This was a frequent lament of Buntin’s, and perhaps there was some truth to it. Tatiana did savor defying her uncle. Buntin, sensing some weakening, persisted in her gentle way. “Think on it. You’ll be away from Dmitry and the court that you say you hate. You’ll meet people your own age and go to dances and parties. No one there will know about your—your father, and with your beauty, you might be the toast of town, if only you are careful.”
“Beauty?” Tatiana echoed, startled out of her anguish. “Who ever heard of a redheaded princess? Of course,” she added thoughtfully, “Napoleon himself called me ‘that flaming flower’ and he’s a connoisseur, isn’t he?”
“Don’t speak of Napoleon, dear, please,” Buntin said faintly. For Tatiana was never meant to meet nor to attract the emperor, and if the tsar ever learned about that escapade, they’d both be packed off to Siberia in a winking. “Think instead of leaving this place, and of having the life you were meant to have, a palace of your own, a highborn husband and children, your freedom.”
Tatiana sat back on her heels. Oddly, it had never before occurred to her that she might have a life outside the Winter Palace. She had once assumed that, were she ever allowed to marry, she would wed poor Cousin Peter and move to a larger apartment in the palace. She knew no other life; however unloving, the palace was the only home she had known for years. What happiness she had made in life, she had made here.
“But I would be leaving behind our little school.” She gestured around the room she had commandeered for the children of servants. “I daresay this is the cheerfullest room in the palace. Count Nevski might have been angry at first, but now even he might admit his staff works better when their children are safe.”
Buntin finally threw politeness out the window and interrupted. “Perhaps he will be glad enough to keep the school going in your absence. He certainly could do it if he chose to. No one interferes with his decisions on household matters in this wing.”
“I hardly think he would even enter this room, much less run the school.” She knew that if she left, the school, into which she had poured all her restless energy for two years, would be closed and the children abandoned again. “Of course,” she said thoughtfully, “I could insist that Nevski keep the school open.”
Buntin looked anxious. “You mustn’t make them angry.”
“Why not? They are making me angry. But I have the advantage now for the first time. They should expect me to negotiate to make my prospects more comfortable.” She smiled triumphantly. “In exchange for my consent, I will exact some small payment. Oh, do not worry, Buntin. I shall only ask for sensible concessions. Like the crown jewels of Kalin Pol. They’re mine by right anyway. And money of my own, so I shan’t be dependent on a prince’s largesse any longer. And a new wardrobe. I can hardly meet the British royal family dressed like a ragamuffin, can I? And a schoolmistress and funds for the school. Oh, I’m sure I can get whatever I ask for. If the alliance truly rests on me, the tsar should be happy to meet such meager conditions.” Ignoring the moan that was her only reply, Tatiana took Buntin’s hand and squeezed it. “And you must come with me. I’d be lost by myself at the British court.”
Buntin’s faded eyes brightened just a little. “You? No, you will never be at a loss. But of course I will accompany you. I’ve grown to hate these eternal winters, and I long so for my homeland.”
Tatiana was chagrined. She had never considered that her companion might want to be somewhere other than right by her side. “You’ve only stayed here because of me, haven’t you? You would have returned to England years ago, if you hadn’t felt responsible for me.”
Buntin smiled with gentle amusement. “I was waiting for you to grow up, and it has taken an unconscionably long time. But finally, you are twenty, ready to be married, and to a royal duke, no less, just as you deserve!”
Tatiana frowned as she considered this. Then, with typical disdain, she dismissed all her fears. “I don’t have to think of that yet.” As Buntin opened her mouth, Tatiana shook her head, setting her too-long curls dancing. “Oh, tell me again about how shocking married ladies are in England, how they walk about town with only one attendant, how they choose their own friends.”
Relieved by Tatiana’s proper interest in marriage, Buntin replied, “Oh, they’re shameless, they are. Here a man would send his wife to a convent if she behaved so wantonly, taking admirers left and right and talking about issues of the day. You’d love it, riding in the park virtually unchaperoned, and speaking your mind—of course, you do that here unsparingly.”
“But there I shouldn’t be punished for it.” Tatiana sat back thoughtfully, tucking her skirt under her heels. “Oh, I think I might like this homeland of yours, Buntin. England . . . the very name sounds like freedom.”
She jumped to her feet and pulled at Buntin’s hand. “Come help me. I need to put on my best gown. I’ll insist on speaking to the tsar himself—to give him my conditions for consent.”