t was Vasili who showed up to escort her to dinner. But Tanya had made sure she wouldn’t need any help with her dress, nearly straining her shoulder muscles twisting about to do up the buttons herself. They could have chosen dresses easier to get in and out of, but she wasn’t going to complain. She was too amazed by her appearance to do other than smirk when Vasili looked her over with some amazement of his own.

The two dresses she had to choose from were the same size, one a beige plaid, the other a bright lemon satinet with bishop sleeves and matching shoes. The shoes were a bit small, but both dresses fit her better than she could have hoped, except for one small area—right across her breasts. Obviously the dresses had been bought already made, and for a woman of smaller proportions than she.

The necklines of the dresses were in the favored boat shape, which exposed shoulders, neck, and a great deal of upper chest, sloping to a point just over the breasts. In this case, the point was rather deep on both dresses. A chemisette could have added some becoming lace to the area, but Stefan had said he would forget to include underclothing when he bought her clothes, and whether he actually forgot or intentionally forgot, there was none included with the dresses.

Under normal circumstances, Tanya would have been so self‑conscious, she wouldn’t have worn either dress. She’d always hidden her breasts under high‑necked shirts in thick materials, so they were nearly invisible. Here she was exposing all, so to speak, or at least the upper curves of her breasts, made worse since they were squeezed together because of the tightness of the material in that area. But these weren’t normal circumstances. In fact, her first look at herself in the large mirror above the dressing table in the cabin made her think of only one thing. Stefan would see her like this and wouldn’t like it at all. And that made her determined to wear the dresses exactly as they were.

She settled on the bright lemon yellow for tonight, simply because its color was so opposite her usual dull ones and went well with her dark hair. Even her dancing costume wasn’t as flattering to her figure. And this without benefit of a corset. Tanya was pleased, more than pleased. She’d never known that she could look like this.

There wasn’t much she could do with her hair, however, other than tie it back. But she did remove the wide, lace-­trimmed ornamental bow at the back of the dress to tie it at her nape instead. She could, of course, have tucked that strip of yellow into her deep décolletage to make the dress a bit more demure. But with Stefan’s reaction uppermost in her mind, she didn’t even consider it.

She had a few second thoughts about it, however, when Vasili stared overlong at her chest. But the rest of her also underwent a thorough inspection, so she let it pass.

“You look lovely, Princess.”

Her brows shot up. “A compliment from you? Are you feeling well, Vasili?”

He laughed and remarked, “You are amusing if nothing else. Now, don’t stiffen up on me when I have gone to so much trouble on your behalf.” He held out his hand, which contained about a dozen hairpins in several different styles, then confided, “Two women on board now assume I am interested in them, although I regret that I am not. You can’t imagine the difficulty that might entail tonight.”

“I wonder why I can’t dredge up any sympathy for you,” Tanya replied.

He grinned boyishly, and for a moment she saw why women found him so irresistible. “I believe I have missed your wit, Princess. It was too bad of Stefan to keep you to himself the whole of this voyage.”

“Did he send you for these?” She took the pins from his hand.

“He suggested that if we didn’t want you looking like a trollop, one of us should make the effort. Naturally, I was elected.”

How casually he tossed out that secondhand insult. She ignored it on the surface, but deep down she was stung. She wondered how many other disparaging remarks were made about her when she wasn’t around to hear them. Since she heard too many when she was around, she could only imagine that these men never said anything nice about her. Well, she hardly had anything nice to say about them either.

She reached for the bow at her nape. “If you will wait a few—”

“Leave it,” he broke in and, at her inquiring look, added, “It is quite fetching as is.”

“But after all the trouble you went through to borrow these.”

He shrugged. “You can use them tomorrow for our arrival in New Orleans.”

Tomorrow? Was that why she was being allowed out of the cabin tonight? Stefan had no doubt decided it was safe enough to let her be around other people since she wasn’t likely to see any of them a second time. How much trouble could she cause in so little time, after all? She hoped she could find an opportunity to show them the error of that assumption. Trollop? She might not look like one now, but how hard would it be to act like one?

“Then shall we go?”

This riverboat was smaller than The Lorilie, though it had two decks as well. The dining saloon was on the lower deck, next to a large room devoted strictly to gambling. Passing that room, Tanya realized this was one of the boats referred to as a floating gambling palace. Professional gamblers made their homes on such boats. So did women of ill repute. For a moment she wondered if that wasn’t the reason she had been kept isolated, but she dismissed the notion as being too unlikely, particularly when her traveling companions, one and all, thought her reputation couldn’t be any worse.

Lazar and Serge were waiting at a table for them. Both stood as she approached. Both bowed slightly as Vasili seated her. Their deference made her uncomfortable, until it occurred to her that it was no more than an act to reinforce the fairy tale. Why they still bothered...

“Is Stefan still at it?” Vasili questioned before he sat down.

“You need to ask, when he has rarely left that table since we boarded?” Lazar replied.

“Why don’t you go and remind him that food is a necessity?” Serge suggested. “He won’t listen to us.”

“Then I suppose I had better.”

Lazar turned to Tanya when Vasili left. “Stefan has been doing a little gambling,” he explained.

She had already gathered as much and asked with little interest, “Is he winning?”

“Actually, he’s lost quite a bit.”

She wondered how much “quite a bit” was to them, not that she cared. She couldn’t wish penury on a more deserving group of men.

“Usually you learn how to play the game before you try your hand at it,” was all she remarked.

“Stefan knows how to play well enough. In fact, he is quite skillful at it.”

The way Lazar was looking at her couldn’t have said more clearly that she was somehow at fault, and that incensed her. “Now that takes nerve, to blame me for his bad luck when I wasn’t even there.”

The rebuke didn’t phase him. “Your despondency has bothered him. I don’t understand it either. You grieve for a hovel when you will live in palaces.”

Tanya sighed inwardly. Obviously, they must be­lieve that perseverance was going to make her accept their story eventually. She was definitely tired of telling them that it just wouldn’t work.

“I wasn’t despondent, Lazar, I was furious,” she pointed out. “You would be, too, if someone showed up and tried changing your life around.”

“Not if it was a change for the better,” he insisted. “You had to be made to see that your life there was over. And you will be happy in Cardinia, Tanya. You will have wealth, power—”

“A husband?”

“Every woman wants to marry.”

“Imagine that! Every single one? And here I al­ways thought I was a woman.”

Her exaggerated sarcasm had him flinching. “You really don’t want to marry?”

“No.”

“Not even Vasili?”

“Especially not Vasili.”

Two hands settled on her bare shoulders, and warm breath stirred the hair by her ear. “Careful, Tatiana, or I will begin to believe that and be so wounded, I will have to exert some charm to change your mind.”

Vasili, not Stefan, the voice told her. Her heart slowed its beat.

Before she could think of a reply to that outlandish promise, however, Lazar asked Vasili, “You couldn’t drag him away?”

“He said he would join us later—perhaps.”

Tanya’s shoulders slumped. Stefan wouldn’t join them. She knew it as sure as she was sitting there. He had ordered her to look presentable, but he had had no intention of seeing for himself if she complied. How dared he take away even the pleasure she had felt in the way she looked tonight? She wouldn’t let him do that, too, on top of everything else.

“If Stefan doesn’t join us later,” she said boldly now, “then we must join him.”

The suggestion was met with total silence until Lazar finally blurted out, “That won’t do at all, Prin­cess.”

“I insist.”

“But Stefan won’t like—”

“You heard her, Lazar,” Vasili cut in. “She in­sists. And she does outrank you.”

Tanya turned to Vasili incredulously. “I do?”

“Certainly you do. Lazar is, after all, only a count.”

Lazar was grinding his teeth by now. “This isn’t the best time to point that out, your Majesty.”

“Relax, my friend, and let Stefan handle the matter if he objects to it. He needs something to draw him out of his present mood, anyway.”

Tanya was interested in only one thing right now. “Does that mean I outrank Stefan, too?”

“How hopeful you look.” Vasili grinned. “But I must disappoint you. No matter Stefan’s rank, responsibility for you is his alone until we return to Cardinia, so you must defer to him in all things. If you choose to argue... but you have dealt well enough with him so far, have you not? He is the one who seems to be having trouble dealing with you.”

Tanya hid her disappointment well. She should have known they wouldn’t go that far to enhance their tale.

“You think so?” she said in a neutral tone. “I hadn’t noticed.” But oh, how she wished it were true, because any difficulty whatsoever that she could cause Stefan would delight her no end.