You Belong to Me by Johanna Lindsey

contract that Simeon Petroff and I signed fifteen years ago, before he died. And it is a binding contract, Alexandra. It promises that you will wed Simeon’s son, Count Vasili Petroff.”
    She came to her feet and leaned over his desk, her color now as high as his, but there was no mistaking that hers was from temper. “Tell me you’re lying!” At the hesitant shake of his head, she emitted a shriek of rage. “You are, I know you are! You can’t tell me I’ve had a betrothed for more than half my life and you never bothered to mention it before now. It defies reason. You would have thrown this man in my face when I told you I was going to wait for Christopher’s proposal. You wouldn’t have let me go on waiting seven years if I were promised to another. And what about all those other men you hoped I would take an interest in?”
    “If you will calm down for a moment, I can explain.”
    She didn’t sit down, didn’t calm down, but she held her tongue, which wasn’t easy when all she wanted to do was scream. Constantin was aware of that fact, but he had had ample time to come up with a reasonable explanation for his so-called “silence” all these years.
    “I can’t deny I wanted you to marry Simeon’s son, just as he wanted it. He was my closest friend, as you know. And you were so young then, so—biddable. There was no way to know that you would grow to be so willful and assertive, argumentative, obstinate—”
    “I get the point, Papa,” she practically growled.
    He grunted before continuing. “I realized when you had your first season that youwould balk at having a husband chosen for you. So with your happiness in mind, rather than my honor, I decided to give you time to choose for yourself—and hoped Count Petroff would turn out to be dishonorable and marry someone else, thereby breaking the betrothal.”
    “And what if I had married someone else?”
    He was well prepared for that question. “First, you need to know that young Vasili never wrote to me, which caused me to wonder if Simeon had gotten around to telling his family about the betrothal before he died. It was a slim possibility that he hadn’t, but one I was beginning to count on back then, especially when you showed such interest in that Englishman.”
    “Count on? You despised Christopher!”
    “But if he would have made you happy—”
    “Never mind that,” she cut in impatiently. “If your friend’s family never knew—”
    “I didn’t say that,” he cut back in, “only that it was possible they might not know. But in either case, if you had accepted someone’s proposal, I would have had to write Vasili Petroff to inform him of it, and I was fully prepared to beg him to relinquish his claim on you.”
    When Constantin had rehearsed this conversation in his mind, he had decided the word “beg” was brilliant, designed to let her know that he had been completely on her side in this before she became unreasonable in her refusal to marry. But her expression said she couldn’t have cared less.
    “So when did he write to you?” she demanded.
    He had been dreading that question, had hoped she wouldn’t have thought of it. Now all her rage would come squarely down on his head, because he couldn’t lie about this when she was likely to get the truth from Count Petroff. “He didn’t.”
    “ You did?!”
    “You have given me no choice,” he said defensively. “You’re twenty-five years old and still without a husband. If you had made the slightest effort to change that fact—”
    “I don’t need a husband!”
    “Every woman needs a husband!”
    “Who says so?”
    “God in His wisdom—”
    “You mean Constantin Rubliov in his!”
    They were down to arguments they’d had before, ground he found much more familiar. “You need a husband to give you children.”
    “I don’t want children!”
    The lie was so blatantly obvious, he had to say so, though his voice gentled to a near whisper. “You know that isn’t