Seduced by the Prince's Kiss Read online

  Adventure awaits!

  And it starts with his kiss...

  Part of Russian Royals of Kuban: princess Anna-Maria Petrova has known stoic, upstanding Prince Stepan Shevchenko all her life. Or at least she thought she knew him. Because he’s never before looked at her the way he does now, alone together on the West Sussex coast. As if one kiss will unleash all the adventure, passion, pleasure she craves... Does she dare to discover if it’s true?

  Russian Royals of Kuban miniseries

  Book 1—Compromised by the Prince’s Touch

  Book 2—Innocent in the Prince’s Bed

  Book 3—Awakened by the Prince’s Passion

  Book 4—Seduced by the Prince’s Kiss

  “Scott delivers an absorbing tale with an uncommon hero, bold heroine, elements of foreign intrigue, treachery and passion. The witty byplay between the characters and their tension-filled battle of wills fuels the readers’ desire to turn the pages.”

  —RT Book Reviews on Compromised by the Prince’s Touch

  “Readers will be captivated by this highly romantic, fairy-tale style story, with its strong heroine and dashing hero. It’s the perfect read that will sweep you away with its fun and uplifting take.”

  —RT Book Reviews on Innocent in the Prince’s Bed

  Russian Royals of Kuban

  Commanding princes unlace the ladies of London!

  Princes Nikolay, Illarion, Ruslan and Stepan were once the toasted royalty of Kuban, renowned for their daring exploits. Now, banished and distanced from their titles, they’ve arrived in London—where balls and carriage rides take precedence over swordsmanship, revolution and battle...

  But in this new and unknown country, they’re about to encounter women the likes of whom they’ve never encountered before. These ladies have resisted the rakes of London—but these princes are about to embark on the most alluring of seductions...

  Read Nikolay and Klara’s story in

  Compromised by the Prince’s Touch

  Illarion and Dove’s story in

  Innocent in the Prince’s Bed

  Ruslan and Dasha’s story in

  Awakened by the Prince’s Passion

  And Stepan and Anna-Maria’s story in

  Seduced by the Prince’s Kiss

  All available now!

  Author Note

  Stepan’s story is about empty nests, new beginnings and the idea that as much as things change, they still remain the same. As the last prince, Stepan has watched his friends find new loves and new lives since their escape from Kuban. He’s stood by them, often at great risk to himself. Now, with them settled, he asks himself the question of empty-nesters everywhere: What next? Is it time for him to pursue his own heart’s desire? And at what cost? Pursuing Anna-Maria could ruin his friendship with Dimitri. Are his own desires worthy of such risk? For years, the care he’s given his friends has pushed aside his need to focus on himself and his own worth. The question he faces now: Is he worthy not only of Anna-Maria but of love? That would be new. But his thirst for adventure, his thirst to belong to someone is not. These are issues that have been a constant in his life. Now Stepan gets to explore the greatest of all uncharted territories—himself.

  Anna-Maria’s journey is along that same path: Who can she be? Readers first met her as Dimitri’s sister in Awakening the Innocent Miss (book two of the Wallflowers to Wives series). She’s made the physical journey from Kuban to London but she hasn’t mentally “arrived” yet. She is still searching for her sense of place and what she can be in this new world, only to discover that the new world of England isn’t as different as she thought. For a young woman, the rules remain the same.

  I hope you enjoy this final installment of the series and that it sparks internal journeys of your own.

  BRONWYN SCOTT

  Seduced by

  the Prince’s Kiss

  Bronwyn Scott is a communications instructor at Pierce College in the United States and is the proud mother of three wonderful children—one boy and two girls. When she’s not teaching or writing, she enjoys playing the piano, traveling—especially to Florence, Italy—and studying history and foreign languages. Readers can stay in touch on Bronwyn’s website, bronwynnscott.com, or on her blog, bronwynswriting.blogspot.com. She loves to hear from readers.

  Books by Bronwyn Scott

  Harlequin Historical

  Scandal at the Midsummer Ball

  “The Debutante’s Awakening”

  Scandal at the Christmas Ball

  “Dancing with the Duke’s Heir”

  Russian Royals of Kuban

  Compromised by the Prince’s Touch

  Innocent in the Prince’s Bed

  Awakened by the Prince’s Passion

  Seduced by the Prince’s Kiss

  Wallflowers to Wives

  Unbuttoning the Innocent Miss

  Awakening the Shy Miss

  Claiming His Defiant Miss

  Marrying the Rebellious Miss

  Visit the Author Profile page

  at Harlequin.com for more titles.

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  To Scott and all the adventures still to come.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Excerpt from Reclaimed by the Knight by Nicole Locke

  Chapter One

  Shoreham-by-Sea, West Sussex—March 1824

  Spring had come again in all its glory: blustering winds, lashing rains and always the peculiar English dampness that conspired to keep a person indoors far beyond the body’s patience for inactivity—at least his body’s. Stepan Shevchenko braced himself against the sea winds buffeting the bluffs. He peered through the eyepiece of his spyglass, searching the empty horizon.

  Nothing yet.

  He collapsed the spyglass with a frown. Still, it was far better to be out here amongst the elements than inside where he’d been for months. He had little tolerance for the indoors. He craved constant exercise, constant adventure, despite his efforts to tame himself to the more sedate rhythms of an Englishman’s life.

  Two springs now he’d spent in Britain and yet in all that time he’d proved only that one could take the man out of Kuban, but one couldn’t take Kuban out of the man. The wildness of Kuban with its mountains and rivers called to the wildness within him, something he buried deep at his most primal self, something he’d been careful to suppress. It had become a secret identity, known only to him and those who knew him best: Nikolay, Ruslan, Illarion and Dimitri. Certainly, no one in London who did business with Prince Stepan Shevchenko would guess at it. To them, he was all that was proper. A boring word for someone whom many thought a boring man.

&nb
sp; He preferred it that way. Proper was a very good cover. So good, in fact, he could even hide the wildness from himself. Sometimes, he almost believed the façade. But on days like today, when the wind blew through his hair, and the rain soaked his face, he knew better. He was still wild at heart; always running, always raging.

  The horizon shimmered, the emptiness interrupted by the appearance of sails. Stepan smiled and lifted the spyglass again. It must be her—his ship, one of them. Through the eyepiece he sought out the name on the prow; the Lady Frances, a ship well known to be sponsored by Prince Stepan Shevchenko, bringing the latest Kubanian luxuries to London: lacquered trifle boxes with carefully painted scenes of Kubanian life on their lids, delicate birch wood carvings and the ever-entertaining Matryoshka dolls. A sense of tentative gratification rippled through him at the sight of the ship, followed by a clench of anticipation deep in his stomach. He moved his glass to take in the space behind the Lady Frances but the remainder of the horizon was empty.

  Wait for it, he counselled himself. Impatience often bred unnecessary worry. He should not be concerned. Not yet. It was a good sign the Lady Frances was here. There was a satisfactory profit in her cargo once the duties were paid and a satisfaction of another sort, the sort that came from surrounding oneself with reminders of home. If he could not go to Kuban, he could bring Kuban to London. It was a type of cure for an odd homesickness for a place he’d not expected to miss, a place that didn’t hold good memories, but haunted him none the less now that he could never go back. But a man did not get rich, not like he had, on importing knick-knacks to decorate ladies’ parlours. No, the Lady Frances wasn’t the real prize. She was merely the decoy.

  His anticipation growing, Stepan focused on the empty space left in the Lady Frances’s wake. Wait for it...wait for it...five minutes went by. Then ten. There was movement. His adventurer’s heart leapt. The thrill never got old. Slowly, a second ship came into view. It was here! The Razboynik held the true profit—casks of undiluted vodka straight from Ekaterinador and duty-free, thanks to his ingenuity and specially engineered barrels. Without the vodka there was no profit in it otherwise. No adventure, either, and no cause that justified the risk. For him there must be all three. Stepan reached into his pocket, trading his spyglass for a mirror and flashed a brief signal out across the water. That single flash meant: ‘All is safe, come in from the sea.’

  Stepan heard his horse nicker from his picket and felt a presence behind him. He smiled without turning, knowing full well who it would be, his land-crew chief, Joseph Raleigh. ‘I swear, Joe, you can smell a ship a mile out to sea.’ He chuckled as Joseph came up beside him. Stepan passed the young man the spyglass.

  ‘It’s a beaut, milord.’ Joseph grinned, peering through the eyepiece. ‘What I can smell is profit. The boys are rarin’ to go.’

  By ‘boys’, Joseph meant the crew that would gather to unload the Razboynik, all of them adolescents ranging from fourteen to seventeen, all of them orphans figuratively or literally. Growing up, Stepan had been both. Some were from London, gathered up during his visits, others were from the area. There were those in society who, if they knew, might condemn him for employing ‘children’ in illegal work. But these were boys who’d seen hardship, who lived with it every day, boys who’d been reduced to doing far worse than diluting vodka in caves before he’d found them. At their age, these boys needed guidance and help, but they also needed their pride. They wouldn’t take charity.

  He knew, he’d been their age and in their situation before, never mind that he’d been raised in a palace and they’d been raised on the streets. Context didn’t prevent one from being lost and rudderless. Like them, he’d been headed towards a life of shiftlessness before he’d been found, a boy not interested in school, only in running wild in the great outdoors. A balanced life needed both freedom and structure. Stepan would pay forward the favour Dimitri had done him if he could. One didn’t need to be poor to need direction. The pitfalls of being an orphan were no respecters of station.

  As for the smuggling—well, everyone did it. There wasn’t anyone in Shoreham who wasn’t connected to ‘free trading’ in some way, either as merchants or consumers or employees. That made it a fairly safe ‘industry’. Folks were less likely to turn in their friends and their own suppliers of goods they couldn’t afford by other means. There were the politics of it, too—this was a way to stand up to an unfair government that taxed goods beyond legitimacy. It was a way to stand up to greed, to a system sustained by standing on the backs of those who could least afford to support the weight, while the system ignored those in the most need: widows, children, orphans, broken men home from war and farmers who could no longer afford to farm. To Stepan, smuggling was protest. When the system changed, he would change.

  Joseph shut the spyglass and handed it back. ‘Shall we go down, milord?’

  Stepan pulled a pouch of coins from his pocket. ‘Make sure everyone who works tonight gets their share. I’ll see you later.’ He would ride down in a moment to meet the Lady Frances at the docks. While he was respectfully and publicly paying the duties on her cargo, the Razboynik would put in unnoticed to the quiet cove below the bluffs. Joseph Raleigh and the land crew would stow the vodka and small packets of spices in the caves. Then, they would spend the week preparing the vodka for transport from Shoreham to London, where Stepan had managed to make Kubanian food, drink and artefacts the latest rage. The women wanted their knick-knacks, the men wanted their vodka.

  It was a good arrangement, one that had increased his fortune and satisfied his need for adventure. The arrangement was neat, but not too neat. There was, after all, a margin for risk. Multiple aspects of his ‘business’ could be discovered at any time. The caves where he stored his treasure were not his own. They belonged to the estate of Preston Worth, whose wife, Beatrice, was a friend of Dimitri’s wife. Worth and his family were not always in residence. The man’s work took them to London a good part of the year as it did now and, when it did not, Worth was a civil prevention officer intent on ridding the coast of smugglers while one roosted in his very own nest. The irony of it appealed to Stepan nearly as much as the risk.

  Preston wasn’t the only threat. There was always the potential the coastguard would discover his illicit little enterprise. Little or large wouldn’t matter to the King’s men. The penalty for smuggling was still the same: hanging or, if one was lucky, transportation.

  Not that Stepan worried about either overmuch. If anything, the penalty for discovery challenged him to be more creative. A good smuggler these days couldn’t rely on simply outrunning the British as one might have done in the past. In the modern era, a good smuggler had to outsmart the soldiers. Thankfully, Stepan was very smart. His new casks with their secret compartments were proof of that. Even if the Razboynik had been stopped, he doubted the excise men would have found anything of concern.

  Stepan turned from the bluff and strode to where his horse waited. They would ride to the docks and then the hour back to Little Westbury and the hospitality of Dimitri Petrovich. He didn’t mind the long day in the saddle or even the rain. He had plenty to occupy his thoughts. He was already planning his next delivery. That ship was due next month and would require more thought than this one. The Razboynik was a practice run of sorts to try out the decoy and the new casks. The other ship, the Skorost, carried an enormous vodka cargo along with more spices and precious Russian saffron. The stakes were infinitely higher. Planning excursions kept his mind busy. It was better to think about how to land contraband than to think about other, less feasible things, like the unattainable Anna-Maria Petrova, Dimitri’s vivacious sister.

  There was nothing but disappointment and heartbreak down that road. If anything were to come of his fantasies in that direction, transportation and hanging would be the least of his worries. Dimitri would have him drawn and quartered, and that would be after Dimitri had him castrated. He’d always admired Dimitri’s
tenacity when it came to protecting his family. Stepan just never wanted that tenacity turned in his direction. He valued Dimitri’s friendship too much, and well, to be frank, he valued certain parts of his anatomy, as well.

  Stepan smiled ruefully and swung astride his horse. He had smuggling to soothe his agitated soul. It gave him purpose and a cause. It kept him out of the house a good part of the day and out of Anna-Maria’s energetic orbit. For the sake of all parties concerned, he’d concluded long ago that Anna-Maria was a passion best indulged at a distance.

  * * *

  She saw him coming the moment he turned down the long drive towards the house. Hmmm. Where had he been this time? Anna-Maria stood carefully to the side of her gauzy white bedroom curtains where no one could see her and pondered her question. She’d made something of a study of Stepan in the long winter months he’d been with them in Little Westbury. It had begun as a way to pass the time until spring, until she could go to London and make her debut. She was nineteen and by rights she should have gone to London last year, but she’d been too new to British shores in her brother’s opinion. This year, she could hardly wait. Finally, her life could begin. Anything would be more exciting than the country.

  But until she could go to London, her brother’s friend made an interesting enough subject. There was an air of mystery to his absences. He left mid-morning and returned late each evening just in time for dinner. Anna had entertained the notion of trying to rise with him in the mornings, but the earlier she rose, the earlier he rose, until he was leaving well before his usual mid-morning departures. She’d experimented with that variable for a week before she gave up trying to pace him.

  She watched Stepan ride up the drive, so straight in the saddle, his hands and legs moving imperceptibly to guide the big horse. Stepan’s riding was refined. He might not be a cavalry officer like Nikolay, but he rode just as well. She’d grown up watching him ride. Stepan, like the others, had always been in her life, just as her brother had. If her brother acted more like a father to her, his friends acted more like uncles. Nikolay, Illarion and Ruslan were the friendly sort of uncles. Affection came easy to them. They’d been the ones to pull her braids, to tease her, to tickle her and make her laugh. Stepan was more reserved, hardly ever indulging in horseplay even when she was younger. When she was growing up, Dimitri had explained in terms a six-year-old could understand that Stepan didn’t know how to be part of a family. They had to teach him.