Free WindBeliever by Charlotte Boyett-Compo

stared into her father’s worried face. “I will slit my wrists!”
    “Marie Catherine!” her mother gasped.
    “You find him that repulsive?” her father asked.
    “I find him beneath contempt,” she informed her father. At his bleak silence, her mother’s shocked stare, the young woman lifted her chin, straightened her shoulders. “May I go now?”
    The Tzar nodded, unable to speak as his daughter curtsied and turned to walk away. He followed his daughter’s straight back procession from the room.
    “What now, Thomas?” his wife asked.
    He shook his head. “We hope we can bring him to our way of thinking, then let nature take its course.”
    “And if nature balks at the union?”
    The Tzar sighed heavily. “Don’t even consider such a thing, Lottie.”
     
    WINDBELIEVER
    Charlotte Boyett-Compo
    Page 35

Chapter Six
    “I’ve questioned him, Your Grace, and I find he has had such headaches since childhood.
    Migraines, they are called,” the Physician informed his Tzarina. “I have given him some laudanum for the pain although he begged me not to. But I thought it best since this pain has lasted well over two days, now. He will sleep for a few hours, then hopefully the pain will have fled.”
    A relieved sigh escaped Charlotte’s lovely mouth. “I was so afraid this had been caused by his fall.”
    The Physician shook his head. “No, although hitting his head on the step didn’t help matters any. My guess is he would have acquired the headache in any case, Your Grace. Such maladies are usually brought on by stress and he does not appear to be in a settled state of mind at the present.”
    “Stress?”
    “He seems, well, agitated. Even with the extremity of his pain he seems to be fixating on some problem or another.” A slight smile touched the elderly white-haired gentleman’s lined face. “He asked if the Tzarevna was going to come back to see him.”
    “Marie Catherine?” The lady’s brow lifted in surprise. “Does he want to see her?”
    “He didn’t say as much, but I gather he wishes to for each time I enter his room, I find him looking up anxiously. When he sees it’s me, he appears to sigh with disappointment.”
    The elegant old physician had no way of knowing Conar was sighing with relief. He had no desire to ever see the bloated cowarevna, as he had nicknamed her, again.
    “Then I shall send her to sit with him and be there when he wakes,” Charlotte said, smiling.
    Maybe things would work out the way they wanted them to after all?

    Yuri Andreanova watched his wife hanging laundry on the line which ran from their cottage to a tall oak tree. He smiled lecherously as the pull of her arms dragged the bodice of her gown tightly over her straining bosom.
    “Have you nothing better to do than ogle me, Yuri?” his wife, Raina, asked, casting him an amused look as she stooped down to lift another garment from her wicker basket.
    “It’s been so long since I’ve had the chance to do so, love of my life, that I find I can not tear my eyes from you,” he answered honestly.
    Raina smiled. “Did not last evening satisfy your lust, my husband?” She pinned a flannel gown to the line and then placed her hands at her hips and leaned back, stretching, aware of how the fabric covering her chest pulled even tauter across her breasts. Looking at Yuri, she saw how his face burning with desire.
    Yuri pushed himself from the ground where he was sitting, his back against the aging oak, and dusted the seat of his breeches. With slow, purposeful steps, he walked to his wife and stared down into her smiling face.
    God, he thought, a lump in his throat, how he loved this fragile-looking, petite woman. Her height was barely enough to reach him at mid-chest, her waist so small he could nearly span it with one hand, and this after three children, he thought with some measure of pride. Her pretty gray eyes were innocent, her coral mouth so tempting he had trouble keeping his eyes from straying to the