Chosen it. She frowned, the grocer’s daughter’s outrage over the tin kingdom sneaking back into her mind. He’d argued against Claire’s objections, but here he was, condemning those in command for taking Alyona’s choices from her. But it was different, wasn’t it, when you tried to protect, rather than destroy?

“Sometimes you confuse me.” She tilted her head, studying him. “I think I know you, know your views, and then you defend someone whose beliefs are vastly opposed to yours.”

He studied her right back. “We are more than just our views, Nadya. At least, I certainly hope so. Otherwise, if we are ever convinced of a new thing, it means our entire person changes.” And maybe that was why he still loved his brother so fiercely, even knowing they’d never see eye to eye. “Disagreeing with someone shouldn’t mean I think they have no right to live, to work, to be given a chance for happiness.”

She lifted her chin. “Even when they would take that chance from you?”

His grin battered down a few of her blocks of anger. “Especially then. We cannot prove ourselves better than our enemies by denying them what they denied us, but only by giving them what they denied us.”

For a long moment, she simply stared at him. These certainly weren’t ideas he’d picked up in Russia. They weren’t ideas she’d ever really heard offered as a reasonable way to live. They were ideas she should have scoffed at as being utterly impossible.

And yet, as she saw the light smoldering in his eyes, they didn’t seem so impossible at all. “I think . . .” She leaned against the wall on the other side of the window, her gaze never leaving his. “I think I like your version of equality. It’s dangerous. But then, the best things usually are.”

He reached out and trailed his fingers down her arm. “Very true. And in the spirit of that, here’s another truth you may find dangerous. I love you.”

She jerked. She couldn’t help it. But she didn’t bolt for the door as she probably would have done a few months ago. “Are you trying to shackle me?”