Golden Paradise

Chapter Eleven

He rode across the high plateau under a brilliant orange-colored moon, but he noticed neither its brilliance nor its color, so intent was he on his thoughts. He was reckoning distances and assessing times, gratified he was doing something at last to expedite a resolution to his sharp-set hunger. The string of ponies he led carried him in relays steadily north until he stopped briefly in Tiflis to eat and to pick up a small escort. He left a note for Militza because he didn't wish to wake her at four in the morning. Also, she would have argued with him or questioned him, neither of which he cared to deal with. He had no answers to her arguments; he hardly knew himself what was driving him.

A telegram had been sent ahead to hold the train at Vladikavkaz, and when he reached the railhead fifteen hours later, he handed his pony over to a groom, said goodbye to his escort and collapsed in his bed on his private railway car. He'd been without sleep for almost three days.

The train to Moscow had been waiting eight hours for him, so gratuities were handed around by his steward to the officials, who'd been treated only to a swift smile and thank-you from the Prince before he'd boarded. Stefan fell asleep before the train was under way and slept through until the next afternoon, fully dressed except for his wet overcoat, discarded in a heap on the parlor floor, and his boots, mud-caked and stained, which were discoloring the bedroom carpet. Three days' growth of beard darkened his face, his fingers and toes had been numb since noon, when the sleeting rain had begun in the mountains, but the worst was over and he fell asleep with a smile on his face. He'd survived this far.

He woke south of Saratov to eat and wash, and when he opened his eyes the second time, Moscow was only an hour away. From there to Saint Petersburg he paced or sat brooding, his mind preoccupied with disturbing elements of jealousy and need. He resented his obsession with Lisaveta; he resented this flying trip north; he resented the thought of other men courting her. But he resented most his own lack of control. He must see her and have her and keep her for himself alone. The sensation was entirely without reason, without precedent… and unsettling. More than that, it was inimical u a man who prided himself on his detachment.

Dressing for the ball that night, Lisaveta adjusted the bodice of her gown for the third time, for the décolletage was more revealing than she remembered. Turning to Alisa, who had brought in a diamond brooch to gather the green brocade neckline a shade higher, she said, "I don't recall having this problem when I first wore this."

Standing at a slight distance, Alisa surveyed her guest attired in a glamorous ballgown cut simply with Juliet neckline, a small cap sleeve and a gathered bustled train. "Have you felt well lately?" she asked, the faintest reflection evident in her voice.

"Perfectly," Lisaveta replied, tugging at the offending neckline, immune to the subtle rumination infusing Alisa's question. "Perhaps I've put on a little extra weight with all the elaborate dinners lately. I'm really not used to a lavish menu, Papa and I always ate less extravagantly. I suppose some extra weight would account for this bodice no longer fitting." Her full breasts rose provocatively above the plunging décolletage.

"Are you putting on weight?" Alisa's question was quiet and speculative. No further word had been mentioned concerning Stefan Bariatinsky, but Nikki was sure a relationship had existed before his cousin reached Saint Petersburg. When Alisa had mildly suggested he was being too cynical, that surely every woman in Stefan's proximity wasn't automatically involved with him, her husband had only said, "Dushka, he was at the siege of Kars for months… months without a woman. Need I say more?"

That circumstance wasn't to be ignored, and knowing Stefan's reputation under even benign conditions, she'd had to admit Nikki was probably right. So quickly calculating the number of weeks Lisaveta had been in Saint Petersburg and the approximate date of her rescue by Stefan, Alisa considered that Lisaveta's added weight might have a more consequential base than simply overeating.

"Do you think you might be pregnant?" she asked, her own experience with the early signs of pregnancy contributing to her abrupt question. "I'm sorry," she added as Lisaveta turned pale and swung around from the mirror to face her. "Was I too blunt?"

"No…well, yes, I suppose…in a way," Lisaveta stammered, her golden eyes wide with astonishment. "I mean-I- how could I be…that's to say," she quickly amended, not naive enough to discount her many weeks with Stefan. "I can't be…can I?" Her gaze was blank or internally focused, as though she were contemplating an interior dialogue without proper answers.

"I don't know," Alisa softly replied, moving to her side and guiding her over to a chair. "Could you be?"

Sitting down like one stunned, Lisaveta leaned back against the cabbage rose chintz and inhaled deeply before answering, her mind swiftly counting days and weeks. "I can't be" she repeated, but she was finding that the arithmetic didn't fall conveniently into place.

She wasn't naive about the possibility of a pregnancy; she was, however, totally without experience with pregnancy. Having been raised in an unconventional milieu without childhood playmates, girlhood chums and young women's intimacies of conversation, she had no knowledge of the actual bodily changes provoked by pregnancy. She felt fine, and while her menses were slightly more than two weeks late at this point, that kind of variation had happened to her before. She couldn't be, she repeated silently.

It was denial pure and simple.

It was an absolute essential in her present state of mind. "Is it Stefan?" Alisa asked.

Lisaveta straightened her shoulders, and her voice was normal again when she spoke. "I'm sure there's another explanation," she said, bolstering her belief in some other more reasonable interpretation for her gown not fitting. "And in any event, Stefan's engaged to Princess Taneiev." She said it as though that fact excluded the possibility she might be pregnant.

"I'm sorry…you're right."

"Don't be… really. Everything was very civil. He's not to blame in any way."

"He has responsibilities at least," Alisa said, her pansy-colored eyes grave.

"As do I. Ours was a mutual attraction, Alisa, I wasn't seduced. He's not the villain." She smiled then at the odd word for Stefan's extravagant loving. "No, definitely," Lisaveta went on, her tone softly reminiscent, "I've no regrets about what we did."

"Do you love him?"

"Every woman he meets loves him, as do thousands more who adore him through his engravings and heroic deeds." It was an equivocation, but an answer nonetheless.

"An engagement isn't necessarily binding," Alisa quietly offered.

"His is for his own reasons. Thank you for the concern, Alisa, but-" Lisaveta lifted one bare shoulder in a small shrug of practicality "-I'm not some young innocent."

Regardless of Stefan's engagement, his reasons for it and Lisaveta's extravagant courtesy, under the circumstances Alisa felt impelled to suggest, "Stefan should at least know."

"There may not be anything to know. I'm sure there isn't. And think how embarrassing that would be to unnecessarily accuse him." Lisaveta gave a reassuring smile to her hostess. The color had returned to her face and her expression was without anxiety. "Look…I'll wear something else tonight, and after Katelina's birthday next week, I'm planning on returning to my country estate anyway." Lisaveta's voice was moderate; she was dealing with the situation as she normally dealt with issues: logically assessing a problem and then resolving it. At least that was what she believed. "Before I came to Saint Petersburg," she went on, "no one knew me, and I'm sure my leaving will cause little stir. I like my country estate, I'm very much looking forward to my studies again, and I'm not," she finished, her smile appearing again, "likely to miss the frantic schedule of a society belle."

"You're taking this all remarkably calmly." Under the circumstances Alisa was surprised at Lisaveta's tranquillity. She should have been hysterical or angry or sobbing or concerned… or at least open to the suggestion of pregnancy, considering her time with Stefan.

Was it possible, Alisa briefly thought, that Lisaveta knew of some unusual, esoteric method of birth control, discovered in some old manuscript, learned from some ancillary reading to Hafiz, unearthed among the tribes of Kurdistan? Was she unconcerned because no real possibility of pregnancy existed? But as she had known Nikki's cousin for only a few weeks and since Lisaveta had never confided any of the details of her relationship with Stefan, Alisa felt awkward asking such an intimate question.

"If falling into a faint would help, I'd consider it. However-" and Lisaveta smiled ruefully "-it won't change or alter a minute of my past. So…do we pin this offending neckline together with your brooch or substitute the burgundy silk."

She apparently was intent on changing the conversation, Alisa decided. "It is looser," she said, debating whether she dared pursue the topic further.

"The burgundy it is."

"How can you be so cheerful?" Alisa inquired. Hesitant or not, she was disturbed by Lisaveta's serenity in the face of a possibly portentous issue.

"How can I not be when I think of Stefan. He's a remarkable man." Lisaveta's smile was self-assured when she stood abruptly in a swish of silk. "And I'm sure you're wrong."

While Lisaveta changed, Alisa excused herself and went to speak to Nikki. As usual, having dressed swiftly, he was patiently waiting for the ladies in his study, his feet up on his desktop, a glass of brandy half-drunk. He looked relaxed, leaning back in his chair, and he smiled in greeting.

"Madame Drouet has outdone herself, darling. You look exquisite." Alisa's pistachio-green damask gown was festooned with garlands of pearls and crystal, her fine shoulders and bosom rising above a low décolletage trimmed with pink silk chrysanthemum petals.

"Thank you, dear," Alisa automatically said, making sure the door was closed behind her. Turning back to her husband, she announced, "I think she's pregnant." She stood stiffly, her back to the door.

"Who's she?" Nikki asked, but his feet had already dropped to the floor and he was sitting upright, his posture belying his casual inquiry.

And he knew the answer to his question before his wife said in a short expulsion of air, "Lisaveta."

"Stefan."

"Of course." Her reply seemed distracted for a moment, her mind in the grip of unresolved pique over Stefan's cavalier treatment of Lisaveta.

"Damn!"

"Thank you," she crisply said. "My sentiments exactly." In her voice was affront for the casual victimization of women in these circumstances. "And she's cheerful," she added, her astonishment evident.

"Are you sure?"

"That she's cheerful?"

Nikki raised one dark brow in contradiction. "That she's pregnant."

"She says no, or probably not or maybe not, all in a calm, deliberate way that unnerves me, but the signs rather disagree. She's not had her menses since she's come to Saint Petersburg and her gowns are getting tight. She's eating too much, she says, like a young naive girl would."

"Which she might be. Oh, God," Nikki groaned, and leaned his head back against the soft green leather of his chair.

, "You know Stefan's engaged to Vladimir's daughter." Alisa had moved across the room and sat down now in a chair across the desk from Nikki.

"If you're right about Lisaveta, he'll have to get disengaged," Nikki growled. "She's my cousin."

"Lisaveta says Stefan is intent on his marriage to Nadejda."

"Has the man no scruples?" Nikki's face was darkened by a scowl.

"You should know, darling, since he was so often your companion in-" his wife paused significantly "-adventure."

"Point taken," Nikki replied with a crooked grin, leaning forward to clasp his hands on his desktop. "But I've reformed." His golden eyes were both amused and affectionate as he gazed at his wife.

"Would he, perhaps?" Alisa suggested, aware what profound changes she'd made in her husband's life.

His eyes turned flinty. "If she's pregnant, he will whether he likes it or not," Nikki replied, and no suggestion graced his voice, only peremptory command.

"Can you force Stefan? "

"Damn right I can." Nikki's voice was soft with restrained anger, his eyes half-closed in contemplation of that necessity.

"Would that be prudent… for Lisaveta?" Men responded differently to compulsion, and while Alisa might take issue with Stefan's casual liaisons, she was realistic about the possible results of forcing a man of his temperament.

"The prudence, or lack of it, can be debated after they're married. She's my cousin, dammit, and he should have thought of that before he seduced her!" Nikki's assessment didn't have the subtlety or nicety of Alisa's.

"Unfortunately, he's at Kars."

"If necessary, he can be called back for his wedding," Nikki said grimly.

When Nikki suggested as much to Lisaveta as they rode to the Gagarins' ball, his tone courteous instead of grim, she replied, "Don't be ridiculous, Nikki. You needn't play avenging relative for me. I wasn't some simple young girl unaware of my choices. I'm quite content."

"And if there's a child?"

Their golden eyes, identical in color if not mood, met and held steadily for a moment.

"There isn't," Lisaveta said, her gaze dropping away first. Despite her denial, she recognized she'd been intimate with Stefan too often in the past weeks to discount the fact she might be carrying his child. And at the thought, both stupefying and strangely pleasant, she felt a flutter of sensation in the pit of her stomach as if her body were trying to tell her something. "But if there should be," she said, raising her gaze again to confront her cousin, "I'm perfectly capable of rearing a child. My father raised me alone."

"It's not the same." Nikki wasn't concerned with child development but rather with protocol.

"It may be for me," Lisaveta said very quietly, as determined as Nikki to decide the direction of her life. She wouldn't be persuaded to change her mind even though both Nikki and Alisa tried to reason with her.

They brought up all the societal pressures she would be exposed to.

"Not in the country," she answered. "Sometimes the country is worse-more provincial and conservative."

"Nikki, darling, Papa and I were practically hermits. It's not a problem."

"Well, think of the child in that isolation."

"It might turn out like me, you mean?"

Nikki smiled a rueful smile. "No, I don't mean that."

"Nikki, you of all people to be lecturing me on protocol. You've said all your life that a Kuzan can do anything."

"This is different."

"How?"

"You're my cousin."

She grinned. "And Stefan must pay."

"Damn right." And then he grinned, too. "This is not logical, is it?"

"No, Nikki, I'm afraid not." From the first moment Stefan had walked into her room in Aleksandropol, logic had ceased to function in her mind. She more than anyone understood that.

"Nikki, dear, Lisaveta knows best how she feels," Alisa interposed, touching her husband's arm in a small gesture of restraint.

"The decision, of course, is yours, Lise," he said immediately, his voice congenial. "Forgive our interference." His smile was bland; his words a lie. He had no intention of releasing Stefan from his obligations. "Everything will work out," he added as a polite disclaimer. "I'm sure."

"Or course it will," Lisaveta replied with alacrity, her tone remarkably cheerful. "I'm as much a Kuzan as you, and we make things work out, don't we?"

Nikki's frame seemed larger in the confining space of the carriage, his size overwhelming the narrow dimensions of the interior, but his voice when he spoke was mild. "We always make things work out," he said.

Stefan arrived at the palace on the Neva an hour after the Kuzans and Lisaveta had left for the ball. "Prince Gagarin," Nikki's butler said to him, "is celebrating his newest Rembrandt acquisition at his villa on the islands."

"When did they leave, Sergei?" Stefan stood impatiently waiting for the answer.

"At ten, Your Excellency. Would you like me to send them a message?" Stefan was wearing an informal tweed jacket and riding pants; Sergei assumed he wouldn't make an appearance at an evening party in such dress. "I could have brandy brought into the library for you."

"Thank you, no."

"The Prince will be sorry he missed you."

Stefan smiled politely. "I'll be seeing him later. An hour, you said?" He had taken two steps toward the door, and the footman was already opening it when Stefan turned back. "Did the Countess have an escort?"

"No, sir."

Twenty minutes later, Stefan arrived at Prince Gagarin's villa. They had been twenty very long minutes in which he cautioned himself to prudence, warned himself against making a scene, knew without illusion his mere appearance would be scene enough, thought transiently of returning to his own palace for evening clothes, as quickly discarded the notion because he refused to take the time when hours counted on this flying trip, told himself he would simply say, "Good evening, Countess, may I have a moment of your time?" and then they would find someplace quiet to talk. That was of course a euphemism for what he really wanted to do, for what was causing the blood to drum in his ears and pulse through his body, for what had driven him across the length of Russia.

His entrance was as dramatic as he knew it would be; everyone in Saint Petersburg thought him halfway across Russia in Kars, but the drama extended as well to his notoriety, his handsome good looks, his unorthodox attire and tantalizing curiosity. Why had he come? Why hadn't he been announced? Why was he scanning the crowd with interest?

He stood perhaps five seconds in the entrance to the ballroom before the first whispers began, and in five seconds more he was surrounded by well-wishers and admirers, by beautiful women and inquisitive statesmen. He politely evaded them all, offering brief answers to their avid questions or courteous refusals or smiling acknowledgement to the compliments even as he moved forward, his gaze intent on the dance floor. He hadn't seen Lisaveta yet or Nikki and his wife, and he wondered restlessly if they'd changed their plans.

The ballroom was ablaze with light, the crystal chandeliers illuminating the large room as if it were noon, the throng of twirling dancers a blur of colored silk and jewels and ornamented uniforms. His own swelling entourage, its rising buzz of whispered comments, exclamations and cries of recognition, was beginning to contest the orchestra's music, and he'd just reached the border of the dance floor and finally caught sight of Lisaveta dancing with a young lieutenant in the Tsarina's Hussars when the music abruptly ceased.

"Ladies and gentlemen!" the leader of the orchestra cried, his eyes on Stefan, his baton raised, "we have the honor of welcoming the Conqueror of Tubruz, the Savior of Mirum, the fearless General Prince Stefan Bariatinsky!" The orchestra director's hand chopped the air, his baton falling in a swift arabesque, and in a muted fanfare of oboes and bassoons, embellished with a flourish of drumrolls, Stefan was presented to the hundreds of guests.

Oh, hell, he swore under his breath as an aisle to the bandstand opened like the passage through the Red Sea and all eyes were directed his way. Hell and damnation. But there was nothing to do under that numerous gaze but graciously acknowledge his introduction. Striding swiftly through the passageway of smiling and congratulatory guests, he lightly leaped onto the stage and bowed to the assembled guests. Modestly accepting the frenzied applause and cheers, he spoke then as he did to his troops, with informality and cordiality: the war was going well; Russia's soldiers were sure to conquer the Turks; the assault on Kars was certain to be victorious this time. He was humble and charming, he was gracious and smiling, he was a potent spokesman for Russia's sacred duty; the crowd loved him.

Lisaveta's first irrelevant thought when, with fluttering pulse and wide-eyed astonishment, she watched him stride toward the stage was, he's not dressed for the ball. His cavalry twill and tweed was a startling contrast to the jeweled and ornamented throng, and he was overpowering in his size. She'd forgotten in the weeks away from him how tall he was and how the width of his shoulders dwarfed other men… and how his smile dazzled.

Her second, more relevant, observation concerned his reason for appearing dressed like that. Her heart began beating in a small rhythm of hope.

Perhaps he'd come for her, she thought, like a young maiden pining for her absent lover. Perhaps the most popular man in Russia was here in Saint Petersburg for her. How fairy-tale perfect it would be if her love were requited, if he could no more live without her than she could without him, if he'd traveled across the breadth of the Empire to sweep her into his arms.

Stefan's speech when he spoke, though, wasn't of frenzied lovesick longing but was essentially political. His manner was one of ease, as though he stood often in riding clothes before a ballroom, and when he stepped down into the crowd after several rounds of additional applause, he didn't seek her out but was immediately surrounded. Even Lisaveta's dance partner apologetically asked her pardon to withdraw and greet the General. She smiled him off with a wave and then moved to a quiet corner away from the stage, watching Stefan in the midst of the adulatory crowd, complex and confused feelings of desire conflicting with pride tumbling through her mind.

"I won't be staying in Saint Petersburg long, but thank you," Stefan was saying for the twentieth time to an invitation, when his searching gaze fell on Lisaveta again over the heads of the importuning crush pressing round him.

Two men were approaching her as she stood near a console table adorned with an enormous arrangement of fuchsia-colored lilies, and her welcoming smile to their mannered bows triggered a surge of resentment. The Golden Countess had used that same smile on him. He'd seen it early in the morning and late at night, in bed and out-of-doors, over the dinner table and across a small cool mountain pool. He'd always thought it was her special smile, used for him alone. But there she was, displaying it for other men.

His temper showed minutely in a faint crispness in his voice, but it was several tedious minutes more before he was able to disengage the last beautiful clinging woman from his arm, make the last gracious refusal to dinner or something more intimate and break away from the mass of people intent on fawning sociability.

The floor was open between them because the orchestra hadn't yet resumed playing, and when Stefan stepped out onto the polished parquet, his progress was noted by every pair of eyes in the room.

He was obviously on some urgent mission, dressed as he was; he wasn't simply passing an idle night two thousand miles away from the war. And while his fiancée was in attendance tonight, no one to whom he'd spoken had heard him ask for her. The style of his engagement, though, was common knowledge, and none of the guests labored under the illusion that he was here for Nadejda. So they watched, avidly curious and titillated by the demonstrable impetuousness of his appearance.

The Golden Countess, it was seen as he crossed the midpoint of the ballroom floor, was apparently the object of his advance. And it didn't surprise a single soul. Prince Bariatinsky had always had an eye for the exotic in women, and surely the Countess was exceptional. Was the rumor true, too, that the Countess and he were… friends? Did Nadejda's spiteful disregard for the Countess have basis in fact?

It looked very much as though it did.

The buzz of speculation rose in a low humming resonance like bees over a flower bed as the distance between the General and Countess lessened. People instinctively held their breaths… waiting.

Reaching Lisaveta in three strides more, Stefan acknowledged the two men at her side with the merest of curt nods and brusquely said, his voice very low and, Borsoff said later, hot with temper, "Countess, may I have a moment of your time?" Without waiting for her answer, he took her hand in a grip just short of punishing and, leaving the two men openmouthed, began stalking toward the terrace doors.

They were the focus of everyone's breath-held scrutiny, but the three people who might actually have done something were all missing at that moment. Nikki was in the card room as was his custom at balls, Alisa had been cornered in the refreshment room by a young matron intent on describing her last confinement in lurid detail, and Nadejda was petulantly upbraiding a maid in the powder room for not adjusting her shoulder flounce properly. So Stefan was allowed to pull Lisaveta from the room unimpeded.

Stiff-armed, he pushed the terrace door open, dragging her through without ceremony onto the flagstone terrace overlooking the manicured grounds falling away to the shoreline. The evening was cool, the breeze off the Baltic harboring the first faint touches of fall, and Lisaveta shivered at the sudden contrast to the heated ballroom. Walking no more than a few paces from the opened door, a distance just barely outside the range of direct illumination from the lighted entry, Stefan pushed her back against the ivy-covered stucco and, bending down, kissed her.