Golden Paradise (16 page)

"Yes, darling, you can." Swinging her up onto Cleo, he followed,
then
settled her across his lap. "If it's the Tsar's fiat," he said matter-of-factly. "Kiss me," he whispered, smiling down at her, his plans on track once again.

"Not with everyone looking." Lisaveta was shy yet and inexperienced in the ways of brazen and public courtship.

While Stefan preferred privacy for his amorous dalliance, it wasn't a requirement. "Then I'll kiss you," he said. And he did.

They rode for half a day over treacherous, almost impassable trails, climbing all the time, pausing occasionally on a rocky promontory to rest the horses, dismounting once to water the mountain ponies at an icy rushing stream. Portions of the trail were no more than a yard across and Lisaveta clung to Stefan through these passages, her eyes shut against the terrifying sight of the valley, distant and small a half mile below, then a mile below. Immune to the terrors shaking Lisaveta's nerves, Stefan was relaxed, joking with his men, exchanging stories and reminiscences in their native Kurdish, brushing Lisaveta's hair occasionally with a light kiss, smiling at her, soothing her when she shivered in his arms.

Late in the afternoon when the air had cooled considerably with the high mountain altitudes and the sun had begun its journey toward the horizon, the party reached a pine grove dappled with shadow, scented with pungent fragrance. Riding through the limpid, iridescent-shot sunlight and cool dimness, they came after some time upon a whitewashed lodge roofed in green glazed tile. The building was without systematic plan, all asymmetrical and sprawling with mullioned windows and decorative porches, vine-covered trellises and assorted bays that had the look of being added on by whim. It was perched picturesquely on a sloping escarpment that fell away beyond the lodge into the openness of the sky, its center portion graced by a landscaped courtyard through which a mountain stream, bordered by a carpet of flowers, ran.

It had the charming look of a fairy tale.

Out of its apricot-painted, vine-covered doorway a dark-haired young girl came running, cast, it seemed, for a part in the fairy tale. Her slender form, clad exotically in brilliant, luxurious Gypsy attire, was lithe as a nymph; her bare arms and legs and feet were the lush olive of her Romany heritage; her wildly curling tresses streaming out behind her shone like black silk.

"Stash, Stash, you're home!" she cried, her great dark eyes gleaming with delight, her arms thrown open wide in welcome.

Lisaveta stiffened in Stefan's arms the same instant he saw Choura's expression alter as she became aware of Lisaveta. Oh Lord, he thought, I forgot. "Don't move," he murmured to Lisaveta, cognizant of Choura's temper and her skill with a knife. In a rapid staccato delivery he spoke to Haci next. The dialect was unfamiliar to Lisaveta, but his intent was clear. His voice was gruff and exasperated. As Haci swiftly urged his horse forward to intercept Choura's forward dash, Lisaveta surveyed Stefan's impassive face. As Haci scooped the Gypsy girl up in one arm and rode out of the courtyard, out of sight behind an enormous stand of rhododendrons, Choura's screams echoing above the rustle of the wind in the
pines,
Lisaveta noted Stefan's air of apparent detachment. No more than an inconvenience—immediately dispatched.

"Will he drown her?" Lisaveta maliciously inquired. This was the common method of disposal for members of the Sultan's seraglio. "Or will I simply be added to your harem?"

Stefan was tired and hungry; he'd been riding for more than
she
hours after a night with little sleep and his fatigue was achingly real. He was not presently inclined, especially after finding Choura still vividly in residence, to politely accept sarcasm from the woman causing him all his discomfort. "I was saving your skin," he bluntly said, "protecting you from Choura's knife."

"I can protect myself, thank you," Lisaveta replied, haughty and incensed; Stefan had not only left a fiancée behind but had a woman in reserve here, as well.

"Not unless you move real fast," he sardonically murmured. "She could carve you up in under thirty seconds."

"Do women fight over you often?" Her barely contained fury was evident in her voice. It was enough to know her own feelings were disastrously involved—against her will and better judgment—but to see Stefan's women conveniently available wherever he lived, and to hear him plainly suggest they might fight a rival for his affection, was galling.

"No," he quietly said, his own self-control additionally provoking in face of her outrage. "Now if you'll excuse me briefly."

"And if I won't?" Her objection was anger only and having the last snappish word—or perhaps most of all, wishing she had the power he did to bend the world to his will.

He looked down at her for a long moment, his expression benign, as if an angry child were thwarting him. "Nakun will see you to my study," he said, neither answering her question nor acknowledging her challenge. "Please make yourself comfortable." With the merest nod he signaled one of his men.

"I don't
want
to make myself comfortable, Stefan." She tried to control her voice as he did, so she wouldn't sound so adolescent. "I want to go home. I refuse to be your…captive," she finished in sputtering frustration. "And if you think for a minute," she added, trying to squirm out of his steely grasp, "that I'm going to quietly submit to your goddamn—" her voice was rising now because he was beginning to smile "—suzerainty like some docile Gypsy girl—"

He laughed.
Docile
was the last word he would have chosen to describe Choura.

His laugh only further ignited Lisaveta's indignation. "I suppose a man who kept five Persian houris for his exclusive enjoyment at Kokand," she snapped, "finds this all amusing. But
I
refuse to be your entertainment!"

Good God, he thought, how far had that story traveled. But he only said in a calm tone, "You needn't get agitated. Accept my apologies for Choura. She was… er… an oversight. I'll straighten everything out and be back shortly."

"An
oversights
Her voice was almost a whisper
. "
Like a forgotten package, you mean?" Her golden eyes were the color of the sky before a thunderstorm. "Or
an
inconvenience?"

"Lord, Lise, relax. There's an explanation. I'll straighten things out."

"Haven't you been listening to
anything
I said?" Lisaveta cried. "I don't want everything straightened out, I don't want you to continue talking to me in that serenely undisturbed tone as though you were taking confession, and I
do not wish to be here
!" Each word was punctuated with a blow to his chest.

Stefan's troopers regarded Lisaveta's vehemence with varying degrees of amusement. They all viewed women as diversions to a warrior's life, and from appearances their Prince was going to be highly diverted when he took the Countess to bed.

At the moment, however, Stefan knew he had to deal with Choura first, and arguing with Lisaveta wasn't accomplishing any useful purpose. "Do I have to have you tied up?" he inquired in the placid tone that grated so on Lisaveta's nerves.

Her eyes opened wide in
aghast
speculation. He wouldn't,
would
he? She realized he was closely related to these Kurdish troopers with their wild and barbaric looks. He lived at times in their way under a warrior code, but did he actually mean "tied up" when he said it in that quiet tone? And if he did—the small unpleasant thought surfaced—for what purpose? "Tied up?" she blurted out, her breath unconsciously in abeyance, anticipating his answer.

"Will you accompany Nakun into the house or do you have to be restrained?" He could have been asking her if she preferred a lemon ice or champagne during a set change at a bail, for all the emotion in his voice.

Lisaveta glanced for a swift moment at the swarthy native tribesman dressed in black turban, tunic and full-cut trousers, standing patiently in his soft Asiatic boots at Stefan's side, waiting further orders. She rapidly took in the array of his weaponry: crossed bandoliers; saber belt and pistol holster; the shined and oiled new Winchester taken as booty from a dead Turk slung across his back; the matching set of silver-engraved daggers tucked into his belt. With the pragmatic deduction of an intelligent woman she murmured, "You needn't tie me."

"Splendid," Stefan cheerfully said, as though no one had been discussing bodily restraint, as if the topic of conversation were banal and unthreatening, as if the word
splendid
fitted this horrendous situation at all.

"I'll 'splendid' you," Lisaveta hissed, as Stefan lowered her into Nakun's arms, "just as soon as I get the chance."

Stefan's smile was wolfish. "In that case, I won't keep you waiting long." He touched her cheek with a caressing fingertip. "Darling…" But his voice when he spoke to Nakun the next moment was coolly commanding. "Lock the door," he said, "in my study, when you leave."

T
he elaborate clock in the study depicting tides and changing constellations was exquisite, but its hands moved annoyingly slowly. At frequent intervals, Lisaveta would interrupt her angry pacing to check its progress and find no more than a minute had passed since she'd last looked. She'd already admired the magnificent view from the expanse of windows lining one wall, noted the craggy mountain landscape and snowcapped peaks in all their awesome splendor, stood transfixed while an eagle swooped in sweeping arabesques across the emptiness of space between her mountain and those distant ones and understood with absolute certainty she could never find her way down the craggy peaks and survive. Unlike the free-flying eagle, she was Stefan's captive.

After that sobering observation she'd sat down abruptly, her eyes unfocused on the panoramic grandeur of blue sky and rugged mountaintops, her mind attempting to deal with the finality of her position. When no ready answer materialized in the chaos of her mind, when no escape seemed possible from this mountain aerie, she'd resumed her pacing again, her rapid strides as agitated as her thoughts.

Despite Stefan's imposing palace and polished manners, he was, beneath his civilized veneer, as much a native warrior as his men. He looked the same: hawklike, swarthy, bristling with weapons. She recalled her first sight of him, when she'd thought she'd been captured by another savage tribesman. Only his Chevalier Gardes uniform had distinguished him from his cohorts that day near Kars. And while she'd learned much of the subtlety and nuance of his charismatic personality in their days together, his tribesmen, too, might be as complex and charming.

She was disturbed and perplexed.

She was indecisive about her unsubtle and profound attraction to Stefan.

She was a bit fearful, too, so far removed from the world on this remote mountaintop.

But she was—beneath and beyond and above the confusion of her feelings—primarily angry.

That fact was startlingly clear when Stefan walked into the room twenty minutes later.

A rose jade figurine of a Tang emperor's celebrated concubine, a special favorite of Stefan's for the cutwork in her trailing gown, narrowly missed his head as he ducked out of the way. The jade depiction of Li Shi Mia thrown at him was followed rapidly by his inkwell, several of his malachite paperweights, and before he could bob and weave across the distance separating them and wrench a silver wine ewer from Lisaveta's grasp, he'd lost the crystal container to his Cellini inkwell and two of his animal-shaped paperweights.

He wondered if perhaps Choura's anger had been easier to deal with. She'd been pacified by a handsome gift of roubles, a promise to send her two racers from his stables and a soothing combination of lies and compliments. When she was smiling once again, he'd had to carefully decline her offer to join a ménage à trois in his bed. "Perhaps some other time," he'd said politely.

And with that promise, her money and two prime horses, she was content. She would be escorted by some of his men to the nearest village, from which she'd find her own way home. Her smile when she'd left had been satisfied and her parting remark perhaps more prophetic than he wished.

"She won't be as easily bought off, Stash, my beauty," she'd said, wrapped in an emerald green shawl to match the jewels in her ears. She blew him a kiss and smiled. "I wish you luck."

He could use a little now, he thought, tightly holding both Lisaveta's hands and trying to sidestep her kicking feet. "Damn you, Stefan, I won't be treated like this," she panted, out of breath from her struggles. "I'm… not… some… Gypsy girl… you can buy… for a few roubles… and spirit away to your… mountain lodge."

"Fifty thousand," he said, moving slightly to one side to avoid her slippered foot.

"Fifty thousand!"
she exclaimed, ceasing her combat for a moment to digest the enormity of Choura's price. "Are you mad? The Emir of Erzurum never paid over twenty thousand for the very best Circassian women."

Taking advantage of her momentary pause, he quickly said, "I did it for you. She's gone."

"Why?" It was a small explosive exhalation of sound as spontaneous as her astonishment.

He didn't know, so he couldn't answer, but a response was required to her question so he evasively said, "I forgot she was here. I've been gone for three months." He shrugged then the way he often did when she pressed him to gauge his feelings, and added one of those platitudinous lies that often served as satisfactory conclusion to an evasion. "She was probably ready to go anyway. Choura dislikes solitude."