Love Storm (32 page)

"Wolf has decided finally to accept my offer of a visit to St. Petersburg," Nikki interjected.

"In that case we can become better acquainted enroute. I don't think you've met my wife, another relative of yours, no doubt," Alex drawled.

"Yes, a cousin I believe," and he politely bowed over Zena's hand with all the grace of the most polished courtier.

On the trip back to Koslovodsk, Alex and Wolf became friends. Wolf was nonpareil as a mountain warrior, and while the cavalcade progressed at the extremely slow pace of Zena's litter, Nikki, Wolf, and Alex took the opportunity to do some hunting. The camaraderie of the expeditions off the trail was an agreeable delight to all parties. Nikki was extremely proud of his two sons. Since there was no stigma attached to irregular births in the highest Russian aristocratic circles,
⁸
Wolf was and would be accepted as one of Nikki's heirs with all the concomitant honors and deference. The fact that he was astonishingly handsome, like all the Kuzans, was simply an added fillip. And with the aura of wild, barbarian ruggedness surrounding him, due to his rearing in the Caucasus, he was sure to titillate every female heart in St. Petersburg. Nikki was realistic about the sensation Wolf would cause in the gilded drawing rooms of the Empire's capital. He sighed resignedly to himself. The problem of escaping numerous irate husbands in the mountains would merely be exchanged for escaping a new group of husbands.

Resting only one night in Kislovodsk, the party continued by train to Moscow. Zena, Bobby, and Alex returned to Podolsk, while Nikki and Wolf went on to St. Petersburg.

The Arranged Marriage

Zena and Alex settled down to an apparent domestic tranquillity. Alex experienced a fierce masculine possessiveness toward Zena. The circumstances that made him the first man to have touched her somehow made him proprietory, as though Zena were exclusively his. He had never experienced a feeling of possessiveness in regard to a woman before. Exclusivity had hitherto been rigorously avoided. Alex had always viewed promiscuity tolerantly, asking of his women only that the bed be vacant from the previous man. He hadn't cared particularly if the bed was still warm. Fastidiousness was no requirement.

He had been content as the pet of all the married women of St. Petersburg and Moscow, dispensing his favors like a sultan with a seraglio at his command. Each night had been a game of bedroom roulette. He was still young enough that the game had never bored him.

Now he found his friends teasing him, mocking him mildly for having settled into domesticity. Alex flared and bristled at the teasing, but underneath he was satisfied, and the lure of other women held no charm.

One evening a week after returning home, Alex and Zena attended a small dinner party hosted by Yuri. Alex, after surveying the assembled guests with very perfunctory interest, had retired to the library. Zena was off in the cardroom, having been persuaded by Yuri's aunt to join her in a hand or bridge. Alex wasn't in the mood for cards,

and he certainly wasn't in the mood for dancing, which was being noisily pursued by mazurka lovers in the ballroom next door. The library was restful, and Alex was drinking himself into inebriation. The prescribed inanities of conversation rolled off his tongue more smoothly when well lubricated by brandy.

Yuri found him a quarter hour later. "Come, sit down. I'll pour us both another drink."

Dropping into deep-cushioned armchairs flanking the fireplace, the two friends drank in silence for some moments.

"All of society is buzzing over your marriage," Yuri said. Alex grimaced. "Do you know what they're saying about the Archer's marrying?" grinned Yuri.

Alex lounged in his chair and looked at Yuri, absolutely unmoved. "I never speculate on such irrelevant subjects."

Yuri laughed lightly. "Shall I tell you?"

"It appears," Alex said, smiling a little, "you are bent on just that."

"They are saying 'God help his wife'," said Yuri with a comical twist of his eyebrows.

"Amen," Alex muttered inarticulately and drained his glass. Giving Yuri a keen look, Alex uttered a laugh that was not without its cynical edge. "Society's concerns are as pressingly significant as usual, I see."

"Speaking of significant concerns, allow me to congratulate you on the tender event in store. I understand, Sasha, your young wife is with child," Yuri said with a discerning look.

"Good Lord, damnable gossip travels fast. We've been back in town scarcely a week, and I didn't even know myself until a few weeks ago," Alex retorted, somewhat chagrined at his best friend's leer.

"Ah, well, the knowing eye of a woman scorned is astonishingly keen, I've always found. Sweet Amalie informed me of the news yesterday, and no doubt the entire range of acceptable Moscow society has also been titillated by the news. I give it twenty-four hours at the outside to reach the scandalmongers in St. Petersburg."

"As long as that," drawled Alex ironically.

"They'll be counting on their fingers for weeks," Yuri warned.

Alex shrugged an elegant shoulder. "There's only one way to handle it, and that's to brazen it out, as usual, while the gossips have a field day. No matter how they count, they're going to come up short. We've been married only three weeks. It's a Kuzan family tradition, these short pregnancies after marriage," Alex said with a guileless smile.

"Must say, my friend, I envy you the next few months," Yuri sighed eloquently. "My experience proves there's never a more amorous period in a woman's life than the early months of gestation."

"I wouldn't know, Yuri, since I've never endured one woman's company for more than a fortnight previously," Alex retorted dryly.

"In that case," Yuri suggestively grinned, "you are, my fine stud, in for a pleasant education."

The days swiftly passed, Alex's moods varying erratically. By and large he was content, having settled down to changes in his life that weren't altogether distasteful, but on occasion he was not altogether reconciled to his new state of matrimony. The days of absolute freedom were gone, and when he dwelt on it, it was galling. He had always ordered and ruled everything to his will and was unaccustomed to the slightest check. In the following weeks one could often see impatience on his face as he fumed at the extra strain of the inevitable maneuverings necessary in a household no longer bachelor.

But then his mood would fluctuate fitfully, and those dark thoughts would vanish. Zena's presence pleasured him, and the gentle swelling of her body gave him an inexplicable feeling of pride. His child was growing in her; the notion of fatherhood hitherto studiously ignored was a pleasant conceit to him.

Zena attempted to accommodate herself to his temperamental mood swings. He was rarely uncivil, but unnerving disinterest would appear transiently, and a chill would run through her. It seemed at those times as though he was unconscious of her presence. Generally, though, he treated her with a courteous affection, and on the rare occasions when Sasha exerted his unutterable charm, her life approached perfection.

One evening the prince and princess traveled into Moscow to attend an evening's entertainment. Immediately Alex walked in, he knew the Barinskys' party was the usual affair: the same people, the same card games, the same dances. Christ, Alex thought irritably, enough was enough! The pose of dutiful husband squiring his wife about was quickly wearing thin. Damn it, he was going to refuse to leave the
dacha
for at least a month. Idiotic people. With the exception of Yuri and one or two other of his friends, the rest of society could very gladly go to the devil. In that genial frame of mind he poured down another drink and strolled into the cardroom. Gambling at least offered some respite to these dull soirees.

Several hours later, considerably drunker and considerably richer for the interval, Alex leaned back in his chair and loosened his cravat. Signaling for a fresh bottle of brandy, he began shuffling the deck of cards.

A large, florid-faced man who had been losing rather steadily at a nearby table said, "Whose bit of fluff is the new
enceinte
female? She's a beauty but a little heavy for my taste."

Alex, seated at the outer table, raised his eyebrows mildly at the crude jest. Without pausing he said placidly, "The lady you speak of, Krasskov, is my wife." Despite the disinterested voice there was a faint challenge in the cool eyes.

The heavyset man swung around at the statement, astonishment writ large on his face. "You married, Archer?" he exclaimed in surprise. "And not a minute too soon, it appears," he finished with a bold, crude laugh.

Krasskov had been at odds with Alex ever since a pretty little playmate of Krasskov's had shown a decided partiality for Alex a year or so before. Alex never turned down a pleasing
danseuse,
but by making love to her in Krasskov's bed in Krasskov's bedroom, Alex had shown, perhaps, a careless disregard for her protector's prerogatives.

Alex hadn't looked up as the man spoke. Continuing to flick over his cards, he said carelessly to the players around his table,
"Vingt-et-un.
Forgive me, gentlemen, the devil's own luck is holding for me tonight," and his hand swept out lightly and gathered the thin gold markers into the heap of gold and paper before him. Only then did he raise his head to cast a bland glance toward the fleshy, broad-shouldered man at the opposite table. Amiably he said, "I don't permit public discussion concerning my wife, Krasskov. You've had too much to drink." Felix Krasskov, despite imbibing, did not miss the deliberate use of his surname. Alex had drunk a great deal, and his amiable tone was the result of supreme self-control.

"Don't permit . . . don't permit," the red-faced man sputtered, his brows creased in a scowl. "Why, you arrogant
..."

Krasskov's companion noted the chill glitter in the prince's eyes and nudged Krasskov uneasily. "Back off, Felix. Shouldn't bait Archer tonight from the looks of him. When he's that deep in his cups, he's dangerous."

Three parts drunk the prince might be, but his senses were unimpaired. He lounged back in his chair, now coolly lighting a cigarette, but his hard stare challenged his antagonist. "Understand, Krasskov?" The inquiry was an insult.

"I don't answer to you, Kuzan," Krasskov growled.

"Don't you, now?" the prince said gently and sat calmly waiting.

There was a shocked, expectant pause.

"Felix!" Kiril interjected hastily as he rose from his seat beside Alex. "Apologize, for Christ's sake. It's his wife, after all."

"Damned if I will," Krasskov said angrily, the humiliation of Alex's behavior with his paramour goading him still.

"Sasha?" Kiril urged plaintively.

The prince shot him a bemused look. "Oh, Lord, Kiril, hush. Krasskov doesn't care to apologize to me. It's perfectly all right." Alex was still watching Krasskov. He drew leisurely on his blue silk cigarette, exhaled slowly, then leaned forward to grind it out. "No apology, my fine buck?" he inquired gently, eyes raised.

"No, blast you!" Krasskov shouted.

"In that case, Krasskov," the prince was smiling now with a tight-lipped smile, and his eyes glowed with a steady blaze, "name your weapons."

Baron Achieff lurched somewhat unsteadily to his feet, an incipient sense of duty impelling him to intervene. "Archer, leave off, you can see Felix's drunk."

"I as well, Vassily," Alex laughed shortly, "but I still can tell when a man casts a slur on my wife."

Vassily's faint hope of averting scandal died, and he was jerked back into an unwanted sobriety. One of the crowd around the table was heard to remark to his companion, "Archer's devilishly proprietary about his wife. Didn't think he gave a damn about females, let alone a wife."

"Have you seen his wife?" came the envious response. "I'd be possessive, too, if she were mine."

Then the prince sighed dramatically and murmured softly, "There's no accounting for some men's taste. I myself fancy a well-rounded female like my wife, in preference to the less generously endowed form of, shall we say," Alex paused delicately, "someone like
Martine
Ivanovna."

The insult seemed gratuitous and, of course, hit its mark, for
Martine
Ivanovna was, in fact, the contested paramour of a year before.

Krasskov jumped to his feet, crossed the short distance, and struck the table with a beefy fist, tumbling piles of gold markers in disarray. Leaning pugnaciously across the green baize surface, his corpulent face flushed with wrath, he roared, "Pistols, damn you!"

The lounging figure betrayed no agitation save the hard glitter in his tawny eyes. "Pistols it is. We'll settle it now." This was Alex at his most dangerous, cold and indifferent with a cutting edge to his voice that would have sheared through plate steel.