Golden Paradise Part 18

"Maybe I don't care to drop the subject."

"And maybe I don't care whether you care or not."

"Dammit, I'm just trying to get to the bottom of this."

"And then what, Prince Bariatinsky, will you do?"

There was a short silence. "Nikki says I have to marry you."

Lisaveta's eyes took on the gelid glint of an arctic winter. "Is this a marriage proposal?" she inquired in a sherbet-sweet accent.

"Yes, dammit, it is," he growled, exasperated at her evasion, frustrated with her disinterest.

"Well, then, dammit, I refuse your gracious offer," she snapped.

"You can't refuse me," he snapped back, this man who only hours before had been appalled at the prospect of marriage.

"But I just have and that, I think, concludes our conversation. If you'll excuse me, Prince Bariatinsky. Your fiancee, perhaps, would be a more suitable recipient of your charming proposals." And she abruptly stood.

As abruptly his hand closed around her wrist and he dragged her back down. "You'll leave when I tell you to leave." He hadn't traveled five swift and fatiguing days across the Empire to be dismissed like some servant.

"You forget, General, you're not dealing with a subaltern," Lisaveta wrathfully flared, struggling to free herself from his steely grasp. "Your orders mean nothing to me."

"Does this mean something, then?" he asked, and pulled her roughly into his arms and kissed her, something he'd been wanting to do since she'd first entered the room.

She fought against his strength and his encroaching mouth and tongue, but she was effectively imprisoned in his arms despite her violent efforts. And unlike last night, when only consummation was a priority, Stefan lingered and teased, he tasted the sweetness of her lips as if she were new to him, as though young ladies wearing coronet braids were an untried flavor, as though he'd traveled five days and nights to exchange kisses like a proper gentleman.

She was surprised at first, after the initial shock of his aggression, because she'd expected his anger again and found instead a tenderness and restraint. He only kissed her, dulcetly, delicately, on her mouth, her cheek, her eyes, on the tip and slender fine bridge of her nose. And only when at last, at long last, she began kissing him back, did his mouth slowly drift downward over the silky curve of her jaw onto the warming flesh of her throat.

He carefully released her arms, which he'd been restraining at her sides in measured degrees until she leaned into him of her own accord, and he began breathing again in a normal rhythm.

"I shouldn't let you kiss me," she murmured above his bent head, her hands resting lightly on the solid muscle of his shoulders.

"But you are," he answered, his deep voice a husky low resonance against her throat, his slender dark fingers beginning to slide the small jet b.u.t.tons at her collar free.

"You're too practiced...I should resist," she whispered, her eyes half-shut against the tremors of pleasure rus.h.i.+ng through her senses.

"And you're not practiced at all," he whispered back, raising his head to look at her. "I find it arousing." He smiled then, a small faint smile of gratification. "Although resist if you like, Countess. I'd find that arousing, as well."

"I hate your licentiousness," she quietly said, her tawny eyes accusing in a curiously erotic way. Perhaps it was the feline quality of her slightly oriental eyes or the manner in which she surveyed him from beneath the lacy fringe of her lashes.

"I can tell," he said, brus.h.i.+ng his palms over the tips of her hardened nipples visible through the cuc.u.mber-colored silk of her gown.

"And I hate your d.a.m.nable a.s.surance," she added hotly, but her voice was husky with a desire he recognized.

"I, however," he murmured, his hands moving upward to slip two more b.u.t.tons free, "adore your temper." His fingers slid inside the eight inches of open neckline he'd freed and he slowly stroked the mounded fullness of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. His hands were as warm as she remembered, and gentle and skilled. Lisaveta's eyes briefly shut and she moaned in warming bliss as luxurious sensation flooded through her body.

But a moment later she sharply said, "No," steeling herself against the pleasure he so easily roused, refusing to willingly surrender again, wis.h.i.+ng to save herself from the humiliation she'd experienced last night. Her eyes were focused once again and aggressive, her hand coming out to rest on his wrist. "Don't touch me."

His wrist, muscular and strong-boned, dwarfed her small hand. "I want to," he replied, no aggression in his voice, only patience and courtesy.

"You must allow me my prerogatives," she said quietly, and waited.

His wrist moved under her hand and drawing back, he shook her hand free. "Your obedient servant, mademoiselle," he said in a parody of good manners, but his voice was tinged with surliness, like a restive boy called to order.

"You're sulking," she declared, her tone suddenly teasing, because he was moody and scowling, his large frame sprawled against the pink feminine sofa like some great dark thundercloud.

"I don't sulk," he said with unmistakable sulkiness.

"You can't always have your own way," she said, thinking how very beautiful he was even when he was scowling.

"But I always have," he replied with neither apology nor ostentation. He smiled then, because she was studying him as though he were an archaeological oddity. "I recommend it."

"What happens when you don't have your way?"

He shrugged rather than answer her, for he wished to avoid further argument. "Why so polemical, dushka," he said instead. "There are pleasanter ways to pa.s.s the time."

"Making love, you mean."

"Precisely."

"And if I don't wish to?"

"Come, darling," he murmured, "you always wish to."

"I don't right now."

He surveyed her for a moment as she had so recently him, and then said mildly, "If you take your dress off, I'll marry you." His remark was facetious and blase and remarkably genuine.

"According to Nikki," she reminded him, "you'll marry me whether I take my dress off or not."

"Hmm," he said.

"Yes, exactly." Her smugness was genial, not malicious.

Another short silence and then he said, "How emphatic are you about your prerogatives?" He was smiling now with a buoyant cheer that made him even more appealing, and she was suddenly jealous of all the women who'd seen that particular smile. It was an intimate smile of exceptional grace and charm, like a promise of personal fulfillment.

"About as emphatic as you are about yours."

"Hmm," he said again. Her honesty was always demonstrably plain.

"Is this difficult, this style of courts.h.i.+p in which a woman doesn't fall immediately panting into your arms?" Her golden eyes were amused.

" 'Difficult' wouldn't be my choice of word. I'd say time-consuming," he drawled, his grin boyish. "But then I've still a day and a half before I have to go back."

Fleeting surprise showed on her face. "Back?"

"To Kars, of course. You didn't think the war was over?"

"Are you going to win?" she asked in an intemperate rush of words, fearful suddenly she might lose him after all, not to Nadejda or a mult.i.tude of other women but to something far worse. It altered her perspective instantaneously and made his presence in Saint Petersburg treasured.

"Of course," he replied with his usual expansive confidence. "I always do."

"The undefeated Prince Bariatinsky," she said softly. He was heralded not only as the youngest commander in the Tsar's army but as the only undefeated general in Russian history.

"At your service, mademoiselle..." Out of uniform he looked vulnerable suddenly, not a symbol of the Tsar's Empire or the strength of Russia's army but simply a man, who was smiling at her and teasing her. A man who'd come a great distance and quite plainly wanted her. A man she loved beyond reason or sanity. "You will be careful, won't you?" Lisaveta said gravely, her mood transformed by a stabbing rea.s.sertion of fear.

"Darling," Stefan said, his smile intact, untouched by her anxiety, "you survive by not being careful. Don't worry about me."

She attempted an answering smile of rea.s.surance but a tiny s.h.i.+ver ran down her spine as if some unseen specter had tapped her on the shoulder.

"Are you finished now?" he asked. She looked at him blankly.

"Talking," he said. "I've only a day and a half." His grin struck away her last vestiges of apprehension.

"Some men subscribe to a touch more gallantry," she mockingly chastised.

"They probably have more time than I," he retorted, un-chastised and smiling still.

"Is that my cue to fall willing into your arms?" A coy and teasing response.

"I'd like that." And while his dark eyes were amused, his voice was suddenly serious. "You own my heart, dushka," he added very softly, acknowledging at last the feelings he'd fought so long, the feelings that had taken him from Kars. "And I'm helplessly in love."

Tears welled in her eyes and she swallowed once before answering. "Oh, Stepka," Lisaveta whispered, reaching out to touch his hand, "what are we going to do?"

"I'm marrying you," he said simply, as though he'd understood that eventuality always and not only in the last few revealing moments, and then he sighed a little because he could ready feel the burden of the past engulf him. All the bitter memories came rus.h.i.+ng back, all the whispers ignored and uncertainties felt, the malice and hurt surrounding his parents' grand pa.s.sion recalled as if it were yesterday. And now he was doing what he'd sworn never to do; he was letting love for a woman compromise his future plans.

Consciously shaking away his reservations, he drew Lisaveta into the curve of his arms, the feel of her warmth next to him mitigating the jarring foreboding. "And you're marrying me," he whispered, her soft braids like silk under his chin. "Do you like the sound of that as much as I?"

"We shouldn't," she murmured, distraught. "I shouldn't. It's asking too much of you." She understood he was relinquis.h.i.+ng all his carefully wrought plans, the ones so painstakingly arranged to overcome the shadow of his father's disgrace, the ones he'd considered a logical solution to the pain of his own unorthodox childhood. He was risking, too, his own ill.u.s.trious career if Prince Taneiev were vengeful. Men had fallen from favor with the Tsar for smaller infractions. And since Alexander was insulated from the world, his information often censored and altered in the political cauldron of court intrigue, there was never any certainty one's case would be presented objectively.

"Nonsense," Stefan said, "everything can be resolved." A striking statement from a man who'd vowed never to love a woman so madly that it affected his life or career.

"You don't have to marry me," Lisaveta quietly declared.

"But I wish to, dushka, and besides," he said, drawing away so he could look at her, a faint grin lifting the corners of his mouth, "Nikki will kill me if I don't."

"Vladimir Taneiev might kill you if you do." No levity infused her remark.

"True. However," Stefan briskly went on, "I understand his greed outstrips his ethics. I'll offer him large sums of money."

"Could I help?" she said then. "I could at least do that."

He looked at her in mild astonishment because he'd never had a woman offer to pay his way. "You were raised differently," he said in murmured wonder, "but thank you, no. I've plenty." An understatement from the heir to two family fortunes that individually could have run the Empire for a decade. "And now that I've offered you my name, my wealth, my future, do you think you could say yes out of consideration for my feelings?" The laughter in his eyes reminded her of a young boy intent on play.

"Oh, yes," she said then, young-girl breathless with suffocating happiness. "Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes..." she whispered, feeling a joy so profound she trembled. She loved him beyond the normal scope of emotion, she loved him with an incoherent, jubilant elation that stacked pleasure upon pleasure to the rooftop of the world.

She had made her objection, offered him a chance to reconsider his proposal out of decency and a kindly courtesy. He didn't have to marry her because Nikki was insisting or because of the possibility she carried his child. She knew, too, how much his previous plans for marriage were based on the sadnesses in his past.

But when she'd made those required objections and he'd refused them all in his teasing, smiling way, she'd allowed the full measure of her happiness to invade her heart, so she felt now a rosy warm magic, as though she could touch the whole world and make it smile with her. She couldn't have accepted him had he been coerced or reluctant. She was too prideful herself to take a husband who didn't love her immensely. And he did, it was plain. Beyond his teasing and irony, it was clear he loved her so much he'd come across Russia for her and would marry her even in Vladimir Taneiev's shadow.

"I'll make you happy, Stepka," she whispered, her face alight with love, "always."

And he knew with that certainty reserved for those rare and perfect unions, she would. He'd searched for her, blase and unknowing, too long to doubt it.

He knew it with that blinding flash of mystic revelation.

With a Zoroastrian belief like burning flame.

With a shaman magic-he knew it.

He smiled, thinking of an additional intuitive reason more: she said "Stepka" with the exact inflection that his father had, and in all the world he'd found someone to love again. Or perhaps she had found him, he thought, considering how they'd met.

"And I'll try, little mother," he murmured, "to make you both happy."

Her eyes showed a small startled reflex and she said very softly, "It's a very new thought..."

"The way it works, darling," he said, his smile so close she could feel its warmth, "you'll have time to get used to the idea."

He kissed her then, and she him, with a giddy smiling kiss that tasted of love and delight and wonder. They had both found the illusive prize of life, the spilled-over love chalice of everyone's quest, the insupportable marvel of requited, deep and perfect love...and it seeped like blissful suns.h.i.+ne into every corner of their mind.

Their kiss in the normal sequence of events turned in time from suns.h.i.+ne into licking flame, and it was then Stefan gathered Lisaveta into his arms with effortless strength, rose from the sofa with a fluid grace and began walking toward the doors leading into the hallway. As if already mated in mind and spirit, he said, "I'm taking you to my palace," before she could ask her intended question.

Chapter Fourteen.

But Nikki was waiting in the corridor, seated on a bargello-upholstered Venetian chair directly facing the drawing room doors.

"Chaperoning, are you?" Stefan mildly inquired, his tone benign, holding Lisaveta in his arms as though he always casually held her while conversing.

"I thought I'd read for a time," Nikki pleasantly replied, his book unopened beside him on the console table.

"And that was the only chair in this block-long palace?"

"The only convenient one," Nikki answered with a grin. "I see all is reconciled." He could see Lisaveta was happy-it was apparent in her beaming face-and Stefan had the look of a triumphant man.

"And if it hadn't been?" Stefan said in a quiet voice.

"I brought my revolver. One never knows when one might need it-reading." He had not of course, but a measure of coercion existed beneath his amused words.

"Before you two do something adolescent and ruin all this unalloyed bliss," Lisaveta interjected with a smile, "may I point out that all this masculine pride is rather irrelevant since Stefan proposed and I accepted."