Susan Johnson - Golden Paradise

"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.

It wasn't a kiss of welcome or greeting or even pleasure; it was distinctly a kiss of possession, as if the harsh pressure of his mouth somehow indelibly acknowledged ownership. Struggling against his strength the moment she realized his intentions, she protested verbally as well as physically to his brutal kiss.

"You're drunk," she remonstrated, turning her mouth away with effort, shoving uselessly against the solid muscle of his chest, her hands small in contrast to his massiveness.

"I haven't had a drink in five days, dushka," he replied, his voice a growl, the endearment an epithet in tone, his arms tightening around her. He'd been traveling day and night for five days while she'd been smiling her special smile and offering more no doubt to every fawning man in Saint Petersburg. He knew what she could offer, he knew what her smile prefaced. He had been told she was everyone's darling and jealousy ate at his reason. His lips brushed over her cheek, his lower body pressed into her, and intent on being the next recipient of the Golden Countess's favors, he said, "Relax, darling, this won't take much of your time."

Those were not words of love or the sentiments of a lovesick swain, and while he'd come and taken her away, his intent appeared wholly without feeling. "Take me back inside, Stefan, damn you," Lisaveta whispered hotly. His mouth was millimeters from hers, and her body was pressed against the ivy wall with such force she could feel the buttons of his jacket imprinted into her flesh.

His soft laugh was unpleasant, his breath warm on her mouth. "Do your new lovers take orders?" He hadn't moved and the weight of his body was solid and resistant.

"Does your fiancée?" she snapped, ignoring the fact she was powerless against him, too angry at his seizure, rude purpose and insinuation to consider her precarious position.

His head lifted abruptly and his eyes in the moonlight darkness gleamed like Fire. "Yes, as a matter of fact," he said very softly, his mouth curled in derision. "Your turn."

"Then so do my lovers." She wouldn't give him the satisfaction of knowing she'd refused all the men because they hadn't measured up to him.

His eyes narrowed at her confident tone, a cold fury overwhelming him. "I've heard," he said in a taut low whisper, "you're much in demand." So all the rumors were true. She'd been entertaining herself with a variety of lovers since she'd arrived in Saint Petersburg. Loris and Dmitri and Kadar and Tamada had all been telling the truth. How many lovers had she had? he hotly thought. He could almost feel his temper as a palpable heat rising in his body-or was it lust… or both? He knew too well how eager and erotic the Countess's style of entertainment was and knew she had the spontaneity and energy to delight a great number of lovers.

He wanted to punish her for her bewitching ways, and then call out and kill each man she'd slept with. In an earlier era he may have done that without a second thought. But one didn't publicly beat women any longer or lock them away in nunneries, and duels were, at least in theory, uncivilized.

He was, however, feeling uncivilized and savagely angry. He was, in fact, very near to losing control, so Lisaveta's answering words were exactly wrong.

"You taught me well," she said, her voice snide and too sweet and taunting.

It wasn't what he cared to hear. He would have preferred all the gossip to have been false; he would have preferred finding her asleep in her bed instead of at a ball, or discovering her quietly studying in some isolated library or embroidering, if women actually did that, or performing any number of other safe, innocuous, acceptable feminine pursuits. He would have preferred anything but her last reply. A strange wildness overcame him, as if he were an adolescent again, totally without restraint.

"Let's see then," he murmured, his chill voice matching the breeze off the Baltic, "if you remember everything I taught you." His hands moved up her back as he finished speaking and came to rest on her shoulder, his fingers sliding under the neckline of her gown in a small gesture of possession.

"Don't you dare." Her own fury and self-determination reverberated through her heated words. Her eyes shone like golden flame.

He stood, his hands lightly cupping her bare shoulders, his touch gentle as though his intentions were benign, as though her fury were irrelevant. "Darling, don't be naive. I attack redoubts bristling with artillery and enemy. Surely-" his fingertips traced the curve of one shoulder, an incongruously delicate juxtaposition to his heated words "-you don't think one small woman can stop me." His voice was very low, unhurried, almost tranquil.

"I'll scream," she challenged. Her hands were still caught against his chest, his body still curtailing her freedom.

"Perhaps later," he replied casually, his palm already sliding up the slender column of her neck. "You always scream," he softly murmured, "at the end." The tip of his finger gently tapped the yellow diamond pendant swinging from her ear. "I'm glad you like the earrings."

"You can't do this, Stefan," she warned. "Someone could walk out any moment." Her voice was more contained than her emotions with Stefan's aroused body pressing into her flesh. "Just release me now and you can go about your business." She tried to keep her tone reasonable and moderate.

"But you're my business." His answer was a teasing murmur, his hands drifting down her shoulders once again, stopping to test the resistance of the gold lace ruffle just below the curve of her shoulder.

"You came all the way to Saint Petersburg to see me?" Her query was laced with doubt and a dizzying curiosity and suspicion, too.

"Of course." His reply was so blatantly nonchalant it resisted belief. "And now," he said, the hush of his voice as languorous as his half-lidded eyes, "I'd like to see you."

"Stefan, be sensible," Lisaveta pleaded, suddenly realizing he was fully intent on satisfying his passion, here, now, within sight and sound of the ballroom. "Please…"