Susan Johnson - Golden Paradise

"How much time do I have?" Lisaveta asked, looking up at him. "Does that sound impossibly pragmatic?" she went on in a tentative voice, then answered her own question in the next breath. "Well, maybe it does, but I've always dreamed girlish dreams of frothy gowns and flowers and priestly choirs and candles and music… and true love."

Stefan touched the fullness of her bottom lip lightly with one finger and said with a quiet intensity, "You have true love, dushka, and you can also have all your girlish dreams. And there's nothing wrong with being pragmatic… it's your wedding." His smile was indulgent. "Is two hours enough?" It was a man's question and he thought a reasonable one.

"Two hours!" she wailed.

He could see their concepts of reasonable differed. "Four hours then, how about that?" he generously offered. "But anything after eleven o'clock, I draw the line." He shrugged and gently reminded her, "The Turks won't wait."

"We'll have to tell Nikki and Alisa," she said, capitulating.

"I already told them on the way home."

"Some men are terribly sure of themselves." Her fine brows lifted in teasing rebuke.

He grinned. "Years of practice."

"I can still change my mind," Lisaveta warned, her golden eyes bright with laughter. "No, you can't."

"Why can't I, pray tell? I'm not obliged to marry you." Her glance was mischievous.

Your cousin Nikki may disagree with you there, Stefan thought, but said instead, "All the guests will be disappointed."

"All the guests?" she said in a very tiny voice.

"And the Tsar."

"The Tsar?" she whispered.

"The chapel candelabra are being polished even as we speak." His expression was amused.

"What if I'd said no?"

"You already said yes."

"I could have changed my mind," she said in a feminine way that over the centuries had been bred into every female on earth-the art of being contrary on principle.

"Well, then I'd have to change it back. I'm good at that." His dark eyes were suddenly as suggestive as his voice, and she was momentarily reminded of his… competence.

"How many guests are invited?" she asked with a studied casualness, aware he was correct in his assurance and wondering in the next beat of her heart how many of his former lovers, how many recipients of his "competence," would be in attendance.

"I think the chapel holds three hundred."

"How many are women?" There. She'd said it. It would have been impossible to be subtle, so her blunt question conveyed the full extent of her concern.

"Just wives of friends," he carefully replied. "I didn't count." Did she really think he was that insensitive?

"I'm jealous," she candidly said.

"So am I. None of your gallants were invited." His voice was gruff.

She smiled at his vigilance. "We agree then."

"I hope so. I wasn't dancing with every man in Saint Petersburg."

"I thought you were probably doing something much less innocent wherever you were."

"Well, I wasn't," he huffily said, as if after years of dalliance she should have intuitively realized he was being celibate across two thousand miles of Russia.

"I adore your jealousy." Lisaveta soothed the crease between his black brows.

"Humpf," he muttered, all his territorial feelings too new to fully assimilate.

Reaching up, she kissed him in selfish gratitude and miraculous wonder, her heart so full of love she wanted to laugh and cry and shout her happiness to the world. And when one small tear spilled over her eyelid and trailed down her cheek, Stefan followed it with kisses, his breath warm on her cheek.

"Don't cry," he murmured, "everything will be perfection. I'll be more understanding, promise," he said in blanket pledge to stay her tears, "and I'll never look at another woman and you can have more than four hours if you wish."

He almost said, "I'll hold back the Turks," but the telegram waiting for him when he'd returned from his audience with the Tsar was worrisome. Hussein Pasha was on a forced march from Erzerum. That startling news sharply curtailed Stefan's timetable. Although Hussein's chances of reaching Kars before Stefan were almost impossible, Stefan had learned not to disregard the impossible. At the thought of his return to battle, his arms tightened around Lisaveta.

"Be happy, Lise," he whispered, her warmth vivid antidote to the sudden bleakness of his thoughts, the fragrance of her hair delicate reminder she offered him the ultimate perfumed sweetness of life. "Don't cry… please… I love you so…"

"I'm really happy," Lisaveta incongruously said in a small hiccupy voice. He'd just promised her carte blanche in his masculine attempt at consolation and his extravagant willingness to please her caused even more tears to fall.

"You're making me feel terrible." He cradled her in his arms, distracted by her tears. "Tell me what you want," he said unconditionally. "Anything… just tell me."

"I don't want anything," she whispered, gulping to restrain her weeping. "I always cry when I'm truly happy."

"You do?" He lifted her chin with a crooked finger. "Honestly?" He'd never had a woman cry in his arms before. He'd experienced the full gamut of other emotions, but never tears- an indication, perhaps, of his skillful expertise and the casual nature of his relationships.

Lisaveta nodded. "Honestly."

And then, out of desperation and uncertainty, he kissed her, because if he was unsure of tears of happiness, he was secure in the efficacy of kisses.

He was right.

Lisaveta was the one to demur softly some moments later. "Do we have time?" she whispered, holding Stefan close, the intensity of her embrace in contrast to her words.

He lifted his head a scant distance and glanced at the clock on the mantel. "No," he said, lowering his head again to kiss her.

"We should stop," she murmured, "before it's too late." She could feel his smile on her lips.

"Good idea," he breathed in the minutest exhalation, "if it wasn't too late already."

"We could just have a small wedding." She reached up a caressing hand, her small palm and delicate fingers sliding up the side of his dark-skinned face to glide into the heaviness of his black hair, her words vibrating on his lips. "I don't need a gown or flowers or music." Her mouth curved into a smile. "We'd save a lot of time."

He raised his face a small distance from hers and his tongue traced a wet warm path up the bridge of her nose. "We'll postpone it an hour." His mouth touched her eyebrow in a brushing caress, then her lashes and the high sweep of her cheekbone.

Lisaveta's wedding gown was selected an hour and a half later from an array of fashionable dresses summoned by fiat from every important modiste in Saint Petersburg. It was handmade lace of enormous value and heavy enough to support the thousands of pearls embellishing its rose-patterned texture. Cut very simply, it was a maiden's gown with a modest décolletage, small bow-trimmed sleeves and a froth of gathers draped into a bustle and lengthy train.

Stefan said, "I like it," when Lisaveta asked; she looked rosy-cheeked and young and so beautiful he felt a small catch in his chest, but then he began breathing again and smiled at his own bewitchment.

He saw that Lisaveta bought all else she needed for her trousseau, as well, and he wasn't without opinions, but they agreed on most styles, as they did later with the tradesmen interviewed for jewelry and flowers and specialty foodstuffs necessary for a wedding on short notice. They argued briefly over the flowers. Lisaveta wanted lilies. Stefan said lilies reminded him of death. Why not orange blossoms or violets or orchids? Orange blossoms were out of season, as were violets, but they took what the florists in Saint Petersburg had in their forcing houses, and they compromised on orchids.

"Small orchids," Lisaveta said, "not the enormous ones."

"Some large orchids," Stefan insisted. "They remind me of Grandmama. Her palace was filled with them." And she agreed because she loved him and he had loved his grandmama enough to have her flowers at his wedding.

When she inquired how their guests would know when to arrive, since the time had been changed twice, once to accommodate themselves and once to accommodate Stefan's temperamental chef, Stefan only said, "No problem." His regiment on staff in Saint Petersburg was transporting the messages, and she hadn't realized until then how familiar Stefan was with boundless power, how unhumble his background, how royal his prerogatives, until he'd added, "It's my cavalry corps."

She suddenly understood he answered to few men in the world. Considering his unique friendship with the Tsar, perhaps it was safer to say he answered to only one man. His position as cavalry commander didn't fully encompass the additional native tribes pledging allegiance to his family, and on the eastern frontier, the fealty of the nomadic tribes constituted an army in itself. The Chiefs of Staff knew that, the Grand Dukes knew that, and he was treated with careful deference.

The power and authority he wielded was almost unreserved and explained a wedding accomplished with such speed and finesse.

No one refused him.

He had but to indicate his desire and it was accomplished.

He was very different from the man she'd come to know on their journey from Aleksandropol to Tiflis or in the informal surroundings of his mountain lodge. Even his palaces in Tiflis and Saint Petersburg were run without undue pomp. He was human, warm, a natural man without formality. This new image of Stefan as master and commander of all he surveyed made her question for a moment whether she really knew the man she was about to marry.

Five hours later, the chapel was filled with expectant guests, delighted to have been called away from previous engagements to witness the sudden and startling wedding of Stefan Bariatinsky to a beautiful young lady who'd been hidden away from society until short weeks ago. A lady who'd been introduced into society by no less a figure than the Tsar, a lady of the prominent Kuzan family, known over the centuries not only for their wealth but for their unconventionality…a polite word for what the less courteous called excesses. The scandal of his broken engagement to Nadejda, of course, only added piquant expectancy to the festivities.

Those more perceptive of the guests in the chapel noted the absence of all of Stefan's previous paramours.

"It must be love," they whispered to one another.

"But for how long?" the more cynical replied.

"She's a Kuzan," some others murmured, insinuation delicious as sin in their voices. "I'll give it a year."

But Stefan had never been noted for the longevity of his infatuations, and Kuzan or not, no one risked their money on a day more.

Countess Lazaroff's suitors weren't invited, either, they noted. He was jealous. Stefan jealous? The thought was novel. Stefan had always been known for the number and variety of his women. The unspoken comment was in everyone's mind. Would one woman satisfy him?

The site of the wedding was an exuberant baroque chapel dedicated architecturally to an earthly approximation of heaven. Built of white marble, it was accented with tall polished pilasters of lavender amethyst rising to support a cornice leafed in gold under a frescoed ceiling and decorated with a profusion of statuary and gilded motifs. The luxury of material and style combined to give the sanctuary an intensely emotional appeal, like a flamboyant architectural melody. Incorporated into this variation of baroque grandeur was the very Russian addition of thousands of candles, votive and otherwise, in chandeliers and candelabra, in display cabinets of great beauty.

And as if the splendor of marble, amethyst and gold, of frescoes depicting the dazzling light of heaven gleaming on angels and cavorting putti, all illuminated by flickering candlelight, wasn't enough to suggest heaven on earth, orchids, large and small, stark white and delicately hued, were massed in great arrangements throughout the chapel. They tumbled in faultless disorder over the altar, twined up candelabrum stands and torchères, were tied into garlands with angel fern and hung in luxurious swags between pilasters. In contrast to the sumptuous display of flora, each row of gilded chairs in the nave was fronted by a tall basket of stately lilies. "For my wife," Stefan had said to the florist, "but I want colored lilies. The white ones are too funereal."

It was done.