Susan Johnson - Golden Paradise

"My cradle," she exclaimed. The familiar swan shape was swathed in white gauze draperies suspended from a crowned canopy, exactly as she remembered.

"I thought you might like the next generation to sleep where you slept," Stefan said, his smile benevolent. "Come see your silver rattle." And tightening his grip on her hand, he tugged her along.

Her silver rattle, the one given as a gift, her mother had said, by Peter the Great and passed down in her family for more than a century, lay shining on the white silk coverlet.

"Even though you don't like surprises, do you approve of the decor? Feel free to change anything," Stefan quickly added, when Lisaveta didn't answer immediately.

"I like the stars," she said, turning to him with a smile.

"A personal whim. I'm glad you approve."

"And everything else, too," she added, slipping her arms around his waist. "You're incredibly sweet and kind and I love you so much my heart sings."

"We could perform a duet then, dushka," Stefan softly whispered, holding her lightly in his arms, "because my heart sings, too…and soon we can harmonize in trio," he added with a grin. Although his voice was buoyant, his words were underlaid with earnestness. "Tell me, Princess Bariatinsky, how you can't live without me."

"I can't," Lisaveta said simply.

"Nor can I without you."

It was a revelation to them both, independent as they were, that they could so conspicuously and extravagantly savor that constraint.

But in love, of course, it wasn't constraint but fascinating attachment, nor was it binding need so much as affectionate harmony.

And ardent passion, as well.

And fond desire.

"I may not soldier for the Tsar so much," Stefan told her.

"I didn't dare ask."

"I need you more," he quietly said.

"The Bariatinskys have served their share," Lisaveta said, tracing the deep scar running from Stefan's shoulder down his chest. His worst laceration wasn't completely healed yet and his arms were crisscrossed with saber scars. The two bullet wounds in his side would be permanently discolored because they'd been infected so long before adequate treatment. "And the peace treaty will be signed soon. Maybe there won't be any more wars."

He opened his mouth to answer and then decided against his cynical reply. It seemed out of place in the sunny, toy-filled nursery. "I hope not," he said instead. "Haci tells me it's time for us both to sire children and race our ponies." His mouth quirked into a smile. "It's not a bad idea…if you don't mind."

"And if I do?" Lisaveta replied, mischief in her eyes.

His answering grin was wolfish, his dark eyes seductive. He had no intention of devoting himself exclusively to his ponies; the object of his devotion was in his arms.

"We can talk about it," Lisaveta coquettishly said.

"Yes, talk," Stefan agreed in a tone of voice suggestive of several things other than talk. "May I invite you into my bedroom for some preliminary discussion." He loosened her arms from around his waist.

"I might be interested," she replied, affecting demureness.

"Is there something that might further pique your interest, Madame Princess?"

"Yes, as a matter of fact, there is." Her golden eyes were amused.

"Is it something, perhaps, more accessible in a different venue?" His body exuded warmth as she stood beside him, his lazy intonation heated in another way.

"In your bed, you mean."

"How astute." His smile was gracious, as if he were familiar with offering paradise to young ladies. "But then your reputation as an intelligent woman is well-known."

"As is yours as a libertine…" There was a rich cordiality beneath her drollery.

"Perhaps we could merge our special…" He paused for a significant moment that seemed to raise the temperature noticeably. "… attributes in a mutually satisfying association," he finished.

"Kiss me and I'll decide," she said with a provocative lift of her shoulder.

He laughed. "You like to give orders," he murmured, one dark brow raised in speculation.

"You should recognize the inclination.''

He did, of course, after a decade of command. "We could take turns," he proposed suggestively. "Giving orders, I mean…"

She smiled.

He smiled.

And on that sweet balmy Christmas Day in a shining white palace on the highest hill in Tiflis, they loved each other with exhilaration, joy and passion. Unlike the imperfect world outside their windows, they had found in each other's arms perfect unspoiled love, safe haven and bliss.

Their son, Zekki, was born that spring soon after the peace was signed. And when Stefan resigned his commission shortly after, to the Tsar in person, Alexander II understood.

"Life is too short," Stefan said. "I've tempted fate too long."

As have we all," Alexander II replied. His words came prophetically to pass when an assassin's bomb claimed his life three years later.

By then Zekki had a sister to share the nursery with, and Stefan and Lisaveta thanked the shamans and benevolent gods for their own good fortune.

Stefan had taken active steps to insure that good fortune, though. Immediately after they'd come back to Tiflis from the Tsar's funeral, he'd begun construction to add more rooms to his mountain lodge.

Alexander Ill was going to be a reactionary emperor, Stefan said. "We may prefer the mountains more in the years to come," he declared.

Lisaveta understood. "For when the troubles come," she posed, in question and statement both.

"For that," he said.

And in the following years the White General, the Savior of Mirum, the Victor of Kokand and Kars, tended his vineyards and his polo ponies and his growing family.

He may have missed on occasion the inexplicable exhilaration of the charge or the intoxication of victory gained against enormous odds, but he'd seen his father die a useless death after numberless victories for the Empire and Tsar, and life had taught him in the end to hold dear the precious minutes of each day. And he intended now-with that particular strength of purpose that had taken him victorious across the battlefields of Russia-to defend not the borders of the Empire but the sanctity of his content.

Two fascinating men inspired Golden Paradise. Born a generation apart, they were living legends in their own time, their deeds and accomplishments surpassing those of any fictionalized hero.

Prince Alex Bariatinsky was handsome, wealthy, the privileged scion of the only noble family directly related to the Romanovs, a childhood companion of the Tsarevitch and the object of his sister's, the Grand Duchess Olga's, girlish love. By eighteen he was an established figure among the jeunesse dorée of Saint Petersburg, notorious for his good looks and dissipation. Scandal piled upon scandal until the Emperor at last showed his displeasure, banishing him to the Caucasus in disgrace. Alex Bariatinsky soon won military glory, and battle by battle his name became synonymous with victory, culminating at last in Shamyl's final surrender. The subjugation of the Caucasus by Field Marshal Bariatinsky was complete.

Throughout this time, his amorous personal life was legendary, but at thirty-five the Prince's amours were brought to a standstill by the wife of one of his officers. It was a fatal passion leading eventually to his ruin.

Stefan's childhood and family background are based largely on the events surrounding Alex Bariatinsky's liaison with Princess Elizabeth Orbeliani. Damia was substituted as Elizabeth's name in my story to distinguish her more completely as a Georgian princess. And in contrast to the events in Golden Paradise, the child born to Alex's and Elizabeth's union was a daughter not a son.

Which brings us to the inspiration for Stefan.

Michael Skobeleff, the son and grandson of a general, himself won his general's epaulets at thirty.

As a youth at university his eccentricities were so expensive and his debts so enormous that his father refused to aid him anymore. He entered the Guards, but again his extravagances exceeded his father's good nature and he was obliged to leave the capital. He entered the Turkistan army, and the Asiatic frontier became for Skobeleff what the frontier of the Caucasus had been for Bariatinsky a generation earlier: a place to either find himself or lose himself.

His expedition to Khiva, however, where with only three Turkoman guides he reconnoitered three hundred and seventy-eight miles of hostile enemy territory in August heats of one hundred and forty-nine degrees, never knowing where they would find water, made him a sensation. Promotions were rapid for him. Asia was the perfect training ground for audacious young officers, and thanks largely to his superlative tactical and strategic abilities, the Khanates of Khiva and Kokand were annexed to the Russian Empire.

He was rewarded with the Governorship of Kokand.

Skobeleff actually did ride into battle on a white horse, dressed in his white dress uniform, covered in perfume and carrying his sword with the diamond hilt, in order, he said, that he might die with his best clothes on. Less facetiously, he wore white in battle so "my fellows can see where I am and know, therefore, whither to follow."

He was called Akh-Pasha by the Turks, meaning the White General, and Osman Pasha, the Turkish commander in the west, predicted that one day Skobeleff would be the Commander-in-Chief of the whole Russian army.

Michael Skobeleff died instead at thirty-seven in a Saint Petersburg brothel under mysterious circumstances.

He had begun to become politically active once the war was successfully concluded, speaking out in Russia and abroad in support of Pan-Slavism. He was perhaps too powerful and too popular to be allowed such exposure and he'd acquired many enemies on his rapid rise to fame, influential people who took issue with his brash style and immense popularity.

I was devastated the first time I read of his death. He was a man of profound courage and abilities: a poet; a linguist (he spoke several languages including many Asiatic dialects and an unaccented English); a scholar of the classics (Horace, Schiller and Byron were his favorites); a kind commander to his humblest soldier; a brilliant general who compared in stature to Alexander the Great and Napoleon. What a waste, I thought.

With literary license I could offer a kinder fate to Stefan. Michael Skobeleff's spirit lives in him.

is a well-known writer of historical romances who has now, with Golden Paradise, returned to the setting that originally made her famous-the Russia of the Czars. She is an avid collector of books of all kinds, commenting, "they threaten to overrun the house." The nineteenth-century Russian writers are her favorites, perhaps the reason Russian settings for her historical romances have always been close to her heart. Research for Susan is "both a passion and a pleasure," and that love makes her historical settings and characters spring vividly to life. Susan and her husband live on eighty acres of virgin hardwood forest in North Branch, Minnesota, along with their horses, three dogs, one lop-eared rabbit and a very large piranha.