Amalie's bounteous, opulent form greeted his bewildered eyes. For a few horrible seconds he didn't know exactly where he was. Memory quickly returned. He groaned softly to himself and quietly swung up to a seated position, cradling his pounding head carefully between both palms. Resting his elbows on his knees, he remained for several minutes supporting his head while chastising himself mentally for drinking too much.
As well as he could remember, which was frankly damn near nothing, there had been another fight with Zena. She had been angry because of Amalie. What the hell had he said? Zena had become increasingly stubborn and querulous lately. He probably had told her to go to hell. Unfortunately, after several bottles of brandy he very commonly told most anyone to go to hell.
Sweet Jesus, what a mess! First, how to get Amalie out of his bed and out of the house quietly. Then he must find Zena and offer some kind of plausible, conciliatory explanation, no matter now deceitful.
The servants could show Amalie out. He'd better find Zena. She had obviously slept somewhere else last night.
Goddamn women could be a bitch of a problem. But he did prefer Zena's company. He'd cajole and appease her somehow. He was quite confident of her affection. Years of enamored women in his wake had disclosed the obvious signs, and Zena was manifesting the usual symptoms. He wasn't presumptuously vain regarding his attraction to woman, simply conscious of well-established, orthodox patterns of female behavior.
What the hell had he said last night? It would help if he could remember. Oh, well, he'd bring Zena around. It might take some persuasion.
Alex silently slipped into a navy shantung dressing gown, eased quietly out the door, and immediately questioned the servants stationed in the hall. "Which room is Mistress Zena in?"
Neither of the footmen would meet his glance. Both nervously eyed each other, the floor, or some distant object over Alex's left shoulder.
"Well?" Alex demanded irritably as the nervous silence lengthened.
"Er . . . she isn't here," the youngest one finally blurted out heroically.
"Is she outside with Bobby?" the prince inquired hast-ily.
"No sir," they both replied, fidgeting. "Well, where the blazes is she?" Alex challenged. "Don't know, Your Excellency," they murmured in unison.
"You don't know!" Alex thundered. "Who the hell does know?"
"No ... no ... no one, my prince," a faltering voice quavered. "The coachman drove her to Moscow last evening and left her."
"Moscow!" Alex roared.
"She left a note, Excellency, in your study," and they both melted into the wall as Alex brushed past them and dashed down the stairs.
Two servants rushed to open the study doors as Alex suddenly appeared. The servants stood stiffly outside against the wall waiting for the storm to break.
The sealed letter was in the center of his desk. He put his hand out and remained for a moment motionless. Then with a violent movement he grasped the envelope and ripped it open.
The note was brief, dry, and to the point with no unnecessary words of explanation:
Bobby is too ill to travel. I will have someone fetch him in two weeks.
Baroness Z. Turku
Zena had left! She had really left! No empty threats, a fait accompli.
Unpenitent anger mounted dangerously. Just because he had kissed Amalie once or twice. . . . He chose to overlook the fact that he had found her in his bed that morning. Mademoiselle Turku was too impertinent for her own good. He'd bring he back and lock her up this time. Damnable pert miss, walking out. He wasn't tired of her yet. Goddamn it, how dare she leave!
A resounding crash echoed out in the hall, and the servants eyed each other apprehensively. "The Ming vase, I think," the elder of the two said. "Better get Ivan."
Two more shattering explosions occurred before Ivan appeared. "He found the note," Alex's steward declared dryly.
"The Ming collection is dwindling, sir," the old retainer said expressionlessly.
"Send for three, maids to clean up the mess," Ivan ordered.
An incredible blast of splintering wood and glass reverberated. "And the carpenter. . . ."
Opening the door to the now silent room, Ivan proceeded in. Alex sat behind his desk, a glass of brandy at hand, cooling his angered brow. A frigid breeze blew through the opening once graced by French doors.
He looked up absently as Ivan entered. "She left, Ivan," he said simply.
"I'm sorry, Sasha."
"No need to feel sorry." Alex's eyes narrowed dangerously as he tossed down the brandy. "I'm bringing her back."
The prince had spent a brief moment wrestling with his conscience (after all, he couldn't keep her here against her will) and his common sense (damn, she was just another female). But neither prevailed against his ungovernable temper and his craving to have Zena again. He'd be damned if he was going to let the hottest little piece west of the China Sea escape that easily. He'd have her back by tomorrow, he resolved ominously. The enraged prince vowed with a regal finality, she wouldn't leave again until he was damn good and ready to let her go.
After rapidly dressing in a random manner that horrified his meticulous valet, Feodor, then visiting briefly with Bobby, who was cheerfully ensconced in the nursery, Alex was on the road to Moscow in fifteen minutes. He left Trevor orders to clear his house of the evening's guests as soon as they woke. Trevor impassively accepted the prince's instructions, which were actually worded more colloquially.
"Get the goddamn fucking bastards out of my house," were the precise words to which Trevor murmured masterfully, "Very good, sir."
Ivan and two grooms accompanied Alex as he whipped and spurred his mount merci lously during the reckless afternoon ride to Moscow.
Alex's thoughts raced ahead. Briefly he considered Zena's route, assuming she would head south to her grandfather. But questioning of the railway porters and ticket clerks seemed to indicate a woman of Zena's description had taken the night train to St. Petersburg. Unreasonable as it appeared, evidently she was headed back to her aunt's. Maybe the distance to the Caucasus had intimidated and deterred her.
Actually St. Petersburg was more convenient for him, only a few hours' journey and a known destination. Her aunt wouldn't be hard to locate. Young Prince Alex had no scruples about seeking Zena out at Baroness Adelberg's.
If the baroness was willing to callously deliver Zena up to the old beast of a general without a single qualm, Alex felt sure she was the kind of woman he could deal with felicitously. He was confident some mutually profitable bargain could be reached for Zena's return to his protection. When one was heir to the larger portion of the gold mines in Siberia and the Urals, not to mention a comfortable percentage of the oil fields in Baku, negotiating in terms of money was merely an exercise in rhetoric.
Alex arrived at the pink palace on the Neva Quay early the next morning in a surly mood. The train ride had been tedious; it seemed like the hours dragged. He would change clothes and immediately present himself at Zena's aunt's house. Damnable chit, putting him to all this trouble! But first, he reminded himself reasonably, he would attempt a more courteous approach.
The double doors were thrown open by two of the army of servants, and Alex stepped through and tossed his gloves at a footman. He shrugged out of his coat as Rutledge greeted him with his usual composed serenity.
"Good morning, my lord," he said, as if Alex hadn't been gone two months but was only returning from his usual evening activities. "Would you care for breakfast?"
"No, thank you, Rutledge," Alex muttered. "I'm in a damnable hurry. Have a bath drawn for me and bring up a bottle of brandy."
Rutledge noted the black scowl and set lips. There was trouble ahead for someone, he surmised. Alex wore one of those glowering determined looks that boded ill for the recipient of his displeasure.
"As you wish, my lord." As Rutledge turned to carry out Alex's directives, he narrowly missed colliding with a scooter moving at breakneck speed into the vast marble entrance ha
ll.
A young child with a cap of close-cut red curls, eyes shining in excitement at her burst of speed, sailed across the black and white parquet floor, balancing precariously on the two-wheeled vehicle. Midway across the foyer she spied Alex, squealed with delight, hopped off the scooter which bounced on the marble floor, and ran across the huge foyer toward her brother.
The sight of Natalie erased Alex's churlishness, and his countenance broke into a broad smile. He threw his arms open as the little girl careened into him. Holding her in a tight hug, he swung her around as she giggled in delight.
"Sasha, Sasha, you're back," she cried as he set her down once again.
"As you see, my little pigeon," Alex replied with a grin, his ill humor forgotten momentarily as Natalie warmed his spirits. "Tata, you're growing so fast. Every time I see you you're at least two inches taller. How old are you now?"
"I'm six," Natalie replied proudly, standing stiffly erect to show her added height.
"Six already?" Alex teased. "Soon I'll have to start chasing your boyfriends away. When did you get into town? I haven't seen you in months."
"We came into town three weeks ago, and boys are ever so stupid, so I shall never have boyfriends," Natalie answered both questions promptly.
"Oh, ho! Talk to me in ten years, little sister," Alex laughed. "Then you'll think that maybe one or two aren't so stupid anymore when they start fawning all over you."
"Do you fawn over your new mistress, Sasha?" Natalie brightly questioned.
Alex choked on his last chuckle and replied shortly, "You're too young, moppet, to know of such things."
"But I do know, Sasha," she solemnly retorted, gazing up at the towering height of her oldest brother, "and I know something else, too. You're in trouble, because Mama and Papa have been scrapping about your new mistress."
Alex lifted one eyebrow every so slightly and cautiously inquired, "How do you know?"
"Papa was hollering ever so loud, and I couldn't help but hear one morning when I was playing in the breakfast room and Mama and Papa were discussing," Natalie's six-year-old tongue carefully articulated, "discussing you and your new mistress in the morning parlor. Papa was raising his voice, and Mama was saying he needn't shout and tell the whole house of his feelings, but I don't think he heard her, because his voice stayed really loud. Mama said your reputation was even worse than Papa's ever had been, and you were into one of your scandals again, but Papa said you were only young and high-spirited."
Alex breathed a little easier hearing that his father at least understood.
"What's a reputation, Sasha?" Natalie inquired uncertainly.
"It's something men can afford to have and women can't, little sister," Alex explained with a sardonic smile. "What else did Maman and Papa say?"
"Well," the little girl earnestly related, "then Mama said that it was different this time, because there was a child involved and the woman was a streetwalker. It must be ever so tiring to walk the streets, Sasha," she commiserated.
Alex choked.
"Is that what streetwalkers do, Sasha?"
Alex cowardly ignored the childish inquiry and prompted her instead, "What did Papa say then?"
"Then Papa said he would find out what was going on if it would make Mama happy, and he would send some money for the child. Then Mama raised her voice too and said you Kuzans always think your gold is a pana . . . pana ..."
"Panacea," Alex helpfully interposed.
"That's the word, panacea," she carefully pronounced, "a panacea for everything. Then Mama said," and the young girl parroted the words exactly, "it isn't that simple this time. A streetwalker, Nikki, do you comprehend} A streetwalker. Mama was pretty mad I think, but then Papa said don't be angry like he always does when Mama gets upset, and then Mama cried and Papa kissed her and held her until she stopped crying. Papa doesn't like Mama to cry, you know, so I think you're in big trouble," Natalie gravely concluded.
"Where are Mama and Papa?" Alex asked warily, not particularly in the mood to face either a distraught mother or a purposeful father.
"Lucky for you Papa is at the barracks, and Mama is with Georgi at the tailor's. He goes to Paris next month. He's almost eighteen now."
Alex reflected that he would have time to take care of Zena at her aunt's before anyone came home. He could face his parents after the problem with Zena was reconciled. One crisis at a time. And for Christ's sake, he was twenty-four years old and had had control of his own fortune for years.
He'd just have to soothe his mother's temper later. She always came around in the end, he reminded himself confidently.
Striding up the stairway to his apartments, Alex vaguely responded to Natalie's steady stream of chatter. His mind wrestled with the problem of convincing Zena to return with him. She was bound to be horrendously angry, and utmost diplomacy would be required.
He was in and out of a bath and into a change of clothes in record time as servants diligently scurried about their tasks.
Natalie perched on the edge of the tub and then on the bed, jabbering steadily as Alex swiftly bathed and changed. She was a cheerful distraction from the confusion of his thoughts, which ranged from anger to frustration to conciliatory musings and back again to resentment as he considered the trouble he was being put to for one saucy minx of a mademoiselle.
Bending to see in the dressing table mirror, Alex quickly brushed his long, unruly hair back with twin silver-backed brushes, then threw the brushes down and turned to Natalie, who was seated on the enormous gilded bed. "Be a dear, my little heart, and tell Maman or Papa when they arrive home that I may be late for supper. I've some business to attend to. Can you remember that?"
"Of course I can." she retorted, keenly wounded.
"I guess you Can at that," Alex replied with a chuckle as he recalled her detailed report to him. "Au revoir, Tata." He bent and dropped a kiss on the curly mop of hair.
"Au revoir, Sasha. Bring me back some candy," she demanded as he walked out of the room.
"I'm not going near a candy store," Alex replied as he walked down the hallway.
Skipping behind him, she leaned over the railing and, with childish optimism undeterred by his negative response, shouted as he descended the stairs three at a time, "I want coconut bonbons!"
Ivan in the meantime had discovered the location of Zena's aunt, and ten minutes later Alex was being ushered into the drawing room of a house on the Fontanka Canal.
A short, plump, tightly corseted figure with dyed red hair and the vacuous, painted face of a faded belle greeted him. "To what do we owe the pleasure, Prince Alex?" Baroness Adelberg simpered, fluttering her ring-bedecked, fat, little hands.
Since Alex was aware of the misery this woman had caused Zena for three years or more, he found himself unable to completely conceal his loathing. The usual sycophant, he thought angrily. "Where's Zena?" he churlishly demanded, choosing to ignore the deferential greeting.
"Zena?" the aunt questioned with amiable perplexity. She was puzzled and slightly alarmed but cautious still in the presence of such an illustrious visitor.
"Yes, Zena, your niece," he demanded, glaring at the toadying woman. "Did she come back here?"
In an instant the entire situation cleared as with a vision from above.
The baroness's eyes narrowed, and the cordial demeanor vanished as rapidly as a pebble in a pond. "So, that's where the little slut went," she sneered. "And now you've misplaced your doxy. Well, she isn't here. Prince Alex. She's smart enough, that one is, to know she's not welcome. After all I did for her, too, the ungrateful tart. Put up with her, that brat of a brother, and her drunken father for three years. Couldn't marry General Scobloff to please me, could she, the obstinate snit. No, had to embarrass me and run off. Well, if you find her, you're welcome to her. Don't send her back here!"
Alex drew himself up to his full, formidable height, looked down his well-bred nose at her, and said contemptuously, "Madame, rest assured there is nowhere on earth I wou
ld be less likely to send her."
Oblivious to the censure in Alex's retort as her mind dealt only with the affront to her own self-inrerest, the baroness irefully continued, "I knew she'd be a slut just like her mother. Blood tells," she said tartly. "Those Circassians are nothing but promiscuous savages. They have harems—harems!" she shrilled. "I knew Zena would be the same. All those savages have loose morals. So I tried to see her properly married off in order to nip that salacious tendency in the bud, nip it in the bud, I say," she righteously declared.
"To a seventy-year-old doddering fool?" Alex inquired sarcastically.
"She needed the firm hand of an older man," the baroness mulishly replied. "As the twig is bent, so grows the tree, you know. She had a mind of her own, the wicked girl, and was hard to control. It comes from being educated. It just isn't womanly. I told her father he was making a mistake instructing her like a man—imagine, Latin, geometry, pistol shooting!" she sniffed disdainfully. "Made her shockingly intractable, that's what it did. I told him it was a mistake. Never saw such a self-willed, stubborn girl. The little hussy had the nerve to argue with me for a month about her marriage to General Scobloff, refusing . . . refusing!" the outraged woman venomously cried. "The nerve when I had arranged such a suitable match!"
"Suitable!" snorted Alex witheringly.
Ignoring the snorted comment, she said primly, "I wash my hands of her, I tell you. I did my duty for the sake of my poor, departed brother (and his money, Alex thought cynically). But she's sunk beneath contempt now— nothing more than a harlot. I hope God punishes her for her sins," the plump woman zealously asserted.
Or perhaps God may punish you for yours, Alex reflected, which he would find infinitely more suitable on the scales of justice.
"Good afternoon, madame," Alex said curtly. "You have set my mind at ease in regard to the concern and interest of Zena's relatives."
"I hope to say I did my duty," the baroness pettishly bristled.
"Zena is very young, after all, and faced with responsibilities of a brother," Alex reminded her coldly.
Kuzan 02 - Lovestorm Page 15
