Golden Paradise

by Susan Johnson

  Sensing his restive mood she tossed her head, caracoled a dozen paces as if to say, I understand, and then, stretching out in a racing drive, flew down the road.

  The fast-moving troop gained on Lisaveta slowly. Each post stop on the Georgian Military Road delayed her, while Ste­fan's own horses were ridden in relays without stopping. Each trooper led a string of mountain ponies ready to be swung onto at a gallop, an effortless action for men considered the best riders in the world.

  Stefan was silent, riding full-out, all his energies concen­trated on arresting Lisaveta's flight. She was more determined than he expected but not, he brusquely reflected, likely to out­run him, Nadejda's interference notwithstanding. And thoughts of Nadejda, Melikoff, her parents, her damnable affectations, all added fuel to his already heated temper. Haci made the mistake of mentioning once that riding the horses to death wouldn't accomplish their mission, but his warning, however gentle, gained only a flinty look from Stefan, and he too fell silent.

  Lisaveta traveled at a leisurely pace through the rich Geor­gian lowlands, then as the road began to ascend, the carriage wound upward slowly through sombre defiles, past forts and ruined castles, the snow-covered mountains all around on the far horizon. She was in no particular hurry, mildly fatigued from her sleepless night and perhaps at base reluctant to be leaving.

  She had to depart, she knew, but that fact didn't obliterate her disinclination. How nice it would have been to stay if she could have quashed all sense of pride, if she could have rec­onciled herself to the recreational position Stefan required.

  He needed surcease from the war, a sensual holiday to miti­gate the impact of twelve weeks of campaigning. She was op­portune and convenient. Perhaps there were women willing to be only a convenience for Stefan.

  She found she could not.

  She'd also found Nadejda a deplorable obstacle. Or per­haps the extent of Stefan's casual resolution to marry Nadejda was the more potent stumbling block.

  There was a small voice inside her brain saying to all her logical assessments, You'd be so much better, and she smiled at the sheer bravado of such audacity.

  Better for what? Better in which way? Better than the hard and practical reasons Stefan had for marrying Princess Taneiev?

  Hardly.

  But better able, she admitted with a small sigh of regret, to love him.

  From that disastrous thought she was determined to dis­tance herself, and distance herself as well from the physical al­lure of Prince Bariatinsky.

  The driver was singing at the top of his voice. Gazing out the window, she smiled. It was a glorious place they were driving through, reddish cliffs hung with ivy and crowned with deep green pines, far above them the gilded fringe of snows and far below the river thundering out from a black misty gorge to be­come a silvery thread glittering in the sun. She should be grateful—for the beautiful day… for her memories.

  Stefan was swinging onto his fifth mount since Tiflis, drop­ping into place without checking the horse's galloping stride; he rode bareback as easily as on his padded saddle and had the calluses to prove it. Even as he strung out the long braided lead, allowing the riderless ponies to drop back, he glanced at the sun swiftly and then at the road descending into the valley below. The Georgian highway, which had been hacked through the mountains in a titanic five-year struggle, clung to the rock face of the mountains, descending and mounting through valley after valley, through gorges and defiles, each as familiar as his own landscaped acres.

  She couldn't be too far ahead now since they'd been on the road for almost three hours. His blue lacquered coach was dis­tinctive and Lisaveta noticed as well for her beauty; each post stop knew exactly when the carriage and lovely lady had passed. She was, according to the ostlers at Tskhinval—the last fort before the Krestovaia Pass—no more than fifteen minutes ahead.

  Stefan nudged his Orloff mare into more speed, and Haci, waving the men behind them forward, whipped his own mount to close the distance between himself and Stefan.

  Ten minutes later they caught sight of a vivid flash of royal blue disappearing over the crest of a rise and Stefan smiled, a wolfish smile not entirely without malice. He was hot and tired, dusty after three hours on the road and in the mood to blame someone other than himself for this morning pursuit. Sliding his Winchester from his saddle mount, he fired six rapid shots into the air and then slowed his horse to a canter. His driver and outriders would recognize the signal.

  The chase was won.

  "Why are we stopping?" Lisaveta asked the mounted man outside the carriage window, apprehensive after hearing the ri­fle fire to find the coach coming to a standstill in the middle of the road. Bandits were still prevalent in the mountains, and if they were being attacked, surely they shouldn't be stopping.

  "Were those shots?" she added, hoping the way a child might for a reassuring answer.

  "The Prince, mademoiselle,'" he said, resting both hands on his saddle pommel and smiling. He had begun the trip ad­dressing her with the rigid protocol required by many nobles, but she had resisted being called "Your illustriousness" and he had deferred to her wishes.

  "Are you sure?"

  "Yes, mademoiselle."

  "But we're over four hours out of Tiflis."

  "Almost five, mademoiselle," he corrected.

  "Why would 'the Prince'—" she duplicated his pronuncia­tion "—be riding north?"

  "I couldn't say, mademoiselle" the young man politely re­plied, although he had a pretty fair notion why, having lived in Stefan's household all his life.

  "Need we wait?"

  She could have been asking him, "Is there a God?" so star­tled was his expression. But, of course, she understood as well as the astonished young outrider why Stefan was on the road to Vladikavkaz.

  And she didn't think he was bringing a proposal of mar­riage.

  In the next moment she chastised herself for unrealistic pre­sumption as well as for demanding justice. She had with eyes wide open and entire free will entered into her relationship with Stefan, and now suddenly she was requiring decorum. It was unjust to him and to her sense of freedom. His pursuit, how­ever, was also unjust to her sense of freedom, and she hoped he'd be reasonable to deal with.

  Maybe he was simply coming after her to say goodbye.

  As the sound of hoofbeats neared, the outrider moved away from the carriage, and swirling dust drifted by her window, mingling with men's voices raised in greeting, the jingle of harness, horses' neighing in recognition of stablemates. She heard Stefan's voice, too, in the melee of sound, and moments later the carriage door swung open.

  He filled the small portal, wearing his clothes from the pre­vious night, his face sweat-streaked and moody, his hair in damp curls, his lip still slightly swollen where she'd bitten him. The sun was at midpoint and hot even at the mountain alti­tudes.

  "Come," he said curtly, and put out his gloved hand.

  No proposal of marriage, that terse command, nor a poeti­cal declaration of goodbye. Not that she'd expected either. But then she'd also not expected the cold chill order. He could be a man of persuasive charm.

  "No," she replied, for a tangle of reasons she'd already spent hours dwelling on.

  Wiping his forehead with the back of his gloved hand, he said, "Don't push me, Lise. We've been riding our ass off for almost three hours.''

  "Is that my fault?" Her mild sarcasm took issue with his egoistic viewpoint. She was hardly to blame for his willful urges; she'd certainly not asked him to follow her.

  "Who the hell else's?" he growled, immune to her reason­ing, tuned in to his own sense of inconvenience.

  "I told you I was leaving," she said, her declaration in­flected with emphasis. "It couldn't have come as such a sur­prise." The scent of his sweat struck her as a breeze blew in from the open door and it was overlaid with the cologne he fa­vored, a special blend distilled in the bazaar from local flora. She was reminded instantly as the fragrance struck her nostrils of other tim
es they'd been heated—by a riding of another sort. She wondered then how useful her words would be, or how ir­relevant against a man of Stefan's determination.

  His answering sigh was audible only to her, and his voice dropped in volume. "I'd love to stand out here in the middle of the mountains under a hot sun," he said very softly, "after two hours' sleep in clothes I haven't changed since yesterday, and argue the fine points with you, Countess, if I was in the mood for an argument—which I'm not."

  Her question was answered, but not without invoking her own willful disposition. "And that means?" Lisaveta slowly said, a flare of resentment responding to his princely peremptoriness and sulky dark glance—to his notion she could be or­dered about like a minion.

  "It means the discussion is over. You'll need a horse for the rest of the journey, so kindly give me your hand and I'll help you alight."

  "And if I don't wish to journey with you?" she said, nar­row-eyed and combative. For all her life she'd had charge of her actions, trained from early childhood to be responsible for her own decisions. She didn't take kindly to orders, princely or otherwise. She was too privileged herself, too wealthy, too ed­ucated to fall into a subservient role.

  Stefan glanced around briefly. His men were lounging on their ponies, but even the most objective observer wouldn't doubt their capacity for action. "Really, darling, save yourself the embarrassment of being taken bodily from this carriage."

  "Are you abducting me against my will?" Her shoulders had straightened in defiance.

  "Hell, no. I'm taking you on a more scenic route home, and don't start all that 'against my will' dialogue because we set­tled that last night. I'm only here to accommodate your…" His smile was libertine and assured and he considered saying "lust" but gentlemanly decided against it. Women normally pre­ferred a more romantic term for their carnal urges. "Wishes," he very softly finished.

  "My wishes are to continue north in this carriage."

  "And you will… eventually."

  "When will that be?" she inquired, each word chill with ici­cles.

  He seemed to be silently calculating. "Twenty days, sixteen hours, give or take a few minutes. It depends on Haci."

  "Damn you." He intended to keep her his entire leave.

  "My feelings exactly," he grimly said. "Now if you don't mind…" He reached for her.

  She inched backward into the corner of the seat. "What if I resist?"

  His eyes shut briefly. "Hell, Lise, you'd think I was going to stake you out on a mountaintop as prey for the eagles. You'll like my mountain lodge, believe me."

  "It's the coercion I take issue with."

  "Would you like a princely invitation? I thought I did that last night." And he had, with grace and courtesy and delight in his descriptions of his mountaintop aerie.

  She had no choice, short of being dragged kicking and screaming from the carriage. She was outnumbered, weapon­less and quite alone against Stefan and his men. But she could at least protest. "I want to categorically express my dissent," she said, her voice unsteady with frustration, "to this— this—"

  "Holiday? Fine. Great. Accepted. Can we go now?" He placed one foot onto the metal step, tipping the carriage with his weight. "Ready?" he said with a smile.

  "You're incorrigible and shameless and completely over­bearing," Lisaveta fumed, staring at him with bold contempt.

  "Masha keeps telling me that. Does it matter when you command a large portion of the Tsar's army?" His grin was teasing, self-assured and provoking.

  "You can't keep me captive," she intemperately said. Then she took another look at Stefan's purposeful stance and expression, noted the number of his mountain men and changed both her inflection and phrasing. "Will you really keep me captive?" she asked, struck suddenly by her absolute vul­nerability.

  "I'd prefer you as my guest." His voice was gallant once again and amiable. She was more beautiful than he remem­bered and he'd missed her terribly already in the few short hours she was gone. "I can promise you—" his words dropped to a husky whisper and he thought of the delight she brought him "—a pleasant holiday."

  "I won't go of my own free will," Lisaveta stubbornly in­sisted against the overwhelming odds facing her, against his whispered promise and her own indiscreet volition, resisting to the last, because with Nadejda in the wings and the hundreds of other women in his past and future, why should she docile­ly become one of them?

  His sigh was a well-bred exhalation of tolerance. "I didn't think you would," he said, reaching in, grasping her hand and pulling her forward as if she were weightless. "Close your eyes and think of the Empire," he cheerfully teased, lifting her out of the carriage and swinging her into his arms in a swish of silk petticoats and crisp pink linen. "You're absolved of all moral blame. Guaranteed. With my reputation I'll gladly take the role of abductor."

  "You don't care what people think, do you?" Her face was very close to his as he held her in his arms, and she didn't know if the blazing sun or Stefan's closeness was the cause of the heat racing through her senses.

  He thought for a moment of the fishbowl of scandal he'd grown up in and of all the scandals since. "Not really," he ca­sually replied, not looking at her, striding purposefully toward Cleo.

  "Do you care what people think of me?" she quietly asked.

  He stopped for a moment as he was about to lift her onto the red padded, quilted leather saddle, his expression suddenly solemn. "My servants and troopers are trustworthy. Nothing will be said."

  "And Nadejda?"

  He considered briefly how he could protect her against that moral outrage. "Masha will help," he declared, understand­ing that stronger measures might be required in countering Taneiev perturbation. "She has great influence in society. And Alexander will champion you should you need more powerful protectors." He spoke of the Tsar in intimate personal terms, pledging her the full extent of his privileged status and posi­tion. His dark eyes were grave and very near as he held her in his arms. "Would you like that in writing?"

  I'd like a license of sole possession, she inexplicably thought, so you'd be mine alone for always and ever. But then every woman he'd ever known, no doubt, reacted similarly. He was rare and beautiful and much too attractive in a million ways. He was going to be—was already—all-consuming and disas­trous to her peace of mind. But since she couldn't conceivably have what she wanted, and he wouldn't welcome the true na­ture of her possessive impulse, she discarded utterance of her irrelevant whimsy and said instead, "You can't absolve a per­son's reputation by fiat."

  "Yes, darling, you can." Swinging her up onto Cleo, he fol­lowed, then settled her across his lap. "If it's the Tsar's fiat," he said matter-of-factly. "Kiss me," he whispered, smiling down at her, his plans on track once again.

  "Not with everyone looking." Lisaveta was shy yet and in­experienced in the ways of brazen and public courtship.

  While Stefan preferred privacy for his amorous dalliance, it wasn't a requirement. "Then I'll kiss you," he said. And he did.

  They rode for half a day over treacherous, almost impass­able trails, climbing all the time, pausing occasionally on a rocky promontory to rest the horses, dismounting once to wa­ter the mountain ponies at an icy rushing stream. Portions of the trail were no more than a yard across and Lisaveta clung to Stefan through these passages, her eyes shut against the terri­fying sight of the valley, distant and small a half mile below, then a mile below. Immune to the terrors shaking Lisaveta's nerves, Stefan was relaxed, joking with his men, exchanging stories and reminiscences in their native Kurdish, brushing Lisaveta's hair occasionally with a light kiss, smiling at her, soothing her when she shivered in his arms.

  Late in the afternoon when the air had cooled considerably with the high mountain altitudes and the sun had begun its journey toward the horizon, the party reached a pine grove dappled with shadow, scented with pungent fragrance. Riding through the limpid, iridescent-shot sunlight and cool dimness, they came after some time upon a whitewashe
d lodge roofed in green glazed tile. The building was without systematic plan, all asymmetrical and sprawling with mullioned windows and dec­orative porches, vine-covered trellises and assorted bays that had the look of being added on by whim. It was perched pic­turesquely on a sloping escarpment that fell away beyond the lodge into the openness of the sky, its center portion graced by a landscaped courtyard through which a mountain stream, bordered by a carpet of flowers, ran.

  It had the charming look of a fairy tale.

  Out of its apricot-painted, vine-covered doorway a dark-haired young girl came running, cast, it seemed, for a part in the fairy tale. Her slender form, clad exotically in brilliant, luxurious Gypsy attire, was lithe as a nymph; her bare arms and legs and feet were the lush olive of her Romany heritage; her wildly curling tresses streaming out behind her shone like black silk.

  "Stash, Stash, you're home!" she cried, her great dark eyes gleaming with delight, her arms thrown open wide in wel­come.

  Lisaveta stiffened in Stefan's arms the same instant he saw Choura's expression alter as she became aware of Lisaveta. Oh Lord, he thought, I forgot. "Don't move," he murmured to Lisaveta, cognizant of Choura's temper and her skill with a knife. In a rapid staccato delivery he spoke to Haci next. The dialect was unfamiliar to Lisaveta, but his intent was clear. His voice was gruff and exasperated. As Haci swiftly urged his horse forward to intercept Choura's forward dash, Lisaveta surveyed Stefan's impassive face. As Haci scooped the Gypsy girl up in one arm and rode out of the courtyard, out of sight behind an enormous stand of rhododendrons, Choura's screams echoing above the rustle of the wind in the pines, Lisaveta noted Stefan's air of apparent detachment. No more than an inconvenience—immediately dispatched.