Golden Paradise

was confident.

The view was superb from the terrace, the sun pleasantly shaded by a rose trellis, the wind negligible, a samovar of great beauty the centerpiece of a magnificently arrayed tea table, when Lisaveta joined the party of three some twenty minutes later.

Teatime turned out to be interesting. It was also enlightening.

Stefan, it seemed, had known Nadejda only three days before he proposed.

Lisaveta had never met a true society miss.

Aunt Militza had met one too many and intended doing her best to see that Nadejda didn't enter her family permanently, though she was wise enough to keep her plans to herself.

'Were you raped, my dear?' Aunt Militza pleasantly inquired after the weather and state of the roads and progress of the war had been exhausted as topics of conversation. She offered Lisaveta a plate of pastel-frosted petits fours as though she were asking a perfectly mundane question. At the stunned look on Lisaveta's face, Aunt Militza pointedly added, 'I mean by the Bazhis, of course.'

Stefan choked as unobtrusively as possible on his mouthful of pate and glared at his aunt. Nadejda hardly needed any prompting to anger. She'd already been rude to Lisaveta a dozen times. Swallowing quickly, he said, 'Rest easy, Auntie, our troop arrived in time.'

'How fortuitous,' Militza replied, smiling as if the sun had finally broken through after a month of torrential storms. 'Isn't that fortuitous?' she repeated, turning toward Nadejda, her smile intact.

'Stefan is known for his good fortune,' Nadejda retorted, her lips pursed, her eyes cold enough to chill the equator.

But her words were the truth. He was, in fact, looked upon by superstitious people as leading a charmed life. Many of the soldiers in the Tsar's army touched Stefan for luck, viewing him as a pagan deity of sorts. He'd never been wounded, never harmed in all the years of leading his troops into battle, although he was always conspicuously in the lead of his cavalry, dressed not in battlefield uniform but in the striking white dress uniform of the Chevalier Gardes. His men would follow him anywhere, and on more than one occasion his bold charges had changed the course of battle.

'As is our entire family,' Stefan's aunt cheerfully declared. 'Although Lisaveta must have a guardian angel, too, traveling alone in a war zone. Why ever were you out there?'

Lisaveta explained in some detail why she'd been in Karakilisa and why she'd left so precipitously.

'A harem?' Aunt Militza said, obviously fascinated. 'How exciting.'

'Only from a distance,' Lisaveta plainly replied, 'I assure you.'

'How disgusting,' Nadejda said, her inflection managing to include Lisaveta in her assessment.

'And Hafiz?' Stefan's aunt went on as though Nadejda hadn't spoken. 'He's one of my favorite poets. You must see Stefan's collection.'

'I haven't seen it, Stefan,' Nadejda pouted. 'Why haven't you shown it to me?'

'You wouldn't like it, Nadejda,' Militza said bluntly. Turning back to Lisaveta, she asked, 'Don't you think Hafiz compares favorably with Ovid?'

'I think, Stefan, that if you have a collection you favor, I should know of it,' Nadejda declared peevishly, arresting the consumption of her sixth frosted cake to state her annoyance. 'At Madame Lebsky's Academy I won a first prize for poetry. Madame Lebsky said she'd never heard a better iambic pentameter.'

Stefan was briefly at a loss since conversations about his collection of erotica were not usual in mixed company at tea.

He frowned at his aunt over his fiancee's blond head. Nadejda, momentarily distracted by the recalled beauty of her verse, was inwardly focused, her eyes half-closed in contemplation.

Stefan's aunt only smiled at him warmly as though she were beyond reproach.

'Darling,' Nadejda said, her resentment forgotten with the memory of her cleverness in poetry, 'would you like to hear my prize-winning poem?'

There was only one suitable answer, he knew, and he gave it.

They were instantly regaled with breathy drama and coy smiles to a rhyming description of a lake at sunset. Nadejda's metaphors were sugary, her similes strangely food focused. Long moments of heavy-handed rhyme later, Stefan worried he'd ever be able to enjoy a sunset again without visualizing caramel syrup dripping over the horizon.

Polite applause followed the poem's conclusion, however, a pleased preening smile graced Nadejda's flawless face, and an insidious sinking feeling settled in Stefan's stomach. He'd only squired his fiancee to receptions and balls the week he was on leave in Saint Petersburg, and their conversations had been interrupted and minimal in such circumstances. Was she truly so vacuous?

'Thank you, Nadejda,' Militza said dismissively, although her tone was scrupulously cordial. 'Stefan, why don't you take Nadejda for a stroll so that Lisaveta and I won't bother you with our discussion of Ovid.'

Militza's suggestions were always delivered as well-mannered commands, but Stefan balked this time, his temper and patience on edge in his unaccustomed role of chivalrous fiance to a woman who wrote such dreadful pedestrian poetry. 'The Countess Lazaroff and I have some business to discuss, I'm afraid,' he said. 'She requires some bank drafts for her journey home. If you'll excuse us until dinner.' He rose abruptly in no frame of mind to be further thwarted by his aunt or any female.

He needn't have concerned himself with his aunt's response. She was delighted to let her nephew go off with his new lover on whatever flimsy pretext he chose, and her smile was beatific when she gazed up at him towering above her. 'By all means, Stefan, the Countess must be assured of her financial resources after having been left destitute on the steppes. Should we put dinner off until ten?'

Stefan's emphatic 'Yes' and Lisaveta's 'No' clashed starkly.

'My financial affairs won't be difficult to arrange,' Lisaveta explained with a calm she was far from feeling. 'I'm sure a banker in Tiflis will accommodate my needs. And if my name isn't recognized, either Papa's or cousin Nikki's will be sufficient.' Lisaveta refused to fall into any of Stefan's plans. If he couldn't abide his fiancee's company, she wasn't going to be a convenient alternative, and if he thought he could snap his fingers and have her follow him, he had a lesson to learn. 'Thank you, Stefan,' she said with serene sweetness, 'but your concern is unnecessary,' and she reached for her teacup.

His arm shot out across his aunt's chair, his fingers closing around Lisaveta's wrist with her fingers just short of her teacup. 'No reason, mademoiselle, to involve Nikki when my banker is amenable. And you forget,' he said, his voice softly emphatic as he pulled her to her feet, took the lace napkin from her hand and placed it on the table, 'your father's papers, which Haci saved from the Bazhis, need your attention.'

She imagined he would prefer not involving Nikki, and as far as papers… He was thoroughly without scruple. There were no papers. For a moment Lisaveta considered exposing him before his rancorous fiancee. It would serve him right. She would simply deny the fictitious papers in embarrassing detail, but on second thought, he was offering her escape along with his own, and it didn't make much sense to suffer here over tea when freedom beckoned.

'I'm sure it won't take more than a few hours to sort them all and make certain nothing important is missing,' he said, smiling, conscious she was acquiescing. 'Should we say dinner at ten?' He waited, confident and assured, his intense dark eyes offering her… pleasure.

She waited perhaps five seconds before replying, because his assurance annoyed her. 'Thank you,' she finally said. 'I'd like to see Papa's reports, but we needn't put off dinner.' She turned to Aunt Militza. 'Eight will be fine.'

Aunt Militza conceded equal points to the two protagonists. How interesting the Countess would be for Stefan. He was familiar only with acquiescence and command. Countess Lazaroff apparently was, as well. 'Eight it is,' she said. 'Now run along. I'm sure Nadejda and I would be bored to tears with reports.'

As Stefan and Lisaveta left the terrace Nadejda was saying, 'Stefan must show me his collection for it will be mine, too, very soon, and poetry is such a love.'

'You are completely unscrupulous,' Lisaveta said irritably, trying to shake his hand from her wrist. Stefan had guided her across the terrace and through the glass doors into the palace with what appeared a polite courtesy, but his grip was steel hard and he wouldn't be dislodged. 'Let go of me!' Lisaveta snapped, struggling to wrench free. 'You're unprincipled… selfish… you're-'