Javad Khan was very tall, and the straight fall of his silk robes accentuated his height. He gazed down at her for a long moment. 'Then you'll need an escort,' he said into the quiet of the room. 'And my best horses.' He smiled. 'And Allah's prayers.'
Lisaveta grinned back, relieved and strangely elated. There was pleasure in taking action. 'Thank you,' she said.
His dark eyes beneath his white brows were amused. She'd always been a headstrong young girl, but maybe that was a portion of her charm. 'You'll need some peasant clothes,' he continued, his own grin matching hers. 'If you look like that-' he indicated her gaily flowered summer frock and dainty blue slippers '-you'll be captured two miles down the road… for someone else's harem.'
Chapter One
Hell would have been an improvement.
There was not a tree in sight, not a blade of grass, just a relentlessly barren plateau too close to the sun and too high for rain.
Prince Stefan Bariatinsky was hot. He was beyond hot. He was bone weary, sweating hot, exhausted hot.
And he'd been swearing under his breath for the last half mile.
'Are you going to make it?' Haci, his lieutenant, asked.
'Hell, no. I want a big funeral.' Stefan smiled, mitigating the harsh severity of his face, which was swarthy by birth and further bronzed by years of soldiering for the Tsar. Although he had his tunic unbuttoned so that it hung open, his heavily muscled chest was sleek with sweat beneath the silver-trimmed uniform, and his leather riding breeches felt slippery against his skin. 'With Gypsy girls to dance over my bier,' he added with a facetious lift of his black brows.
Not that Stefan had ever restricted himself to Gypsy girls. He was in fact, next to the Tsar, the most feted man in the Empire, adored by a great variety of women, and not just for his rank and wealth.
He was the most fearless officer in the Empire.
And handsome as sin.
Too handsome, men said, watching their wives' eyes dwell on him.
Too handsome, jealous young ladies said, watching him flirt with a rival.
Too handsome, like his father, older wags remarked, remembering the scandalous ways of the elder Prince.
But impetuously charming, they all agreed.
'It's not much farther,' Haci pointed out, for forty of the fifty miles from Kars to Aleksandropol were now behind them. 'And in a few days you'll be at the lodge, with Choura dancing on your-well-wherever,' he finished with a grin.
Stefan's Gypsy lover was waiting for him at his mountain retreat and she was capable of taking one's mind off any mundane problems. 'That thought,' Stefan returned, his mouth quirked in a smile, 'might just keep me alive until Aleksandropol.'
'You only have to last ten miles.'
'Don't say 'only.' Right now it seems the end of the earth.' Stefan shifted slightly in his saddle, flexing his broad shoulders in an attempt to ease the discomfort of aching muscles and fatigue. It was a hundred and two degrees, and he was so covered with dust that the sweat trickling down his body was leaving paths. His formerly white Chevalier Gardes uniform was now an indistinguishable color that would have been a court martial offense on the parade ground. But he and his personal bodyguard of Kurdish irregulars were riding north toward Tiflis, capitol city of Georgia, for a badly needed furlough after the three-month siege of Kars. Their first night's stop in Aleksandropol would at least afford him the luxury of a bath, food and a woman-in that exact order, his libido tempered by personal demands for comfort first.
The war in the east had ground to a standstill in the blazing heat of July, both Russians and Turks content with maintaining an attitude of mutual surveillance. Both sides in this war- begun by the Tsar in April to save the Christian minorities in the Ottoman Empire from further massacres-were now bringing up reinforcements before resuming the campaign.
Meanwhile the Russian siege of Kars, Turkey's great fortress on its eastern border, had been abandoned and the Russian troops were retiring toward Aleksandropol for some desperately needed rest.
As the Tsar's youngest and best general, Stefan knew the Russians had begun the campaign with too few men, and after Tergukasoff's defeat at Zevin they couldn't afford another disaster. It was vital the troops were allowed some rest before hostilities were resumed.
When the war had begun in April, Kars in Eastern Turkey had been one of three main positions of the Turkish line on their border with Georgian Russia. Russian troops had taken one fortress and garrisoned it, but Kars had cost thousands of lives in vain assaults. The Chiefs of Staff couldn't agree on strategy. Coordination was a nightmare, since whenever reinforcements should have been called up or an assault planned, competing generals fought for control. Stefan's cavalry corps was the only unit to have continued success but at the cost, often, of more men than he could afford to lose… to staff blunders. And even his successes were viewed at times with jealousy.
Stefan had studied military history along with the more recent campaigns and had devised his own tactics to defeat the impregnability of earthworks defended by magazine rifles. To his men he was both a leader and a friend. 'Come,' he would say, not 'Go,' and he always explained the situation to them and told them what to do. His men knew he wouldn't ask them to do anything he couldn't do himself. He was viewed as unorthodox in his tactics and to many on the staff as a potential danger with his victories mounting.
But Stefan was weary of the bickering and rivalry among the general staff when he knew that cooperation was needed to win this war-cooperation and more men, sufficient supplies and improved armaments. Much to the displeasure of some of those in the High Command, Stefan had equipped his own men with captured Winchester rifles, when most of the Russian army was still equipped with antiquated Krenek rifles.
He sighed at the inequities and the pettinesses that were costing them thousands of lives. He needed this furlough to forget for a few weeks the awfulness of war and to recharge himself for the coming offensive.
The Turks, too, spy reports indicated, were licking their wounds.
After three months, very little progress had been made. Russia had won some battles. The Turkish army had dug in and built formidable entrenchments and had won some battles by rebuffing Russian advances.
But now Russia was stalled on their march west toward the Dardanelles. And Kars, the most modern fortification in the Turkish eastern border, had held fast against Russian attack.
For Turkey, this was a Holy War for Allah.
For Russia, a crusade to save oppressed Christians in the Ottoman Empire.
The gods for whom all the thousands of soldiers were dying hadn't deigned to give any signs.
Unless the blazing sun was their way of calling a temporary truce.
'Bazhis,' Haci muttered suddenly and sharply.
Stefan turned in surprise, because they were now very near Aleksandropol and the marauding Turkish bands generally kept their distance from the cities. But when he followed the sweep of Haci's arm he saw them through the shimmering waves of heat. Fewer than his troop of thirty, he decided, quickly counting. Good. His next thought was accompanied by a twinge of unmilitary annoyance. Damn, there went his imminent prospect of a bath.
Despite his personal wishes, Stefan applied spurs to his black charger. With Haci at his side, they set off in pursuit, followed by his colorful bodyguard, each man the best young warrior of his tribe. All were sons of Sheikhs, their different tribal affiliations evident in the variety of their dress: the red-and-white turban of the Barzani; the green sash of the Soyid; the Herki's crimson and the Zibari's blue flowing robe; each man's horse trappings and brilliant garments streaming behind as they galloped across the plains.
Drawing his rifle from the cantle scabbard behind him as the distance between his men and the Bazhis diminished, Stefan sighted on one of the fleeing bandits. As he'd suspected, the marauders had realized they were
