Golden Paradise

sputtering frustration. 'And if you think for a minute,' she added, trying to squirm out of his steely grasp, 'that I'm going to quietly submit to your goddamn-' her voice was rising now because he was beginning to smile '-suzerainty like some docile Gypsy girl-'

He laughed. Docile was the last word he would have chosen to describe Choura.

His laugh only further ignited Lisaveta's indignation. 'I suppose a man who kept five Persian houris for his exclusive enjoyment at Kokand,' she snapped, 'finds this all amusing. But I refuse to be your entertainment!'

Good God, he thought, how far had that story traveled. But he only said in a calm tone, 'You needn't get agitated. Accept my apologies for Choura. She was… er… an oversight. I'll straighten everything out and be back shortly.'

'An oversights Her voice was almost a whisper. 'Like a forgotten package, you mean?' Her golden eyes were the color of the sky before a thunderstorm. 'Or an inconvenience?'

'Lord, Lise, relax. There's an explanation. I'll straighten things out.'

'Haven't you been listening to anything I said?' Lisaveta cried. 'I don't want everything straightened out, I don't want you to continue talking to me in that serenely undisturbed tone as though you were taking confession, and I do not wish to be here!' Each word was punctuated with a blow to his chest.

Stefan's troopers regarded Lisaveta's vehemence with varying degrees of amusement. They all viewed women as diversions to a warrior's life, and from appearances their Prince was going to be highly diverted when he took the Countess to bed.

At the moment, however, Stefan knew he had to deal with Choura first, and arguing with Lisaveta wasn't accomplishing any useful purpose. 'Do I have to have you tied up?' he inquired in the placid tone that grated so on Lisaveta's nerves.

Her eyes opened wide in aghast speculation. He wouldn't, would he? She realized he was closely related to these Kurdish troopers with their wild and barbaric looks. He lived at times in their way under a warrior code, but did he actually mean 'tied up' when he said it in that quiet tone? And if he did-the small unpleasant thought surfaced-for what purpose? 'Tied up?' she blurted out, her breath unconsciously in abeyance, anticipating his answer.

'Will you accompany Nakun into the house or do you have to be restrained?' He could have been asking her if she preferred a lemon ice or champagne during a set change at a bail, for all the emotion in his voice.

Lisaveta glanced for a swift moment at the swarthy native tribesman dressed in black turban, tunic and full-cut trousers, standing patiently in his soft Asiatic boots at Stefan's side, waiting further orders. She rapidly took in the array of his weaponry: crossed bandoliers; saber belt and pistol holster; the shined and oiled new Winchester taken as booty from a dead Turk slung across his back; the matching set of silver-engraved daggers tucked into his belt. With the pragmatic deduction of an intelligent woman she murmured, 'You needn't tie me.'

'Splendid,' Stefan cheerfully said, as though no one had been discussing bodily restraint, as if the topic of conversation were banal and unthreatening, as if the word splendid fitted this horrendous situation at all.

'I'll 'splendid' you,' Lisaveta hissed, as Stefan lowered her into Nakun's arms, 'just as soon as I get the chance.'

Stefan's smile was wolfish. 'In that case, I won't keep you waiting long.' He touched her cheek with a caressing fingertip. 'Darling…' But his voice when he spoke to Nakun the next moment was coolly commanding. 'Lock the door,' he said, 'in my study, when you leave.'

Chapter Seven

The elaborate clock in the study depicting tides and changing constellations was exquisite, but its hands moved annoyingly slowly. At frequent intervals, Lisaveta would interrupt her angry pacing to check its progress and find no more than a minute had passed since she'd last looked. She'd already admired the magnificent view from the expanse of windows lining one wall, noted the craggy mountain landscape and snowcapped peaks in all their awesome splendor, stood transfixed while an eagle swooped in sweeping arabesques across the emptiness of space between her mountain and those distant ones and understood with absolute certainty she could never find her way down the craggy peaks and survive. Unlike the free-flying eagle, she was Stefan's captive.

After that sobering observation she'd sat down abruptly, her eyes unfocused on the panoramic grandeur of blue sky and rugged mountaintops, her mind attempting to deal with the finality of her position. When no ready answer materialized in the chaos of her mind, when no escape seemed possible from this mountain aerie, she'd resumed her pacing again, her rapid strides as agitated as her thoughts.

Despite Stefan's imposing palace and polished manners, he was, beneath his civilized veneer, as much a native warrior as his men. He looked the same: hawklike, swarthy, bristling with weapons. She recalled her first sight of him, when she'd thought she'd been captured by another savage tribesman. Only his Chevalier Gardes uniform had distinguished him from his cohorts that day near Kars. And while she'd learned much of the subtlety and nuance of his charismatic personality in their days together, his tribesmen, too, might be as complex and charming.

She was disturbed and perplexed.

She was indecisive about her unsubtle and profound attraction to Stefan.

She was a bit fearful, too, so far removed from the world on this remote mountaintop.

But she was-beneath and beyond and above the confusion of her feelings-primarily angry.

That fact was startlingly clear when Stefan walked into the room twenty minutes later.

A rose jade figurine of a Tang emperor's celebrated concubine, a special favorite of Stefan's for the cutwork in her trailing gown, narrowly missed his head as he ducked out of the way. The jade depiction of Li Shi Mia thrown at him was followed rapidly by his inkwell, several of his malachite paperweights, and before he could bob and weave across the distance separating them and wrench a silver wine ewer from Lisaveta's grasp, he'd lost the crystal container to his Cellini inkwell and two of his animal-shaped paperweights.

He wondered if perhaps Choura's anger had been easier to deal with. She'd been pacified by a handsome gift of roubles, a promise to send her two racers from his stables and a soothing combination of lies and compliments. When she was smiling once again, he'd had to carefully decline her offer to join a menage a trois in his bed. 'Perhaps some other time,' he'd said politely.

And with that promise, her money and two prime horses, she was content. She would be escorted by some of his men to the nearest village, from which she'd find her own way home. Her smile when she'd left had been satisfied and her parting remark perhaps more prophetic than he wished.

'She won't be as easily bought off, Stash, my beauty,' she'd said, wrapped in an emerald green shawl to match the jewels in her ears. She blew him a kiss and smiled. 'I wish you luck.'

He could use a little now, he thought, tightly holding both Lisaveta's hands and trying to sidestep her kicking feet. 'Damn you, Stefan, I won't be treated like this,' she panted, out of breath from her struggles. 'I'm… not… some… Gypsy girl… you can buy… for a few roubles… and spirit away to your… mountain lodge.'

'Fifty thousand,' he said, moving slightly to one side to avoid her slippered foot.

'Fifty thousand!' she exclaimed, ceasing her combat for a moment to digest the enormity of Choura's price. 'Are you mad? The Emir of Erzurum never paid over twenty thousand for the very best Circassian women.'

Taking advantage of her momentary pause, he quickly said, 'I did it for you. She's gone.'

'Why?' It was a small explosive exhalation of sound as spontaneous as her astonishment.

He didn't know, so he couldn't answer, but a response was required to her question so he evasively said, 'I forgot she was here. I've been gone for three months.' He shrugged then the way he often did when she pressed him to gauge his feelings, and added one of those platitudinous lies that often served as satisfactory conclusion to an evasion. 'She was probably ready to go anyway. Choura dislikes solitude.'

'And yet,' Lisaveta murmured, 'she waited here for three months?' Jealousy underlay her remark, overwhelmed her like a gale at ten thousand feet in these mountains, for she knew very well why a woman who