Golden Paradise

naivete of her request but by her utter candor. 'Gladly,' he replied, his emotions evident in his voice, 'with intemperate feeling and pleasure.'

When her face lighted up at his response, her joy and happiness immediately apparent, a warmth of unprecedented feeling washed over him. Gently lifting her face to his, he said very, very softly, 'I plight you my love on this mountaintop,' pledging surety to her and with that pledge, unknown to Lisaveta, offering his love for the first time in his life.

He lifted her in his arms then, as though his patience had a finite limit, and carried her out of his study and up the small curved staircase. The polished wooden railing resembled a sinuous grapevine, curling upward as it would in nature, minutely detailed with beautifully carved tendrils, leaves and fruit; the treads were covered in lush grass-green carpet, silken and luminous. So close to nature were these creations of man she almost expected to gaze up and see stars in the sky.

'Where are the stars?' she playfully murmured.

As if he read her mind, as if they were so completely in harmony he knew what she was thinking, he answered, 'In ray room.'

Past the top of the vine-draped stairs, at the end of a narrow hallway hung with candlelit icons and illuminated paintings reminiscent of glittering jewels, Stefan pushed open double wooden doors, hinged and ornamented with brass serpentine animal forms, and stepped into a room he'd known since childhood.

Toys were stacked on shelves and tabletops; a wooden rocking horse painted dapple gray in primitive craft style with large staring eyes and an unusual smile gazed at them from a window embrasure; a special glass case held massed armies of miniature soldiers. The polished wood floor was covered with fur rugs, as was the plain four-poster bed, although the elaborately embroidered, lace-trimmed white pillow covers were an incongruous sight in this young boy's room.

The dormer windows were curtained in plain blue linen, made less plain by the entwined Bariatinsky-Orbeliani family crests woven in gold thread and picked out with sapphire jewels. While austere in design, Stefan's room spoke eloquently of his family's enormous wealth, from the sable rugs to the cabochon emeralds in his rocking horse's eyes.

And the stars.

When he pointed up with a smile so she'd look, Lisaveta saw a lapis lazuli arched ceiling set with diamond stars.

'You have a fortune in your ceiling,' she couldn't help but say. Even though her mother's family was in the exclusive ranks of the Empire's wealthiest and the Lazaroffs were far from paupers, she'd never seen anything like the lavishness of Stefan's households.

'My mama's Persian background,' Stefan explained. 'The Orbelianis had a different standard of wealth than the rest of the world.' He didn't reply with either apology or pretension but simply made a statement of fact. 'I wanted to see the stars at night when I went to sleep, I told Mama when I was very young and this lodge was being built.'

'Does Choura like your diamond stars?' She couldn't restrain her remark although she'd valiantly suppressed it twice before it came tumbling out. Her jealousy was stridently real and Choura was wildly beautiful by anyone's standards, an untamed dazzling enchantress.

'I haven't brought her here.' He'd never brought any woman to this room. It was exclusively his in a selfish introverted way. He'd never wanted to share his past or his feelings-all openly visible here in his mementos and childhood toys. He'd preserved the shelter of this room intact against the personal disasters that had decimated his family. His happiest memories of childhood were inventoried and catalogued by each particle and belonging in this room, and until today he'd never wanted to expose those intimacies to anyone.

Lisaveta's gaze was skeptical.

'Her room was on the main floor facing the courtyard,' he matter-of-factly said, secure in the truth. 'I'll show you if you-'

'No,' she said. 'No, don't show me.' The thought of Stefan and… her… in any room made her feel green-eyed with resentment. 'So she never saw this?' It wasn't that she didn't believe him, only that she found it hard to believe.

Stefan set her down carefully in an oversize chair upholstered in royal blue damascene, squatted down in front of her so their eyes were level and said, this man who was known to prize his personal privacy, 'Ask me everything and then you'll be content.'

'Don't patronize me, Stefan.'

'I'll answer honestly.' And that, too, was a startling admission from Stefan, who by virtue of necessity in the sheer number of his amorous liaisons considered evasion an essential.

Lisaveta sighed, her expression rueful, her golden eyes innocent as a young girl's. 'I'm sorry. Do you think me excessively possessive?'

'I think you've brought me unmitigated joy the week past is what I think.' He grinned. 'And I'm in no position to be passing judgment on character.'

She smiled back, charmed by both his admissions. 'True,' she unabashedly said, happily accepting both his statements. 'Why didn't she see this?' she asked then, because she wanted the detail behind his action, because she wanted the pleasure and luxury of hearing he hadn't cared for Choura as much as he did for her.

'I didn't say she didn't see this. She may have when I was gone. None of the doors are locked.'

'Why?'

'Why aren't they locked?' A lifetime of evasion wasn't so easily jettisoned.

Lisaveta gazed at him with mock severity.

'It was my room,' he said bluntly. 'I didn't care to bring her here.'

'Why?'

He shrugged. 'I don't know.' His reasons were not so easily disentangled from the muddle of his past. It had been a matter of survival, perhaps, for a man who'd seen his world destroyed while very young. His dark eyes held hers for a moment. 'Introspection is a new concept for me, dushka. I'm sorry,' he said, apologizing for the inadequacy of his answer. 'It didn't seem right. Is that sufficient?'

'I'm sorry,' she said, recognizing the effort he'd made in answering, 'for being so insistent. It's as though I've no control over my jealousy.'

'We're well matched then, sweetheart, because I must keep you by me… regardless…' He left the sentence unfinished, for each knew the difficulties evaded to bring them here together.

His shoulders seemed very wide only inches below her eye level, the breadth of his chest like a solid wall before her. His black eyes beneath his heavy brows were like a force of nature, so vibrant and intense was his glance. He was dynamic power and energy and a magnetic beauty she could no more relinquish than the earth could stop turning on its axis. With a curious finality she said, 'And I want you selfishly for myself alone.'

His voice was intense and gruff. 'We're agreed then.' She looked the most perfect woman he'd ever seen, rosy-cheeked, her golden eyes bright with spirit and passion, her slender form dwarfed by the custom-built chair made to suit his own enormous frame. Her traveling suit blended perfectly with the royal blue of the chair as if she'd planned her wardrobe for the eventuality of this moment. The dusty-rose linen, trimmed with white organdy collar and cuffs, buttoned in steel-gray mother-of-pearl, dramatized both her femininity and warmth and he wanted her in his bed with an urgency he'd never experienced before.

'I can't wait any longer,' he said, the way a young boy might. 'Have I answered everything now?' Anyone knowing Stefan would have been shocked at his grave diffidence. He was not a humble man.

'Have I told you how happy you make me?' Lisaveta replied, astonished at the exhilarating bliss she felt in his presence.

'And I can make you happier,' he murmured, his smile roguish and familiar, his mood restored. Adoring women were a constant in his life. He was back on familiar ground.

'Arrogant man,' she whispered.

'But you need me,' he whispered back, reaching for the buttons on her jacket.

She stopped his hand. 'We need each other.' She waited with an arrogance matching his own.

'Yes,' he said, engulfing the hand that stayed him but holding it gently in his warm palm. 'We do.'

They made love right there in the chair because it was most convenient for their unbridled passion. The second time, when their frantic need had diminished slightly so they needn't so selfishly take from each other, they tested