'Which overshadowed points one through three,' Stefan sarcastically murmured.
Nikki wasn't unrealistic. Vladimir was powerful. 'So Vladimir was the deciding factor.'
'With
'Exactly why I'm here,' Nikki cheerfully replied to the gloomy man sunk into the brown leather chair. 'First ask her to marry you.'
He was offered a slow and searching look. 'And what of Nadejda?'
'Engagements are made to be broken.' A bland smile accompanied the platitude.
'At the risk of upsetting your plans,' Stefan neutrally said, 'I should point out the contracts are rather lengthy and signed.'
'You can afford to buy her off. You own half of Georgia. And remember to be persuasive when you propose. Lise is curiously independent.'
'I'm supposed to beg her to marry me?' For someone who'd only considered marriage a final necessity, the prospect was dumbfounding. 'Maybe we should rethink this. She's probably not pregnant. She probably doesn't want to marry me if she is.'
This reasoning received a scowl from Nikki, who viewed family honor as quite apart from other of his casually held beliefs regarding male-female relationships.
'She will?' Stefan said, responding to Nikki's scowl. 'You don't know if she will,' he went on, answering his own question.
'If she's pregnant,' Nikki very quietly said, 'you're marrying her.'
'And if I don't?' Stefan as softly inquired, thin-skinned and touchy when given ultimatums.
Nikki lifted his hands in a gesture of goodwill. 'Let's not ruin a pleasant friendship. You care about her or you wouldn't be here causing a scandal at the Gagarins'.'
'I cm,' Stefan wryly admitted, 'a hell of a long way from Kars.'
'Exactly,' Nikki said.
'All right. I'll talk to her.'
'Do you want to come back with me?'
'Now?' It was evasion pure and simple. Stefan had been a bachelor too long.
'Tomorrow morning,' Nikki pointedly said, and rose to leave.
'Tomorrow morning,' Stefan agreed, and reached for the brandy bottle.
Why was it, he reflected, the subdued heat of the brandy sliding down his throat, more daunting to contemplate marriage to Lise than to Nadejda? He answered his question without a flicker of delay. Because he
On that morbid note, he refilled his glass, only to reflect on further restrictions should he marry Countess Lazaroff. She could be a demanding woman and insistent; she also had an imperious streak, due no doubt to her Kuzan blood, and she argued with him often and vehemently if she disagreed. He wasn't in the mood that evening to contemplate the more positive side of their relationship. He saw only in this marriage, so different from the kind he'd contemplated with Nadejda, the absolute end to his freedom. The thought prompted him to swallow the contents of his glass, necessitating another refill, a sequence that continued into the wee hours.
Stefan wasn't in the best humor the next morning, touched as he was with a slight headache, nor was the recipient of his call in any better spirits. Lisaveta had spent a sleepless night debating the appalling negatives in her attraction to Stefan. Both were uneasy, also, considering the circumstances of their last meeting.
Why had he come? she wondered when the footman came to fetch her from the library. Surely there was nothing to say after last night. Had she not thought she would appear cowardly to refuse his card, she would have.
He automatically rose to his feet when she entered the drawing room, but slowly, to favor his throbbing temples, and immediately apologized. 'Forgive my actions last night at Gagarin's,' he quietly said. 'I was entirely at fault.'
Since Lisaveta's sleepless night had to do with the humiliation of her unrestrained surrender to the irresistible Prince, she wasn't in an absolving mood. 'Yes,' she said with censure and disapprobation, 'you certainly were…but then, you and shameless excess are synonymous.'
Stefan opened his mouth to speak, about to remind her of the nail marks she'd left on the back of his neck, but decided against it and said instead, 'I'm extremely sorry.'
Lisaveta scrutinized him sharply, since his tone was much too contrite for the Prince Bariatinsky she knew. But perhaps he had manners after all, or perhaps a conscience. Regardless, this visit was over. 'If you came to apologize, consider it done. Good day, Prince Bariatinsky.'
'Wait.'
Her hand was on the door latch. 'Yes?' she said in stern inquiry, as a teacher might.
She was dressed in a morning gown of cucumber green, plainly cut, and she looked quite different from the seductive beauty of last evening. She looked…scholarly, he decided was the proper word. Even her chestnut hair was braided into a coronet, enhancing her puritanical image, and she wore only Militza's pearls in her ears for jewelry. Why did he find her chaste and virtuous appearance so sensual? Was it because her unornamented frock was suppressing what he knew lay beneath? Or was it her cool and distant attitude he found challenging? He wished, he decided, to take down her braids and unbutton her high-necked gown; he wished to touch her soft warm flesh and bring her to life.
'You had something more to say?' she prompted as the silence lengthened, but there was demand in her tone rather than geniality.
Restored to his purpose, he said, 'Yes… actually I do.' He found himself at a loss momentarily on how exactly to begin. How precisely, he wondered, do you politely ask, Are you pregnant, and if so, is it mine, and if so, should we marry, and if I propose, will you accept, and do you really want this or find it as embarrassing and awkward as I? Not to mention the overriding fact he still had a fiancee, who might or might not be easily disposed of, Nikki's nonchalance notwithstanding.
He didn't contemplate asking questions about love, because in the current circumstances it was irrelevant. But the thought of love did enter his mind in a strange and elusive way, because he had faced last night the solid truth of his journey north and he hadn't been able to place the impetus on lust alone. As the brandy in the bottle declined he had had to admit that assuaging his lust could have been accomplished with infinitely less effort in Aleksandropol. And he could have saved himself eight days of travel.
'Am I supposed to guess?' Lisaveta coolly asked into the new small silence, not in the right frame of mind to parry verbally with the man who'd entered her life with the abruptness of a meteor, made himself essential to her without even trying with the same casual charm he extended to all women, and then as abruptly took his leave-only to disastrously repeat his performance in an abbreviated version last night. She was bitterly resentful of his charm and her attraction to his careless seduction.
'I talked to Nikki last night,' he said in way of gentle introduction. 'And?'
Apparently she wasn't going to make this easy. He took two steps forward so they wouldn't be conversing across so great a distance and, editing the bluntness of Nikki's statements of last evening, said, 'He mentioned, or suggested… that is-he's aware we spent some time together before you arrived in Saint Petersburg.'
He had gone home from the Yacht Club soon after sunrise and bathed and breakfasted. An early-morning ride had helped marginally to clear his head and he'd come directly to the Kuzan palace afterward, as some men ascend the scaffold briskly in order to speed the inevitable. His hair was still damp from the sea mist that lay over Saint Petersburg in the mornings.
Lisaveta knew he'd been out riding, dressed as he was. And she took issue with the even tenor of his life.
