Golden Paradise

mademoiselle,' he said in a parody of good manners, but his voice was tinged with surliness, like a restive boy called to order.

'You're sulking,' she declared, her tone suddenly teasing, because he was moody and scowling, his large frame sprawled against the pink feminine sofa like some great dark thundercloud.

'I don't sulk,' he said with unmistakable sulkiness.

'You can't always have your own way,' she said, thinking how very beautiful he was even when he was scowling.

'But I always have,' he replied with neither apology nor ostentation. He smiled then, because she was studying him as though he were an archaeological oddity. 'I recommend it.'

'What happens when you don't have your way?'

He shrugged rather than answer her, for he wished to avoid further argument. 'Why so polemical, dushka,' he said instead. 'There are pleasanter ways to pass the time.'

'Making love, you mean.'

'Precisely.'

'And if I don't wish to?'

'Come, darling,' he murmured, 'you always wish to.'

'I don't right now.'

He surveyed her for a moment as she had so recently him, and then said mildly, 'If you take your dress off, I'll marry you.' His remark was facetious and blase and remarkably genuine.

'According to Nikki,' she reminded him, 'you'll marry me whether I take my dress off or not.'

'Hmm,' he said.

'Yes, exactly.' Her smugness was genial, not malicious.

Another short silence and then he said, 'How emphatic are you about your prerogatives?' He was smiling now with a buoyant cheer that made him even more appealing, and she was suddenly jealous of all the women who'd seen that particular smile. It was an intimate smile of exceptional grace and charm, like a promise of personal fulfillment.

'About as emphatic as you are about yours.'

'Hmm,' he said again. Her honesty was always demonstrably plain.

'Is this difficult, this style of courtship in which a woman doesn't fall immediately panting into your arms?' Her golden eyes were amused.

' 'Difficult' wouldn't be my choice of word. I'd say time-consuming,' he drawled, his grin boyish. 'But then I've still a day and a half before I have to go back.'

Fleeting surprise showed on her face. 'Back?'

'To Kars, of course. You didn't think the war was over?'

'Are you going to win?' she asked in an intemperate rush of words, fearful suddenly she might lose him after all, not to Nadejda or a multitude of other women but to something far worse. It altered her perspective instantaneously and made his presence in Saint Petersburg treasured.

'Of course,' he replied with his usual expansive confidence. 'I always do.'

'The undefeated Prince Bariatinsky,' she said softly. He was heralded not only as the youngest commander in the Tsar's army but as the only undefeated general in Russian history.

'At your service, mademoiselle…' Out of uniform he looked vulnerable suddenly, not a symbol of the Tsar's Empire or the strength of Russia's army but simply a man, who was smiling at her and teasing her. A man who'd come a great distance and quite plainly wanted her. A man she loved beyond reason or sanity. 'You will be careful, won't you?' Lisaveta said gravely, her mood transformed by a stabbing reassertion of fear.

'Darling,' Stefan said, his smile intact, untouched by her anxiety, 'you survive by not being careful. Don't worry about me.'

She attempted an answering smile of reassurance but a tiny shiver ran down her spine as if some unseen specter had tapped her on the shoulder.

'Are you finished now?' he asked. She looked at him blankly.

'Talking,' he said. 'I've only a day and a half.' His grin struck away her last vestiges of apprehension.

'Some men subscribe to a touch more gallantry,' she mockingly chastised.

'They probably have more time than I,' he retorted, un-chastised and smiling still.

'Is that my cue to fall willing into your arms?' A coy and teasing response.

'I'd like that.' And while his dark eyes were amused, his voice was suddenly serious. 'You own my heart, dushka,' he added very softly, acknowledging at last the feelings he'd fought so long, the feelings that had taken him from Kars. 'And I'm helplessly in love.'

Tears welled in her eyes and she swallowed once before answering. 'Oh, Stepka,' Lisaveta whispered, reaching out to touch his hand, 'what are we going to do?'

'I'm marrying you,' he said simply, as though he'd understood that eventuality always and not only in the last few revealing moments, and then he sighed a little because he could ready feel the burden of the past engulf him. All the bitter memories came rushing back, all the whispers ignored and uncertainties felt, the malice and hurt surrounding his parents' grand passion recalled as if it were yesterday. And now he was doing what he'd sworn never to do; he was letting love for a woman compromise his future plans.

Consciously shaking away his reservations, he drew Lisaveta into the curve of his arms, the feel of her warmth next to him mitigating the jarring foreboding. 'And you're marrying me,' he whispered, her soft braids like silk under his chin. 'Do you like the sound of that as much as I?'

'We shouldn't,' she murmured, distraught. 'I shouldn't. It's asking too much of you.' She understood he was relinquishing all his carefully wrought plans, the ones so painstakingly arranged to overcome the shadow of his father's disgrace, the ones he'd considered a logical solution to the pain of his own unorthodox childhood. He was risking, too, his own illustrious career if Prince Taneiev were vengeful. Men had fallen from favor with the Tsar for smaller infractions. And since Alexander was insulated from the world, his information often censored and altered in the political cauldron of court intrigue, there was never any certainty one's case would be presented objectively.

'Nonsense,' Stefan said, 'everything can be resolved.' A striking statement from a man who'd vowed never to love a woman so madly that it affected his life or career.

'You don't have to marry me,' Lisaveta quietly declared.

'But I wish to, dushka, and besides,' he said, drawing away so he could look at her, a faint grin lifting the corners of his mouth, 'Nikki will kill me if I don't.'

'Vladimir Taneiev might kill you if you do.' No levity infused her remark.

'True. However,' Stefan briskly went on, 'I understand his greed outstrips his ethics. I'll offer him large sums of money.'

'Could I help?' she said then. 'I could at least do that.'

He looked at her in mild astonishment because he'd never had a woman offer to pay his way. 'You were raised differently,' he said in murmured wonder, 'but thank you, no. I've plenty.' An understatement from the heir to two family fortunes that individually could have run the Empire for a decade. 'And now that I've offered you my name, my wealth, my future, do you think you could say yes out of consideration for my feelings?' The laughter in his eyes reminded her of a young boy intent on play.

'Oh, yes,' she said then, young-girl breathless with suffocating happiness. 'Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes…' she whispered, feeling a joy so profound she trembled. She loved him beyond the normal scope of emotion, she loved him with an incoherent, jubilant elation that stacked pleasure upon pleasure to the rooftop of the world.

She had made her objection, offered him a chance to reconsider his proposal out of decency and a kindly courtesy. He didn't have to marry her because Nikki was insisting or because of the possibility she carried his child. She knew, too, how much his previous plans for marriage were based on the sadnesses in his past.

But when she'd made those required objections and he'd refused them all in his teasing, smiling way, she'd allowed the full measure of her happiness to invade her heart, so she felt now a rosy warm magic, as though she could touch the whole world and make it smile with her. She couldn't have accepted him had he been coerced or reluctant. She was too prideful herself to take a husband who didn't love her immensely. And he did, it was plain. Beyond his teasing and irony, it was clear he loved her so much he'd come across Russia for her and would marry