her even in Vladimir Taneiev's shadow.
'I'll make you happy, Stepka,' she whispered, her face alight with love, 'always.'
And he knew with that certainty reserved for those rare and perfect unions, she would. He'd searched for her, blase and unknowing, too long to doubt it.
He knew it with that blinding flash of mystic revelation.
With a Zoroastrian belief like burning flame.
With a shaman magic-he knew it.
He smiled, thinking of an additional intuitive reason more: she said 'Stepka' with the exact inflection that his father had, and in all the world he'd found someone to love again. Or perhaps she had found him, he thought, considering how they'd met.
'And I'll try, little mother,' he murmured, 'to make you
Her eyes showed a small startled reflex and she said very softly, 'It's a very new thought…'
'The way it works, darling,' he said, his smile so close she could feel its warmth, 'you'll have time to get used to the idea.'
He kissed her then, and she him, with a giddy smiling kiss that tasted of love and delight and wonder. They had both found the illusive prize of life, the spilled-over love chalice of everyone's quest, the insupportable marvel of requited, deep and perfect love…and it seeped like blissful sunshine into every corner of their mind.
Their kiss in the normal sequence of events turned in time from sunshine into licking flame, and it was then Stefan gathered Lisaveta into his arms with effortless strength, rose from the sofa with a fluid grace and began walking toward the doors leading into the hallway. As if already mated in mind and spirit, he said, 'I'm taking you to my palace,' before she could ask her intended question.
Chapter Fourteen
But Nikki was waiting in the corridor, seated on a bargello-upholstered Venetian chair directly facing the drawing room doors.
'Chaperoning, are you?' Stefan mildly inquired, his tone benign, holding Lisaveta in his arms as though he always casually held her while conversing.
'I thought I'd read for a time,' Nikki pleasantly replied, his book unopened beside him on the console table.
'And that was the only chair in this block-long palace?'
'The only convenient one,' Nikki answered with a grin. 'I see all is reconciled.' He could see Lisaveta was happy-it was apparent in her beaming face-and Stefan had the look of a triumphant man.
'And if it hadn't been?' Stefan said in a quiet voice.
'I brought my revolver. One never knows when one might need it-reading.' He had not of course, but a measure of coercion existed beneath his amused words.
'Before you two do something adolescent and ruin all this unalloyed bliss,' Lisaveta interjected with a smile, 'may I point out that all this masculine pride is rather irrelevant since Stefan proposed and I accepted.'
'Congratulations.' Benevolence and cordiality infused the single word, for beyond the fact that Lisaveta's future was secure, Nikki was genuinely fond of them both. 'Should I talk to my priest?' he inquired, rising from his chair.
'So subtle,
Lisaveta was currently feeling an over-the-moon happiness and was capable of complacently viewing the yawning jaws of hell with equanimity. 'Whatever you think,' she said, her voice compliant.
Stefan's eyes widened in mock surprise. 'No argument, no contention, no combative response? Had I realized,' he went on with teasing brightness, 'how simple it was to curtail your temper, I'd have proposed long ago.'
'There, you see, the feminine mystique transparent at last,' Lisaveta facetiously replied. 'I'll teach you everything I know,' she promised in a whispered aside.
Her remark immediately refocused Stefan's attention on his original mission. 'I'd really like to stay and chat,' he said to Nikki, who was beaming visibly at the success of his cousinly pressure, 'but I've only a day and half before I have to leave.'
'I'll call at your home later, then,' Nikki said, 'to hear your plans. Do you want me to inform anyone?'
Stefan's answer was staccato swift. 'Not just yet,' he said, his glance over Lisaveta's head significant with meaning. He had first to face Nadejda and her family. 'I'll get back to you.'
'Say goodbye,' Lisaveta murmured into the sweep of black hair near Stefan's ear, and he promptly did, as anxious as she to be alone, the problem of Nadejda's family instantly discarded in lieu of more gratifying thoughts.
'Have a pleasant day,' Nikki volunteered, his doting grin that of an extremely pleased man.
'Thank you,' Stefan replied, his face creasing into a broad smile as his eyes met with Lisaveta's. 'We will.'
The weeks of their separation past, their ruinous jealousy resolved, neither chose to dwell on the unreliable future; they were feeling only intemperate joy. And when Stefan had Lisaveta at last where he'd so often fantasized of late, in his home and bed, softly warm beneath him, he told her how much he loved her with a rare and garlanded poetry she found captivating. She answered him with her own simple words, words she'd contemplated in the long days of their absence and the bitter nights of their separation, words she'd once considered forever denied her. 'I love you,' she said, 'with all my heart.'
'I'll never let you go,' he quietly replied, the nature of his love less benevolent. It matched the strength he'd fashioned into his destiny, it matched the fear he'd lived with when he thought her indifferent. It spoke, too, of his confidence. The Commander of the Tsar's Cavalry had never suffered defeat. She was his. He was content, and more, he was whole again.
If he'd been asked he wouldn't have been able to answer why he'd abandoned his long-held beliefs so readily. He'd fought against loving her, against acknowledging he cared; he'd told himself his feelings were some aberrant temporary fascination. But he'd discovered his emotions wouldn't so obediently comply to his rationalization or yield to any objectivity.
'I have estimated the influence of Reason upon Love and found that it is like that of a raindrop upon the ocean,' Hafiz had written.
And Stefan's own heart understood at last.
They played with teasing silliness that afternoon in his bed made of chased gold. It was large enough-having been cast originally for his Orbeliani great-great-grandfather, who had kept a harem of eight hundred concubines-for facetious games of pursuit. It was soft enough to engulf one in gossamer down and ostentatious enough, Lisaveta bantered, to support Stefan's reputation for exhibitionist play. Rumor had it he'd entertained multiple women in his splendid bed. He didn't deny or confirm the rumor; he only said, 'You're my only love… you're my world.'
He was gentle when he entered her sweet and heated body after the teasing play and romp; he was so gentle he scarcely breathed for fear of hurting her if she carried his child; he was so gentle she felt as though his body drifted over her, weightless. And the sensations built for both of them with an intensity so extravagant and extreme they were inebriated with combustible vaulting passion. He lay above her afterward and shuddered, eyes shut and breath held; Lisaveta trembled in sweat-sheened excess, every nerve ending wantonly exposed.
Their afternoon was heated and self-indulgent; it was the stuff dreams were made of, it was the enchantment troubadours embroidered in song.
And so unlike, Stefan said with a smile, his previous notions of prenuptial events.
Meanwhile, on the Palace Square where the Taneievs' princely abode faced the vista of Peter the Great's equestrian statue and the gilded domes of the Admiralty, Nadejda was saying, narrow-eyed and livid with anger, 'He cannot be allowed to humiliate me here in Saint Petersburg. Don't make any excuses for him, Mama.' She swung around in her pacing before the windows to face her mother, the bustle of her pink taffeta gown quivering at her sudden halt. 'I won't have it! In Tiflis it didn't matter. Good God, that backwater scarcely has sufficient nobility
