by Jane Feather
“I will saddle Petrushka for you.” He turned to the stables. “If you’ll heed the advice of one who knows, you’ll let the princess run herself out before you talk with her. The wind and the steppes have a rare calming influence.” He chuckled to himself, leading from a stable a diminutive horse that Adam recognized as one of the swift, hardy mountain horses indigenous to the Polish province of Cracow. “She’s got more of her grandfather in her than of her father.”
Adam was not sure what conclusions he was supposed to draw from that piece of information, but he swung himself astride the mountain horse with a word of thanks, wondering which direction he should take across the limitless expanse of wilderness.
“Follow the north star,” the giant said over his shoulder, as he walked back to the stables. “The princess always goes north at night, to the Novgorod Rise.”
Always! Holy Mother, how often did she take to the steppes in the middle of the night? He was not dressed for riding, and it was only when he found himself alone in the majestic silence of the barren landscape that he remembered he was unarmed. It was a near-suicidal risk he was taking, to ride the Wild Lands at night without so much as a knife at his side, but having started he would not turn back.
He followed the north star for an hour, hearing the sough of the wind in the long grass, the sudden rustle of man or beast slithering out of his path, but there was no sign of the magnificent stallion and his long-haired rider until he saw in the shimmering silver light of the night sky a small hillock ahead, breaking the unrelieved flatness. Outlined against the horizon stood the Cossack horse, head lifted to the wind; motionless upon his back sat Sophia Alexeyevna, looking to the west and the Polish frontier.
His wiry mount ate up the distance between them, but as he approached, Sophie turned, grim determination etched upon her face. She held her pistol, aimed unwavering at his heart. “Do not come any closer.”
Adam drew rein. “I cannot believe that if the prince taught you to shoot he did not also teach you that one does not draw upon an unarmed man.” With quiet deliberation, he urged his horse forward again, his eyes holding hers in a silent battle of wills.
Slowly, Sophie lowered the pistol and turned away from him, again looking out across the plain toward the west. “It is foolish to be out on the steppes unarmed,” she said, almost indifferently. “What are you doing here?”
“I might ask the same of you,” he returned quietly. “I wished to be certain that you intended returning at some point tonight.”
That brought her head around sharply. “It is no business of yours.” The dark eyes flashed in the starlight, and he sensed the rising of that alarming temper. However, he could not allow himself to be intimidated by it.
“It is my business, I am afraid. Until we reach St. Petersburg, you are my responsibility. I must ensure that you come to no harm, and that you take no wild notions of escape into your head.” He was deliberately blunt, knowing that the confrontation had to come, and the sooner it was over the better.
She drew in her breath sharply, then, without warning, flicked her rein. Khan turned instantly, gathering himself for flight. Risking an ignominious tumble, Adam leaned sideways, seized the stallion’s bridle above the bit with one hand, and caught the wrist of Sophie’s whip hand with the other. He clung to both with grim determination, concentrating on asserting mastery over the horse, who, if he decided to take off, was far too strong to be physically hindered by a man’s hand on his bridle. In such an instance, Adam would be hauled from his own mount.
The great beast trembled in the cold night air, ripples of tension running across the sinewy neck, arched and powerful. Then, as he sensed his rider’s confusion and the force of the other’s will, he became quite still, lowering his head to stand patiently waiting for whatever was happening to be resolved.
The swiftness of Adam’s restraining movements had indeed confused Sophie, taking her off guard for the precious moment she needed to confirm her own mastery over Khan. The fingers circling her wrist were constricting—not painful, but she could feel the force that would so easily surpass her own.
“Let go!” she said in a fierce whisper. “Damn you, let me go!” The muscles of her arm tensed as she pulled at her captive wrist; his fingers tightened over the fine bones and the pulse beat fast against his thumb.
“Peace,” he said with quiet insistence. “Be still, now. I am not enjoying this any more than you are. But we are going to be in each other’s close company for upward of four weeks. I do not wish to be your jailer, Sophia Alexeyevna.” He waited for his words to sink in, the words that permitted no possibility of negotiation. She had no choice, and it was pointless to enter a discussion that might imply otherwise.
A tremor ran through her, reminding him of some wild animal of the steppes recognizing the inexorable approach of captivity. Then she faced him, the dark eyes inscrutable. “I imagine, Colonel, Count Danilevski, that you will obey your orders and perform your duty like the good, mindless soldier you are.” Scorn laced her voice. “I am not mindless, sir, and I do not easily yield up the right to direct my own affairs.”
The count silently cursed Prince Golitskov and his unorthodox methods of child rearing. Controlling his impatience and irritation with her stubborn refusal to accept the impossibility of the odds, he said neutrally, “Then we are going to have a very uncomfortable time of it, Princess.”
“So be it,” she said, her voice cold and flat.
“Are you ready to return to the house now?” he asked politely, as if she had not spoken. “Or do you wish to commune with nature a little longer?”
“I would be alone,” she said.
“In the seclusion of your bedchamber, you will be so,” he replied with the same neutral courtesy.
That tremor ran through her again, but Sophie had herself well in hand now. She was not going to be rid of him this night except behind her own door. She would bow to the inevitable for the present. She would renew her attack on her grandfather in the morning. It was inconceivable that he was really prepared to sacrifice her upon the altar of family and imperial duty.
“If you would be so kind as to loose my horse and take your hand off mine, Count, I might be able to achieve that seclusion.”
“I do not wish to spend the night chasing you across the steppe,” he said carefully.
She gave a sharp, derisive crack of laughter. “Do you really think you could catch Khan?”
“No,” Adam said simply. “I do not. But I could keep him in sight. It strikes me as a tedious way to pass the night.” With a little shrug, as if to repeat her own “so be it,” he took his hands away.
“My thanks,” murmured Sophie, softly ironic. “So very kind of you, Count.” She swung Khan to the south, pressed gently with her heels, and the magnificent creature broke into a gallop.
Adam set Petrushka to follow, intent on keeping them in sight across the flat landscape, although he was fairly certain that Berkholzskoye was her destination. He reached the stable yard just as Boris Mikhailov had returned Khan to his stable.
“You found her, then?” he said laconically, taking Petrushka.
“I did, but I am not sure I achieved much.” Adam frowned.
“The princess doesn’t take kindly to another hand on her bridle,” Boris said over his shoulder, as he led the horse away.
“Literally or figuratively?” asked Adam, following him into the warm, lamplit gloom, redolent with the rich scents of hay and horseflesh.
“Both,” replied the muzhik, chuckling. “You’ll get nowhere with her if you go head to head.”
But just what choice had she left him? Adam mused irritably as he made his way back to the house. She had declared war, not he. He lifted the latch on the front door. It would not budge. Disbelieving, he shook it and felt the resistance of the heavy internal bar. Who the devil would have relocked the door? Even if a servant had happened to come into the hall and discovered the open door, he or she would surely have made the logical ass
umption that whoever had opened it was still without. Suspicion grew, became certainty. It could only have been Sophia Alexeyevna.
All the anger and frustration he had kept tight-reined since his meeting with her that afternoon finally broke free. Of all the childish, spiteful tricks! A piece of typical female malice, secret and underhanded. The sort of trick that Eva would have played him…He hammered on the door knocker with all the force of pent-up resentment, outrage, and the absolute knowledge of the misery in store for him until this abominable mission was accomplished.
“Who is it?” A familiar voice from above broke into the trance induced by his furious thoughts and his rhythmic, remedial hammering.
He looked up and saw Sophia Alexeyevna’s face, pale in the starlight, framed in the long brown hair falling forward as she leaned out of a casement. “Come down here and open this door, at once!” he demanded with a parade ground crackle that she found herself obeying without thought.
Sophie flew down the stairs, wondering what disaster could have struck. She wrestled with the bars, but they were too heavy even for her wiry strength. “I cannot,” she called. “Just a minute.”
A couple of minutes later she appeared from around the side of the house, huddled into a thin wrapper over her nightgown, her feet thrust into a pair of skimpy slippers. “Whatever is the matter?” She pushed her hair away from her face, tossing it over her shoulders, her eyes showing him a mixture of indignation, anxiety, and bewilderment. “You will wake the entire household, and it is not just. They rise much earlier than we do.”
His jaw dropped. What on earth was she talking about? “How dare you lock me out!” he spat out furiously. “A piece of childish spitefulness—”
“Lock you out!” Sophie exclaimed. “Why would I do such a thing?” The candid dark eyes stared in shocked confusion. “The front door is always kept locked from sundown. There are brigands on the steppes.”
“I left it open,” he said, but uncertainly now.
“Then Gregory would have locked it again,” she replied. “He is the night watchman. He checks the doors every hour.”
Adam sensed the shadow of his inevitable discomfiture. “How did you enter?”
“Through the side door. That stays open until Boris Mikhailov comes in. It is a small door, not easily seen. Did you not ask Boris Mikhailov to let you in?” She shivered as a gust of wind tipped with the cold of the flatlands whistled around the corner of the house.
“No, I did not,” Adam said, feeling foolish. “You will catch cold in your nightgown.”
“You did not give me time to put my clothes on,” she said with utter truth, still standing on the gravel path, regarding him gravely in the milky starlight. “Did you really imagine I would serve you such a stupid, pointless trick?”
He wished with all his heart that he could deny it. Not only did he feel foolish, he was overwhelmed with guilt, as if he had committed some appalling solecism. Indeed, he knew that he had. What little he knew of Sophia Alexeyevna should have told him that she was incapable of such a mean-spirited act.
“I ask your pardon,” he said a little stiffly. “I cannot imagine what I was thinking of. But you must go inside now, before I have your sickness on my conscience in addition to my injustice.”
Sophie looked at him steadily for a minute. “I want no part of your world,” she said, before swinging on her heel and walking away from him.
Adam followed, recognizing that he had done his cause yet further disservice. The thought that had been nibbling uncomfortably on the edges of his mind crystallized. He did not doubt his ability to deliver up Sophia Alexeyevna to the czarina, and thus to Prince Paul Dmitriev. But if she had not achieved at least resignation when he did so she faced a bleak future. Prince Dmitriev did not tolerate opposition or the unconventional. He would permit neither in a wife—particularly one thirty years his junior. And if she did not fit his mold, there was no reason to believe that the methods he would use to reshape her would be gentle.
Chapter 3
Sophie slept little until dawn, when she fell into a heavy slumber disturbed by a confused dream tangle of flight and pursuit. A pair of deep-set gray eyes drew her inexorably toward a tall man with a wide, intelligent forehead dominating a lean, aristocratic face, a beautiful mouth now set in stern purpose as he plucked her from the freedom she knew lay beyond her, drew her body backward even as her soul strained ahead; then she was looking into a pair of yellow wolf’s eyes, bared fangs, a spare gray body gathered to spring. She woke, her nightgown clinging damply to her skin, when Tanya Feodorovna, bustling in with hot water, drew back the curtains to let in the spring sunshine.
“It’s a beautiful day, Princess,” declared the peasant woman who had been Sophie’s constant attendant since Boris Mikhailov brought the infant princess to Berkholzskoye. The young mother of a newborn son, Tanya had cheerfully accepted another babe at her breast, where the milk flowed plentifully, and when her own child died she had transferred all her maternal energies to her nursling, caressing and scolding through childhood hurts, scrapes, and temper tantrums, steering her through adolescent confusions with her own brand of practical, no-nonsense wisdom. It was the latter with which Tanya was armed this April morning.
“By all the saints!” she exclaimed, examining the heavy-eyed Sophia. “You’d best not show such a long face to your husband on your wedding morning! A man likes to feel he’s pleasured his wife, not subjected her to the torments of the fiery kingdom!” She bustled over to the armoire, saying over her shoulder, “Of course, a woman’s chances of being pleasured are not very high, but a man still likes to feel he’s succeeded.”
“If they were made aware of the fact that they hadn’t, then perhaps they would try harder.” Sophie found herself responding in usual fashion, despite her wretchedness. “Anyway, Tanya Feodorovna, I am not getting married.”
“That’s not what I heard,” said Tanya, shaking out the folds of a flowered muslin dress. “The sooner you stop fighting it, Sophia Alexeyevna, the happier you’ll be.” She laid the gown on the bed. “Hurry up now. The prince is waiting for you in the library. You’ve slept right through breakfast.” She poured water into the washbasin. “What clothes do you want to take with you? I’m sure I don’t know that you’ve anything suitable for St. Petersburg. I haven’t, either…nor Boris Mikhailov…”
“What are you talking about?” Sophie swung herself out of bed, standing groggily in a patch of sunlight. “You and Boris—”
“Why, we’re to come with you,” Tanya said cheerfully. “Bless your heart, you didn’t think the prince would let you go off all that way without us?”
Sophie closed her eyes on a nagging thump behind her temples and a welter of confusion. A great many matters seemed to have been decided in the few short hours she had been asleep. “I am not going to St. Petersburg, Tanya.”
Tanya humphed. “Hurry with your dressing. I’ll fetch you up some coffee and biscuits.” The heavy door closed with the emphatic snap that generally expressed the opinion that her erstwhile nursling had better stop talking nonsense and gather herself together with all due speed.
Sophie began to have the frightening sense that events were moving too fast for her to grasp them. She had parted with her grandfather the previous evening stating that she would not comply with the imperial command. But it seemed as if he was proceeding without paying any attention to her statement; as if there was no question of discussion. If Tanya Feodorovna believed that the princess was about to depart for St. Petersburg and a husband, then the entire household would believe it. The first shaft of genuine panic loomed. Until now she had not truly believed that this could happen. Her grandfather would see her position—he had to. Of course, he would support her. Now a niggle of misgiving rippled across the surface of certainty, threatening to develop into a full-blown storm of doubt. Could it be that no one was on her side?
Tanya brought her coffee and sweet biscuits to compensate for her missed breakfast. She drank the
coffee, made as strong as Tanya knew she liked it, hoping that the powerful concoction would haul her clearheaded into the waking world. It helped a little, but she was still heavy-eyed and pale when she went downstairs to the library.
Prince Golitskov was with his lawyer and Count Danilevski, conferring around the leather-topped desk. He looked up as his granddaughter came in, subjecting her to a grave appraisal that missed nothing. “You do not look as if you slept well, Sophie.”
“I did not,” she replied. “Tanya Feodorovna said you wished to see me.” She nodded to the lawyer, whom she knew well, and offered a cool good morning to the count, who had risen at her entrance. He was in uniform once more, his black hair confined in a neat queue at the nape of his neck. The gray eyes held hers for a long moment, the inexorable eyes of her dream, and the spectre of the wolf slid confusingly into her internal vision. Why were the two somehow inextricable? There was nothing remotely wolflike about Count Adam Danilevski.
He was bowing, smiling as he drew forward a chair for her. “I am sorry you passed a bad night, Princess.”
Sophie dismissed the polite platitude with an impatient gesture. He was perfectly aware that he was more than partly responsible for her troubled sleep. Disdaining the chair, she walked over to the French window to stand in a patch of warming sunshine. The light accentuated her pallor and the smudges under her eyes, even as it brought out the rich chestnut highlights in the dark hair massed on her shoulders.
Adam’s lips tightened at this clear discourtesy. He had hoped to make amends for his error of the previous evening, but obviously Princess Sophie was having none of his conciliatory smiles and friendly expressions.