‘I wasn’t going to say any such thing.’ Allison stared in dismay at the shattered, no doubt priceless, Derevenko china. ‘I can’t think how we came to...’
Aleksei grinned. ‘We were not thinking.’
‘No. But we can’t possibly—at least, not here.’
Her words, the product of her thrumming body, spoken without thinking, seemed to crackle in the air. ‘Do you mean that?’ Aleksei asked. ‘That you would, if...’
Her mouth went dry. She could deny it, but it would be a lie, and who was to say when there would be another chance? ‘Yes.’
Yet he did not move. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes, but not...’
‘Not here.’ He kissed her. ‘We will go where we will not be disturbed.’ He kissed her again. ‘Not your chamber. Nor mine. Not any room in this damned palace where a servant is a bell-pull away.’
‘The barge?’ Allison suggested, half-teasing.
‘Too far away, but if you are in the mood to be transported, I have just thought of the perfect venue.’
* * *
Ten minutes later, after traversing a bewildering maze of corridors and staircases, Aleksei pushed open a huge wooden door. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, as he held the door open, ‘the stables and the grooms’ quarters are in quite another part of the grounds. This is the carriage block, and no one will come here unless summoned, but just to make sure we are not disturbed...’ He turned the key in the lock, then held the lamp high. ‘What do you think? Are you transported?’
‘Good heavens.’ Allison stared around her in astonishment. ‘How can one family possibly require so many sleighs?’
‘The rivers and canals of the city are generally frozen from December until March. A sled is the quickest and safest way to get around. Here,’ Aleksei said, pointing, ‘are the small ones used by servants, which can be drawn by a pony or dogs.’
There were several simply constructed sleds, the main body a basket-like structure, balanced on wooden runners. ‘They are compact enough to be used on the narrowest waterways,’ Aleksei told her. ‘Michael and I had our own sleighs when we were children. Mine was just exactly like this one, but Michael, naturally, had his livery painted on it. It will be Nikki’s now.’
‘And will you teach him to use it?’
‘That is for one of the grooms to do.’
Allison said nothing. Sometimes it was best, she had discovered, to allow her silence to ask the question. And she was rewarded this time.
‘Though the grooms likely have more than enough to occupy them, and if I do say so myself, I reckon I’ll be able to pass on a few winning tips to my nephew.’
‘I hope not a few neck-breaking tips.’
He laughed. ‘No, he’ll discover those for himself. I shall teach him how to sled at a nice sedate pace.’
‘Something tells me that a nice sedate pace is anathema to you.’
‘No option, in one of those, but if you come over here—here is a troika. Now this,’ Aleksei said, running his hand over the sleek little sled, ‘is built for speed. Three horses, harnessed abreast, so it can only be used on the widest of the rivers or in the open country. The middle horse wears this larger collar, see. The trick when driving, is to keep him at a slower pace than the two outsiders.’
‘That sounds challenging,’ Allison said, eyeing the narrow seat doubtfully. ‘And extremely dangerous.’
‘This is a racing sled. This one,’ Aleksei said, taking her a few paces on, ‘is the Duke’s official troika. Still tricky to drive mind you, but as you can see, designed for show rather than pace.’
‘Good grief! It looks like a throne balanced inside a crown.’ The troika was curlicued and gilded, the velvet-lined seat seemingly held aloft by four burnished angels, an elaborate construction of mystical creatures rising to a peak at the front of it, topped with the birds which adorned the portico of the palace.
‘Magnificently monstrous, isn’t that how you described the barge? Wait until you see the pièce de résistance.’
Aleksei led her through a maze of smaller sleds designed to seat one or two. Some were stacked with wicker baskets, some bore the ducal crown and the bird symbol. Some had no covers, some had leather hoods.
‘Miss Galbraith, I present to you, the ducal sleigh.’
She burst out laughing. The so-called sleigh was actually a full-size carriage on runners, painted, predictably, in crimson and gold, the Derevenko coat of arms emblazoned on the central panel, which also served as the door. There were four windows on each side. ‘It looks big enough to hold—what six people?’
‘Eight, at a push.’ Aleksei opened the door and pulled down the step. Inside there was a throne-like seat at each end, and wide benches lining each side, all upholstered in velvet. ‘Like the barge, it’s ridiculously heavy and is rarely used. Six horses struggle to get it moving. I’ve only been in it once. I can’t remember the occasion, it was at the Winter Palace, I think. I was very young, and forced into wearing some ridiculous robe.’
‘I can’t imagine what the Imperial carriage must be like, if this is for a mere duke. The ice on the river must be very thick, to support such a contraption.’ Allison sat down on one of the benches. The ceiling of the sleigh coach depicted the heavens, complete with puffy clouds, putti and winged horses. ‘This reminds me of the Winter Palace.’
Aleksei sat down beside her. ‘Most likely by the same artist.’
His leg brushed her gown, and excitement flickered low in her belly. It had been possible, while engrossed in this display of sleds, to forget the purpose of this tryst. No, that was not true, but she had pretended to forget.
‘Allison.’
She jumped as Aleksei took her hand. Butterflies fluttered wildly in her belly. His thumb stroked circles on her palm. He smiled at her quizzically. ‘If you have changed your mind I will understand perfectly.’
Her heart was racing. Though she was flustered, terrified of making a fool of herself, and feeling irrationally gauche, she was also... ‘No. I mean, no, I have not changed my mind.’ And she was blushing furiously. ‘It was different, in the heat of the moment. If you would just kiss me or—or something, then I would be able to stop thinking and...’
‘I want nothing more, but I can’t, not while you are uncertain.’
‘I’m not!’ She grimaced. ‘I know, it sounds as if I am but I’m not. I’m nervous. What if you are disappointed?’
‘That is simply not possible.’ Aleksei turned her hand over, pressing a kiss to her palm. ‘I have wanted you so much from the moment I met you.’
‘Have you?’ Her voice no longer sounded strident, but breathy. Her pulses were still fluttering, but in a very different manner.
‘You know I have.’ He touched her hair lightly. ‘I want to see your hair tumbling down over your back. I want to find out if your skin is the colour of cream, as I imagine it to be. I want to kiss you, not just on the mouth,’ he said, pushing back an escaped curl to kiss her cheek, then the sensitive spot behind her ear. ‘I want to kiss every inch of you. Here,’ he said, cupping the swell of her breast through her gown. ‘And here,’ he said, sweeping down the dip in her waist to the curve of her bottom.
‘Aleksei. Yes.’
* * *
The taste of her sent his senses spinning. He eased himself on top of her, kissing her all the while. She returned his kisses eagerly, and he lost himself in the sweet, drugging taste of her, in his own aching response as he cupped her breasts, as she ran her hands over his back.
Why were there still so many layers of clothes between them? He shrugged himself out of his coat. He had not allowed himself to believe this could happen, though he had imagined it many times. The reality was so different, nothing like anything he had felt before, infinitely superior. Her kisses. Her mouth. Her tongue touching his, her hands on him, her hot, sweet breath. He wanted to
devour her. He wanted to lose himself in her. Blood surged to his groin, making his shaft pulse. Aleksei groaned. If he was not careful, he’d lose himself far too quickly.
Her hair was spread over the velvet of the carriage upholstery, the copper and auburn putting the crimson cushions to shame. Her lids were heavy with desire, her cheeks flushed. Breathing raggedly, he dragged his mouth from hers to concentrate on loosening the fastenings of her gown. Her hands fumbled with his waistcoat buttons. He tore himself free of it, and his shirt at the same time.
‘Aleksei,’ she whispered, in that tone that sent his pulse rocketing. ‘Aleksei.’ He adored the way she said his name. Her hands were on his chest, flat over his nipples, making his throat constrict. He eased her gown over her shoulders. He loosened her corset enough to free her breasts, now covered only by a white chemise. He could see the dark, peaked outline of her nipples through the linen.
He untied the ribbon of her chemise. Her skin was like cream and silk, just as he had envisaged. He dipped his head, kissing the warm valley between her breasts, then licked his way around the contours before taking one dark pink nipple into his mouth, sucking hard. Allison arched her back, moaning her pleasure. He was so hard he ached. He sucked on her other nipple. Her nails dug into his back.
He wanted to take his time. He wanted to savour her. But her kisses were fervent, her hands urging him to hurry, and his own body was clamouring for fulfilment in a way that was impossible to resist. When he slid his hand beneath her gown, he forgot all about the kisses he had dreamed of bestowing over her shapely, stocking-clad legs, drawn irresistibly to the heat of her thighs, the musky, damp, feminine core of her. She was so wet, his fingers slid easily into her, the harsh, yet sensuously female cry his touch elicited making his shaft pulse in response. Their kisses were feral now, their tongues thrusting and clashing. He wanted to pleasure her, to linger over the readying of her, but she was more than ready, saying his name over and over and over, a plea he could not resist.
He would curse his lack of his usual finesse later, he knew that as he struggled to unfasten his breaches, to kick off his damned boots at the same time, but Allison didn’t want to wait, and he wasn’t sure that he could.
At last he was free. His shaft sprang to attention. He wanted her to wrap her hands around it, but he couldn’t wait for that either. ‘Are you sure?’ he asked, clinging desperately to the last vestiges of self-control.
‘You really need to ask?’ she replied, pulling him down on top of her. ‘You need not worry, if that is what concerns you, I have the skills to ensure...’
But this was too much to take for granted. It was a matter of honour with him that he always took care. A kiss, the deepest of kisses, the most sensual of kisses. His hands under her full buttocks, lifting her. Slowly, slowly, he entered her. Slowly, he told himself, but as soon as his tip nudged the slick heat of her he was lost, and as soon as he sank into her, her climax took her, strong, pulsing waves that he could not resist. She was crying out, shaking and shuddering under him, and he thrust wildly, hard, driven by a primal need he had never felt before, falling suddenly, fast, to his own completion, only just managing to spend himself safely, in a shuddering climax that felt like it would never end.
* * *
She was sprawled semi-naked on the bench of the Derevenko state sleigh, with the completely naked His Illustrious Highness Count of Derevenko on top of her. ‘I think we may just have committed treason,’ Allison quipped, because the situation was so unreal, she felt she had to say something.
Aleksei’s laugh seemed very slightly forced. ‘Desecration, perhaps.’ He sat up. His colour was high. His torso seemed tanned. She hadn’t expected that. His chest was smooth. She hadn’t expected that either. The ripple of his hard-packed muscles had had a very unexpected effect on her senses too. In the heat of passion, she hadn’t even been able to look at or to touch the rest of his body, and now she was too embarrassed, in the aftermath, to do anything but look the other way as he grabbed his breeches and pulled them on.
She had behaved like a wild animal. Her one lover had been accomplished and selfless, but had never kissed with the wild abandon of Aleksei’s kisses, had never lost himself totally in passion as Aleksei had. Her response tonight had been visceral, her climax sudden, violent, unstoppable.
Belatedly realising that she was still supine, Allison sat up in a tangle of skirts and petticoats. Her fingers fumbled with her various hooks and fastenings. How did there come to be so many! Her hair most likely looked like a bird’s nest.
‘I’m sorry.’
Startled, she looked up from her attempt to straighten her attire. Aleksei had pulled his shirt on. He was sitting beside her, but they were no longer touching. ‘What for?’ Allison asked, confused.
‘My lack of finesse.’
The white-blond streak in his hair was standing up like a comma. A cow’s lick, her grandmother would call it. ‘Your lack of finesse. I behaved like—like a wanton.’
‘Allison!’ He pulled her into his arms. It was so very, very good, to be able to burrow her head into his shoulder, but Aleksei gently forced her to look up, to meet his eyes. He laughed awkwardly. ‘I wanted it to be perfect but I lost control.’
I lost control. Was it wrong of her, to take delight from those words? ‘We both did.’
His eyes darkened. His smile became sinful. ‘Perfectly so.’
He kissed her, a sated, deep kiss, that gave her confidence. And to her astonishment, made her realise that she was not so sated as she had thought. ‘True perfection,’ Allison said wickedly, ‘is something which requires diligence. There is a saying—if at first you don’t succeed...’
‘Try again?’ Aleksei pulled her to her feet, pulling the back of her gown together, and managing to deal efficiently with the tiny buttons. ‘I look forward to that. But in the meantime...’
‘Is it very late?’
‘I don’t know. I was going to suggest a riverside stroll, but if you are tired...’
‘No,’ Allison said hurriedly, ‘I’m not tired. Not a whit.’
* * *
Aleksei found a thick cloak belonging to one of the coachmen for her, and they walked along the embankment of the Moyka River, following the same route they had taken in the rowing boat. ‘I can’t believe I’ve been in St Petersburg less than a month,’ Allison said.
‘I know, time is flowing faster than the Neva.’
He pulled her closer, wrapping his arm around her waist. It was another clear night, the stars pinpoints of light in the canopy of the sky. Though the buildings varied in size and height, in colour too, the façades painted gold and white, terracotta and blue, at night they formed one solid, dark mass on the narrow towpath of the embankment. The lights from some of the windows reflected in shimmering gold in the water. Allison shivered. There was a marked autumnal bite in the air that made her grateful for the heavy cloak.
‘The season is changing,’ Aleksei said, as if he had read her mind. ‘We will not see many more days such as this one. You brought the sunshine with you from England. It has been unseasonably warm since you arrived. Soon, the temperature will plummet, and the rain will set in. St Petersburg in the rain is not such a beautiful place.’
‘In Scotland, we had rain in the winter, the spring and the summer as well as the autumn,’ Allison said. ‘Freezing rain in the winter, soft in the summer, but it soaks right through you all the same. It makes everything very green, mind you. It’s a different kind of climate in London, much warmer and drier. You’d be astonished at the difference five hundred miles can make—and at the variety of plants which can be cultivated as a result.’
‘You have your own garden?’
‘Of course I do, and grow many of the same herbs as are grown in the palace garden. Would that I had a little succession house though, I’d grow a lot more than orchids.’
‘Is that what we ha
ve in our succession houses, beside deadly poison?’
‘Ours, is it now?’ Allison teased. ‘Don’t you mean Nikki’s? There’s a grape vine in one of them, and lemons and oranges in another, and then of course there is the fern house, but it’s all very—very ornamental.’
‘You don’t approve of ornamental plants?’
‘Only if they also have a practical application.’
‘Well you’ll have the luxury of being able to afford both, once you have completed your work here.’
They had arrived at the Red Bridge, and of one accord stopped to lean on the railings, to watch the faint ripple of the Moyka as it flowed out towards the Neva and then on, out into the Baltic Sea. The journey she’d be taking, when this adventure was over.
Her stomach lurched. How soon would it be over? How many more days and nights did they have together? Surely she should be counting down the time with anticipation, for when she left, her new life would begin. And this interlude would be over. No more St Petersburg. No more Catiche and Elena and Nikki. Though there were times, especially with Catiche, when her ingenuity and her patience were stretched, her efforts to engage with them on her own terms, without trying to emulate the saintly Madame Orlova, were increasingly paying off. The dread she’d felt every morning at the schoolroom door was a thing of the past. She relished their company now, delighted in stretching her always vivid imagination to invent new stories to tell them, new ways to entertain them. She was beginning to enjoy their company far too much for her own good.
But worse, much worse than no more children, would be no more Aleksei.
‘I’m glad,’ Allison said, surprising him by throwing her arms around him. ‘Tonight. I’m glad we did not wait.’
He pulled her tight against him. His lips were cold, but his kiss was warm, sensual, a promise. ‘I’m glad too,’ he said. ‘Very glad.’
* * *
Only afterwards, lying alone in her bed, unable to sleep, watching the dawn light filter through the curtains, did Allison finally concede to herself that she was in far deeper waters with Aleksei than she ever intended.
From Governess to Countess Page 12