Alex sat back on her heels. “So she did.”
The older woman glanced sideways as she gave the rope a final twist. “It was a matter of much pride to her that your grandfather favored you. And much worry.”
“I know.”
Her aunt’s words echoed in Alex’s mind a short time later, as she knelt among her scattered possessions. She righted a small bird cage-shaped chest, her heart aching at the painful memories it brought. Her mother had laughed and hidden little treasures for a young, curious Alex in the chest’s many small drawers. It seemed so long ago, so many tears ago, that Alex had last heard her mother laugh.
Even now, five years after Elena Jordan’s death, Alex still carried the scars left by the complex relationship between the hawk-eyed chieftain and the daughter who’d defied him to wed where she would. For as long as Alex could remember, the three people she’d loved most in the world had been pulled in opposite directions. Her grandfather by tradition and his responsibilities. Her mother by her love for the outsider she’d married. Her father by his refusal to believe guns were the solution to Karistan’s problems.
During her visits to Karistan, Elena had pleaded with the old chieftain to understand that violence and bloodshed were not her husband’s way. Daniel Jordan was an economist, a man of learning, wise in the ways of the outside world. Although he chose words over weapons, he wasn’t the weak half man the headman believed him to be. In disgust, the Karistani chieftain had tolerated the outsider only for his daughter’s sake.
The tension between the two strong-willed people had grown with each passing year, however, until at last Elena had stopped returning to the steppes altogether. She’d sent Alex back each summer, refusing to deny her her heritage.
Ultimately, her grandfather’s unceasing hostility toward Daniel Jordan had driven Alexandra away, as well. Fiercely loyal to the man whose gentleness had often been her refuge, Alex had sprung to her father’s defense whenever the chieftain’s hatred spilled over into some vitriolic remark. The summer she turned seventeen, the ataman had made one scathing comment too many. The final quarrel between them had shaken the entire camp with its fury. That had been the last summer Alexandra had spent on the steppes.
She’d been back only once since. After her parents’ deaths. After the fall of the Soviet Union, when reports of the violence between Karistan and Balminsk had begun to filter out to the rest of the world.
She’d been appalled at the devastation she found during that brief visit. And hurt as she’d never been hurt before. Her grandfather had told her brutally that she was of no use to him unless she wrung all trace of Daniel Jordan from her soul and stayed to fight by his side. She must choose, once and for all, between her two worlds.
Alexandra had refused to deny the father she loved, and the hawk-eyed chieftain had turned away in silent fury.
He hadn’t spoken to her when she left, or during the years that followed. He must have known she’d funneled every penny of profit she earned from her designs into Karistan through Dimitri, but the headman had never acknowledged it. He hadn’t relented, hadn’t ever forgiven her for not choosing him over her father’s memory.
In the end, he’d taken the choice out of her hands.
She was here. And she was ataman. Now she carried the burden he had shouldered for so long.
“This yours?”
Alex glanced up to see the American standing over her, a gold satin bra trimmed with ecru lace in his hand and a wicked gleam in his eyes. She pushed the painful memories aside and reached for the filmy undergarment.
“It is.”
“I thought so. From the color,” he added, when she flashed him a quick look. “It’s the same as your eyes—sort of halfway between honey and hardtack.”
Alexandra snatched the lacy confection from his hand. “Thank you…I think!”
What was it with this man? Despite her best efforts to keep him in his place, Sloan simply wouldn’t stay there. In the short hours since he’d arrived, he and his grin and his blasted horse had literally turned the camp upside down. Stuffing the bra into one of the mother-of-pearl boxes, Alex tried again to assert her authority.
“I told you a half hour ago, we don’t need your help any longer. We’ll take care of the rest.”
“Now, that wouldn’t be right, Alexandra, seeing as how Ole Red caused this havoc in the first place.”
He rolled her name in his slow, teasing way that caused Alex to grit her teeth and Katerina to send him a sharp look. Across the width of the tent, the younger woman’s eyes narrowed with suspicion and instant jealousy.
Alex suppressed a sigh. Things were bad enough between her and her cousin without this man’s presence exacerbating them further. An ancient Cossack saying, one passed from mother to daughter over the centuries, rose in her mind. Men were ever the burden women must bear in life—one could not live with them, nor cook them in oil rendered from yak grease, as they generally deserved.
Unaware of the fate she contemplated for him, Sloan hunkered down beside her and picked up one of the odd-shaped drawers. “Do all these little jobbers go in that chest?”
“Yes, but I’ll put them away.”
Ignoring her protest, he angled the box to fit into an empty slot. In the process, he also spilled its entire contents. Childhood trinkets, her mother’s hand-carved ebony comb, her pens and the few sketches Alex had found time to do since returning to Karistan tumbled out onto the patterned carpet.
His big hands shuffled through the loose papers, adding to their general disorder and Alex’s exasperation. Tilting them up to the light provided by the overhead bulb, he studied the top sketch.
Alex glanced at the drawing. It showed her cousin standing at the edge of the steppes, her head thrown back and her hair whipping in the wind. She wore the traditional calf-length skirt and belted tunic of Karistan, to which Alex had added rows of piping in an intricate, exotic motif. Both the skirt and the tunic shirt were smoother, sleeker versions of the traditional dress, and allowed the ease of movement and tailored comfort the women who could afford Alex’s designs preferred.
The overall effect was one of East meeting West. A blending of cultures and continents. A harmony that Alex could express in her designs, but had yet to find in herself.
When Sloan gave a low, appreciative murmur, however, Alex was sure he wasn’t admiring her design or her cousin. Irritation spurted through her, and something else that she refused to identify. She tugged the sketches out of his hand.
“I’ll put those away. Go join the men!”
He quirked an eyebrow at her tone, then pivoted on one heel and swept the tent with an assessing glance. When he swung back to face her, his knee brushed against her thigh with a sudden, startling intimacy.
“It’s still the far side of disaster in here. Sure you don’t want me to—?”
“No! Yes! I’m sure.” Alex edged her leg away from his. “Just go.”
He rose, dusting his hands on his jeans, then stared down at her for a moment. “God keep you until the dawn, Alexandra Danilova Jordan.”
She blinked, surprised at how comforting the traditional blessing sounded in his deep voice.
“And…and you.”
The tent’s flap had barely dropped behind his broad-shouldered silhouette before Katerina made her way across the tent.
“How is it the Amerikanski calls you by name? You don’t permit the men of our host to do so!”
Alex crammed the last of her belongings into the chest and rose. She was too tired for another bout with her cousin, but from long experience she knew Katerina wouldn’t be put off when she wore that surly expression.
“It’s not that I don’t permit them to call me by name. They choose not to, out of respect.” As they always did when she spoke Karistani, her dialogue and thoughts alike took on a more formal, stylized structure.
“So he does not respect you, this countryman of yours?” Katerina’s upper lip curled. “Just what did you do after you sent
me back to my tent like a child tonight, that caused him to lose respect for you?”
“Cousin!”
Katerina placed both hands on her full hips. “What, Alexandra?”
Alex bit back a sharp rebuke. As much as the younger woman had strained her patience these past weeks, she disliked arguing with her in front of the others.
“We will not discuss the matter now.”
“Yes, we will.”
“Katerina, I don’t wish us to argue like this, in front of the others.”
The women watching the scene from the far end of the tent stirred. Ivana of the honey pot set down the skirts she’d been folding. “We’ll go, ataman.”
Alex shook her head. “No, there’s no need.”
Her face pale against the black kerchief covering her hair, the young widow glanced at the others. Evidently, what Ivana saw in their faces gave her the courage to speak.
“There is need. You must talk with Katerina. Listen to her. She…she echoes many of our thoughts.”
A familiar sense of frustration rose in Alexandra’s chest as the other women filed out. She was their leader, yet they would not confide in her. She was of their blood, yet different from them in so many ways.
Suppressing the feeling with an effort of will, she faced her cousin. From the set, angry expression on Katerina’s face, Alex knew she’d have to take the first step to heal the breach.
“I’m sorry if I embarrassed you tonight. I should have used more tact.”
“Yes, you should have.”
“And you, my cousin, perhaps you should have shown more restraint.”
“More restraint?” Katerina’s voice rose. “More restraint?”
“You were draped over Sloan like a blanket,” Alex reminded her. “Such forwardness is not our way.”
A long-held bitterness flared in her cousin’s dark eyes. “What do you know of our ways? What can you possibly know? You’ve passed your life in America, enjoying your pretty clothes and your fancy apartment and your lovers.”
“Katerina!”
“It’s true. You may have spent long-ago summers on the steppes, but you’re not really one of us. You weren’t here in the winters, when the cattle froze and we ate the flesh of horses to survive. You weren’t here during the years of war, when our men died, one after another.”
Stunned by the vicious attack, Alex could only stare at her.
“And even when you were young,” Katerina rushed on, as though a dam had broken inside her, “our grandfather set you apart. You rode, while the rest of us walked. You sat with him and listened to his tales of forgotten glory while we labored at the cooking pots. He petted and protected you even then.”
Alex’s pride wouldn’t allow her to point out that grueling fourteen-hour days in the saddle hardly constituted petting and protecting. “I but followed his will,” she answered through stiff lips.
“Just as you followed his will when you assumed leadership of this host, Alexandra? You, a woman! An outsider!”
“I’m of his blood, as are you.”
“Yet he chose you over me.”
Now they came down to it…the hurt that had festered between them for weeks.
“Yes, he chose me. I didn’t want this, Katerina! You know I never intended to stay when I came back. But I gave my promise.”
The girl bent forward, her eyes glittering. “Do you know why our grandfather called you back, cousin? Do you?”
Her heart twisting at the irony, Alex nodded. “Yes, I do. As much as he hated my other life, he came to realize it gave me knowledge of the outside world. Knowledge necessary to deal with the vultures he knew would descend on Karistan with his death.”
“So you may think!” Katerina retorted. “So you may tell yourself! But it was not your knowledge of the outside world that made him choose you. It was your hardness! Your coldness!”
“What are you saying?”
“Do you think our grandfather mourned your absence all these years? Pah! He reveled in it. He boasted that it proved you as strong and proud as he himself. So proud you couldn’t refuse the title when he passed it to you. So strong you would never be swayed by your heart, like the other women of this host.”
Alex reeled backward, wanting desperately to deny the stinging charges. Yet in a dark, secret corner of her mind she knew Katerina was right. Her grandfather had possessed a strength of will that was both his blessing and his curse.
As it was hers.
The two women faced each other, one breathing fast and hard with the force of her anger, the other rigid and unmoving. Then, slowly, like rainwater seeping into the steppes after a pelting storm, the bitterness drained from Katerina’s face.
“Don’t you see, cousin? Our grandfather gave you leadership of the host because you alone have the strength to hold Karistan together, as I…as the others…could not. Only you would ensure that our people don’t scatter to the winds.”
Under her embroidered blouse, Katerina’s shoulders slumped. “But perhaps only by scattering, by leaving this bloodstained land, will we find peace.”
Her heart aching at the bleakness on her cousin’s face, Alex reached out to grasp her hand.
“Katrushka…” she began, using the pet name of their childhood in a desperate attempt to bridge the gap between them. “You must give me time. A little time.”
“Too much time has been lost already. Too much blood spilled, and too many tears shed.” The younger woman sighed. “Only the old ones are left now, ’Zandra, and the women. We…the women…we talk of leaving. Of going to the lowlands.”
“You can’t leave. Not yet.”
“Don’t you understand? We want husbands, men to warm our beds and our hearts. Children to bring us joy. We won’t find them here.”
Alex gripped her fingers. “You mustn’t leave here. This is your home. Just give me a little time. I…I have a plan. Not one I can speak of yet, because it may not work. But someone comes, someone who can help us, if we just hold out a little longer.”
The two women searched each other’s eyes.
“I’m sorry,” Katerina said at last. “I but add to your burdens. I don’t mean to, cousin.”
Alex forced a small smile. “I know.”
“I…I shouldn’t have become so angry when you took me to task tonight.”
“And I shouldn’t have taken you to task so clumsily.”
Katerina hesitated, then gave Alex’s hand a little squeeze. “I know you think me overbold, ’Zandra, but I’m not like you. None of us here are. We don’t think as you do. We believe a woman is not a woman unless she has a man to warm her bed.”
Well, she was right there, Alex thought. In that, at least, she and her cousin were worlds apart.
“I… We… We want a man,” Katerina said simply. “Someone like this Amerikanski.”
“What?” Alex jerked her hand free.
“Someone young and strong, with laughter in his eyes instead of hate. Someone whose blood runs hot on a cold night and whose arms were made to hold a woman.”
“Katerina!”
“Why do you sound so shocked? He’s much a man, this one. Any woman would be happy to take him to her bed.”
“For heaven’s sake, he’s only been in camp for a few hours! You know nothing about him. He could be an…an ax murderer! Or have a wife and six children waiting for him in America.”
If he did, Alex thought, remembering their searing kiss, she pitied the woman.
Some of the lingering hurt between the two women faded as Katerina flipped her hair to one side and essayed a small, brave grin. “Pah! Do you think I waste my time? I learned all I need to know of him in less time than it takes to thread the needle. He has no wife, although many pursue him, I would guess. One has only to see the gleam in his eyes to know he has the way with women.”
He had that. He certainly had that, Alex agreed silently.
“He’s an outsider,” she protested aloud.
“He may be an outsider,
but he has the wind and the open skies in his blood. He owns only a small piece of land in America, not enough to hold him, or he would not wander as he does, delivering horses to strange countries.”
Surprised at her cousin’s shrewd character assessment, Alex stared at her.
“He’s like the men of the steppes used to be,” Katerina finished on a dreamy note. “Strong and well muscled. He would give a woman tall, healthy children. Smiling daughters and hearty sons.”
The guilt, worry and resentment that had been building within Alex since the night of her grandfather’s death threatened to spill over.
“Perhaps we should consider putting the man instead of the horse to stud,” she snapped.
“Perhaps we should,” Katerina agreed, laughing.
Alex shook her head. This was all too much. “I…I need to think!”
Now that she’d said her piece, Katerina’s earlier animosity was gone. “Go. Take the air, and do your thinking. I’ll finish here and brew us some tea. Go!”
Grabbing the coat she’d tossed down earlier, Alex lifted the tent flap. Once outside, she sucked in deep, rasping gulps of the cold night air.
With all her heart, she longed to saddle her gelding and head north for the ice cave her grandfather had shown her as a child. It had been her special place, her retreat whenever they clashed over his unceasing hostility toward her father. Since her return, it had become the only place she could really be alone in a land with few walls and little privacy. The only place she could find the quiet to sort through the worries that weighed on her.
But she didn’t dare ride out at night unescorted. Not with the ever-present threat of raiders from Balminsk. Not with Nate Sloan in camp. She couldn’t take the chance that he might stumble over something he wouldn’t understand.
Damn it all to hell!
Simmering with frustration and confusion, Alex threw her cloak over her shoulders and stalked to the outskirts of the camp.
What in the world was she doing here?
Why had she abandoned her business, her scattering of friends, her on-again-off-again fiancé, to come back to Karistan?
Why, after all those years of unrelenting silence, had she answered her grandfather’s stark three-word message?
Dangerous to Hold Page 28