Laddy jack-knifed to a sitting position and onto her feet in one panic-stricken movement, then stood facing him with her back to the dying fire, her eyes wide, her breath rasping in her throat.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded.
“But you know this already. You invited me to come,” Mischa answered, and in the shadows his mouth was unsmiling and his eyes fixed on her face.
“What?” she screeched. “Of course I didn’t!”
“I had an invitation,” he said silkily. “It was printed on the front page of the paper this afternoon.”
“Did you seriously expect me to take any notice of your threats this morning?” she demanded contemptuously. “Did you think that a word from you would throw over the freedom of the press?”
He looked at her through eyes that were heavy lidded with anger. “This has nothing to do with the freedom of the press,” he said in a dangerous tone. “This is between you and me.”
The note in his voice sent a whisper of fear up her spine. “It is like hell!” she shouted. “Get out of my house!”
There was a moment of tense silence between them, and suddenly, with a thrill of fear, she became aware of his size, and his power seemed to flow out and touch her. With an abrupt wild motion Laddy threw the book she was holding at his head.
Mischa caught it with one hand and, glancing at the title, laughed shortly.
“Were you waiting for me?” he asked, tossing the book negligently onto a low sideboard as he moved into the room towards her.
Laddy couldn’t withstand the impulse to step back, though it was a sign of weakness. The fine silk of her long burgundy caftan brushed her legs with a quiet whisper, sending a shiver up her spine.
“Keep away from me!” she shouted, but somehow her voice, too, was a whisper.
“There is a way to keep me away from you,” Mischa said, advancing on her slowly, step by threatening step. “Tomorrow you will wish that you had followed it.”
She stepped backwards again, hoping to dash around the back of the sofa to the door, but she was brought up short: the hem of her robe had caught on one of the rough logs stacked by the fireplace.
The delicate fabric snagged and came away as she jerked it, but too late: he had understood her intent and was now so close in the soft circle of lamp glow that he could stop her escape with one slow hand.
“No,” she begged him, her eyes stretched wide, her voice catching in her throat.
Mischa smiled. “How can it be ‘no’,” he asked lazily, “when you are wearing the robe of the sacrificial virgin?”
She swallowed, and involuntarily her eyes followed his hands as he pulled open his coat. His trench coat was lined with luscious black fur, and he wore it over a snug black sweater and black corduroy jeans. His eyes still holding her, he shrugged out of the coat and threw it negligently onto the thick pile of cushions on the floor behind her. It landed on a large high cushion and splayed out over half the pile with a silken rustling that revealed the sensuous black fur of the lining.
It made the cushions suddenly seem like some barbaric warlord’s bed, and Laddy found herself staring over her shoulder at the shiny silken blackness, her lips parted on a gasp of surprise.
“It is even more beautiful to the touch,” Mischa suggested softly. “Like your hair.”
She felt his hand on the ribbon that tied her long hair back on her neck, and she jerked her head around to evade it. But he simply tightened his grasp and brought his other hand up so that his arms encircled her head, and slowly he pulled the ribbon from her hair.
She was shaking like a leaf, hating him, hating the burning, erotic touch of his hands upon her as he brushed her hair’s black cloudiness around her face and shoulders.
Laddy’s eyes closed at the touch, but she fought the response. “Take your hands off me!” she said, opening her eyes to blaze at him. “I despise you. The touch of your hand on me makes me sick!”
He smiled a cold smile, showing his teeth. “You hate me,” he agreed lazily, “but before this hour is out you will ask for more than the touch of my hand on you.”
“No!” she cried as panic filled her, twisting to get away from him. But she was backed up now with her feet and ankles against the pile of cushions, and losing her balance, she fell sideways onto them.
For a brief moment she felt the silken black fur against her cheek and under her outflung palm, before a strong dark hand gripped her wrist and pulled her onto her back—and in that instant the broad heavy body of Mischa Busnetsky flung down against hers and pressed her into the cushions. Without warning his mouth clamped passionately down on her own, forcing her head back and her lips apart in a deep, thrusting kiss that scorched through her. And then, terrifyingly, a flickering flame caught in her blood and threatened to lick through all her veins.
“Please,” she whimpered, when his mouth released her. “Oh, please, go away!”
He sought out the sensitive spots that six months ago he had discovered and taught her, and she closed her eyes and desperately clenched her hands against the response her body made to the heat of his mouth against her ears, her neck, her throat, and the soft hollows of her shoulders.
She moaned aloud, and immediately, to disguise the response, she cried, “I hate you!”
His hand slid into the low neckline of her robe and found her breast so suddenly that she gave another hoarse cry of need, and Mischa laughed deep in his throat.
“No,” he whispered, his mouth tantalizing against her ear. “You do not hate me, my Lady—not my mouth, or my hands, or my body. Someone else you hate, but don’t think of that now. Think only of this—” he ran his hand along the length of her shuddering body through the silk “—and this—” he tilted her head back over his arm and kissed the hollow of her throat “—and this—” and his lips began to taste hers slowly, deliberately, his tongue flicking between her parted lips with tormenting lightness till she was nearly mad for the violence of his mouth on hers.
She was breathing through her mouth in little half moans of despair and desire. Then, involuntarily his name was on her lips, and not until she heard it did she realise what he had achieved.
“Mischa,” she begged huskily. Then immediately she cried in horror, “No! Oh, God!” But she had remembered herself too late. In the moment when she had made that first begging cry, Mischa’s rough-clad body had come down on top of her again, his legs between her own, his hands firm around her wrists.
She was sensually assailed by the black fur against her hands and her wrists, the pillows giving under her back, of his thighs warm against hers—and of how powerful his hungry sex was.
“No?” he asked huskily. “Still no?” His legs and hips slid down against her until his mouth was against her breast, caressing the swelling tip through the wine-dark silk that covered and revealed her passionate response to him.
With agonizing slowness his hand encircled her other breast, and his mouth found that one, too, with its heat and caress.
He touched the silk impatiently and leaned over her on one elbow. “Take this off,” he commanded in a deep growl. “I want to touch you.”
“No,” she said, her jaw clenching against the knowledge that she wanted his mouth on her bare skin as if it were water in the desert.
“Take it off or I will tear it off,” Mischa said without raising his voice.
“It is the last gift my father ever brought me,” she said coldly. “You took him from me, why not my memories, too? Go ahead and tear.”
He breathed deeply, then gathered her up against his chest with one strong arm, her body almost frail against his, and his other hand, with gentle impatience, slid the dark silk up between them till her breasts were bared to him.
With rough possessiveness he ran his hand from her knee over the curve of thigh, hip and waist, till it closed firmly on her breast, and he bent with open mouth to kiss the firm roundness.
There was the lightest touch of hard, white teeth then, and a sh
ock of pleasure knifed through her so sharply that she felt faint.
She wanted him. God forgive her, in every nerve and cell, in every pore of her skin, she wanted him. She wanted to feel his naked skin against hers, she wanted his body to find hers as it had done long ago, thrusting and pushing until she was consumed by the pleasure he gave her.
She could feel his body against her then, hard, demanding—and waiting for her to cry her need aloud. Desire clouding her brain, she could feel the plea rising in her as his hands pressed and his legs moved against her.
She gritted her teeth, willing him to admit a need as great as her own, but he only watched her in the shadowy light with half-lidded eyes and flickered a smile each time her breath caught in her throat.
She grasped at a tiny corner of reason through the swirling sea that she drowned in, and understood dimly what torment would be hers if she gave in to the icy passion that burned in him.
She understood it, and still she wanted him. She could not have moved a muscle to fight off the searching fire of his mouth, the hot caress of his rough, passionate hands, the disturbing pressure of his hard body. She could not push him away when every second was increasing her wild need of him. She must make him push her away instead—before the cry in her throat told him the truth.
“Pavel Snegov,” Laddy whispered gropingly, hardly knowing what she said. “I....”
Mischa’s mouth was between her breasts, and she whimpered and her hand pressed against his thick dark hair as though to hold him there forever.
“Yes?” Mischa breathed, and then he stiffened as though the name had suddenly reached him, and with the tearing pain of desolate need she knew she had won.
“Pavel Snegov will want to know what valuable information you gave me tonight,” she said, amazed that the noises her lips were making could produce any kind of sense. “You must tell me something that will make him happy.”
Mischa rolled away from her onto his back and lay cursing softly in Russian. The agony of being left alone ripped through Laddy’s body like a shriek, and she bit her lip hard. The pain restored her to reason, and she sat up to pull her robe down over her aching body and dropped her head forward on her knees.
The sound of Mischa’s throaty laughter behind her made her stiffen. Before she could move, his hand was in her hair and she was pulled down to bend over him as he lay back on the cushions. He smiled up into her eyes, a strange, intent smile that she couldn’t read.
“Tell the good comrade this,” he said, his finger brushing her lips with an odd fierceness. “There is one thing in this world with which he could destroy me. But it is mine—and he will never touch it.”
He pushed her up again and reached over her to grasp the soft folds of his coat, and she could sense a deep silent joy like laughter in him. He flung the coat over his arm and sat looking at her with an expression in his eyes that again she couldn’t fathom.
“Have you learned that it will be wise to stop writing lies about me?” he asked.
“I don’t write lies!” Laddy blazed, the passion he had raised in her finding an outlet at last. “I write what I see! And neither you nor anyone else is going to stop me!”
His eyes smiled with a hot, approving sensuality that stopped her breath.
“Good,” he said. “That is very good.”
“What?” she whispered, confused.
“Oh, yes,” he said with slow deliberation. “We have unfinished business, have we not? I will read the paper to learn when you wish to finish it.”
With an easy movement he was on his feet looking down at her.
“What a pity you cannot review my books,” he said. “That would give your hatred great scope—and think how I would make you pay for it afterward.”
He crossed to the hall and went out, but Laddy closed her eyes not to watch him go. She heard the noise of the door to her flat and then of the front door while she lay shaking, clenching her hands—lay trying not to let her wild brain imagine how Mischa would make her pay for a scathing attack on one of his books.
* * *
The Saturday morning papers went to town on what had happened at the book launch the previous evening. The circumstances of her father’s death were fully rehashed in many papers, along with Mischa’s extraordinary accusation that the Kremlin might be implicated in his death. A few outlined Lewis Penreith’s long career as a fighter in the area of human rights and as founder of the International Council on Freedom. The statement that Laddy had made after Mischa had so abruptly thrown her to the wolves was also covered.
She was a little startled to see how much she had said:
Miss Penreith, a staff reporter on the London Evening Herald, who was attending the reception on the media side, was obviously surprised when Mr. Busnetsky made his statement. But she confirmed that her father had been to Russia shortly before his death four years ago, and that she had reason to believe it was on that trip that he obtained both of the Busnetsky manuscripts being published this week. She said her father had hidden the manuscripts in a secret location she had been unaware of until their discovery last spring. Miss Penreith said that her father would have moved the manuscripts to his publishing offices in Covent Garden within days of acquiring them, but that his untimely death must have intervened. The manuscripts, To Make Kafka Live and Love of a Lady, were not found in his office. Miss Penreith declined to divulge where the hiding place was. Earlier this year the London Evening Herald published a series of articles by Miss Penreith that were the result of extensive interviews with Mr. Busnetsky. The articles, acclaimed for their in-depth study of the personality of the well-known dissident, were syndicated in newspapers and magazines around the world.
Laddy let the paper fall back onto the table and wished she hadn’t got out of bed this morning. She leaned wearily back in her chair, pressing her eyes with thumb and forefinger, then stood up.
Outside the kitchen window a grey November day was just beginning to throw chilling rain against the glass. Laddy sighed, pulling the belt of her terry-cloth robe more securely around her, picked up her cup and moved to the stove to refill it from the coffeepot.
She leaned against the counter, cradling the warm cup in her hands, and watched the drops of rain on the window multiply.
“You’re a great one to talk about honour, Comrade Busnetsky,” she muttered aloud. “This is another thing I won’t forgive you for as long as I live.”
The rain didn’t let up all morning and by early afternoon it was getting steadily worse. With her house cleaned, her groceries got in and her laundry done on Friday night, there was no reason for Laddy to brave the elements, so after lunch she settled down with Love of a Lady. It was not a large book and she knew it was fiction; she told herself that she didn’t have the mental energies on such a bleak afternoon to continue To Make Kafka Live.
By the end of the first chapter her eyes were swimming so that she could hardly read, and when, hours later, she had finished the book, she flung it violently aside and a storm of weeping overtook her.
She was filled with a sense of desolate loss. After months of hating Mischa, she was painfully reminded of the fact that once she had loved him, that once her heart had overflowed with warmth and love. Now it was a cold black lump in her breast that for some reason kept on pumping blood to keep her alive, and she understood that Ben Smiley was right—she had survived by becoming less than human.
Love of a Lady was a prose poem, a paean of love for a woman she recognised as herself. Mischa had told her the simple truth when he said that her memory had kept him alive over the years of their separation. The book had been written over a period of nearly four years, beginning at the time of his first arrest after they had met in a roomful of paintings. It was a diary of love letters, of yearning, of promises—yet at the same time it was a novel, with a unifying core that she felt but did not quite recognise.
This was what she had lost. This was what suspicion and fear and lack of trust had destroyed. A love that
had once been consuming and fearless, a love that had triumphed over every agony of body and mind....
That a man who had loved her so much could have hurt her so brutally was a contradiction almost impossible to believe. Laddy remembered the look she had seen in his eyes six months ago when he opened the manuscript she had brought him and translated the title. He had loved her then as much as the man of the book loved his lady, and instinctively she had known it. But the man in the book would have accepted far, far more from his woman than any small mistake Laddy had committed against Mischa....
What had happened to change his love? What had occurred between the day she had given him the manuscripts and the day he had accused her of being a spy?
He had come to know her. The dreams had become a reality. That was all, nothing else.
So although the dream woman who had kept him alive had been herself, Mischa had not been able to love the real Laddy Penreith the way he had loved her image for eight years.
That was hardly surprising. The only surprising thing about it, in fact, was that this thought had never occurred to her before. All the accusations of espionage and betrayal had been a cover for the real fact—Mischa had learned that he simply did not love her.
Laddy was no longer crying. Her eyes were as dry as her heart was cold. He had not been hurt by her, he had not felt betrayed—he had been too much of a coward to tell her the truth, that was all.
She couldn’t stop herself picking up the book again, staring down at the wine-red dust jacket spattered with infinitesimal dots of a red so dark it was almost black and at the golden lettering of words that had once been meant for her.
Love is strong as Death. The quotation, unattributed, had a page to itself immediately before the text. Laddy sat with the page open in front of her, wondering what the source was. She had heard the quote before, but she could not now remember the context. And suddenly it seemed important to know where the line came from.
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