Silver Nights (32 page)

Seraphina stepped backward, kicking away the garment clinging to her ankles, before returning to her interrupted task. She undressed him with all the delicate skill of one trained to the task, making each removal an act of loving service, bringing him to aching arousal. Throughout, she said not a word, allowing her hands and eyes to speak for her. Barefoot, wearing nothing but the tunic skimming her hips, she moved across the chamber while he lay back on the divan, almost febrile with desire, drifting in the trancelike languor that accompanies fever. He watched her bend over a brazier in the corner of the room, the ivory curve of her backside gleaming in the lamplight, and his chest tightened, his loins throbbed. She picked up the copper jug heating on the brazier, pouring its contents into a deep bowl, which she brought over to the divan, a smile curving her mouth.

Rose petals floated on the surface of the water in the bowl. She dipped a soft cloth into the water, drawing it, scented with roses, down his body. Adam lay back on the divan, wondering for a bare second who belonged to whom in this fantasy. Kneeling at his feet, she began to massage oil into his warmed, softened skin, starting with his toes, before crawling slowly up his body, a frown of concentration between her brows. Stretching lazily downward, he caught the hem of her tunic and drew it up to her waist, giving him an uninterrupted view of the soft roundness of her bottom as she
progressed upward. Her eyes lifted from her task, met his in a question: Was this pleasuring him, or did he want something else from her?

“Do not stop,” he directed, linking his hands behind his head. “I merely wished to improve the landscape.”

Lost in the art of giving pleasure, in the possession through homage of another's body, Seraphina wandered in her own Arabian night, where passion grew, insidious amid the rich scents of arousal, the lush fragrance of the flowers of love, the whispering fountain, the golden lamplight. She was formless, consisting only of pleasure centers, of nerve centers stimulated to the point where bliss hovered on the brink of pain. When the time came for her to give herself into his possession, to move as he bade her, to position herself as the hands dictated, she slipped off the edge of the universe into the rose-tinted, golden-hued world where ecstasy was the only sensation; and it was infinite.

 

“Adam?”

“Mmmm?” Indolently, he rolled over to look down at her. It was the first time she had spoken since he had walked into his chamber with his friends, a loving lifetime ago. He brushed a lock of hair from her breast. “Is the fantasy over then?”

She smiled. “I have not the strength to endure another such.”

“No,” he agreed, lying down beside her. “Such extremity of pleasure is not to be borne too often. Which is perhaps fortunate.” He chuckled. “What a mistress of invention you are.”

“I am not the only one with a creative imagination.” She sat up suddenly, a spark of indignation in the dark eyes. “How could you have said you bought me from a
camel driver
?”

Adam grinned. “I thought, on the spur of the moment, it was remarkably quick-witted. It was not as if I was expecting to find one of love's slaves waiting for me. How I am to hold my head up in the regiment again, I don't know.”

“Oh, rubbish!” Sophie declared. “Did you not see how they envied you?”

“I suppose in keeping with true Turkish hospitality, I should have offered to share you,” he mused.

“Was I a skilled and obedient slave?” Her eyes dancing, she kissed his mouth.

Adam groaned. “Beyond my wildest dreams. So much so that I cannot find it in me to be angry with you for the risk you took.” He struggled up, leaning against the cushioned back of the divan. “I will not even ask how you acquired the props for your little play, because I am certain I will not enjoy the answer.”

“I took every precaution,” she assured him seriously.

“I am sure you believe you did,” he said with a mock sigh. “You are reckless beyond permission, Sophia Alexeyevna.”

“I thought you said you were not going to be vexed,” she protested. “It is most ungrateful of you.”

“Ah, no, never that! You must absolve me of ingratitude, sweetheart.” Sighing, he swung off the divan. “It is time you returned to your own bed, before the world wakes.”

Sophie yawned languidly. “I do not see why it should matter anymore. Prince Potemkin knows…” She stopped, seeing the look on Adam's face. “All right, it does matter. I am going.” She slipped on her gauzy costume again. “No one will recognize me in this, anyway.”

Adam drew her against his length, slipping his hands inside the trousers, grasping her buttocks firmly. “Do not ever again say it does not matter. Just because Dmitriev is absent does not mean you can behave as if he does not exist. Do you understand me, Sophie?” When she gave a rueful nod, he kissed her in hard farewell. “Off you go.” His hand slapped her bare skin as he turned her to the door. She skipped through it with a mock indignant ouch and did not see his face where for a moment hopeless frustration etched deep lines, darkened the gray eyes with something like despair.

“How long do you think you would like to remain at Berkholzskoye, Princess?” The czarina regarded her lady-in-waiting with kindly, yet speculative, eyes.

The June sun was hot, pouring in through the palace windows standing open to the River Dnieper where the water life of Kiev was continuing with customary bustle.

“Four or five months, Madame,” replied Sophie. “I could be certain to return to St. Petersburg by early December, if you desire it.”

“That will depend upon your husband, I would think.” Catherine played with her quill pen, turning it between her hands. Sophia Alexeyevna showed little sign of her pregnancy. Her loose Russian caftan of pale blue cambric concealed any thickening beneath. There was a serenity about her face, though, a hint of roundness softening those previously definite features, an inner tranquillity revealed in her eyes.

What a crying shame things had had to turn out in this way, reflected the empress. Had Adam Danilevski presented himself as a suitor for the hand of the Golitskova, there would have been no possible objection. The princess could have made her choice between Dmitriev or the count with the czarina's blessing. Instead, they were in this tangle. Of course, it was a perfectly common tangle, she thought pragmatically, and the young woman and her lover seemed perfectly capable of dealing with it without undue fuss.

“We will inform Prince Dmitriev that we granted you leave of absence from court until December to visit your grandfather.
Should you wish to remain in the country throughout the winter, assuming your husband does not object, then you have our permission to do so.”

Sophie curtsied deeply. “Madame, I shall be eternally grateful for your consideration.”

The empress nodded in brisk agreement. “Yes, but then we accept that these things do happen. They must just be tidied up neatly.”

Relieved, Sophie left the imperial presence, wondering when the czarina had first guessed at her pregnancy. She had not been obliged to take Catherine into her confidence when making her request. The reason for it seemed to have been understood already. But was her secret known only to Prince Potemkin and the empress? No one had given any indication of knowledge, no covert looks, none of the sly innuendos that usually accompanied such discoveries; but gossip was the staff of life in this court. It seemed almost impossible that such a piece of scandal should have slipped past the scandalmongers. Still, there was little point constructing causes for anxiety when the major concern was now dealt with. She would dispatch a messenger to Berkholzskoye, asking her grandfather to send Boris Mikhailov and Khan to Kiev. On Khan, she could be home within a day.

Adam, however, did not see the advantages in this plan when she imparted it to him that afternoon in the hunting cottage on the riverbank. “If you send such instructions to Prince Golitskov, I will ensure that he receives a message from me counter-manding them,” he announced flatly. “You will not ride fifty versts on that stallion in your customary flamboyant fashion. Is that understood?”

“And I suppose you would have me jolted in a carriage, vomiting every half mile!” she returned. “I am quite capable of riding!”

“I did not say you were not.” He spoke with the assured calm of one confident his will would prevail. “You must be a little more considering of your condition, Sophie sweet. You were dancing until all hours last night, after spending the day sailing on the river in the heat of summer. It is not sensible.”

“But I feel perfectly well.” She smiled, taking his hand. “Do not mollycoddle me, Adam. I am strong as a horse.”

“Oh, yes,” He nodded gravely. “Strong as a horse, but you can't endure the sight of blood without swooning, or the motion of a carriage—”

“Oh, that is unfair!” she broke in. “Everyone has some weaknesses.” She tilted her head, regarding him quizzically. “I do not know what your weaknesses are, though.”

“You,” he said quietly. “You are my greatest weakness, and it is such an Achilles heel that I could not survive with more than that one.”

There was nothing to be said. They tried—oh, how they tried—to forget the future, to pretend that they were not locked into an insoluble maze; but all the imperial indulgence in the world could not alter the facts.

“How am I to journey to Berkholzskoye in a manner that will satisfy you?” Sophie asked, reverting to the original topic because there was nothing to be said on the other one.

“With my escort, on a mount of my choosing,” he replied promptly. “By which I mean a staid, broad-backed animal with an easy gait and not the slightest inclination to take the bit between its teeth.”

Sophie opened her mouth in laughing protest at this appalling prospect, then realized what he had said first. “With your escort? How?”

His smile broadened, and she saw what she had only been half aware of before. He was bursting with some news, his complacent satisfaction visible in every expressive line of his face. “I am sent on a diplomatic mission to Warsaw,” he informed her. “To leave immediately.”

“And Berkholzskoye is not far out of your way.” She laughed delightedly.

“Better than that,” he said. “I have permission to accomplish
any
family business that might appear imperative whenever it can be fitted in with my mission, as long as I have rejoined my regiment in St. Petersburg by the first of next year.”

Sophie crept into his arms, only now recognizing how fearful she had been. “You will be with me.”

“Yes, love, I will be with you.” Tenderly, he stroked her hair and cheek, holding her as if he had known all along what this would mean to her. In fact, he had known, tormented as he himself had been at the thought that he would not be able to be with her when she gave birth to their child. “I will take you to Berkholzskoye, leave you there while I go to Warsaw, and be back by your name day.”

September 17 was her name day, the feast of St. Sophia. He would be back with her in ample time. Tears clung to her eyelashes, spilled to glisten on her cheek. “I cannot describe how happy that makes me.” She lifted his hand to her wet cheek.

“You do not have to, love,” he replied softly. “Because I know how happy it makes me.”

There was a moment of silent communion, then Sophie said in a different tone, “About this horse, Adam—”

“Staid, broad-backed, and sluggish,” he reiterated firmly. “And we will spend one night upon the road.”

“Tyrant!” Then her eyes gleamed. “We could spend the night at the post house where we stayed when you took such shameless advantage of an innocent maid.”

“A wild-tempered, hard-riding, fast-shooting Cossack woman,” he corrected remorselessly, slipping easily into the relaxed, joking humor necessary to dispel an emotional outpouring that would do neither of them any good.

Sophie's good humor was sorely tried, however, when she saw the horse Adam had selected for her journey. He had meant exactly what he had said. “No,” she declared. “I will not ride it, Adam. It does not deserve the name ‘horse.' It belongs to some other species.”

“He is a comfortable ride,” Adam replied, imperturbable. “I grant you he is not pretty, but he is solid.”

“Solid!” Her lip curled in disdain. “He is solidified!”

“Nevertheless, my love, you are going to ride him and no other.”

“But I will be so embarrassed! What will Boris Mikhailov say?”

“When he knows your condition, he will commend my choice. Allow me to assist you.”

It was fortunately very early in the morning, and there were only serfs in the stables to bear witness to the discussion. “I do not see why your wife's riding accident should make you assume that all pregnant women are at risk on a horse,” Sophie declared crossly, and without thought.

Adam froze; the earth seemed to catch its breath in its ordained orbit of the sun. “What do you mean?”

“I beg your pardon.” Sophie forced herself to look him in the eye. “I did not mean to speak out of turn.”

He shrugged, saying in cold dismissal, “I had thought you too sensible to pay attention to the babblings of the little Saltykova and her like.”

A confusion of guilt, self-consciousness, and embarrassment flooded her, and with it the angry protest that she had no reason to feel so. She had done nothing to be ashamed of, said nothing to be embarrassed by. “You said yourself that Eva died in an accident.” She gathered up the reins of her stolid mount. “It is true I heard tell it was a riding accident.”

“And you heard, also, that she was with child.” His voice bit into the summer morning. “I imagine you also heard that the child could not have been mine.”

It was unbearable, here in the sunny stable yard, with her own child, Adam's child, quickening within her, unbearable to hear the pain masked by the cold, dispassionate contempt in his voice. The contempt was for himself, which made it so much harder to hear. Sophie searched for something to say that would diffuse this, but there was nothing. If she reminded him that pregnancy was simply a consequence of the infidelity he had known about anyway, and should not therefore be seen as an added cross to bear, she would be painting their own picture in the vivid colors of the truth that they kept locked inside themselves.

In silence, she placed her foot in the stirrup, swinging upward onto the horse's broad back with no more than the slightest diminution in her customary agility. In the same silence, Adam mounted and they moved out of the yard, joined at the gate by the six serfs from Adam's personal retinue who were to provide armed escort.

After about ten minutes, Adam, in the most natural tone imaginable, drew her attention to a hawk, hovering immobile against the brilliant blue sky, just the tip of its wings fluttering to keep it balanced, poised over whatever prey it had spied in the long grass. It dived, plummeting through the morning air, the embodiment of violent death, sleek, contained, every feather and sinew part of the beauteous weapon that was itself.

“I never tire of watching them,” Sophie said.

“I know.” Smiling, he leaned over, tipping her chin to kiss the corner of her mouth. As he straightened again, he said cheerfully, “If you were riding Khan, I would never have been able to do that, so there are compensations.”

Subject closed, Sophie thought. Closed but unresolved. Oh, well, she gave a mental shrug. They had enough problems without her digging into a past he wished kept buried.

They spent that night at the same post house, ate what Sophie swore was the identical chicken stew, drank klukva, and walked in the milky Nordic night in quiet memory of the kiss that had set them upon a path of joy, of growth, of fear, and of futility.

The next afternoon, the reed-thatched roofs of Berkholzskoye appeared. “Boris Mikhailov taught me to ride before I could walk,” Sophie said, squirming uncomfortably in her saddle. “I think I would prefer to walk now. I have my pride, Adam.”

“Too much of it,” he retorted. “Your mount is of no importance. You still ride him as if he were a Cossack stallion, and that is all that is going to interest Boris Mikhailov.”

Old Prince Golitskov was taking the evening air in the rose garden when a young lad came breathlessly with the news that riders were approaching down the poplar avenue. Hope set the prince's gnarled hands trembling slightly. It was not inconceivable that it should be Sophie. He had heard that the empress's suite was returned to Kiev from the Crimea and was taking a short respite before continuing to St. Petersburg. He hastened, as fast as his rheumatics would permit, to the front of the house.

“Holy Mother,
petite
!” he exclaimed as the cavalcade appeared on the gravel sweep before the house. “Whatever are you riding?”

“I told you, Adam,” Sophie exclaimed, almost tumbling
from the broad back in her anxiety. “Oh,
Grandpère
, I have missed you so. Are you well?”

Golitskov embraced his granddaughter for a long moment, feeling the change in her before standing back, regarding her with an all-seeing eye. “I am quite well, Sophie. And you?”

“Perfectly well,” she replied, “except for bruised pride after riding that excuse for horseflesh.”

Adam dismounted. “Prince.” The two men clasped hands.

“I bid you welcome, Adam.” They exchanged a smiling look that spoke volumes.

“Oh, here is Boris.” Gathering up her skirts, Sophie flew across the gravel to hug the giant figure. “How is Khan? I cannot wait to—”

“Sophia Alexeyevna!” Adam broke in sharply. “Don't you so much as think of throwing your leg across that beast's back!”

“You talk such nonsense!” she exclaimed in exasperation. “Khan is as gentle as a lamb. Is he not, Boris?”

Pulling at his beard, the muzhik looked at his princess with the wise eyes that missed nothing. “Khan's many things, Princess,” he pronounced, customarily laconic. “But that's not one of them.”

Sophie's face fell ludicrously. “I had counted on you, Boris Mikhailov.”

The muzhik merely smiled, crossing to greet Adam, who took his hand. “Does my eyes good to look upon you, Count.”

“And mine to see you, Boris Mikhailov.”

“Let us go inside,” Golitskov said. “You'll be glad of a glass, Adam, I daresay.”

Sophie was about to announce that on this occasion she also would not look with disfavor upon such a thing when a loud shriek of joy came from the door and Tanya Feodorovna, in a flurry of calico skirts, came rushing out. “Sophia Alexeyevna, by all the saints! Let me look at you.” After kissing her soundly on both cheeks, she stood back to do just that. Then she nodded briskly. “Home's the best place for you for a while. No more of this gallivanting. Just you come upstairs and I'll make you a tisane. Been riding all day, if I know you.”

“But I am not in the least fatigued, Tanya,” Sophie protested as she was swept willy-nilly into the house.