"My pleasure, Boris," the prince returned composedly.
Amalie exhaled a tiny sigh of relief and immediately reached up to wrench off the frightful damp towel that was ruining her curls.
Boris cast her a dark look of censurious contempt as he said, "If you'll excuse us, madame, you seem to have recovered from your ordeal."
Turning to the countess, Alex, too, bid his adieus, giving Amalie a quick wink before following Boris downstairs to his study.
Several servants saw to their comforts. Brandy and cigars were presented. A fresh pack of cards was opened. Caviar and oysters were offered and refused. The men settled back in their chairs and quite amicably agreed on rhe merits of the brandy and Turkish leaf.
"What stakes?" Boris inquired as he leisurely shuffled the deck of cards on the exquisite ivory inlaid table.
If Alex had cared, they could have played for Amalie, ordinarily a tantalizing prize to any red-blooded male in St. Petersburg, he thought ruefully. Unfortunately he didn't want her. No one seemed worth having since Zena.
He sighed wearily, deprived of even slight exhilaration a duel would have offered. "I don't know," Alex replied, his enervated mind searching for a wager.
There they were, two jaded gentlemen who could have anything money could buy—and did.
Alex's eyes showed a spark of interest. "Your index finger against mine? Loser cuts his off," Alex suggested affably.
Boris's eyes widened in alarm; to bestir oneself to such a degree struck him as both vulgar and unnecessary. "Damn savage! You always had a reprehensible streak of madness in you, Archer," he declared with as much vehemence as his normal lethargy permitted.
"Lord, relax, Boris," Alex laughed. "You quite alarm me when you raise your voice above its normal languid murmur. Let's say your stallion Irish Hills against my new roan mare. How's that? Conventional enough?"
Boris's soft body subsided another degree into his velvet cushioned chair and nodded in grateful assent and relief. Although he appreciated Archer's macabre sense of humor, the requisite energy and spirit necessary to consummate the wager was quite beyond the limits of his torpid indolence.
"Deal, man," Alex ordered. "I feel lucky tonight."
Yuri woke Alex the next afternoon about three. "Wake up, you sluggard. This is late even for you. You must have spent all night exhausting yourself again in some female's bed. Who was it this time to fatigue you enough to sleep all day?"
"Well, Amalie began the night, if you must know, but she wasn't what exhausted me. Sat up until morning playing whist with Boris after he unexpectedly appeared."
"Unexpectedly?" Yuri inquired. "How unexpectedly?" he asked with a grin.
"Fortunately for him not too unexpectedly, or he'd have been tossed down the stairs. A few brief moments of warning from that footman Amalie pays so well allowed me to satisfy my rather crude passion. By the time Boris ambled into the room, most of our clothes were back on." Alex smiled faintly a the memory. "Boris appears extremely indifferent to his wife. I've never seen them together before. Treats her with almost a cruel contempt."
"I don't think he's ever forgiven her for the deception," Yuri said with a slight twist of his mouth. "He paid a high price for her, and she wasn't a virgin."
"She wasn't a virgin?" Alex exclaimed. He narrowed his eyes consideringly. "And how do you know that, may I ask?"
Yuri shrugged evasively.
"The Golden Goddess?" Alex said in astonishment. "Never say you were the first?" "The first," Yuri acceded quietly. "When?" Alex inquired.
"We were both fifteen," was the pensive reply.
"Good Lord, she was a fool," Alex declared. "Amalie knew even then that she must marry for money. Her father's gambling debts were notorious throughout the empire. She must have realized when you sell yourself for that high a price, the buyer ar least expects a virgin."
"You know Amalie, Alex. Do you think that kind of sensual passion could have been kept chaste until she was eighteen?" Yuri quirked one eyebrow derisively.
Alex emitted a short, hard laugh. "As you say, Yuri, I stand corrected. How did it happen?"
"Our estates ajoin, as you know. We spent that summer together; I gave Amalie her first lessons in love, having the advantage of a two-year start on her. In our remote area of the Ukraine, although droit du seigneur was no longer legal and hadn't been for generations, old traditions die hard, and I, as my father's heir, was offered at a very young age the pick of our peasant girls. They had some misguided notion that sleeping with the Batiushka or the Batiushka's son enhanced their reputation. So I was well schooled by fifteen.
"It was a beautiful summer, Amalie's and mine. We explored each other's bodies with infinite joy and leisure. Unfortunately too soon, the usual consequences ensued. Amalie became pregnant. I would have married her, but my wealth didn't suffice. Damn her father's black soul. In the seclusion of the country the next spring our daughrer was born. Since Amalie had still to sell herself to the highest bidder, a child was an impossible encumbrance.
"I took the baby and raised her. Betsy isn't my niece but my daughter," Yuri confessed.
"I and everyone else know that, Yuri," Alex said quietly. "The only question has ever been, Who's the mother? Besty's a darling and remarkably like her father. But now that I know who the mother is, I can say also remarkably like the mother. Does Amalie ever see the girl?"
"Quite often. They're good friends, although Amalie visits as an acquaintance of mine. I told Betsy long ago her mother died in childbirth."
"Now that Amalie's father is gone to his reward and can't amass any more debrs, do you ever think of marrying Amalie?"
"God, no. We've known each other too long and too intimately. Familiarity, you know, breeds contempt. She scorns my loose ways and wild, licentious living, and I've never been able to understand how she could have sold herself to that soft slug Boris. Filial piety has its limits, it seems to me. Betsy's rather spoiled anyway; we're a very good team, my beautiful daughter and I. And marriage hasn't exactly agreed with you, my fine stud. What makes you think I'm interested in that misery?" Yuri jibed.
"Touché," Alex grunted. "Marriage and living with one woman is an unnatural state."
"I'll drink to that," Yuri laughed. Reaching for the decanter, he poured two brandies and handed Alex his. "To the natural state of bachelorhood."
They both drained their glasses.
"Well, what's on the agenda tonight? Do we check the flesh on display at Orenburg's ball or straight away to the Islands and the accommodating gypsies? What say, Alex?"
"Let's skip the simpering society masses," Alex said, wrinkling his beautiful aristocratic nose. "I'm not in the mood tonight to offer even the barest civility for a fuck. The gypsies will suit me well. With them it's a business arrangement—no distasteful emotional outbursts, no spurious tender sentiments, so much more convenient.
"Let's see if Wolf s up yet. I lost him last night almost as soon as we entered Princess Nagarin's party. She dragged him away, and neither one of them had reappeared by the time I left with Amalie. Kitty certainly didn't play the perfect hostess last night. Well, no doubt she did to one of her guests," Alex amended laughingly. "Let's go find Wolf. He'll be interested in the Islands tonight." And so the diligent quest to elude boredom continued.
A week later at a small card party lorgnettes were raised, pince-nez adjusted, brows delicately quirked, and eyes narrowed as the room's aristocratic occupants carefully scrutinized and assessed the bald temerity of the young Kuzan heir. No one had ever conceded that Alex had pretty manners; he had very little at all, and although fully noted for his reckless, impudent manner of address, he had, in this latest remark, far surpassed a hitherto notorious reputation for plain-speaking.
As Alex had been introduced to a stunning brunette visiting from Paris, a guest of the hostess, he had declared in a resonant carrying baritone, "Honore Consrance, as I live and breathe, what a damnable pleasure to see you again. And how are the softest, most delectable t
highs in Christendom?"
The lady in question had good-naturedly tapped his cheek lightly with her ivory and lace fan and replied sweetly, "The same old Alex, I see." Then lowering her voice to a seductive murmur, she added, "And how is the best tool of pleasure in Christendom, mon amp."
Their eyes met over her fan, and Alex replied quietly with a gallic shrug and a small smile, "I'm staying in practice, madame, so as not to lose my fine edge."
Her eyes gleamed appreciatively.
"Taking pity on all the languishing, inviting St. Petersburg females, Sasha?" she queried flippantly.
"Pity?" inquired the prince delicately, his gleaming eyes half closed in amusement. "I've found, my dear," Alex drawled sardonically, "it's something quite different they're after."
Honore trilled a soft, musical peal of mirth, then directed a frank, open glance into those amused eyes. "But you're married, I hear," the gorgeous Frenchwoman said.
"That I am," Alex replied unreservedly. "A fate which befalls all of us eventually. And you too, I understand. Are you and monsieur la comte happy?" he asked with a comic look in his cat's eyes.
"Together you mean? Sasha, really, such naïveté for an abandoned reprobate like yourself," she chided. Her eyes twinkled. "But my marriage has its advantages."
"Such as?" Alex drawled.
"Monsieur is never home."
"How convenient," Alex murmured. "We seem to have similar marriages. Princess Kuzan prefers the salubrious air of the mountains to the company of her husband."
"In that case, Sasha, mon ange. Perhaps we can console each other in our privation," and she allowed her radiant eyes to meet his with a challenge.
The prince was not slow to take it up. "Honore, my darling," he whispered softly. "I have always admired your tenderhearted compassion. Your scheme of mutual commiseration has an intriguing appeal. How soon can you leave this dreary affair?"
Honore rippled a low laugh of satisfaction. "An hour?" she suggested with a quirk of her charming mouth.
"An hour?" Alex lamented jestingly. "Have pity, I detest bridge parties."
"Thirty minutes, then," Honore allowed charitably with a tilt of her beautiful head.
"Ten," Alex said, and his eyes met hers with unreserved ardor.
"Ten," she whispered, shaken by the candid sensuality and by memories of the prince's passion.
And so they consoled each other quite assiduously, for they were old friends.
Alex, schooled in the Kuzan tradition of private tutors and university on the Continent, had first met Honore six years before, when he had spent two years in Paris. Outside the obligations of his university tutoring in law, he thoroughly enjoyed the wildly dissipated counter-culture available in Paris during La Belle Epoque, conducting himself in the normal fashion of a healthy, young Russian prince. Honore Constance, the daughter of an ancient but genteelly impoverished French family, had warmed Alex's bed for the two years of his sojourn. Alex had protected Honore from malicious remarks and any would-be traduc-ers during the years of his friendship, for no one of even the dullest intellect chose to publicly come to verbal blows with a Kuzan. On one occasion when Honore had chided her young lover on his intimidating address to a French count of her acquaintance, Alex had replied, "I am a prince, mademoiselle. It is my prerogative to be intimidating."
When it came time for the prince to return to Russia upon completion of his studies, he left a suitable fortune as gratitude for Honore s fidelity and passion. The magnitude of the wealth entailed on her continued to protect Honore in her lover's absence and served as well to assure her conrinued entree into even the most conservative homes, although it was common knowledge that Prince Alex had first ruined her and then installed her as his mistress. France was ever a nation with a shopkeeper's mentality, and gold spoke powerfully at all levels of society. No doors were closed to Honore Constance de la Garonne, and her fortune assured her a splendid array of marriage suitors.
A fortnight sped by that summer, as Honore and Alex renewed their friendship, but much as he enjoyed her company, when it was time for Honore to return to France, she left no great emptiness in his heart.
The next week he resumed his amorous attentions to the ladies of St. Petersburg, but within days the old depression returned. No matter how he devoted himself to pleasure, his discontent and boredom mounted. No matter how many times the evening ended in some woman's arms, he was never satiated. The woman he had each night wasn't the woman he wanted. He told himself he was a pleasure seeker by choice but found uneasily that the pleasure was never more than the most fleeting fulfillment.
Despite his best efforts to the contrary, he was missing Zena. Many women had been uncomfortably chagrined as the inebriated prince had on numerous occasions addressed them as Zena in ardent phrases of passion.
It was more than six weeks now since Zena had left. Every pregnant woman he saw made him wince in dismay. Strange, he had never noticed pregnant females before, and now it seemed wherever he looked his eyes espied the blooming form of an enceinte woman. He was tormented with memories of their idyllic retreat at the dacha. Visions of her laughing smile, her delicate winsome face, and her perfect form all touched him with remorse.
Then for the first time the veneer of his self-absorption seemed to crumble and he thought with new stabs of pain how she might be suffering. He began to worry, imagining her in countless discomforts of poverty. Could she take care of herself and Bobby? Was she the victim of some brute who abused her? Was she healthy? Was she happy?
Lord, he missed her. He finally admitted to himself that he missed her, and he really cared about her. This is what caring is, he thought, wanting the person near you always. Love was enjoying an intimacy that wasn't fleeting, but deep and enduring and, as he'd found out, often difficult. Was it too late for them? Did she hate him now? Had she turned lightly to another man? Had she forgotten him already? The harsh, cheerless questions were achingly unpalatable.
He checked at his bank, and no funds had been withdrawn by his wife. The news left him slightly shaken, but he cautioned himself to composure. If she had gone ro her grandfather, there was no need for money. But no one was absolutely certain she had gone there. He sent a telegram south. To hand deliver it the distance to the mountain aul took some time. Six days later he had his reply. Zena was not there.
He panicked then. She was out in the world alone, or at least without him. In fewer than four days it would be September. In fewer than two months his child would be born, and he didn't even know where Zena was. His wife and child were vulnerable in the midst of a perilous, treacherous world. He was frantic to find them and make them safe. Detectives were set on the trail almost two months old. The results were negative. All inquiries came to naught. His agents had drawn a blank.
Anxiety for Zena became a very real fear. The most frightful visions tormented him. How could she live without funds? How could she support herself and Bobby without using his money? She couldn't keep a job when she was almost eight months pregnant. What if she had placed herself under some man's protection? His rage would mount furiously at the prospect.
God, what was he going to do? All avenues led to a dead end. Six detectives had been unable to find a clue to Zena's destination. She had for all intents dropped off the face of the earth.
9
Unaware of the desperate efforts to locate them, Zena and Bobby were living very quietly in a pension on a quiet street in Nice. Zena's landlady was kindly and politely tactful about questioning her new guest. The striking young widow was beautifully dressed but very frugal in her habits. She spoke French without accent, although her name, Mrs. Nazarin, was definitely Russian. The beautiful widow was a perfect tenant, however, never noisy or demanding, living a very circumspect, routine existence, taking her small son to the park both morning and afternoon, doing her own cooking and retiring early in the evening.
Zena's landlady observed the peaceful, placid habits of her guest and concluded Mrs. Nazarin was tranquilly a
waiting the birth of her second child. Zena had schooled herself on the train from Moscow to present a serene face to the world. It was essential for Zena to maintain this exterior at variance with the inner reality. Outwardly she obeyed the rules of civilized behavior. But despite her best efforts, the first weeks in Nice were just a black anguish, hardly separate one from the other.
As the feeling of numbness subsided, Zena consciously hoped to eventually make the sham a reality. All it takes is time, she told herself. Time would soothe the spiritual wounds of pain and despair that tormented her. Time would cure and restore the deep hurt of her rejection.
Time would dignify the humiliation of her inglorious, unrequited love.
But the practicality and logic of sensible reason didn't easily withstand the strength of willful emotions and a temperament decidedly less than practical.
The remembrances of Sasha's gentle touch, the warmth of his boyish laugh, the infinite pleasures he could provoke, pushed aside all sensible emotions. Passionate memories of love reacted very poorly to cold rationality. With an effort of will Zena sent away the images of Sasha that mysteriously appeared before her. In the meantime, she had lost ten pounds. So much for good intentions.
Shortly after her arrival, Zena made the acquaintance of an English gentleman who frequented the little park near her pension. He had kindly played catch with Bobby one morning when Zena had become fatigued with Bobby's inexhaustible reserves of energy. She had caught and chased Bobby's erratic throws for quite some time before the gentleman had politely offered to relieve her. He had taken over as partner to Bobby's youthful enthusiasm, allowing Zena a much needed rest. When Bobby later entertained himself by tossing bread crumbs to the pigeons, the tall man sat down and introduced himself. He was Alistair Prescott, Earl of Glenagle. Zena offered a minimum of information, introducing herself as Mrs. Nazarin, a widow from Moscow who had recently lost her husband.