Since adolescence Prince Alexander Kuzan had done exactly as he pleased, looking down his insolent, well-bred nose with contempt at any who would dare cry scandal. After initiating or being involved in the most perverse and wicked excesses of the past eight years as the leader of St. Petersburg's fast set, one could understand the merry chuckle and raised black brows at the mademoiselles shy consideration of propriety.
"If I didn't know better," he said speculatively, "but there's no doubt I took your maidenhead, I'd be inclined to think you were not an innocent at all. Do women's romances instruct so explicitly?" he teased. "I was under the impression they were all of sighs and languishing looks and unrequited, passionless love."
"Oh, you're quite right about romances," Zena agreed. "I tried to read a few of them, but the silly airs of the heroines are really too idiotic to stomach. My reading instead followed the classics and the histories so adored by my father."
"Hmm," said Alex in faint surprise, "I detect a different side to you—not all beautiful, charmingly female, it seems," Alex mocked softly. "A bit blue, I think."
The mademoiselles want of sophistication caused her to miss the cynical overtones, and she continued quite earnestly, "I've always been fascinated by history, my lord, a taste my father encouraged."
"My father and a long line of dissolute Kuzans, as you see, encouraged rather different tastes in me. You're the first woman I've known who admits to reading."
Alex had always found learned women an awful bore, invariably too determined to exhibit their erudition. He heartily embraced the masculine notion that women as a sex were meant to be feminine, dainty, exquisite creatures.
A startled pair of eyes looked up at him. "That seems odd, my lord," Zena said. "I find reading one of my favorite pleasures."
"Please, mademoiselle, I beg of you," said the prince lazily, "no more my lords."
"Very well, My 1 ..." She hesitated. "Prince Kuzan?"
"Good God, no! My name is Alexander Nikolaevich Kuzan. My family calls me Sasha. My friends call me Archer. My acquaintances call me Alexander Nikolaevich."
"Why do your friends call you Archer? What an odd name. Do you like archery?"
There was the hint of a smile in his voice. "Not partieularly, but on occasion it's amusing. Better call me Sasha. Archer won't do."
"Why not, if your friends call you that?"
"It's a long story, and one that would not interest you." Again she heard the smile in the dark. "Now, no more my lords. Puts me in mind of a servant girl. Sasha, all right?"
"Yes, my 1 . . . yes, Sasha," Zena demurely replied.
His cigarette had been rushed out, and now both hands were languidly stroking Zena as she lay in his arms.
"Very pretty, mademoiselle." The prince's long finger traced the outline of a dainty flower-shaped scar on the rise of Zena's hip.
The young woman blushed at his tantalizing finger on her flesh. "A childhood accident," she explained.
His fingers wandered lightly over waist and hip, traced a silky drifting pattern on the inside of her thighs, softly roved upward to caress the lush female breasts, stopping a moment to rub his thumb against a soft nipple. Zena's body was slowly warming to his touch, and his stiffness quivered as the tumescence grew.
"Bluestocking or no, little one," he murmured idly, "there are other roles set aside for a woman in this world of ours. You'll surely want children someday."
"No!" Zena's emphatic response resounded in the hushed room. "I intend to finish my father's research and haven't time for children." Her determined reaction momentarily stilled Alex's roving hands.
He delicately lifted his eyebrows in mild astonishment. Is this young chit so naïve that she's unaware of the correlation of their lovemaking and the possibility of children? Does she innocently believe a passionate nature like hers housed in a voluptuous, exquisite, womanly body, even now beginning to stir passionately, can ignore the ofttimes consequences of that pleasure?
Then with an almost immediate indifference, the prince shrugged off her naïveté and its attendant difficulties. It wasn't his problem. Light fingers delicately squeezed a peaked pink nipple. Zena shuddered and made a little helpless sound.
He bent to kiss the soft yielding lips so close to his and guided her hand to the arched instrument of pleasure pulsing in anticipation.
They stayed awake all night making love, drinking champagne, and talking about every imaginable subject. Breathless and warm from love he would pull her atop his body and she'd lie on the heated, muscular bed of his torso, inches from his face; he poured her chilled champagne and, in altering moods of teasing and seriousness, they talked of their lives. Reaching up occasionally or drawing her down to kiss her lips, Alex would attempt to recover the train of thought but, often as not the kiss set off a passionate embrace that in a leisurely manner ultimately resulted in a renewed exploration of their mutual paradise. He brought her up countless times that night to shuddering, clutching peaks of enchantment while he melted quivering in numerous sweet deaths within her lush warmth.
At times positions would be reversed, and he would ride lightly above her, feeding her champagne with his kisses.
"Only half a mouthful, my sweet," he teased, "for my selfish instincts prevail—the other half is mine." Thusly in a bantering, joyful fashion another bottle of champagne was consumed. As the bubbly effervescent liquor inundated Zena's senses, her last inhibitions vanished; she opened her heart to this charming rogue, opened her mind to the warmth and security he genially offered, and opened her body to the overwhelming rush of passionate desire roused by the experienced proficiency of a consummate, skillful, courtly libertine, reaffirming his noted reputation as the Archer.
It was dangerous to want anyone as she wanted Sasha, Zena warned herself, and after such a whirlwind short acquaintance, but to a young woman who felt very much alone in the world and had known only cold tolerance the past few years, Sasha's comforting arms, softly murmured phrases of love, and sensuous pleasure were intoxicating.
As dawn approached, the exhausted young maid fell asleep. The prince watched her briefly from the vintage point of one elbow—long, dark lashes falling on flushed pink cheeks. What very long eyelashes the mademoiselle had, thought Alex, apropos of nothing. They made great shadows on her cheeks. The heavy mane of red-brown hair was disarrayed in wild waves around her dainty face, one arm flung in exhaustion above her head while the delicate petite body, of proportions Venus would have envied, glowed white against the shadows of the morning light.
The faint color of dawn seeped into the quiet room. Zena's soft breathing stirred the silent air as she lay warm and replete at his side. He gazed at the young mademoiselle with an uncommon tenderness. Alex was neither so dissolute nor so blasé as to be untouched by the quiet magic of the moment. He was aware of what she had given of herself, of the frank adoration and melting acquiescence presented gratuitously with an open heart.
He reminded himself that she wasn't one of his usual companions. The attendant implications confounded him, and he brusquely dismissed the uncomfortable thoughts with a slight frown.
He rose then and drew a blanket over her in a friendly, protective way, as if she were somehow in his charge. He wrapped himself in his squirrel-lined gray silk dressing gown and retired to a chair by the fire to await the early entrance he anticipated from Bobby.
He'd let the young chit sleep until afternoon. She was unfamiliar with sleepless nights. His normal careless, dissipated life routinely experienced periods without sleep, and three continuous days of drinking and carousing was not in the least unusual.
The eminently satisfied prince spent the morning entertaining a talkative, engaging three-year-old, and only when the dressmaker he had sent for arrival did he wake Zena.
"It's two o'clock, little one," he whispered in her ear, "and duty calls. Are you ready to have pins stuck into you?"
Zena's eyes snapped open in apprehension. Had the considerate, unutterably charming prince of
the previous night turned into a perverted sadist?
The warm look in his eyes and the smile flashing his even white teeth belied the startling, alarming inquiry.
"Pins?" Zena squeaked and struggled to a sitting position.
Reacting to the panic in Zena's eyes, Alex chuckled genially and hastened to reassure her. "A dressmaker's here—that kind of pin, my pet. Really, child, sadism isn't my style. I feel deeply offended," he mocked, teasing still, but his soothing reassurances didn't have the desired effect.
"Dress . . . dressmaker?" she now quavered in renewed horror. "Oh no, my lo—(he scowled) er, Sasha. I couldn't. I'd be too embarrassed."
"Good God. Embarrassed about what? There's no need to feel embarrassment before a tradesperson. Come now, I'm wearied of that green dress."
He drew her forcefully from the bed, wrapped her in the silk comforter, and with the curt injunction to do as he said, forced her, still weakly protesting, through the bedroom door into the adjacent sitting room.
"Sasha, really this isn't necessary. I'm sure I could . . ." Zena was objecting as he propelled her into the center of the room, "just redo that green ..." The sentence died abruptly at Zena noticed an elegantly dressed woman standing the window. Clutching the sapphire silk comforter with redoubled intensity, Zena threw a distracted, frightened look over her shoulder at the impassive prince.
Alex ignored the pleading in her eyes, determined, as was his custom, to brook no interference with his wishes. Gripping Zena's shoulders, his long fingers digging painfully through the silken coverlet, he held her firmly imprisoned before him.
"May I introduce Mrs. Mvaky, my dear. She has kindly consented to put your wardrobe to rights."
No explanation was given the dressmaker as to either the name or the relationship of this young woman. Curiosity consumed Moscow's finest modiste, but the prince's lucrative patronage commissioned so often over the past years sealed the haughty woman's lips. Prince Alex's generosity often indulged a lady love's whim for new gowns, which in turn filled Mrs. Mvaky's pockets with gold rubles. The prince's openhanded liberality stifled the dressmaker's native curiosity. The prince never quibbled over prices, his bills were paid promptly by his man of business, and his taste in female attire was richly articulate. Indeed, he was one of a handful of her male customers who understood what looked best on a woman and who never asked the price.
It appeared Prince Alex had yet another light o'love to embellish. Not in his usual style, this one, Mrs. Mvaky observed rapidly through shrewdly assessing eyes.
No customary Junoesque female here; instead almost a child. Certainly unprepossessing, frightened almost (hers not to question the fear nonetheless; none of her business the bizarre proclivities of this gilded youth), certainly a decided change from the haughty pretentions of some of the aristocratic sluts he usually preferred.
An aura of innocence about the young thing? Certainly the look of it, but in the company of one of Russia's most thoroughly disreputable rakes, clearly impossible, and from the looks of it stark naked underneath, with bare feet peeking out from the blue silk.
These swift musings were cut short and her speculations put to rest as the prince swept the silken comforter from the nervous girl and, much as a proud Pygmalion might show off his masterpiece, left the young woman uncomfortably nude in the center of the antique carpet. The most prominent modiste in Moscow heroically concealed her inadvertent gasp. She had been right: not a stitch on. Alex's eyes gleamed in appreciation. His lordship's attention seemed to have wandered, but at a discreet cough from the modiste he brought his gaze from contemplation of Zena's ripe beauty and, looking directly at the dressmaker, said urbanely, "A complete wardrobe, Mrs. Mvaky, everything. I trust you brought some dresses out as my man requested."
Gathering her composure, for naked women were not even in the prince's usual unorthodox repertoire, Mrs. Mvaky quickly brought out a navy silk morning costume. Without so much as a blink of the eye to indicate her consternation, she avoided the embarrassed gaze of the young auburn-tressed female and threw the full skirt over the head of the girl. Some seconds later, securing the buttons and hooks down the back while the prince stood critically assessing the fitting, she conversed in businesslike accents, "With the exception of the bodice the entire frock is too large. Everything will have to be taken in."
"Navy is much too severe for the lady. (The word "lady" increased the dressmaker's curiosity.) But we'll have this altered until more suitable gowns can be made," the prince broke in curtly.
"What else did you bring with you?" Alex was oblivious to Zena's embarrassment and strictly enjoined himself to remember that this time he was outfitting a respectable female. He studied the suitability of all the dresses Mrs. Mvaky had with her and, ignoring the pointed looks and pained glances of the young mademoiselle, further ordered a magnificent wardrobe with a practiced expertise that did not go unnoticed by Zena.
Short of making a scene in front of this intimidating woman, Zena had no choice but to submit to the ordeal, while Alex promised himself that once Mrs. Mvaky left he would bend his every effort to cajole and coax Zena into accepting both his gift of a wardrobe and, more significantly, the incontrovertibility of her future position with him.
Having women to bear him company at his dacha, buying gowns for them, living life with a bohemian disregard for conventions, dealing pleasurably in the lighthearted game of amour, all were eminently natural in the elegant, aristocratic class to which he belonged. He couldn't expect the girl to understand the careless, pleasant world he lived in, but he must do his captivating best to give her delight in this unfamiliar milieu into which she was thrust. She was obviously startled after the quite different world from which she had come—one, no doubt, in which a man must live with one wife to whom he is lawfully wed—a world in which a girl should be innocent, a woman virtuous, a man stalwart and steady; in short, all the foolishness he chose to ignore and ridicule as his youthful, pleasure-loving instincts flitted delightfully from amusement to amusement.
With an abrupt flick of his wrist he dismissed the dressmaker.
Then taking both of Zena's little hands in his, he raised them to his lips and pressed a light kiss into the palms as he glanced down at her from under his lashes. "You look delightfully beautiful in this cream lace tea gown, little one," Alex said with his brightest smile. "Relax, child. I promise Mrs. Mvaky is discretion personified. She won't breathe a word about you," he dissembled to set the chit at ease. He knew before the day was out all the polite world of Moscow would know of Zena's arrival, as if it mattered. No one dared censure his liaisons. In any case, he didn't give a damn for the opinion of any member of the haut monde from the tsar down.
"If it bothers you to take clothes from me, consider it a loan that can be repaid at a later date." He kissed the tips of her fingers as he still held her hands in his, and gazing at her over her clasped hands with just the suitable degree of penitent apology, begged forgiveness with his devastating eyes.
"My grandfather could pay you back," Zena hesitatingly suggested.
"Of course, if you wish," the prince readily acceded.
Zena broke into a relaxed, merry smile, for once the dilemma of payment was reconciled in her confused mind, what woman could resist the magnificent wardrobe the prince had ordered. She had to own it would be pleasant to see Sasha's admiration when she was clothed in her new gowns.
Alex, heartened by the warm smile of the pretty woman, tranquilly noted that another minor crisis had been averted.
Crushing her in a bear hug, he nibbled one soft pink ear. Zena melted against his body, the confounded, warring jumble of perplexing emotions overwhelmed by the dominating presence of this bewitching man.
She knew what she was doing wasn't right. She knew modesty and virtue were respected qualities in a woman, but when Sasha (she warmed her heart with the intimate name) held her and kissed her, all staid resolutions flew away, and all she wanted was to be near him. Luckily, for the peace of her a
lready uneasy mind, she didn't know that Prince Alex had this same devastating effect on all the women in his vast acquaintance.
"Let's turn on the Gramophone in my study and dance to the new waltz records sent from Vienna. That lace gown makes you look so good I may have to take it off soon."
As Zena blushed, Alex burst into gay laughter, kissed her on both cheeks, and twirled her out the door and down the hall to his study.
Prince Alex's very pleasant holiday had begun.
PART II
LOVE’S IDYLL
1
In the ensuing weeks the young chit was just where Alex wanted her, near him or in his arms or under him. She was more enchanting and diverting and sensuous than his most vivid imagination could have depicted or expected. The pretty maid learned the game of love with a facility and captivating celerity that piqued the jaded appetites of this surfeited young rake. She was sensitive, sensuous, responsive, tender, spirited, and impassioned; the full gamut of her vivacious personality never ceased to amaze him. He even listened politely to her vehement monologues on women's rights, feeling it only courteous quid pro quo for all the delectable, incomparable sensuality she offered him.
A charming domestic routine was established at Podolsk. The days were spent in joyful companionship together and in company with Bobby: skating, skiing, going for sleigh rides, building snowmen, playing indoor games in the nursery; in short, amusing themselves in childish youthful pleasures. Zena had sorely missed such youthful pleasures in the cold atmosphere of her aunt's establishment. For Alex these pleasures were simply his usual indulgence to sybaritic whims. It pleased him to please her. Her childlike joy was intoxicating to watch, and at night she intoxicated him in countless other ways, offering him Venus's delights in earthly form. The weeks flew by as in some blissful Elysium. The prince never thought beyond gratifying his fancies; only rarely had the need arisen in his