Luke stared down the grand, melancholy street, at the foreign silhouette of an onion dome, at the buildings standing in a stalwart line along the river. He had never felt so uncomfortable, so out of place…so English. This beautiful, complex country would ruthlessly bend a man to her will whether he was proud or humble, rich or poor. “Mikhail's past—and his death—are no concern of mine,” he said tonelessly. “I don't care what you choose to do about it. All I want is to take my wife back to England.”
Tasia slept peacefully in her room. She had done as Luke had asked and lay down to rest as soon as he had left her. For the first time in days she was able to relax. Everything was out of her hands now. Luke had found her, and he was somewhere in the city, doing what he could for her. No matter what happened now, her conscience was clear. All self-doubt and blame were gone. She lay on her back, floating amid quiet dreams, her hair spread over the pillow.
Her sleep was interrupted all at once as a large hand slid over her mouth to stifle her cry of surprise. A masculine voice rasped against her ear. “I have some unfinished business with you.”
T
asia's eyes flew open, and she blinked at the shadowed face above her. Realizing it was her husband, she relaxed beneath him, though her heart drummed rapidly. His hand lifted.
“Luke—”
“Shhh…” His mouth covered hers in a searching kiss.
“How did you get in here?” she gasped, twisting her mouth free. “Colonel Radkov told me the security was being tightened, and I could have no more visitors—”
“Nikolas countermanded his orders. We're locked in together for the night.”
“But why would Nikolas—”
“Later. I've got to have you now.”
His crushing weight came over her, and all questions dissolved in a rush of excitement. It seemed like months since she had been with him, and it felt so good, his weight lowering over the bedclothes to hold her in place, his mouth hot and plundering. Tasia moaned in her throat and struggled to free herself from the confining sheets. He continued to kiss her, licking, teasing, sealing his lips over hers. Through the layers of his clothes and the linen sheets, she felt the shape of him rising hard and urgent against her. She pressed upward in demanding undulations, pleading for his possession.
Luke lifted himself to pull at the bedclothes, revealing her slender upper body covered in a thin chemise. He dragged his parted lips over her exposed skin and followed the edge of cambric as she pulled it down with her trembling hands. His head moved over her bared breasts, finding the soft peaks, sucking with gentle tugs of his mouth.
They strained together, undressing, touching, striving to press skin against skin. Luke was half-clothed, his shirt gaping open, one leg still encased in his trousers, when he entered her with a hard thrust. Tasia gasped at the twinge of pain, her body yielding to the relentless male force. He kissed her throat, her jaw, waiting until she had adjusted to him, and then he pressed deeper within her, making her groan with pleasure. Her hands moved over the backs of his shoulders and gripped the muscled surface.
He rolled over, his hand firm on her back. Tasia straddled his hips and braced herself on his long body. She sought the perfect angle, pressing all her weight on the luscious point of their joining. She rose and pushed down again, pleasured by the gliding heat within her. Obligingly he followed the rhythm she set, his eyes a sapphire gleam in the darkness as he watched her.
She squirmed on top of him, riding the steady movement, taking fierce delight in having all his strength and power captured beneath her, caught fast between her thighs. She slowed the pace, tormenting him and herself, while each driving thrust pushed her closer to the edge of ultimate sensation. Suddenly it overtook her in a blaze of sweet agony. She tensed and trembled, desperately biting her lips to hold back a whimper. Luke clamped his hand around the back of her neck to pull her head down, muffling her cry with his lips. He buried his sound of fulfillment in her mouth as he pushed upward in one last surge. Drained and satisfied, he relaxed in a sprawl, while Tasia lay heavily on his chest.
After a while she stretched with a dreamy sigh and removed her chemise and the rest of Luke's clothes. He lay there like a spoiled sultan accepting the ministrations of a favored concubine.
“You don't know how much I've missed this,” Tasia said, tossing his shirt to the floor. She lowered herself to his chest again, lightly dragging the tips of her breasts over the hard, bare surface.
Luke grinned and began to play with her long hair. “I have some idea.” He drew the feathery ends of her hair over his chest and neck, then tickled her shoulder. “You're getting very good at it. I think I'd better take you back to England with me. A talent like yours shouldn't be wasted.”
“I agree,” she said wistfully, pressing her lips to his warm skin. “Let's go right away.”
“Tomorrow night,” Luke replied, turning serious. Before she was able to reply, he told her about everything that had happened, and the plan he and Nikolas had conceived on the ride back to the Angelovsky Palace.
Tasia listened in silence, trying to sort through a confusing mixture of emotions. She felt relief and hope that perhaps there was a chance for her to continue the life she had begun with Luke in England. But more than anything, she was filled with a sense of injustice at what had been taken from her.
“I'll be glad to leave Russia,” she said bitterly. “I was sorry to go the first time, but not now. It's my country, my home…but all I've ever seen was the beautiful facade. I never realized how everything was rotting underneath. How many people have been sacrificed for the ‘greater good’? There's no future here. They say we are all children of the tsar. They call him Batushka, father of all the Russias, a benevolent parent who loves and protects us as God does. It's all a lie, a fairy tale invented to make it easy for a greedy few to take advantage of the many. The tsar and his ministers, and all the families like mine and the Angelovskys…they don't care about Russia. They just want to make certain that nothing threatens their comfortable lives. If I manage to leave here, I'll never come back, even if I have the chance someday.”
Hearing the pain and anger in her voice, Luke tried to comfort her. “One of the most painful things in life,” he murmured, “is having your illusions taken away. Don't think it's only here that people take advantage of others. It happens everywhere. Even the most honorable men are capable of cruelty and betrayal. It's human nature…there's dark and light in all of us.”
“Thank God I have you,” Tasia said wearily, resting her head on his chest. “You would never betray me.”
“Never,” he agreed, bringing a lock of her hair to his lips.
“You're the best man I've ever known.”
“You haven't known that many,” Luke said with a short laugh, embarrassed by her praise. He moved over her and cradled the side of her face in his hand. “But I love you more than my life. You can depend on that, Tasia…always.”
The following morning Nikolas unlocked the door to the suite and requested a minute alone with Tasia for a reason he would not explain. Luke refused immediately, claiming that anything Nikolas wished to say to his wife could be said in front of him. An argument brewed until Tasia interceded. She went to her husband and whispered in his ear, rising on her toes to reach him. “Please, Luke, just allow us a few moments.”
Glaring at Nikolas, Luke left the suite with the greatest reluctance. Tasia smiled faintly at her husband's surly departure and turned to her cousin. “What is this about, Nikolas?”
He stood looking at her for a moment, his face like carved granite. The thought flashed through her mind, how coldly beautiful he was. Suddenly her breath stopped as he stepped forward and knelt before her in a lithe movement. His head lowered, and he lifted the hem of her gown to his lips in an ancient gesture of homage. He let go and stood up. “Forgive me,” he said stiffly. “I did you the greatest of wrongs. My debt to you will live through my children's children.”
Tasia made an effort to gather her scattered wits. She had never imagined Nikolas would apologize for his actions, much less in such a manner. “All I ask is that you protect my mother,” she said. “I'm afraid she may be punished for helping me tonight.”
“There will be no consequences for Marie. I have friends in the ministry of the interior, as well as the department of police. They'll be angry at your disappearance, of course, but all they can do is question Marie as a formality. I'll bribe a few high-ranking officials to ensure that she isn't confined or interrogated, and to say that she is a foolish woman who was duped by her clever daughter. I'll take care of everything. You can trust me on that.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Good.” He turned to leave.
“Nikki,” she said softly. He stopped and glanced at her with a rare expression of surprise. No one ever called him by the dimunitive form of his name. “You know sometimes I have…feelings about things.”
“Yes.” Nikolas smiled slightly. “You and your infamous witch spells. If you've had a ‘feeling’ about me, I don't want to know about it.”
“There is disaster ahead for you,” Tasia persisted. “You must leave Russia. If not now, then very soon.”
“I can take care of myself, cousin.”
“Terrible things are going to happen if you don't make a new life for yourself somewhere else. Nikolas, you must believe me!”
“Everything I want, everything I know, is right here. For me there is no world outside Russia. I would rather die here tomorrow than spend a lifetime in any other place.” A mocking smile touched his lips. “Go with your English husband, and bear him a dozen sons. Save your concern for those who need it.
Da sveedah'neeya
, cousin.”
“Goodbye, Nikolas,” she replied, her face drawn with anxious pity as she watched him leave.
Madam Marie Petrovna Kaptereva entered the Angelovsky Palace wearing a green satin hooded mantle that covered her from head to toe. The sentries stationed in the entrance hall stared at her with respectful interest.
Colonel Radkov, the officer in charge of the imperial security detail assigned to the palace, approached the woman. “The prisoner is not permitted to have visitors,” he said in a forbidding manner.
Before Marie could reply, Nikolas Angelovsky stepped forward to intervene. “Madam Kaptereva is allowed to spend ten minutes with her condemned daughter, on my authority.”
“It is against my orders to allow—”
“Of course, I'll understand if you decide to take your complaints to the minister of justice. I'm known as a very forgiving man.” In spite of his words, Nikolas gave him a smile of such chilling menace that the officer turned pale and shook his head with an incomprehensible mutter. The Angelovsky reputation was well-known and, by all accounts, well-deserved. No sane man would voluntarily make an enemy of the prince.
Silently Marie placed her bejeweled white hand on Nikolas's proferred arm. They ascended the stairs together.
Luke was waiting in the antechamber of Tasia's suite as the door was unlocked and opened. He and Nikolas exchanged a subtle glance—so far all had gone well—and Nikolas left with a murmur of warning. “Ten minutes,” he said, closing and relocking the door behind him.
Luke stared at the woman before him, noting the superficial likeness between his wife and her mother. They were both small and sable-haired, with the same porcelain skin. “Madam Kaptereva,” he murmured, lifting her hand to his lips.
Marie Petrovna could pass for a woman of thirty rather than forty. She was a great beauty, with more classically perfect features than her daughter. Her eyes were round instead of cat-shaped, her brows as delicate as butterfly feelers instead of bold slashes. Her lips were drawn with a pouting perfection that was entirely different from the passionate ripeness of Tasia's. But there was a brittleness about Marie that would only grow as the years passed. Luke far preferred Tasia's radiant and unconventional beauty, which would never lose the power to fascinate him.
Marie swept him from head to toe with an expert glance, and gave him a flirtatious smile. “Lord Stokehurst,” she said in French, “what a pleasant surprise. I expected a small, pale Englishman, and instead I find a big, dark, handsome one. I do
adore
tall men. They make one feel so safe and protected.” Gracefully she unfastened her mantle and allowed him to take it. Her well-endowed figure was clad in a yellow gown. Jewels covered her waist, neck, arms, and ears.
“
Maman
,” came Tasia's tremulous voice from nearby. Marie turned with a brilliant smile, holding out her arms as her daughter rushed forward. They embraced with a mixture of laughter and tearful exclamations.
“They wouldn't let me see you until now, Tasia.”
“Yes, I know—”
“You look so beautiful!”
“And, you, as always, Maman.”
Together they went to the adjoining room for privacy and sat on the bed with tightly linked hands.
“There is so much I want to tell you,” Tasia said, her voice muffled as she leaned forward to hug her mother.
Uncomfortable with displays of emotion, Marie patted Tasia's back with a light flutter of her hand. “How is it for you in England?” she asked in Russian.
Tasia smiled, her face suddenly glowing. “It's heaven,” she said.
Marie glanced at the next room where Luke waited. “Is he a good husband?”
“Good, and generous, and kind. I love him very much.”
“Does he have land and property?”
“He's very wealthy,” Tasia assured her.
“How many servants does he have?”
“At least a hundred, perhaps a few more.”
Marie frowned, for the number was modest by the standards of Russian nobility. At one time the Kapterevs had possessed almost five hundred retainers. Nikolas Angelovsky's servants numbered in the thousands, necessary to maintain his twenty-seven estates. “How many estates does this Stokehurst have?” she asked suspiciously.
“Three, Maman.”
“Only three?” Marie's frown deepened, and she let out a disappointed sigh. “Ah, well…as long as he is kind to you,” she said, trying not to sound glum. “And he is handsome. That counts for something, I suppose.”
Tasia smiled wryly. She took Marie's hand and squeezed it lovingly. “Maman, I'm expecting a child,” she confided. “I'm almost certain of it.”
“Truly?” There was a mixture of delight and dismay on Marie's face. “But Tasia…I'm far too young to be a grandmother!”
Tasia laughed and listened attentively as Marie advised her what to eat and how to preserve her figure after the baby was born. Marie promised to send the white lace christening gown that had been used by four generations of Kapterevs. All too soon their ten minutes were over, and there came a knock on the door of the next room. Tasia started at the sound and looked at her husband with wide eyes as he approached.
“It's time,” Luke said quietly.
Tasia turned back to her mother. “Maman, you haven't told me how Varka is.”
“She is well. I wanted to bring her with me tonight, but Nikolas forbade it.”
“Will you give her my love, and tell her I am happy?”
“Yes, of course.” Busily Marie began to unclasp her necklace and bracelets. “Here, put these on. I want you to have them.”