Authors: Merline Lovelace
Alex glanced at the drawing. It showed her cousin standing at the edge of the steppes, her head thrown back and her hair whipping in the wind. She wore the traditional calf-length skirt and belted tunic of Karistan, to which Alex had added rows of piping in an intricate, exotic motif. Both the skirt and
the tunic shirt were smoother, sleeker versions of the traditional dress, and allowed the ease of movement and tailored comfort the women who could afford Alex's designs preferred.
The overall effect was one of East meeting West. A blending of cultures and continents. A harmony that Alex could express in her designs, but had yet to find in herself.
When Sloan gave a low, appreciative murmur, however, Alex was sure he wasn't admiring her design or her cousin. Irritation spurted through her, and something else that she refused to identify. She tugged the sketches out of his hand.
“I'll put those away. Go join the men!”
He quirked an eyebrow at her tone, then pivoted on one heel and swept the tent with an assessing glance. When he swung back to face her, his knee brushed against her thigh with a sudden, startling intimacy.
“It's still the far side of disaster in here. Sure you don't want me toâ?”
“No! Yes! I'm sure.” Alex edged her leg away from his. “Just go.”
He rose, dusting his hands on his jeans, then stared down at her for a moment. “God keep you until the dawn, Alexandra Danilova Jordan.”
She blinked, surprised at how comforting the traditional blessing sounded in his deep voice.
“Andâ¦and you.”
The tent's flap had barely dropped behind his broad-shouldered silhouette before Katerina made her way across the tent.
“How is it the
Amerikanski
calls you by name? You don't permit the men of our host to do so!”
Alex crammed the last of her belongings into the chest and rose. She was too tired for another bout with her cousin, but from long experience she knew Katerina wouldn't be put off when she wore that surly expression.
“It's not that I don't permit them to call me by name. They choose not to, out of respect.” As they always did when she
spoke Karistani, her dialogue and thoughts alike took on a more formal, stylized structure.
“So he does not respect you, this countryman of yours?” Katerina's upper lip curled. “Just what did you do after you sent me back to my tent like a child tonight, that caused him to lose respect for you?”
“Cousin!”
Katerina placed both hands on her full hips. “What,
Alexandra?
”
Alex bit back a sharp rebuke. As much as the younger woman had strained her patience these past weeks, she disliked arguing with her in front of the others.
“We will not discuss the matter now.”
“Yes, we will.”
“Katerina, I don't wish us to argue like this, in front of the others.”
The women watching the scene from the far end of the tent stirred. Ivana of the honey pot set down the skirts she'd been folding. “We'll go,
ataman.
”
Alex shook her head. “No, there's no need.”
Her face pale against the black kerchief covering her hair, the young widow glanced at the others. Evidently, what Ivana saw in their faces gave her the courage to speak.
“There is need. You must talk with Katerina. Listen to her. Sheâ¦she echoes many of our thoughts.”
A familiar sense of frustration rose in Alexandra's chest as the other women filed out. She was their leader, yet they would not confide in her. She was of their blood, yet different from them in so many ways.
Suppressing the feeling with an effort of will, she faced her cousin. From the set, angry expression on Katerina's face, Alex knew she'd have to take the first step to heal the breach.
“I'm sorry if I embarrassed you tonight. I should have used more tact.”
“Yes, you should have.”
“And you, my cousin, perhaps you should have shown more restraint.”
“More restraint?” Katerina's voice rose. “More restraint?”
“You were draped over Sloan like a blanket,” Alex reminded her. “Such forwardness is not our way.”
A long-held bitterness flared in her cousin's dark eyes. “What do you know of our ways? What can you possibly know? You've passed your life in America, enjoying your pretty clothes and your fancy apartment and your lovers.”
“Katerina!”
“It's true. You may have spent long-ago summers on the steppes, but you're not really one of us. You weren't here in the winters, when the cattle froze and we ate the flesh of horses to survive. You weren't here during the years of war, when our men died, one after another.”
Stunned by the vicious attack, Alex could only stare at her.
“And even when you were young,” Katerina rushed on, as though a dam had broken inside her, “our grandfather set you apart. You rode, while the rest of us walked. You sat with him and listened to his tales of forgotten glory while we labored at the cooking pots. He petted and protected you even then.”
Alex's pride wouldn't allow her to point out that grueling fourteen-hour days in the saddle hardly constituted petting and protecting. “I but followed his will,” she answered through stiff lips.
“Just as you followed his will when you assumed leadership of this host,
Alexandra?
You, a woman! An outsider!”
“I'm of his blood, as are you.”
“Yet he chose you over me.”
Now they came down to itâ¦the hurt that had festered between them for weeks.
“Yes, he chose me. I didn't want this, Katerina! You know I never intended to stay when I came back. But I gave my promise.”
The girl bent forward, her eyes glittering. “Do you know why our grandfather called you back, cousin? Do you?”
Her heart twisting at the irony, Alex nodded. “Yes, I do.
As much as he hated my other life, he came to realize it gave me knowledge of the outside world. Knowledge necessary to deal with the vultures he knew would descend on Karistan with his death.”
“So you may think!” Katerina retorted. “So you may tell yourself! But it was not your knowledge of the outside world that made him choose you. It was your hardness! Your coldness!”
“What are you saying?”
“Do you think our grandfather mourned your absence all these years? Pah! He reveled in it. He boasted that it proved you as strong and proud as he himself. So proud you couldn't refuse the title when he passed it to you. So strong you would never be swayed by your heart, like the other women of this host.”
Alex reeled backward, wanting desperately to deny the stinging charges. Yet in a dark, secret corner of her mind she knew Katerina was right. Her grandfather had possessed a strength of will that was both his blessing and his curse.
As it was hers.
The two women faced each other, one breathing fast and hard with the force of her anger, the other rigid and unmoving. Then, slowly, like rainwater seeping into the steppes after a pelting storm, the bitterness drained from Katerina's face.
“Don't you see, cousin? Our grandfather gave you leadership of the host because you alone have the strength to hold Karistan together, as Iâ¦as the othersâ¦could not. Only you would ensure that our people don't scatter to the winds.”
Under her embroidered blouse, Katerina's shoulders slumped. “But perhaps only by scattering, by leaving this bloodstained land, will we find peace.”
Her heart aching at the bleakness on her cousin's face, Alex reached out to grasp her hand.
“Katrushka⦔ she began, using the pet name of their childhood in a desperate attempt to bridge the gap between them. “You must give me time. A little time.”
“Too much time has been lost already. Too much blood
spilled, and too many tears shed.” The younger woman sighed. “Only the old ones are left now, 'Zandra, and the women. Weâ¦the womenâ¦we talk of leaving. Of going to the lowlands.”
“You can't leave. Not yet.”
“Don't you understand? We want husbands, men to warm our beds and our hearts. Children to bring us joy. We won't find them here.”
Alex gripped her fingers. “You mustn't leave here. This is your home. Just give me a little time. Iâ¦I have a plan. Not one I can speak of yet, because it may not work. But someone comes, someone who can help us, if we just hold out a little longer.”
The two women searched each other's eyes.
“I'm sorry,” Katerina said at last. “I but add to your burdens. I don't mean to, cousin.”
Alex forced a small smile. “I know.”
“Iâ¦I shouldn't have become so angry when you took me to task tonight.”
“And I shouldn't have taken you to task so clumsily.”
Katerina hesitated, then gave Alex's hand a little squeeze. “I know you think me overbold, 'Zandra, but I'm not like you. None of us here are. We don't think as you do. We believe a woman is not a woman unless she has a man to warm her bed.”
Well, she was right there, Alex thought. In that, at least, she and her cousin were worlds apart.
“I⦠We⦠We want a man,” Katerina said simply. “Someone like this
Amerikanski.
”
“What?”
Alex jerked her hand free.
“Someone young and strong, with laughter in his eyes instead of hate. Someone whose blood runs hot on a cold night and whose arms were made to hold a woman.”
“Katerina!”
“Why do you sound so shocked? He's much a man, this one. Any woman would be happy to take him to her bed.”
“For heaven's sake, he's only been in camp for a few
hours! You know nothing about him. He could be anâ¦an ax murderer! Or have a wife and six children waiting for him in America.”
If he did, Alex thought, remembering their searing kiss, she pitied the woman.
Some of the lingering hurt between the two women faded as Katerina flipped her hair to one side and essayed a small, brave grin. “Pah! Do you think I waste my time? I learned all I need to know of him in less time than it takes to thread the needle. He has no wife, although many pursue him, I would guess. One has only to see the gleam in his eyes to know he has the way with women.”
He had that. He certainly had that, Alex agreed silently.
“He's an outsider,” she protested aloud.
“He may be an outsider, but he has the wind and the open skies in his blood. He owns only a small piece of land in America, not enough to hold him, or he would not wander as he does, delivering horses to strange countries.”
Surprised at her cousin's shrewd character assessment, Alex stared at her.
“He's like the men of the steppes used to be,” Katerina finished on a dreamy note. “Strong and well muscled. He would give a woman tall, healthy children. Smiling daughters and hearty sons.”
The guilt, worry and resentment that had been building within Alex since the night of her grandfather's death threatened to spill over.
“Perhaps we should consider putting the man instead of the horse to stud,” she snapped.
“Perhaps we should,” Katerina agreed, laughing.
Alex shook her head. This was all too much. “Iâ¦I need to think!”
Now that she'd said her piece, Katerina's earlier animosity was gone. “Go. Take the air, and do your thinking. I'll finish here and brew us some tea. Go!”
Grabbing the coat she'd tossed down earlier, Alex lifted the
tent flap. Once outside, she sucked in deep, rasping gulps of the cold night air.
With all her heart, she longed to saddle her gelding and head north for the ice cave her grandfather had shown her as a child. It had been her special place, her retreat whenever they clashed over his unceasing hostility toward her father. Since her return, it had become the only place she could really be alone in a land with few walls and little privacy. The only place she could find the quiet to sort through the worries that weighed on her.
But she didn't dare ride out at night unescorted. Not with the ever-present threat of raiders from Balminsk. Not with Nate Sloan in camp. She couldn't take the chance that he might stumble over something he wouldn't understand.
Damn it all to hell!
Simmering with frustration and confusion, Alex threw her cloak over her shoulders and stalked to the outskirts of the camp.
What in the world was she doing here?
Why had she abandoned her business, her scattering of friends, her on-again-off-again fiancé, to come back to Karistan?
Why, after all those years of unrelenting silence, had she answered her grandfather's stark three-word message?
“I die,” the telegram had read. “Come.”
So she had come. And been forced into the leadership of a people she barely knew anymore. She'd promised, and on the steppes, a promise made was a promise kept.
Although she felt trapped by this unfamiliar role, there was no one to pass it to. Katerina herself admitted she didn't have the strength; nor did the other women still left of her grandfather's line. Although one of her aunts was an artist of great skill, and another cousin a gifted healer who'd studied at the Kiev Medical Institute, the women of Karistan hadn't been trained for leadership. Nor did they want it.
With a small groan, Alex tried to come to grips with what they did want.
Her mind whirling, she tucked her chin into the folds of her coat. Gradually, the ordinary, familiar sounds of the camp settling down for the night penetrated her chaotic thoughts.
A man's low, gruff laugh.
The whinny of a horse in the distance.
The plink of a three-stringed balalaika picking out an ancient melody.
Alex tilted her head, straining to catch the faint, lilting notes. Like the wipe of a cool cloth across fever-burned skin, the music of the steppes eased the tight band around her heart.
Soothed by the haunting tune, she shrugged off her doubts and feelings of inadequacy. Whatever the reasons her grandfather had had for summoning her, she was here. Whether she wanted it or not, she carried the burden of this small country until she could pass it to someone else and get on with her life.