Seized by Love (9 page)

Alisa was lying quietly
now, enclosed within Nikki's strong arms, the trembling of her body having
ceased.

Into this wonderland of
pleasure, this paradise for the senses, drawled a lazy voice.

"It looks as though
you win the bet, Nikki. I should have known better, since your skill in these
matters is widely renowned. Must say, I envy you the ride."

Nikki swore and rolled onto
his back, his eyes glaring contemptuously at the mocking, derisive smile of
Illyich. Cernov was at his side, blandly surveying the delicious display of
Alisa's body. He gave the faintest flick of a wink at Nikki.

Alisa lay there, eyes still
closed, caressed almost into insensibility. Nikki quickly drew his shirt over
her nakedness.

He watched her floating
slowly back into awareness from the nirvana of sexuality where she'd so
wondrously expired. She opened her torpid eyes, deliciously languorous, still
remote, unfocusing.

"You bastards!"
Nikki snarled, turning to the two men.

"Now, now, Nikki,
don't be vulgar. You know perfectly well I escaped illegitimacy by ten
days," Cernov imperturbably retorted.

"Damn voyeurs!"
Nikki spat out, a frustrated, blazing anger igniting his mind.

Alisa's lovely eyes opened
with a startled look, at last fully conscious of the scene and its spectators.

"Nikki!" she
whispered frantically, appalled she was lying almost naked before two
strangers.

"I'll give you two
seconds to get out of here, or I'll kill you both!" Nikki said in a voice
that was solid ice.

Sensible of the reputation
Nikki enjoyed as a brawler, the two officers judiciously turned on their heels
and left. Cernov, grinning, calmly blew a kiss in Alisa's direction as he
wheeled around.

"Who the hell would
think Nikki would get angry over some little piece and a frolic in the
woods?" Cernov exhaled softly in amazement. "I've never seen him
regard a woman as anything more than a serviceable convenience."

"God only knows, but
when Nikki's in that murderous a mood, I'm not going to wait around to find out
why," Illy-ich responded with a prudent expediency that had served him
well in the past. Together they returned to the lodge to satisfy the desires
that Alisa's lush body had stirred within them. Nikki listened to their hasty
retreat through the underbrush, then turned to the dismayed woman.

"Forgive me, Alisa,
for the crude stupidity of my friends," he apologized softly.

As Nikki watched her silent
face, he saw a tear well out of one corner of her eye and trace a course down
her rosy cheek.

Damn them, damn them to
hell, he thought. Of all the abominable luck!

"I'm sorry,"
Nikki said aloud, and moved toward Alisa as if to offer what comfort he could.

He'd had vague misgivings
and qualifications about this seduction from the beginning, and even more so
after their second encounter, but he'd brushed them aside. For Nikki had always
lived unhampered by restrictions, ungoverned by rationale, totally unconcerned
with consequences. Now he found himself uncomfortably conscious of being the
cause of Alisa's pain and humiliation. He felt guilty, and this guilt upset him
because it was foreign to his nature.

In addition to the guilt,
he was smolderingly furious at his wretched friends. If he'd been honest with
himself, he could have understood their puzzled reaction to his rage. For years
the men had participated in many "shared" experiences with women. How
were Cernov and Illyich to know that in this rare instance they were not
supposed to join the fun?

Alisa cringed from Nikki's
sympathetic gesture. He hastily stayed his hand in midair.

"Please go," she
whispered.

"Alisa, let me
explain," Nikki began, forcibly struck by the misery in her tear-filled
eyes.

"Please," she
remonstrated in a barely audible voice. "Just go, you've had your
amusement." Her body involuntarily shuddered. "Just go!" she
cried hysterically.

"Very well,"
Nikki said stiffly. He dressed swiftly, apologizing formally when he withdrew
his shirt from her naked form and replaced it with one of her petticoats.

"Please accept my
deepest apologies, Madame," he said in a clipped, cool voice as he bowed
briefly to her recum-bent form, her eyes staring, unseeing, averted from his.
Then he walked quickly away, flushed with frustration and anger.

Quite suddenly, all the
light went out of Alisa's day. She wept and wept, hugging her petticoat to her
as though to keep herself from breaking apart from the great racking sobs of
humiliation. She wasn't ashamed of the men seeing her unclothed, she could survive
that; she was ashamed for wanting Nikki so, for willingly giving her body to
him; he hadn't had to force her, she had wanted him. And she wept for that
capitulation, for her loss of will. Strong and resolute enough to withstand an
intolerable man and marriage for six years, determined enough to patiently plan
and wait for escape from a husband she despised, she'd been brought low by an
unfathomable desire for a man with a reputation for treating women casually.
Who at this very moment, no doubt, considered her simply another pleasant
diversion.

Alisa's life hadn't been
happy since the death of her parents; everything she'd loved and cherished had
been swept away in a few days when influenza had claimed both her parents
within hours of each other. The raging fever that had held them in its
tenacious, deadly grip had never broken. Her lovely, gay mother and quiet,
scholarly father had eased into a coma from which they'd never wakened. Alisa
had often wished in the years following that she, too, could have died, but her
young, strong body had defeated the disease.

Then so shortly after,
indeed quite improperly so, the incredulous demand of her hand in marriage by
old Mr. Forseus, arranged, he'd said, by her father. Unthinkable, but
apparently true, since her father's signature was on the document.

If she'd not had Katelina
to love after that first year, a child to bring joy to her, she wouldn't have
had the strength or courage to continue her existence. Katelina, her darling
Katelina, her only solace, had given her reason to live.

Now, the one time she
ignored reason, negated logic, passionately made a daring, bold grasp for
momentary happiness, she'd been utterly shamed and humiliated. Maybe there
truly was no hope for joy or pleasure in her life, Alisa sorrowfully thought.
But she
had
been happy, deliriously happy with Nikki for however brief
the moments.

And she cried afresh at her
wounded heart and pride. She cried for all her sorrows and all her misery these
many years and sobbed all the sobs that had been so long suppressed. Then at
length, when she'd finally drained all the pent-up tears, she took herself to
task with the indomitable spirit that had always sustained her.

Be sensible, you'll survive
this mortification, she told herself. She still had Katelina and before long,
perhaps they'd be able to leave Forseus and make their way in the world. Ami,
her father's old groom, Maria, her old nanny, and Rakeli, Katelina's nanny,
were devotedly loyal and always ready to assist her, should that hope become
reality.

Alisa washed herself
hastily at the river, then dressed carefully and adjusted her clothes into a
semblance of order, her face in a spurious repose, and walked home.

Nikki partially assuaged
his black rage and frustration by summarily driving Cernov and Illyich out of
his lodge, spurring their departure with a string of vivid obscenities. With a
considerably more polite choice of words, Nikki convinced his young cousin
Aleksei to repair to the town house in Petersburg for a few days until Nikki
joined him. The Gypsy girls were promptly ousted as well, piled into a carriage
in which they contentedly counted their money all the way back to the city.

Nikki immediately shut
himself into the music room with two bottles of brandy and a brooding anger
that turned into a brooding melancholy by the bottom of the second bottle.

He roared for his musicians
and commanded they play sorrowful, quiet Finnish love songs, the old familiar
songs of Nikki's childhood. His mother's Tzigane ancestors had settled north of
Lake Ladoga over a hundred years ago, when a grateful noble had deeded them a
large tract of land and citizenship in return for having preserved an only
son's life from a runaway horse. Nikki's paternal grandfather had begun
construction of Le Repose, northeast of Vüpuri, in 1810; the country estate was
to become the favorite seat of the Kuzan family. Nikki had been reared there
and grew up in an atmosphere of Karelian tradition.

Play "Kalliolle
Kukulalle," he would sullenly mutter every second song, and the musicians
would lapse again into the sad minor key and play the single melody Nikki
wanted to hear.

Kalliolle kukulalle Rakenan mina majani Sine hajan oman ystavan Asuman
minuu ransani.

The poignant lyrics spoke
of a lover bringing his sweetheart to a secluded forest cabin and plunged Nikki
still deeper into an agonizing, gloomy depression. He couldn't dislodge visions
of Alisa from his mind. They had shared a sexual response that had struck even
the surfeited, world-weary Prince as rare and unique. She was a beauty,
unutterably so, artless, dazzling, sensual. He
must
see her again!

At one o'clock in the
morning Nikki's glazed, drunken eyes lit with a brilliant flash of an idea. He
impatiently waved the musicians away and called for his steward. After sending four
riders out with a message for his father's gar-dener, Nikki, eminently
satisfied with his resourcefulness, fell into a drunken sleep, having left
adamant orders to be wakened when the messengers returned.

Fifty versts (33 miles)
away, in the sunny breakfast room of Le Repose, Prince Mikhail Petrovich
Kuzan's principal seat and model estate of 172,000 dessiatins (484,400 acres),
Nikki's parents were enjoying the early morning companionship of a breakfast a
deux.

"What in the world is
Nikki up to?" his mother curiously inquired. She was a petite, dark-haired
Tzigane woman, still lovely and slim at fifty.

"Need you ask?"
his father replied dryly. "When Nikki strips our greenhouses of ten dozen
orchids and twenty baskets of strawberries, I would hazard a guess your dear
boy has found some woman who adores orchids and has a passion for strawberries.
Let us at least hope this sudden passion for strawberries does not signify yet
another
enceinte
mistress. He has populated the world quite adequately
already with his bastards."

"Now, dear, don't be
too harsh on Nikki," Princess Kuzan remonstrated gently. "He's
supporting them all quite satisfactorily, even lavishly, and need I remind you
that you quite put him in the shade by your reckless escapades until I tamed you
into the joys of domesticity. The rumor mills put his streak of wildness at
your door, Misha my dear, for as you well know, the Kuzan bloodlines have long
possessed a reputation for vice," she finished sweetly.

Nikki could do no wrong in
the eyes of his loving mother. He could be wild and a hellion, but her love was
unconditional and she served as a conciliatory influence on the occasions when
father and son's obdurate temperaments clashed.

"I could perhaps argue
about who tamed whom, and from whence the taint of wickedness came, but I
politely defer to you as a gentleman should," old Prince Kuzan graciously
replied, smiling at his wife. Even after thirty-four years, she continued to
delight him. The wild Tzigane heritage of the ripe sixteen-year-old Gypsy he'd
married had never been submerged. That wildness had been but thinly veiled with
the veneer of sophistication necessary to move in Prince Mikhail's aristocratic
circles on the rare occasions it suited him to remove himself from the
comfortable, elegant seclusion of Le Repose.

"I wish someday Nikki
could find a love like ours, Misha," Princess Kaisa-leena Kuzan wistfully
murmured.

"We had rare luck,
love. It doesn't happen often in this world," the Prince replied with
obvious feeling, recalling their first tumultuous meeting thirty-four brief
years before.