He filled the small portal, wearing his clothes from the previous night, his face sweat-streaked and moody, his hair in damp curls, his lip still slightly swollen where she'd bitten him. The sun was at midpoint and hot even at the mountain altitudes.
"Come," he said curtly, and put out his gloved hand.
No proposal of marriage, that terse command, nor a poetical declaration of goodbye. Not that she'd expected either. But then she'd also not expected the cold chill order. He could be a man of persuasive charm.
"No," she replied, for a tangle of reasons she'd already spent hours dwelling on.
Wiping his forehead with the back of his gloved hand, he said, "Don't push me, Lise. We've been riding our ass off for almost three hours.''
"Is that my fault?" Her mild sarcasm took issue with his egoistic viewpoint. She was hardly to blame for his willful urges; she'd certainly not asked him to follow her.
"Who the hell else's?" he growled, immune to her reasoning, tuned in to his own sense of inconvenience.
"I told you I was leaving," she said, her declaration inflected with emphasis. "It couldn't have come as such a surprise." The scent of his sweat struck her as a breeze blew in from the open door and it was overlaid with the cologne he favored, a special blend distilled in the bazaar from local flora. She was reminded instantly as the fragrance struck her nostrils of other times they'd been heated-by a riding of another sort. She wondered then how useful her words would be, or how irrelevant against a man of Stefan's determination.
His answering sigh was audible only to her, and his voice dropped in volume. "I'd love to stand out here in the middle of the mountains under a hot sun," he said very softly, "after two hours' sleep in clothes I haven't changed since yesterday, and argue the fine points with you, Countess, if I was in the mood for an argument-which I'm not."
Her question was answered, but not without invoking her own willful disposition. "And that means?" Lisaveta slowly said, a flare of resentment responding to his princely peremptoriness and sulky dark glance-to his notion she could be ordered about like a minion.
"It means the discussion is over. You'll need a horse for the rest of the journey, so kindly give me your hand and I'll help you alight."
"And if I don't wish to journey with you?" she said, narrow-eyed and combative. For all her life she'd had charge of her actions, trained from early childhood to be responsible for her own decisions. She didn't take kindly to orders, princely or otherwise. She was too privileged herself, too wealthy, too educated to fall into a subservient role.
Stefan glanced around briefly. His men were lounging on their ponies, but even the most objective observer wouldn't doubt their capacity for action. "Really, darling, save yourself the embarrassment of being taken bodily from this carriage."
"Are you abducting me against my will?" Her shoulders had straightened in defiance.
"Hell, no. I'm taking you on a more scenic route home, and don't start all that 'against my will' dialogue because we settled that last night. I'm only here to accommodate your…" His smile was libertine and assured and he considered saying "lust" but gentlemanly decided against it. Women normally preferred a more romantic term for their carnal urges. "Wishes," he very softly finished.
"My wishes are to continue north in this carriage."
"And you will… eventually."
"When will that be?" she inquired, each word chill with icicles.
He seemed to be silently calculating. "Twenty days, sixteen hours, give or take a few minutes. It depends on Haci."
"Damn you." He intended to keep her his entire leave.
"My feelings exactly," he grimly said. "Now if you don't mind…" He reached for her.
She inched backward into the corner of the seat. "What if I resist?"
His eyes shut briefly. "Hell, Lise, you'd think I was going to stake you out on a mountaintop as prey for the eagles. You'll like my mountain lodge, believe me."
"It's the coercion I take issue with."
"Would you like a princely invitation? I thought I did that last night." And he had, with grace and courtesy and delight in his descriptions of his mountaintop aerie.
She had no choice, short of being dragged kicking and screaming from the carriage. She was outnumbered, weaponless and quite alone against Stefan and his men. But she could at least protest. "I want to categorically express my dissent," she said, her voice unsteady with frustration, "to this- this-"
"Holiday? Fine. Great. Accepted. Can we go now?" He placed one foot onto the metal step, tipping the carriage with his weight. "Ready?" he said with a smile.
"You're incorrigible and shameless and completely overbearing," Lisaveta fumed, staring at him with bold contempt.
"Masha keeps telling me that. Does it matter when you command a large portion of the Tsar's army?" His grin was teasing, self-assured and provoking.
"You can't keep me captive," she intemperately said. Then she took another look at Stefan's purposeful stance and expression, noted the number of his mountain men and changed both her inflection and phrasing. "Will you really keep me captive?" she asked, struck suddenly by her absolute vulnerability.
"I'd prefer you as my guest." His voice was gallant once again and amiable. She was more beautiful than he remembered and he'd missed her terribly already in the few short hours she was gone. "I can promise you-" his words dropped to a husky whisper and he thought of the delight she brought him "-a pleasant holiday."
"I won't go of my own free will," Lisaveta stubbornly insisted against the overwhelming odds facing her, against his whispered promise and her own indiscreet volition, resisting to the last, because with Nadejda in the wings and the hundreds of other women in his past and future, why should she docilely become one of them?
His sigh was a well-bred exhalation of tolerance. "I didn't think you would," he said, reaching in, grasping her hand and pulling her forward as if she were weightless. "Close your eyes and think of the Empire," he cheerfully teased, lifting her out of the carriage and swinging her into his arms in a swish of silk petticoats and crisp pink linen. "You're absolved of all moral blame. Guaranteed. With my reputation I'll gladly take the role of abductor."
"You don't care what people think, do you?" Her face was very close to his as he held her in his arms, and she didn't know if the blazing sun or Stefan's closeness was the cause of the heat racing through her senses.
He thought for a moment of the fishbowl of scandal he'd grown up in and of all the scandals since. "Not really," he casually replied, not looking at her, striding purposefully toward Cleo.
"Do you care what people think of me?" she quietly asked.
He stopped for a moment as he was about to lift her onto the red padded, quilted leather saddle, his expression suddenly solemn. "My servants and troopers are trustworthy. Nothing will be said."
"And Nadejda?"
He considered briefly how he could protect her against that moral outrage. "Masha will help," he declared, understanding that stronger measures might be required in countering Taneiev perturbation. "She has great influence in society. And Alexander will champion you should you need more powerful protectors." He spoke of the Tsar in intimate personal terms, pledging her the full extent of his privileged status and position. His dark eyes were grave and very near as he held her in his arms. "Would you like that in writing?"
I'd like a license of sole possession, she inexplicably thought, so you'd be mine alone for always and ever. But then every woman he'd ever known, no doubt, reacted similarly. He was rare and beautiful and much too attractive in a million ways. He was going to be-was already-all-consuming and disastrous to her peace of mind. But since she couldn't conceivably have what she wanted, and he wouldn't welcome the true nature of her possessive impulse, she discarded utterance of her irrelevant whimsy and said instead, "You can't absolve a person's reputation by fiat."