Seized by Love (5 page)

And so began a long summer
of sweet delirium for them both. The sweetness overtoppled mind and sense; they
had something unique, something to be cherished. She taught him much about
women and love and she drew from him bittersweet memories of what raw,
uncontrolled youthful passion could be. He was to her simultaneously both
anguish and ecstasy, anguish for her youth forever beyond recall, and the
ecstasy of blossoming under Nikki's ardent naked desire. There was no permanent
cure for the dreaded fears of approaching middle age that plagued Soronina,
only temporary relief in the arms of the young Nikki, who made her forget for
the moment the threat of the future without her beauty.

Nikki's parents returned to
Le Repose after a month, but he stayed behind. He had come into an inheritance
from his grandfather on his sixteenth birthday which allowed him to further
indulge his propensity for independence. Nikki's mother attempted to persuade
her son to return with them. She felt he was being drawn in too deeply, after
having seen Soronina's overt, frankly loving gaze envelop her boy one evening
at a ball. It was so unlike the frivolous, shallow Soronina and terrifying in
its possible consequences. Much as Princess Kaisa-leena adored Soronina as a
friend, one did not care to contemplate her as a daughter-in-law. Prince
Mikhail kept his peace and forbore issuing any unwanted words of fatherly
advice, hoping that his reckless son would tire of the affair in due course. If
not, time enough then to intercede.

That summer the affair
swiftly reached notoriety as Nikki, with blazing indiscretion, escorted
Countess Plen-tikov everywhere. He arranged his life to please her because it
pleased him also. When they went out he was at her side, masterful,
proprietary.

However, on the rare
occasion when he would decide to leave town for a few days, no amount of
coaxing, either amorous or petulant, would change his mind. Regardless of their
easy intimacy, Soronina lacked her usual control. Nikki simply went when he
wanted to go. He never stayed long, and when he returned, she would look into
those tawny, brooding eyes and a shiver of pleasure would run through her.

By the end of August Prince
Mikhail stepped in. The gossip and rumors were becoming serious. Never one to
pander to discretion, Nikki had practically installed himself in Count
Plentikov's town palace during that nobleman's absence. Dangerous rumors were
making the rounds of the clubs to the effect that the cuckolded husband was
about to ask for satisfaction from the young pup warming his wife's bed.
Because Count Plentikov's reputation as a superb sportsman was nonpareil,
Prince Mikhail didn't wish to contemplate a duel between such unmatched
parties. Nikki didn't have the experience to survive an encounter regardless of
his skill with rapier and pistol. His youth was quite dramatically a
disadvantage on the dueling field in contrast to its obvious advantage in the
bedchamber.

One morning Nikki was
bodily removed from Countess Plentikov's city palace by four of Prince
Mikhail's body servants as he strolled down the marble stairway toward the
breakfast room to join Soronina. AH that day Nikki raged and stormed and
threatened his father as Prince Mikhail attempted to explain the seriousness of
the dilemma. Unfortunately neither party was open to reason.

Late that night Nikki
managed to elude his jailers and immediately returned to the Countess, who was
distraught over the possible repercussions of this scandal. Having long adhered
to the aristocratic principles of unlimited dalliance so long as no hint of it
reared its ugly head, she was beside herself now with terrified misgivings.
What had come over her this summer to so wildly throw away all restraint and
discretion? Nikki's impetuous temperament had overcome her sensible prudence.
Dreadful forebodings of being cut from polite society plagued her.

Pacing her bedroom chamber,
Nikki pleaded with Soronina to marry him, but she shuddered to think of a
May-December marriage between a youth and a woman old enough to be his mother.
She could not tolerate the ridicule. Then he begged her on his knees to go to
the Continent with him. He had plenty of money, they would have a glorious life
together, they would be happy. Again she shuddered—to be a kept woman was
beyond her comprehension. Nikki insisted he would then kill her husband in a
duel. Again she was appalled at the raw, passionate nature of her young lover.
Tears came to her eyes and spilled over onto their entwined hands.

Above all, their love must
not be lost, he said. No hazard was too great. He wildly promised her anything
she wanted. He waited for her answer.

But it was impossible. All
her life Soronina had unques-tioningly accepted the dictates, the refined
etiquette, and protocol of exclusive Petersburg society and would no more
consider ostracizing herself from the comfortable confines of that world than
she would consider becoming a circus performer. She tried to explain to Nikki
that one must do what's expected of one's class, understand the necessity for
society's conventions, serve as an example.

Even at that young age
Nikki was sufficiently his father's son to curl a well-bred lip. When he broke
in contemptuously, standing erect, and spat coldly at her to spare him any more
of those inconsequential platitudes, Soronina was grief-stricken and the young
boy's heart reached out and longed to give her comfort, but he couldn't give
her what she wanted: security—safe, comfortable, snug, luxurious security. She
cried harder when the door burst open and Nikki's father and servants once more
dragged young Prince Kuzan away. She wept bitterly and whispered, "I'll
never be the same."

The young Prince was never
the same either. What shreds of romantic illusion and idealism and naive belief
in happiness he had managed to retain in the brittle society in which he lived
were swept away that night and eventually obliterated during the next two years
he spent in Europe.

Prince Mikhail had not
taken any chances of losing his only child to some dueling pistol held in the
hands of an irate husband. He had kidnapped Nikki to save him. And after his
confrontation with Soronina, Nikki was unhappy, disillusioned, and consequently
could be persuaded to sojourn away from Petersburg.

"You will forget her,
my son," his father had said, and he was partially right. Once in Europe,
nothing was too rash to attempt. Morality, never of great concern, was gone
from his mind. Unfettered feverish activity prevailed, and before long the
pursuit of this wildly dissipated life served to dislodge most of his old
romantic memories, but not without its price of self-torture.

Two years later a much
wiser, more cynical young man came back to Petersburg, cool, restrained, elegant,
guarded. He took his place in society and never again was persuaded to turn
from a confrontation. He was, in fact, extremely quick to take offense, indeed,
provocative to an unnerving degree, soon bordering on the notorious after his
fifth duel in the same number of years. Nikki could even manage to meet
Countess Plentikov in public and blandly pass the time with her as if their
tempestuous
amour
had never been. It took an effort, for one never
quite forgets the sweetness of first love, but he had grown up and civility
demanded that much from him. One must set an example, he would mirthlessly
remind himself.

But the unhappy affair set
the direction of his future liaisons. Never again did he expose his heart,
swearing that the ignominy of offering his heart and soul only to find them
refused would never be repeated. Women became merely an amusement, a convenient
receptacle for his passions when the need came over him, or else a frivolous
pursuit to idle away the measured tedium.

Lightly jumping across the
gurgling expanse of water, Nikki silently walked up behind Alisa. She was
seated with her back to the water, a sketchbook on her lap, rapidly capturing
the woodland scene in vivid watercolors.

"Nikolai Mikhailovich
Kuzan at your service, my lady," he said softly (and unthinkingly in the
habitual French spoken by the Russian aristocracy; it was not the language of
this area of the duchy).

Alisa jumped up, wildly
scattering her sketchbook, paints, and brushes in the process.

"How do you do,
sir," she stammered, replying in the same language, but totally flustered
by the unexpected handsome stranger looking down at her. She flushed uneas-ily
under his close inspection.

Nikki lifted one eyebrow
quizzically, smiled slightly, and calmly waited for her to introduce herself.
The silence lengthened.

Nikki prompted her.

"I believe I've seen
you on occasion in Vüpuri, but, unfortunately, always at a distance," he
said smoothly. "I fear I don't know your—"

"Of course,"
Alisa blurted out, embarrassed at her lapse in manners but shaken by meeting
the piercing scrutiny of those pale golden eyes. "I'm sorry, forgive me,
Monsieur. Mrs. Valdemar Forseus at your service, sir," she responded
rapidly, and bobbed a quick curtsey.

I certainly hope so, Nikki
said to himself. His eyes swiftly swept her bowed figure as she gracefully
executed the curtsey.

Nikki's former glimpses of
Mrs. Forseus hadn't done her justice. She wasn't simply another wholesome
country lass, merely pretty and vivacious. She was breathtakingly beautiful.
Her hair at a distance seemed to be copper. It was in fact a scintillatingly
luxuriant golden-red; her eyes were large, dark violet, seductively lashed; her
lips inviting (still slightly parted in surprise); her creamy complexion was
flawless; her figure full-bosomed and slender-hipped. She was a lovely sight,
and Nikki viewed her with a slow smile of sheer aesthetic appreciation. On
second thought, alas, only partly aesthetic, for she had an opulent, ripe
lushness about her that generated a surge of pure lust in Nikki's libertine
soul.

Her long-lashed eyes
lifted, bright with a startled vivacity, and meeting Nikki's gaze, she
encountered a hungry look that made her creamy skin glow again for an instant
with rose.

For a man of his experience
and jaded appetites, Nikki felt, ridiculously, a crazy, youthful elation as he
contemplated the beautiful upturned face, a stirring of desire that comes on
one at the sight and scent of a perfect master-piece of female flesh. This
little seduction should prove to be tantalizing, he speculated pleasantly to
himself.

"You must be related
to the Prince Kuzan who owns the hunting lodge," Alisa remarked a little
unsteadily, feeling she must say something to break the spell of those
magnetic, unnerving tawny eyes.