Silver Nights (21 page)

“You thought well, Boris.” Adam stretched a bare arm through a gap in the sheets. “You'd best get out of your own clothes.”

“Just doing so,” responded the muzhik. “Is Sophia Alexeyevna all right?”

“Quite well, Boris.” Sophie answered for herself.

“Don't deserve to be,” declared Boris. “Such craziness!”

“I could not permit Khan to freeze!” Agitated in her defense, Sophie stepped away from the blissful scorching heat of the fire, her arms dropping away from her breasts.

Adam, rummaging through his valise, glanced up and drew in his breath sharply, seeing her now for the first time: clean-limbed, high-breasted, the soft curve of hip, elegant length of leg. She was too thin, but the lithe muscularity he had first noticed appeared little diminished by her imprisonment in St. Petersburg….

“Adam!” Sophie choked with laughter. “What are you thinking?” Her eyes gazed with unashamed satisfaction at the very obvious physical expression of his thoughts.

“Put this on, for pity's sake.” He handed her a brocaded silk dressing gown. “This is the most absurd situation.” He began to dress himself rapidly, conscious of the teeming room beyond the tent.

“This is the most absurd garment,” Sophie declared, hitching up the skirt into the girdle so it would not drag upon the earth floor. “Silk brocade in this place!”

“If you prefer your bare skin, the choice is yours,” he retorted, restored to himself in dry britches, shirt, and jacket. “Were the horses well provided for, Boris Mikhailov?” He
pushed through the curtains, his tone brisk as he spoke once more in Russian, reassuming the dignified mien of a colonel in the Preobrazhensky regiment of the Imperial Guard.

Sophie, undeceived, chuckled to herself as she spread out their wet clothes in front of the fire, where they would gently steam until morning. The sheets were taken from the hooks and the room given back once more in its entirety to the postman and his family. Boris Mikhailov, for whom the need for privacy was unfelt, had changed his clothing by the stove under the indifferent eye of an old babushka stirring cabbage soup.

The soup, heavy black bread, salted cucumbers, and raw onions appeared on the stained plank table. A communal cup of kvass passed around the table, refilled when empty from the beer barrel in the corner of the room. Sophie, who shared Adam's dislike of the weak beer, settled for the occasional gulp of vodka, but fatigue swooped down upon her like a hawk on an unwary sparrow. One minute she was sitting upright on the long bench, her belly filled with soup and bread, the next her eyes had closed and she had slumped against Adam's shoulder. Voices, cackling chickens, snapping dogs squabbling over scraps, whining children—she heard none of them. When Adam carried her over to the settle beside the fire, she curled onto the hard wood as if it were the softest feather bed. He covered her with one of the furs from the sleigh, sparing a rueful thought for the denial he had imposed upon them both that morning. Maybe, in future, it would be sensible to take advantage of opportunities when they offered themselves.

He found himself a corner of the room where everyone slept in a higgledy-piggledy confusion of cradles, cots, and mattresses, the oldest and youngest closest to the sources of heat. Fleas hopped, chickens pecked, dogs scratched. Adam finally slept.

Sophie awoke at daybreak. She awoke with a surge of vitality, unlike anything she had felt since she first arrived in St. Petersburg. Pushing aside the fur, she sat up on her hard bed, swinging her legs to the floor. A cat twined itself around
her calves; something tugged at the hem of Adam's dressing gown. A pair of solemn brown eyes peered up at her from a dirt-encrusted face. Smiling, she bent to scoop up the soggy baby who hungrily stuck his fist into his mouth. Around them, bodies began to stir, making reluctant waking noises. Holding the babe on one hip, she went to the tiny, snow-encrusted window. It was impossible to see out, so she stepped over animals and still-recumbent bodies to the door, gingerly lifting the crossbar.

Outside, the sun sprang off the snow with blinding brightness. All traces of the storm had vanished, although it was still bitterly cold. She closed the door swiftly. A child was feeding kindling into the sinking fire; another was doing the same for the potbellied stove. The babushka yawned toothlessly and took the baby from Sophie, thrusting a milk-soaked rag into the roundly opened mouth. Dogs were sent outside with the encouragement of booted feet; Boris Mikhailov opened up the saddlebags, and soon the aroma of coffee filled the hovel.

Sophie brushed at the wet patch on the silken robe at her hip where the babe had been perched. Looking up, she saw Adam smiling sleepily at her from his corner. Crossing the room, she held out her hands to him. He grasped them firmly and pulled himself upright.

“Good morrow, sweetheart.” He kissed the tip of her nose. “What's the weather doing?”

“It's beautiful. Freezing, but bright sunshine. I have to go to the outhouse, but I must get dressed first.” She gestured expressively around the busy room.

“Quite frankly, I don't think anyone is going to show the slightest interest,” Adam said. “Unless it be an inquisitive babe or a chicken.” Retrieving her dried, warmed clothes from the fireplace, he brought them back to the corner. “The less fuss you make, the less anyone's going to notice.” He planted himself, foursquare, across the corner.

Her crooked, quizzical smile quirked before she turned her back on the tumbling scene, pulling on stockings and pantalettes beneath the robe. Modesty beyond that stage seemed
singularly pointless. Dropping the robe, she scrambled into the rest of her clothing behind the screen of Adam's back. The satin gown was a sad sight, water-stained, crumpled, a seam split from yesterday's ride. Her hair, uncombed for over two days, hung bedraggled to her shoulders. Dirt clung beneath her fingernails. The image of General, Prince Paul Dmitriev rose unbidden, unwanted, in her mind's eye. Quite suddenly, she burst out laughing.

Adam swung around. “Whatever has amused you, love?”

“I was thinking of Paul,” she said, then saw his face close. “Only in terms of what a spectacle I must present and how he would react,” she explained, hesitant, tentative beneath his abruptly forbidding countenance.

“He tried to kill you,” Adam said flatly. “I do not find anything amusing in that thought, or in any other to do with your husband.” He turned from her, striding across the room to the door. It swung open, letting in an ice-tipped finger of air, a brilliant shaft of sunlight, then closed.

Adam marched to the stable. How could Sophie possibly be amused by thoughts of her husband? Had she no understanding of the situation in which she…they found themselves? Her husband was eventually going to find out that against all odds she had survived this journey, but he must not discover Adam Danilevski's part in it. Boris Mikhailov could have made an opportune reappearance to explain her safety. At Berkholzskoye, the muzhik would be beyond Dmitriev's vengeful hand. The thoughts, plans, explanations ran through his head as he checked on the horses. The one thought he could not evade was that Sophia Alexeyevna was another man's wife and would remain so until death broke the contract. And he, Adam Danilevski, a man of stern moral rectitude, one who had sworn never to become entangled with a woman again, was playing a part in the same sort of triangle that had destroyed his own marriage—except that this time he was playing the guilty role.

He could hear Eva's scornful laugh as she accused him of prudery, of ignoring, of hiding from, the realities of the world they inhabited; standing at the head of the stairs, her
belly, swollen with another man's child, pushing against her skirt…

“Something bothering you, Count?” The calm tones of Boris Mikhailov shattered the corrosive images.

“Not at all,” he denied, turning toward the muzhik, aware, even through the denial, that his mouth was set, his eyes hostile with memory. “I was just looking at the horses. They seem not to have suffered any serious ill effects.”

Boris looked at him with the wise eyes of one who has seen and learned much. “Best to be honest with her,” he said. “Sophia Alexeyevna can deal with most things, but she can't abide confusion and lies.”

“And you think I am about to confuse her with lies, Boris?” Adam's eyebrows lifted sardonically. “What have I done to deserve such a judgment?”

But Boris was not to be intimidated. He simply shrugged. “You know your own business best, lord.” Bending, he began to run knowing hands down Khan's hocks, feeling for the heat that would warn of a strained tendon.

Adam left the stable. He had not told Sophie of his marriage; there had seemed no point. He could not talk about it without bitterness, a bitterness he knew would become directed toward his audience. And now, enmeshed in this tangle of love, it would be even more difficult. The parallels were too clear, too agonizingly obvious.

Sophie was just coming out of the post house as he emerged into the dazzling morning. She was wrapped tightly in her pelisse, the pale oval of her face framed in the fur hood. Her hand lifted in salute, but she did not wait for him, simply turned toward the noisome outhouse at the rear of the inn.

Had he hurt her? Adam swore softly. Of course, he had. Pacing up and down in the snow, he waited until she emerged; she came hurrying toward him, her boots scrunching across the crisp ground, one hand shielding her eyes from the sun's dazzle. “Are we ready to leave?”

“In a minute,” he said quietly, taking her mittened hands. “I am a bear in the morning, Sophie, particularly when I
have spent the night fighting off fleas.” He smiled. “Forgive me.”

Her candid dark eyes regarded him gravely, as if reading his soul. Then she shrugged. “There is nothing to forgive, Adam. You do not wish to talk of Paul. I cannot blame you. We will not do so again.”

“I hurt you,” he said, squeezing her hands.

She smiled with a hint of resignation. “I have had my head bitten off before, love. There is no damage done.”

With that, he was obliged to be satisfied. They resumed their journey with Boris Mikhailov driving, but a constraint hung over the occupants of the sleigh. Sophie seemed distant, although she smiled and responded whenever Adam attempted to initiate a conversation. But it was clearly an effort for her, so eventually he fell silent, leaving her to draw pictures in the dirt on the window as she peered out at the landscape that today sped by, the blades of the sleigh cutting through the crisp snow.

By mid-afternoon, Adam decided he had had enough of this unrelieved tedium. He could not accuse Sophie of sulking—indeed, such behavior would be foreign to her nature—but there was more to her introspection than a simple desire to be alone with her thoughts. Action was definitely required. He gathered up a handful of sticks from the pile in the corner of the sleigh and replenished the brazier, giving Sophie a speculative look.

“What is it?” Suddenly, vividly aware of the look that penetrated her not-very-pleasant reverie, she gazed back at him, puzzled yet with a prickle of anticipation.

Stroking his chin thoughtfully, Adam remarked, “I was just thinking that opportunities for privacy are so few and far between, we should perhaps take advantage of them when they come.”

Sophie's eyes widened. “Do you mean what I think you mean?”

“What do you think I mean?” he teased.

“Here…now…?” Sophie looked around the tiny space. “But it's broad daylight.” The prickle was blossoming
into full-blown awareness, sending tingles up her spine, creeping across her scalp, creating a hollowness in her belly.

“So it is,” agreed Adam solemnly.

“It is not decent,” Sophie said, her dark eyes glinting with mischief.

“By the law according to whom?” inquired Adam with a raised eyebrow, drawing her against him so that her head rested on his shoulder. He smiled down at her, and she wrinkled her nose wryly.

“You are a shameless rake, Count.”

His head bent, his lips pressed against the soft curve of her mouth, a finger brushing in a stroking caress over the planes of her face, before trailing down to the mounded curve of her breast. The slow, sweet spread of longing annointed her. Her body moved into the caress as his fingers deftly unfastened the buttons of the pelisse and her nipples lifted into his molding palm. Without loosing her mouth, Adam spread the fur over them both before he pulled down the low neckline of her much-abused gown and released her breasts from the confinement of the chemise.

Sophie's sighing pleasure rustled against his lips, all discontent, the vague niggling unhappiness left over from the morning, subsumed now under the touch of lust, the affirmation of love. She felt his hand slide from thigh to knee, drawing up her skirt and petticoat, slipping into the waistline of her pantalettes. The garment was pushed down to tangle at her ankles, and the bared flesh of hip and thigh danced beneath the sensuous stroking fingers and the soft brushing warmth of the fur covering. He unfastened his own clothing, wriggling free of his britches with an agile twist, then caught her behind one knee and drew her leg across his hip.

He held her strongly beneath the cover, her body fitted to his, as the sleigh slid across the snow and its whispering progress matched the whispering rise of pleasure within as he allowed an infinity of stillness to pass, when she was conscious only of the throbbing presence filling her body, the only movement that of the sleigh insinuating its gliding rhythm into their joined selves. Slowly, he turned her until
her hips rested on the edge of the wooden bench, twisting himself to rise above her smoothly, so there was no loss of contact. Then he added his own movements to the movement of the vehicle, thrusting with gathering tempo, until she was no longer aware of her body as an entity apart from the motion beneath her and within her.

She sank into extinction, sank through layers of delight, drifting down, a cloud speck in the wide blue horizon, until she lay lapped in peace upon the luxuriant verdant carpet of release. Adam looked down at her closed eyes, the sable lashes dark half-moons on the delicately flushed cheeks. She was limp in his hold, but as he moved to withdraw from her, her arms tightened around him in protest.