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Authors: Countess In Buckskin

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“You’re too kind, sir, and too besotted with your wife to notice any woman in the room but her.”
Her hand went to the strings of her black velvet cloak. Stumbling over his feet, Mikhail rushed to take the garment from her hands.
If the princess glowed in red and gold, Tatiana glittered in shimmering, sensuous lavender silk and glistening black jet. A high, weblike collar of black beads banded her neck and spread over her bare shoulders in an intricate pattern of loops. A huge tear-shaped amethyst hung from the lowest loop. It drew every man’s eyes, Josh’s included, to the shadowy valley between breasts bared by the low-cut gown.
“We will give thanks,” the baron proclaimed, leading the ladies to benches set at the head table. “Then we shall eat and sing and show our American guest how Russians celebrate the feast of Saint Sergius, no? Here, my friend, sit here beside the countess.”
Slowly Josh moved to the seat indicated. Make no mistake, the Countess Karanova had returned to her own kind. This glittering, elegant woman bore little resemblance to the tangle-haired shrew who’d accosted him in the Hupa sweat house. Even less to the writhing, passionate creature who haunted his every waking hour and most of his sleeping ones, as well.
He’d felt her withdrawal from the moment they’d arrived at Fort Ross. Now he barely recognized her.
Just as well he was moving on tomorrow, Josh told himself. He’d delayed his departure too long as it was. It was time, past time, to get on with his mission. For reasons he preferred not to think about at this moment, the prospect of resuming his solitary wandering didn’t hold the lure it once had.
Thoroughly disgruntled, he took his assigned seat and drew upon the manners he hadn’t used in years.
“May I pour you some wine?” he inquired politely. “Or perhaps beer?”
Tatiana threw him a startled look. “Vodka.”
“As you wish.”
 
An hour later, Tatiana was forced to admit that the evening wasn’t going at all as she had planned. She’d thought to dazzle Josiah with her charm. Perhaps stun him just a bit with her borrowed paints and perfumes. She’d certainly never intended to make him stiffen up like a poker and treat her like a stranger.
Of a sudden, he’d grown so...so polite! Throughout this interminable feast, they’d carried on a stilted dialogue, each awkward with the other. Now the sound of voices raised in song and the stamping feet of the exuberant dancers put an end to their stiff conversation.
This would not do. This would not do at all. Frowning, Tatiana nibbled at the remains of a flaky pastry coated with honey and debated how best to break through the American’s so strange reserve. When her tongue flicked out to catch the sticky sweetness that ran down her fingers, Josiah stiffened. She glanced up to find him regarding her intently.
“What is it?” She raised her voice to be heard over the music. “Have I honey on my nose or chin?”
No.
She popped the last crumbs into her mouth, then took another swipe at her sticky fingers. To her surprise, a slow, breath-stealing grin etched its way across Josiah’s face.
“Why do you smile at me in such a way?” she demanded.
“What?”
“Why do you smile at me so?”
He bent and brought his mouth closer to her ear. Tatiana’s nerves took fire when his warm breath tickled the fine hairs at her temple.
“I was remembering the night we roasted mountain trout over the fire. You licked your fingers then, too.”
She blinked. “And that causes you to grin?”
“Yes, ma’am, it surely does.”
Actually, the sight of Tatiana running her tongue around her fingers caused Josh to do a whole lot more than grin. It also blew away his vague, uneasy notion that the woman who’d walked through the mountains and this shimmering, sophisticated creature were somehow different beings.
“You are a puzzlement to me, Josiah Jones,” she said, shaking her head. “Shall I ever understand you?”
“I’m not sure the good Lord meant for men and women to understand each other.”
“Oh, so? What, then, did He intend for them to do?”
Tatiana read the answer in his eyes. Swift heat poured into her face. Sweet Virgin above, she could not believe that she blushed like the veriest schoolgirl!
“Among other things,” Josiah replied with a wicked grin, “He intended them to dance.”
Rising, he stepped over the bench and held out his hand to her. “Will you take a turn about the floor with me?”
“They’re doing a Ukrainian
hayivka
,” she replied doubtfully. “Do you know this dance?”
“No, but it can’t be much harder to learn than the Hupa White Deerskin ceremonial.”
“Ha! You shall see!”
Gathering her skirts, Tatiana rose. A stately gavotte or even a graceful waltz would have accorded more with her dignity than this rollicking folk dance. She feared greatly for the delicate kid slippers she’d borrowed from Helena among the forest of stomping boots. Yet she wouldn’t have missed the chance to put her hand in Josiah’s for all the gold in the trar’s treasury.
The contact was all too brief. He led her to the floor, and Tatiana found a place in the noisy, laughing circle of women. Hands on hips, she dipped a shoulder to every second beat and took a gliding step to the right on every third. Arms looped over each other’s shoulders, the men moved in the opposite direction. The wooden floorboards shook under their heavy, pounding thumps.
“This isn’t so difficult,” Josiah commented when they faced each other once again.
Tatiana threw back her head. “Oh, so? Wait until we make another turn or two.”
Luckily she was only a few feet away from him when the tempo abruptly doubled. She couldn’t miss the surprised expression on his face as the men suddenly dropped to a squat and thrust out first one leg, then the other. Dragged down with the others, Josiah landed on the floor with a resounding whump.
Laughter erupted from all sides. Grinning sheepishly, he was pulled to his feet and swept along in the energetic dance. After a few more clumsy tries, he managed to catch the rhythm. He thrust out his legs with some energy, if not skill.
Many believed the
hayivka
was intended to lighten hearts after the long, dark Ukrainian winters and stir the blood for the spring ritual of choosing a mate and bringing forth new life. Even here, so far from the land of its origin, the dance served its purpose. Tatiana couldn’t help but notice the way Josiah’s muscled thighs bulged with each bend and thrust, and the stretch of his linen shirt across his shoulders as he swept past. She dipped and swayed and felt her blood heat with each glimpse of his lean hips and broad chest.
And when the whooping, stomping men broke their ring to claim their partners, her womb contracted like a vise. Josiah stood before her, his chest heaving from his exertions and his amber eyes gleaming as he encircled her waist with both hands.
Breathing every bit as hard and as fast as he, Tatiana put her hands on his shoulders. They stared at each other for long seconds before the dancers pushed them into movement. Taking his cue from the others, Josiah swung her around, then lifted her high in the air.
Laughing, breathless, her blood roaring through her veins, Tatiana gave herself up to the dizzying dance and to the feel of his hands on her body. When the music finally ended, she could only cling to his shoulders while the room spun around her and a single thought drummed in her head.
By Saint Igor, she wanted him! With everything that was female within her, she wanted him!
And he wanted her. She could feel it in the bite of his hands at her waist. See it in the skin stretched taut across his cheekbones.
“Tatiana...”
Her heart thrilled at the harsh, urgent note in his voice. Her head tried to warn her to go cautiously.
“Yes?”
“I need to talk to you.”
Talk was not what she saw in his eyes. Nervously she wet her lips.
“So we shall sit, and you shall talk.”
The sight of her small pink tongue drove the last rational thought from Josh’s head. His blood pounded from the exuberant, primitive rhythm of the dance. His body pulsed with the need to claim the woman he held captured in his hands. He ached to pick her up, throw her over his shoulder and storm out of the warehouse to find a bed. A pile of hay. A nest of furs. Anywhere they weren’t watched by a hundred curious eyes!
“Not here,” he muttered hoarsely.
He didn’t sling her over his shoulder, but he did drag her to stand before their hosts.
“Will you excuse us?” he asked brusquely. “We have...unfinished business yet to discuss.”
Alexander Rotchev lifted a surprised brow. Before he could comment, however, his wife intervened.
“You may use our parlor,” Princess Helena declared loftily. “We shall remain here with the children for at least another hour or more, so you need not fear to be disturbed during this—” her dark eyes slid to Tatiana “—discussion.”
Josh used the short trip across the compound to gain a measure of control over his galloping, riotous senses. He lost it again the moment the door to the Rotchev residence closed behind them and Tatiana flung off her cloak. She stood silhouetted against the glow from the banked fire. If she was wearing any petticoats under that thin, shimmering silk, Josh sure as thunderation couldn’t see them. His throat closed at the outline of her rounded hips and long, curved legs.
He reached her in two strides and pulled her into his arms. His head went down to claim her mouth. She rose up to meet it, locking her arms around his neck. Their kiss was a rough, greedy fusion of two hungry bodies.
Josh dug his fingers into her hair and held her head still while he plundered her mouth. He tasted the honey she’d licked from her fingers. Her tongue danced with his. All too quickly, he was close to forgetting who he was, who she was.
“Tatiana,” he said raggedly against her lips.
She angled her head, her mouth moving hungrily over his. “Yes?”
“I have to leave tomorrow.”
“Do you, Josiah?”
“Yes.”
“Why?” She tore her mouth from his, breathing hard. “Is the call of your mountains so strong that you must answer it always?”
Duty and desire fought a short, ferocious battle. Josh wanted to tell her. Ached to tell her. Loyalty to the uniform he once wore so proudly kept him from crossing the line.
“I have business I must conduct,” he said gruffly, “but I’ll come back. I swear it. Before your precious twigs begin to sprout.”
Tatiana believed him. God help her, at that moment she believed him. Even worse, her weak, foolish, so very
stupid
heart urged her to give him something to speed his return.
Wrapping her arms around his neck, she canted her hips into his. The intimate contact brought a glint of laughter to her eyes.
“These twigs are not all that sprout, I think.”
Groaning, Josiah swept her into his arms and carried her to the massive settee. In a flurry of frantic hands, he raised her skirts while she worked the ties of the front flap on his buckskin britches. They were both panting by the time their flesh came together, and on fire with need by the time their bodies joined.
Chapter Twelve
 
 
A
n hour later Josh escorted Tatiana back across the compound. As they approached the noisy, stillcrowded warehouse, his steps slowed. He had little desire to rejoin the festivities, and none at all to end his moments alone with Tatiana.
He’d promised her that he’d return, and he fully intended to as soon as he relayed his findings to the United States vice-consul in Monterey. But what then? What could a half-pay officer with no roots and no future offer this dazzling Russian? What would she want from him when she learned his real reasons for escorting her to Fort Ross?
Cursing the president’s express instructions to keep his mission secret, Josh pulled Tatiana to a halt some yards from the storehouse entrance.
She turned to look up at him questioningly. Light spilled through its glazed glass windows and painted her face in a soft glow. Dark curls tumbled about her face, less ordered now than when they’d left some time ago. Josh tucked a soft, silky curl behind her ear.
“I must leave in the morning.”
“So have you said.”
“I’ll return within a month, six weeks at the most.”
She smiled. “Yes, before the twigs sprout.”
It wasn’t a declaration of love. Far from it. For now, though, Tatiana decided, it would do. It would do nicely. Josiah would return, and by then her head would have sorted through her heart’s foolish reaction to his slightest touch.
“What will you do while I’m gone?”
“I shall water the cuttings and pray that my father’s work bears fruit.”
“If it doesn’t?”
“It must,” she said simply. “It is his legacy to me, all I have left to...”
The sound of an agonized moan cut her off. Startled, Tatiana jerked around and peered through the darkness.
“Stay here,” Josh ordered softly.
Moving on soundless feet, he rounded the corner of the warehouse. A dim figure knelt in the mud just outside the glow from the windows. Shoulders hunched, arms wrapped across his middle, the man gave another long, wretched groan.
Josh recognized the lank, sandy hair at the same moment Tatiana brushed past him, clucking like a hen roused from the henhouse late at night.
“Mikhail! What do you do here, in the cold and the mud? Have you been hurt?”
A pale face turned up to hers. Swallowing convulsively, the young clerk tried to answer. “No, not...not hurt. Just...”
He gave another groan and hunched over. When he lifted a bleary face once more, Josh gave him a sympathetic grin.
“Too much kvass?”
Mikhail tried to nod. The movement caused his eyeballs to bulge behind his spectacles. He bent over and retched repeatedly.
“It matters not what caused the sickness,” Tatiana scolded when his heaving subsided. “Take his other arm, Josiah. Aid him to rise.”
Between them, they got the rubber-kneed clerk to a bench set against the storehouse wall. When he sank onto the seat and dropped his head into his hands, Tatiana perched beside him and patted his back.
“Go inside,” she instructed Josh. “Fetch a cloth and some water.”
Resisting the urge to salute, he complied with her curt orders. Moments later, Tatiana tipped water onto a folded kerchief.
“Here,” she said softly. “Lift your head.”
“No, Countess. You must not sully...”
“Come, come. Let me bathe your face. You’ll feel much better.”
“No, I...”
“Cease this foolishness. Lift your head.”
Reluctantly the clerk complied. While Tatiana dabbed at his face, he threw a silent, agonized look over her shoulder.
Josh understood the unspoken plea. The last thing any young man wanted was for a beautiful woman to tend to him in such humiliating circumstances. Hiding a smile, he moved to the bench.
“I’ll take care of him. You go inside.”
“No, no, he is most ill.”
He hooked a hand under her arm and raised her to her feet. “Go inside. I’ll see that he gets cleaned up and finds his bed.”
Tatiana stood irresolute, her glance shifting from the hunched-over clerk to the tall man before her. She felt the strangest need to spin out these moments with Josiah as long as possible. God help her, she would even grasp at poor Mikhail’s wretchedness as an excuse to delay rejoining the crowd.
The truth of the matter was that she didn’t want this night to end. Even less did she want the morning to come. She knew Josiah’s ways. He’d be gone as soon as the gates opened at dawn. She’d not see him again for a month, perhaps six weeks. Her weak heart ached at the thought.
“I may not have the chance to speak privately with you again before you leave,” she said softly. Her fingers brushed down his cheek and traced the shape of his chin. “May God keep you safe, Josiah Jones.”
“And you, Tatiana Grigoria.”
She dropped her hand and turned away.
“She’s so beautiful,” Mikhail mumbled, following her with bleary eyes. “And so kind.”
Kind and ferocious and stubborn and brave, Josh thought as he hauled the clerk to his feet. The youth staggered along beside him.
“And so tragic,” he added. “Did you know...?”
He stopped and burped mightily. Looking rather surprised that he could emit such a burst of sound, Mikhail swiped his sleeve across his mouth.
“Did you know the tsar made her watch her husband’s execution?”
Josh shot him a quick look. “No.”
“The commander of the Imperial Guards himself held her while the executioner strangled the man. Right before her eyes.”
“The bastard!”
“Yes, he was. And stupid, too, to get himself involved in a plot against the tsar.”
The surge of fury that swept through Josh didn’t center on Tatiana’s dead husband, but on the man who would force a wife to watch such a horror.
“Now she has lost her father,” Mikhail said mournfully. “And soon she will lose what is left of her estates, if not her head. We will all lose everything.” He belched again, then slapped a hand across his mouth. “Your pardon, sir. Oh! Ohh!”
Hastily Josh lowered his burden. Leaving the wretched clerk on his knees in the center of the compound, he strode to the well. The wooden bucket dropped into the pit with a splash and came up full. When the cold water hit Mikhail full in the face, he floundered like a mountain perch on the end of a line.
Tossing the bucket aside, Josh yanked him to his feet. “What is this about Tatiana losing her head?”
Mikhail goggled at him, clearly unsure what had caused his benefactor to become so ferocious. His befuddled mind fixed on an extraneous detail.
“You should not address the countess by her given name. It is not done.”
Josh grabbed the lapels of his frock coat. With one jerk, he pulled the whey-faced clerk half off his toes.
“Why did you say that you’ll lose everything? I thought these cuttings Tatiana brought with her were supposed to save Fort Ross?”
Mikhail floundered helplessly in his iron grip. “It’s...it’s too late. It was too late when she arrived with them.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
The clerk shook his head in a futile effort to clear it. “No, I must not speak of it.”
Josh lifted him a good foot in the air. “Think about the woman who just wiped the spew from your face. And about the fact that I’ll peel your scalp back inch by inch if you don’t tell me why the hell it’s too late.”
Mikhail’s mouth opened, closed. Opened again.
“Talk,” Josh snarled.
“The...the ship that brought word of her father’s death also brought a message from the tsar. He ordered Baron Rotchev to...”
“To what?”
“I should not...”
Josh gave the clerk a shake that rattled his teeth. “To what?”
“To draw up plans to dispose of Fort Ross.”
Slowly Josh lowered his captive. Feet spread, mouth grim, he studied Mikhail’s woebegone face.
“When?”
“No date has been set, but...but the Baron Rotchev was instructed to approach the British and French by the end of June, to see if they have interest in purchasing the properties.”
“Why the British and the French, and not Mexico or the United States?”
Thoroughly miserable, Mikhail could only shake his head. “Tsar Nikolas will never deal with the Mexicans. They are peasants. There is not a drop of royal blood among them. Nor, if you will forgive me for so saying, among the leaders of your own country. No, he will sell Fort Ross to the French or the British.”
“Over my dead body,” the American muttered.
“Does Tatiana know about this?”
“The countess? Yes, but she believes her father’s precious cuttings will yet stay the tsar’s order, if only they take hold.”
“You don’t believe they will, do you?”
“No one does,” Mikhail said morosely. “For all his great wisdom, Count Karanov could not know how thin the soil is here, and how difficult it is to grow a decent crop. No, we shall all sail home this fall, or to Archangel...if the tsar doesn’t order us all hung from the walls of Fort Ross first.”
Josh was beginning to develop a powerful dislike for the ruler of all Russias. He had also developed an equally powerful determination to keep Fort Ross from falling into the hands of either the British or the French. In the process, he’d damned well make sure Tatiana didn’t fall into the tsar’s hands.
“I must tell Baron Rotchev what I have told you,” Mikhail muttered abjectly. He turned on wobbly legs and headed back to the warehouse. “Now I shall never be first
prikashchiki.”
Josh caught him by the arm. He admired the youth for having the spirit to own up to his mistakes. The Lord knows, Josh himself had confessed a record number of transgressions during his years at West Point. Experience had taught him, however, that confessions were better received if the culprit had worn a clean uniform when he made them.
“Come on. Let’s get you into a clean shirt. Then we’ll both go talk to the baron.”
Hope that he wouldn’t have to bear the full brunt of the baron’s anger flared in Mikhail’s pale eyes. “You will speak to him, also?”
“Yes.”
Josh couldn’t tell Rotchev of his secret mission. Not without higher authority. But he could damn well advise the Russian that the United States might have an interest in Fort Ross and get some idea of the price the Russians intended to ask.
 
He rode out the west gate just after dawn the next morning on a rawboned gelding with dappled hindquarters he’d purchased from the Russian American Fur Company.
Pulling up on the crest of a rolling rise, he looked back. Gray, swirling mist obscured the fort. Only the peaked roof of the storehouse and the crosses atop the chapel towers pierced the low-lying fog.
For the first time in longer than Josh could remember, he didn’t feel a stab of relief at trading wooden walls and roofs for open skies. The hills ahead didn’t call to him. Even the mountains were silent.
Instead, he felt the damnedest urge to turn his mount and ride back for one last word with Tatiana. One final promise.
What could he say to her?
That his feelings for her had slipped right past lust into unfamiliar, uncomfortable territory? That the mere thought of her was enough to make him so damned tight he could barely keep his mind on the road ahead and his senses alert? What in the hell did he have to offer her, except a promise?
I’ll be back. I swear, I’ll be back.
 
A week later he rode through the gates of Sutter’s Fort.
In his years of wandering, Josh had spent many a night within the walls of frontier fortresses, but none of them compared to the armed compound Captain Johann Sutter had constructed alongside the Sacramento River.
Baked adobe brick walls some two feet thick and eighteen feet high surrounded a huge compound that included several barracks buildings, a bakery, a mill, a blanket factory and various workshops. Cannons bristled from the battlements, and Indian troops armed with rifles patrolled the walls alongside Mexican vaqueros and beefy-faced, mustachioed immigrants from a host of other nations.
At the far end of the compound stood the main residence, an imposing adobe structure that combined home and headquarters. Josh pulled up before the tall wooden doors and dismounted. Handing the gelding’s reins to a waiting stable boy, he pounded the travel dirt from his shirt and britches. He’d stomped out most of his dust when his host came striding out.
His face brick red in the unseasonably warm spring sunshine, Sutter extended his hand.
“Willkommen Sie.”

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