Seized by Love (10 page)

Nikki opened his eyes, lifted his head a scant inch off the pillow, and said drowsily, “French letters? Condoms? They spoil the pleasure; I never use them.” He reached out to touch her hair. “You wouldn’t like them, my love.” His eyelids fell and he dozed off, still holding her tightly to his rugged form.

Alisa knew she should force the issue for her own safety
and protection, but she didn’t want to spoil their little remaining time together.

Nikki hugged her closer and they both slept.

Instinct told Nikki, when he was alone and away from Alisa’s tempestuous excitement, that he was getting in too deep this time, that this wasn’t another light flirtation or trivial affair, but regardless of this premonition, he plunged boldly in. He hadn’t enjoyed himself so much for months—more—years. It was a time of deepest content.

Alisa, too, lived in the bewitching, sensual present, grasping at the opportunity to postpone the end of these halcyon days. If time could just stand still.

She resolutely refused to consider the future. She wouldn’t, she wouldn’t, yet she cried inwardly when conscience raised its unwanted head above her repression. She deserved some gaiety, some brief taste of love, she told herself, and for the most part, Alisa was blissfully happy. Since living in “
durance vile
” for six years, who could blame her for ignoring the admonitions of her conscience, the call of duty?—when charming, handsome Nikki was bathing her senses in rapture and extravagantly indulging her caprices.

No such irresolution or discordant meditation preyed on Nikki’s mind, for he’d long eschewed regrets as both useless and fatiguing. He had quite simply decided that he would bring Alisa back to Petersburg when he returned and install her in a comfortable house on the Quai des Anglais. If the neighborhood was good enough for the Emperor’s mistress, it was good enough for his.
⁴

Nikki never pondered over or curbed his selfish wishes. He had never had to. Alisa was delightful, lovely, vivacious, intelligent (the latter quality hitherto avoided in Nikki’s amorous adventures). But her overwhelming quality,
the major attraction, the most fascinating enticement in this week of tumultuous pleasure, was purely sensual. This woman roused him, teased him, fired his jaded senses to new, exquisite limits. Her spontaneous response as he instructed her in the delights of the flesh, her first tentative, then more assured forays into the game of love, her guilelessly greedy appetite for pleasure, stimulated and whetted Nikki’s weary spirit.

Surely he would be a fool to walk away from the pleasures Alisa offered him. She was the fetching, enchanting antidote to the ennui that had threatened to engulf him.

Over the years Nikki had, with caution and skepticism, scrupulously avoided any permanence in his relationships with women, preferring married women of his class, already lawfully tied, or else expensive tarts and actresses easily satisfied with lavish gifts and generous purses of gold. He avoided the obligation to provide an establishment for any one woman for even the transitory duration implied in those arrangements. Nikki’s fierce independence had survived all attempts to ensnare, and clinging women had always been anathema to him. He turned quite cold and remote when pressed by the importunities of an ardent female. But now Nikki was quite willing to make the necessary adjustments to his normal, selfish regimen. To have Alisa comfortably settled convenient to his town palace would offer him the most pleasant recreation.

One afternoon, as Alisa lay nestled snugly in Nikki’s arms, drifting back from the idyllic depths of pleasure, he quietly said, “Today must be our last day at the lodge. I received a message this morning that necessitates my attendance with the Chevaliers Gardes at the Emperor’s review Sunday. You must come with me. Pack what you need
tonight; I’ll send my carriage round for you in the morning.”

Alisa wished she’d misunderstood, but knew she hadn’t. Nikki had simply said, “Come with me” as if it were the most natural thing in the world, nothing more, no promises, no assurances; she was to him merely another woman of a certain class.

Happiness that he wanted her was overlaid with shock and dismay. But the thing that shocked her most—the daughter of landed gentry, well-bred and gently reared, was that she wished with all her heart she could disregard her conscience, her parents’ ideals, and answer simply—I will come.

If she hadn’t a daughter who must have opportunity for a normal life, she might have been even more tempted to say I will.

Sighing unhappily, Alisa reminded herself that she’d known this all must end when Mr. Forseus returned home. This “pleasant interlude” (what a deceptively benign term for these tumultuous stirrings of her heart) had merely ended a few days earlier than expected.

“I can’t,” Alisa softly replied.

Nikki’s complacency was abruptly shattered.

“Why not?” he questioned in faint irritation, unused to negative replies.

“I have a daughter to consider” was her straightforward answer.

Nikki hesitated momentarily. Of course, he should have remembered—what was the child’s name? It escaped him. A girl, she had said. After a short pause Nikki replied decisively, “Bring her along.”

“No, I can’t,” Alisa repeated.

Now fully awake, Nikki asked with a sort of baffled impatience, “Why ever not? You shall have as large a house as you wish. I’ll hire a niania and a governess—an English
one, everyone seems to prefer English ones. There, that’s taken care of,” he said with satisfaction.

God, why couldn’t she just say yes. Nikki was so good to her, and God knows she deserved some happiness after all those miserable years. Why
couldn’t
she say yes? Even when Nikki tired of her, Alisa knew his generosity wouldn’t allow her to become destitute. With all her heart she wanted him. The precepts of a lifetime held firm, however.

“No, Nikki. It wouldn’t do,” Alisa retorted with a quiet sadness.

Nikki’s irascible temper was rising. Was she like all the rest after all? Holding out for a larger prize, for more remuneration, jewelry perhaps, maybe a more sumptuous house, the right kind of horses and carriage? Had he been deceived by the artless sincerity and air of innocence? He thought not, but apparently he had.

He’d pay her price if it wasn’t too high. He wanted her and, hell, he gambled vast fortunes at a single throw. Certainly he could afford whatever her asking price was.

“Tell me what more you want, then,” he drawled coolly, determined to outbid her demands.

“I don’t want anything from you, Nikki,” Alisa’s unhappy voice replied. “You’ve given me one week of blissful happiness, and I knew it would have to end when Mr. Forseus returned from Helsinki. I’m sorry. I must think of my daughter.”

“You told me yourself you won’t stay much longer with that sadistic lecher.” Nikki spoke accusingly, for Alisa had in the course of the last week, to her own immense surprise, confided to Nikki the whole wretched story of her marriage when he had questioned the vestiges of bruises on her tender flesh. (That first afternoon in the meadow, events had moved too rapidly for him to be certain, but the following encounter, the next afternoon, in his bedroom at the lodge, when time and the lack of spectators permitted a
leisurely appraisal of Alisa’s beautiful body, the faint discolorations were apparent.) Alisa had, at first reluctantly and then more volubly, as the pressure of six years’ enforced silence were lifted, described her coerced marriage at fifteen, Forseus’s bizarre aberrations and cravings for a nubile young girl-woman to rekindle his flagging desires, his abrupt rejection of her for several years after the birth of their daughter, and his renewed sadistic demands that he had forced on her twice lately.

Alisa’s ungainly body during pregnancy had repulsed Forseus, and after Katelina’s birth he’d fearfully shunned the baby as an incarnation of the devil’s child. Forseus’s religious fanaticism (often mutually complementary to sexual deviation) had convinced him that a birthmark on Katelina’s leg was the devil’s sign. He’d been appalled by the pale pink birthmark in the shape of a half moon and from the day of her birth had refused to have any contact with the child.

Nikki was enraged at her story. That old man was the man who possessed Alisa, owned her, slept with her, touched her, caressed her, abused her. God, how could she, he thought angrily. And, damn him, Forseus was a savage monster even by the none-too-exacting standards of humanity afforded contemporary husbands.

“I know I said I would leave him someday, but I must first find some employment,” Alisa explained patiently.

“Damnation!” Nikki was furious now. He wasn’t having his way. “Work?” he incredulously inquired, his face blank for a moment with disbelief. Immediately denying the staggering heresy, he demanded, “Why work when I’ll take care of you?”

He really didn’t understand, Alisa thought with a feeling of despair. For Nikki, a woman’s dignity, her pride, were at best nebulous, and more aptly much overrated. In his experience women almost universally opted for security rather
than independence. Rich or poor, highborn or low, they were all the same to him. But Alisa was not cut from the same mold. She, too, had a stubborn inclination and an inordinately determined will of her own. How else had she survived Forseus?

“You wouldn’t understand, Nikki. There’s such a thing as a woman’s dignity and pride. I’m not a whore to be acquired for the price of a house and a governess and a nanny.”

“Damn right I don’t understand!” he said through clenched teeth, trying to control his rage while groping vaguely for some reason for Alisa’s violent affront, the entire issue of a woman’s dignity and pride beyond his comprehension. Woman’s pride? Sweet Jesus! Their pride was between their legs!

“You won’t come, then?” he continued hotly, furious at having his wishes thwarted, irritated at Alisa’s monumental naïveté that presumed there was a whore in the world he would have offered the luxurious, privileged existence he’d offered her. By God, he’d even consented to allow her damn brat to tag along.

“No,” she replied stiffly.

“Very well,” his voice was steely, “allow me to thank you for a pleasant week.” Nikki rolled over and pulled open a drawer on the bedside table. Taking out a purse of roubles, he tossed them on Alisa’s naked belly.

“It’s been amusing,” he said coldly, one sardonic eye-brow raised.

Alisa lifted the purse from her stomach, gently set it on the floor, rose from the bed, and dressed as rapidly as her numerous petticoats permitted.

Nikki watched sullenly, not uttering a word. He let her go and then laughed scornfully at himself for allowing passion, once again after all these years, to overcome his usual cool reserve. Stupid fool! he chastised himself.

Seconds after the door closed behind Alisa, Nikki reached for the bellpull and when the servant arrived, requested in a dangerous voice, “Three bottles of brandy,
immediately
.”

As the afternoon shadows turned to evening dusk, even the three bottles of brandy failed to dislodge or dull the cold fury of his thoughts.

Damn inconsiderate slut! He’d offered her a pampered, luxurious life, the considerable influence of his protection, and a damn sight less sadistic treatment than that peasant she was married to gave her. I am not a whore, she had said. Insufferable arrogance— Why, oh, why would none of them ever admit to being what they were?

“Where the devil is she? I told you to keep watch over her!” Valdemar Forseus shouted wrathfully at his large, lumbering son.

“She couldn’t have gone far without a horse or carriage,” the middle-aged son calmly replied to his father, who was livid with rage, having already harangued his son for several minutes. Forseus’s sparse gray hair was standing wildly about his bald pate, his small, sunken eyes flashed with anger, his carefully manicured, blunt peasant hands clenched and unclenched on his riding quirt.

“We weren’t expecting you for six more days,” the son continued with the puzzled simplicity of a dull intellect.

“That’s obvious!” Forseus thundered. “Is that devil’s brat with her?” Forseus asked suspiciously.

“No, I saw Katelina out in the orchard with Rakeli.”

“Very well, get out of my sight!” Forseus spat out irritably. “I should have known better than to expect any competence from you. You take after your mother, you lout!”

Far from being disconcerted by this tirade, the simple, ponderous son merely turned on his heel and walked slowly back to the stables, where he was most happy and content, brushing, feeding and talking to the horses. After years of listening to his father’s fulminations, they scarcely made an impression on him.

Forseus stalked into the house, threw his coat, hat, and quirt on the hall table, and bellowed for his butler.

“Bring me some kvass into the study,” he instructed grimly. “Leave the door open,” he ordered as the butler set the pitcher of kvass before his master and retreated from the room.

For forty-five minutes Forseus sat, sunk deeply in his leather chair, drinking steadily, his scowling beady eyes trained on the hallway.