Sweet Love, Survive (20 page)

Some minutes later, Kitty walked into the drawing room and Apollo looked up. “Very chic,” he said, his narrowed eyes sweeping her with something very like scorn.

“It’s warm,” Kitty replied tersely.

“Sable and purple cashmere is always
très élégant
,” he went on as if she hadn’t spoken. “So sorry, Countess, I’ve no violets tonight. Sables positively cry for violets. The war has brought
its privations, alas.” The golden eyes were half-lidded in vexatious irony.

“I’m not used to violet corsages, anyway.” Kitty nervously watched him refill his glass.

“Ah, yes, I forgot,” he drawled, “you’re a simple innocent, rusticating in the country.” On the word innocent, his gaze swung up from the task of pouring and waited for her reaction.

Kitty refused to respond, so he merely lifted the glass in salute, smiled dazzlingly with his easy, self-assured charm, and tipped the liquid into his mouth. With the carelessness of the inebriated, Apollo set the glass down casually in the vague direction of the table, then heaved himself out of the comfortable armchair and started for the back door in a lazy, rolling stride.

Having fortified himself with the additional liquor, Apollo’s equanimity was now restored—or if not restored, suitably cozened by alcohol. He had made himself a promise while slouched in the general’s chair, drinking the general’s vodka, and waiting for the general’s paramour. He’d kill him. Not tonight. Not now. But he’d kill Beriozov. And with that comforting thought, Apollo’s mood had mercurially swung to the tinsel light mockery, which Kitty was finding as difficult to deal with as the cool anger. Following him silently, she retreated into muteness and prayed they reached safety. Using the servants’ rear staircase, they left the general’s suite.

    Karaim and Sahin were waiting, saddled and ready in a stable three blocks away.

“What took so long?” Karaim asked shortly, stamping his feet to restore the circulation, silently taking in Apollo’s cut face and the fingermarks on his hands. Marks of a woman—and in Apollo’s present mood, prudent to disregard.

“The general’s hospitality was most pressing,” Apollo replied lightly. “I don’t think he likes to drink alone.”

Karaim could see the brilliant drunken glitter in Apollo’s eyes and, knowing his temper, wondered academically how fast they must ride to stay ahead of pursuit. Apollo sober was
someone to be reckoned with; Apollo sodden was a child of danger immune to caution, flirting with death.

“Did you kill him, then?” Karaim inquired quickly, for if that was the case, their hunters would be unrestrained.

Dark straight brows were raised and a golden gaze sorrowed. “Do I look that drunk?” a slurred voice said, mildly chagrined. “The day I can’t drink a Siberian peasant under—”

Karaim didn’t think he had time to hear the entire story. He kept to the point. “Did you kill the general?”

“He was in the best of health when I left,” Apollo said in an obliging, slurred tone, rocking slightly on his heels. “In fact, I tucked him in myself. Save a roaring headache, and—” a note of contempt crept into his voice and this time he spoke with no slur—“a missing bedpartner, come morning all will be identical in his life.”

At Apollo’s last, rather rude remark, Karaim’s eyes swung to the lady. Her spine stiffened. Kitty spoke, staring straight at Apollo, cold outrage in her eyes. “Suppose we drop that subject.”

“The general’s bedpartner, you mean?” Apollo asked tauntingly.

“That, and the general, and everything to do with him.” It was so quiet her breathing was audible.

“Wouldn’t that be convenient?” His level denunciation rolled through the silence like a tornado through a ripe wheat-field.

Kitty’s face burned, but during the last few weeks she had learned to stomach humiliation. Besides, her freedom was worth any price. “If not convenient,” she replied with a terrible smile, “at least it will make our journey bloodless.”

Knowing Apollo’s unpredictability when drunk, Karaim interrupted before his master could reply. “The sooner we leave—”

About to say something, Apollo apparently curbed the impulse. “Good idea, Karaim,” he grunted. “I’ve been indecently reasonable all evening, but my control doesn’t last forever in
this state. And we must be into Tuesday by now,” he finished nastily. His own dark thoughts obsessed him for a moment; images of Beriozov with Kitty tore at his composure. Stalking toward Leda, he consoled himself with his earlier murderous promise.

Extending a hand to Kitty, Karaim helped her into her saddle, and the trio followed Apollo out of the stable.

He rode far ahead of the others, bareheaded, stiffbacked, in a murderous mood. His hair seemed paler than ever in the eerie gray predawn light, and Kitty’s eyes were drawn repeatedly to his rigid shoulders. By the time the first pink streaks of morning sun were lighting the horizon they were twenty miles from Stavropol. By midmorning they were in White territory, so they stopped to rest in the shelter of a deserted barn.

Karaim and Sahin guarded the entrance, keeping watch on the distant ribbon of road which disappeared into the dip of a river valley. Several miles beyond the point where the road dropped out of sight rose a small plume of smoke—and one never knew if a Red patrol, having broken through the lines, would suddenly appear.

Kitty was exhausted. They’d been on the road for almost seven hours, and they had stopped now only because the animals needed rest. In the short break before they set off again, Kitty dropped to the ground, leaned against an unused grain storage bin, and looked out at the winter landscape with unseeing eyes.

After talking briefly with his two bodyguards, Apollo came into the barn, discarding the tunic of his Red Army uniform. Rummaging through his saddlebags, he slipped into the black
beshmet
and tight-fitting, leather-seamed
cherkesska
he preferred, enveloping himself once more in the shaggy black burkha that served as cloak, blanket, and bedroll.

He had a violent pounding headache from the heavy drinking of the previous night and even seen through taut nerves and blood-veined eyes Kitty was looking much too desirable. Golden curls, tinseled with moisture, peeked from beneath
her fur hat; her nose and cheeks were prettily tinged with pink, her long-lashed eyes dark in the dimness of the barn. The immediate arousal he experienced annoyed him.

Exhausted, bleakly resentful, and lamentably sober, he sank to his haunches near Kitty and addressed her gruffly. “Are you warm enough?” While the sentiment was one of concern, the voice was cool almost to the point of discourtesy.

Kitty, responding to the tone, disregarded the fact she was thoroughly chilled and said, “Yes, fine.”

A floor-length sable should keep one warm, Apollo thought caustically, taking in the sumptuous, long-haired, saffron fur engulfing Kitty. Where did the general steal that? he wondered. “Good,” he replied brusquely, and, the social niceties briskly concluded went on to explain in a formal tone how he happened to appear in Stavropol.

“I promised Peotr I’d see you safely to Novorossiisk.”

“Peotr! Is he …?” Kitty’s white teeth unconsciously bit into her soft, crimson upper lip, and her eyes, dark-lashed absinthe, seemed to fill her face.

“He’s fine,” Apollo quickly interjected. “Not wounded, the last I saw him. And … fine,” he finished lamely, no glib excuses ready on his tongue. It had been a long night.

“Where is he, then?”

“Well …” Apollo’s mind was racing as fast as his excruciating headache would allow. “The last I saw him was at Ekaterinodar. We separated there, both starting east. One of us would get through, we figured.” Peotr was heading east, although it was to Baku, not Aladino. “Aladino was practically on my way.” Merde, he hated to lie, but none of that was exactly a lie.

“Do you think Peotr was hurt or captured?” Kitty asked anxiously.

“No,” he answered a little too fast.

“Oh,” was all Kitty said, but her overquiet reponse indicated full understanding. More misplaced anxiety for the same indifferent husband, she ruefully acknowledged. And Peotr may not be quite as callous as it appeared; after all, he had left instructions for her to leave at the first sign of trouble. It
was her own fault she hadn’t followed his suggestion. “We’re on our way to Novorossiisk, then?” she inquired into the uncomfortable silence.

Apollo paused briefly before answering. “That’s what I promised Peotr.” His voice was flat, colorless.

So. He’d come only out of duty to an old friend, Kitty unhappily reflected. He had risked his life to save
her
—but for Peotr. She had hoped in some ridiculous, illogical way that he cared for
her
—that wanting to find and save her had been his motive. That silliness could now be summarily dismissed. It had all been simply another of Apollo’s dangerous games, played out for its own pleasure. Winning was the prize; not her. Suddenly, for a moment, her will to live waned to a whisper. Her last desperate illusion—the talisman that had kept her dream alive, had sustained her through long, dreadful nights—lay in shattered fragments at her feet.

She really must try to control this terrible inclination to fantasize, she decided, very near tears. All that romanticism should have been left behind with childish games and what by now must be the ruins of Aladino.

As Apollo balanced before her on his powerful legs—all force and lean masculinity, his hair, as usual, a ruffled, wild mane, his yellow cat eyes assessing her with a guarded look—she wanted to say, despite all she knew and understood now, despite all that had been revealed to her of Apollo’s motives: I’ve missed you. But the cool restraint in his glance, the grim line of his mouth, curtailed the impulse.

“It’s the most sensible course,” he went on slowly. “All of South Russia will be overrun in a matter of weeks, maybe less. The best thing is to get you on a ship to Constantinople.” His tone was logical and detached. While jealousy gnawed at his innards and misplaced pride goaded his resentment, Apollo was still sensible enough to realize, regardless of his own whims, that the wisest course was for Kitty to leave Russia.

He scarcely knew how he felt or what he felt, or, for Christ’s sake, what Peotr intended to do once everyone was safely in Europe. This ruined barn a few versts within the White lines
wasn’t the place to make lengthy decisions about anyone’s future. Even if a more amenable environ could be found, none of them had the time. Simply to stay ahead of the Red advance would probably tax everyone’s endurance.

Be practical, he told himself. The sorting out can come later—if they all lived through the next few weeks.

“Aren’t you evacuating with the rest of the troops?” Kitty asked.

Apollo said briefly, “No. Later, maybe.”

“What are you going to do?” If she had any pride she wouldn’t even ask, but, unfortunately, she wanted to know. And when it came to Apollo, all her bridges were burned. At the thought of never seeing him again she had no pride, no conscience, no scruples. If she thought those chill golden eyes would relent, she’d throw herself at him and say, “Take me with you! Anywhere—I’ll go anywhere at all.” But there were degrees of foolishness even she wouldn’t approach, and throwing herself at such uncompromising aloofness was one of them.

“I’ll go back to the mountain aul—that is, if Karaim, Sahin, and I can find our way through the Red Army.”

“It’s suicide,” she breathed, and a bit of her died at the thought of his proud young life thrown away.

“Everything’s suicide nowadays.” Apollo’s soft, even voice paused a moment as he thought of all the useless waste, and the prospects for his future, then resolutely went on unaltered. “I can’t guarantee your ship will be much better. Typhus is epidemic.”

There was a long silence, but in the end she couldn’t resist; her control was weaker than his. “Let me stay with you, then,” she blurted out. There. Her defenses, pride, all put aside. Almost immediately she wished she could have cut out her tongue.

Excruciating seconds passed. His lack of response was an insult in itself. Apollo’s closed expression hid any clue to the impulses of his mind, and if he wavered for a moment, he quickly firmed his resolve. At last he said with a small sigh, “I can’t.”

Ignored by a husband and now rejected by a lover. It was worse than Kitty expected, although she had cautioned herself often enough about the “lasting affections” of men like Apollo. The resulting humiliation was more painful than she thought possible. Don’t cry, she cautioned herself inwardly, Don’t … you … dare … cry! And only a long, drawn-out breath gave indication of her tremendous effort to overcome the most terrible urge to weep.

Any inclination she’d had to disclose Apollo’s imminent fatherhood was effectively crushed by that short, curt, “I can’t.”

“Well, off to Novorossiisk, it seems,” she said with brittle élan, curtailing the conversation by rising from the ground and moving toward her horse. Apollo uncurled without comment to let her pass. “Have we rested long enough?” she asked casually, adjusting the girth on her saddle.

“Long enough,” Apollo replied, grasping her around the waist and lifting her into the saddle. Adjusting Kitty’s booted feet into the wooden stirrups, he said, “We’ll be in Novorossiisk tomorrow morning.”

Kitty swayed slightly atop her mount. Tomorrow morning was long hours away.

Catching the bridle, Apollo reached out a hand to steady her. “Are you all right?” he asked, seeing her face pale visibly. Suddenly she looked very small, despite the long fur coat and high peaked hat.

No, I’m not, Kitty thought, staring at him. I’m cold. I’m tired. I’m hungry. Every bone and muscle in my body aches from the last seven hours of riding. My husband has left me. My lover doesn’t want me. My mind and body are soiled from tortured weeks with General Beriozov. My nerves are shattered, my hopes are crushed. I’m carrying my lover’s child and am about to be put on a boat for Constantinople to make a life for myself in a new land, alone.

Fortunately the years after her parents’ deaths and the years of her joyless marriage had fortified her defenses; she had also found the strength to survive General Beriozov. The future required she garner the necessary strength once again. She had
done it before, she could do it again. She must; there was no other way.