Sweet Love, Survive (31 page)

“Nothing important,” Kitty mumbled, while in fact her mind unlocked doors of disquiet she had carefully guarded all these months.

Rather than pursue the subject, Apollo steered Kitty toward the lighted doorway. “Come and see Karaim’s most recent acquisition. You’ll love it.” Apollo’s tone was warmly animated.

Forcibly suspending any further thought of Tamara, Kitty responded to Apollo’s affable expression and cheerful words.

“What will I love?” she asked, smiling.

“Two reels of film. One French and one American.”

Kitty squealed in delight. The cinema, as Apollo was well aware, was an obsession with her, and for that reason he had added his request to Karaim’s list on his last foray out of the village.

“And if you’re very good,” Apollo teased, “we’ll take them home tonight to view.”

“Tonight? Really? Doesn’t Karaim mind?”

Apollo laughed. “He minds like hell, but I just won the throw of the dice. Tonight they’re ours.” Looking down at Kitty’s jubilant face, his grin widened. Picking her up, he twirled her around. “Do I take care of you or do I take care of you?” he asked laughingly.

“You … take … care of me … very … well!” Kitty mirthfully exhaled, winging through the air.

Setting Kitty down, Apollo kissed her lightly on the cheek, then, gazing with a keen-eyed look that traveled slowly from the top of her head to her toes and back again, taking in the
fullness of her blossoming pregnancy, one eyebrow shot up and he said with a lazy smile, “It seems I certainly do.”

Kitty’s lilting laugh floated through the room.

One slim, young girl brooding in a corner viewed this playful repartee with chillingly cold eyes.

    In the course of the night, between the cinema and other pleasant activities, Tamara’s vindictive words were forgotten. But in the glaring light of day, the disturbing phrases began drifting in and out of Kitty’s thoughts. “He’ll never marry you.… I mean to have him.… Ask him what happened to Noenia.…”

Apollo, seated on the window seat across the bedroom, was pulling on his boots when Kitty, ensconced in the center of the bed watching him, asked, with studied casualness, “Who’s Noenia?”

Stopping in midpull, Apollo tensed for a moment, then resumed his task. Looking up, his face a bland mask, he said, “Who?”

“Noenia.”

Rising, Apollo smiled at Kitty and, manlike—wanting to avoid a topic that could prove uncomfortable—replied, “Never heard the name.” Walking the two steps to the door, he paused, one hand on the latch. “Hurry and dress now. I’ll see you in the breakfast room in twenty minutes. I’m going to check on Leda.”

Great, Kitty thought dispiritedly, watching the door close on his tall, lean form. He claims he doesn’t know her. Now whom do you believe? Some snippy little hussy like Tamara, or the man you love? She recalled Peotr and all his paramours, considered Apollo and his wartime reputation, thought of the promiscuous habits of reckless young Russian aristocrats who gambled, drank, and made love lightly, expertly, and transiently, always completely charming, completely drunk, and completely irresponsible.

Some snippy little hussy, that’s whom she believed. Damn, damn, damn. She fell back in bed and covered her head.

Kitty lay there thinking morosely. He says he’ll marry you, but does he mean it? It’s easy to say, particularly since you already have a husband. Does he really care, or are you simply another passing fancy? The last thing she needed was that conversation with Tamara last night. As if she weren’t already feeling insecure enough—she hadn’t been able to see her feet in three weeks.

How the hell had Kitty heard of Noenia? Apollo was uneasily speculating as he descended the stairs three at a time. Damn gossipy women. Someone evidently had mentioned Noenia.

When she’d disappeared Apollo had raised holy hell only because rumor had it Iskender had been to blame, and youthful independence had necessitated immediate affront. A year or two later he’d heard of Noenia again; she was living in Besh-Tau, the mistress of one of the grand dukes. He wished her well. If he had known at the time what Pushka intended, he could have saved Iskender the confrontation with Noenia’s fiery temper as well as a tidy sum of money. Apollo had enjoyed the pretty woman’s company for an unheard-of five weeks, but he’d had no more intention of marrying her than of marrying any of the other ladies he’d entertained himself with.

Thinking about it, Apollo supposed he could have explained all that to Kitty, but it had happened so long ago … best leave it alone. Women were always quick to read romance into past amours. His had been strictly physical. Why confuse the issue?

After breakfast they strolled to the pond in the meadow. Formerly they rode in the morning, but Apollo wouldn’t permit Kitty to ride anymore. There’d been some words over that; Kitty had felt well physically and was extremely fond of an exhilarating gallop early in the morning. Apollo had been adamant, however, quoting the local midwife verbatim and very sternly remarking, “I mean to see that you do what you’re told.”

He was quite a bully with her health, always admonishing her with some snippet of advice from mountain lore, and later
that morning while swimming lazily in the pond, Kitty reluctantly admitted to herself that she really couldn’t move very rapidly anymore. Their mock tag races under the pear trees had declined recently into a slow-moving choreography with Apollo conceding her victory very early to save her from fatigue. All in all, Kitty mused, floating in the cool spring water, this wasn’t a good time to be assailed with acid comments like Tamara’s; she was feeling unwieldy, unlovely, and about as graceful as an unpended turtle.

After the swim, dressed again, lying in the sweet-smelling grass beneath heavily laden pear trees, the impulse to know wouldn’t desist. Despite Kitty’s very determined effort, Tamara’s disastrous words were still not dislodged from her consciousness but danced and pirouetted vexingly, faster and faster. “Won’t marry you … other children … ask about Noenia … many women … you’re no different.” Kitty counseled herself to silence, cautioning herself not to exaggerate another woman’s personal injuries to pride, reminding herself that she had learned in the demanding school of life, over the last three years, not to expect constant felicity. In addition, it hardly ever paid to be sulky and difficult. Also, deep down, she knew Apollo’s affection couldn’t be faulted.

So she tried to be unruffled and calm about Tamara’s disclosures. And she was, for almost ten minutes more. Then abruptly her inner struggle came to an end, defeated by a temperament too long trained to independence. “Tell me about Noenia,” she blurted out. “I know you had her up here. I know she exists and you spent time with her.” A rising querulousness was startlingly evident by the final word.

There was a racking silence. Apollo looked up slowly from the book he was reading. “Who told you about her?” he quietly asked.

“So you
do
remember her,” Kitty said, a little too sharply, her worst fears rapidly coming to fruition. “And your children. You never told me. How many do you have besides the one growing in me?” Her voice had risen more than she wished. Taking a breath to calm her racing heart, she said, “If you don’t mind, I’d like to know.”

Apollo hadn’t moved. With a quiet intake of breath he replied, “Not many.”

The evasive retort ignited Kitty’s warming temper. “
Not many
! God above, how insouciant the male animal can be! What the hell is
not many
?” Every slight to womankind, every difference between the sexes, trembled in the vibrating timbre of her voice.

“It means two.”

“And are they here underfoot? Do you see them? Visit their mothers? Am I cramping your style? Why didn’t you tell me?” She finished in a wail.

“It didn’t seem very pertinent.”

“But of course. Children never seem
pertinent
to libertine men!”

Apollo’s voice was still gently calm. His eyes reflected a quiet sadness, rather than anger. “The reason it didn’t seem pertinent,” he explained patiently, “is that my children are in Europe being raised by their mother and her current husband. The lady, you see, when she discovered she was pregnant, wasn’t interested in marrying a seventeen-year-old boy. At the time I found it rather heartless. But she was adamant—and her husband, when he returned from Egypt, apparently was amenable. I’ve only seen the twins four times since they were born.”

Immediately Kitty was contrite. “I’m sorry,” she said softly.

“I am too,” was Apollo’s murmured reply.

Kitty was momentarily nonplussed by the flash of melancholy in his pale eyes, but once begun she wanted all her questions answered. She realized Tamara’s words had upset her more than she’d known. “You did know Noenia,” she softly accused. “Why didn’t you say so this morning?” And she wondered how many other lies and evasions she had been subjected to.

“I thought it unimportant. Now who told you?” Apollo insisted softly, setting his book aside. He didn’t like to have Kitty upset, particularly over something as senseless as this.

Kitty marveled at the quiet arrogance. Didn’t seem important
to whom, for God’s sake? Here was a man used to doing exactly as he pleased; the world, at least here in the mountains, ordered to his perfection. “Why should it matter who told me?” Kitty said defiantly, struggling to a sitting position. Apollo moved quickly to help her but she brushed his hands aside and repeated, “Tell me what happened to Noenia.”

“Tell
me
,” he said evenly, “who
told
you about her, and I will.”

“Oh, very well,” Kitty replied coolly. “It was Tamara.”

“The bitch,” he muttered. “I might have known.”

“What’s the difference how I found out?” Kitty observed petulantly. “Evidently your amours are common gossip.” Her face mirrored her distaste. “And I’m just another juicy tidbit for the rumor mill.”

“Look here, Kitty,” Apollo said somewhat ominously, leaning on his elbows and staring directly into her eyes. “Number one, my amours are
not
common gossip; outside of little snits like Tamara, most people mind their own business. Number two, you, my sweet, have not, are not, and never will be a subject of gossip. You’re the woman I love and my future wife.”

“Why should I believe you? After twins you never told me about, and some mystery woman you denied knowing, not to mention all the doxies you and Peotr entertained from one end of Russia to the other, I don’t know what to believe. You probably tell every woman you love her!”

Apollo choked a little at her naiveté. “Listen, Kitty,” he said gravely, “if I didn’t want you here, you wouldn’t be here. It’s as simple as that.”

She stared at him and frowned. “That’s not what Tamara says.”

“Now, sweet,” Apollo said with mild exasperation, “if Tamara knew me as well as she professes, she’d know I’ve mastered the art of polite good-byes very well. If I don’t want a woman around, she doesn’t stay—and I’m embarrassed to admit that most of the women I’ve known have gone out with the empty brandy bottles in the morning. The few who have
lasted slightly longer”—a trace of mockery sharpened the deep voice—“simply had a wider latitude of expertise. None of them,
dushka
, ever affected my heart … until you.”

A small flame kindled in Kitty’s soul at the quiet words, and eyes that only moments before were acid green now shone with the sea-green buoyancy of sparkling waves. “So I outlasted the brandy bottle?”

“Long past.” Apollo’s eyebrows went up in that quick little reflex, acknowledging the remarkable fact. Almost in a musing tone he went on, “First, you outlasted that terrible time in the forenoon when the night’s liquor has worn off, you’re too exhausted to make love anymore, and conversation is beyond your energy. And then, after that, the expected ennui never came, nor the usual tedium. Nor the boredom, at which point I usually began to wonder exactly how to word a polite good-bye.”

“You never thought, even once, about an elegantly worded adieu for me?” Kitty was teasing a little now, feeling joyous after the last disclosure.

“Well … the first time, I didn’t have any choice. The troop was waiting to ride off to God only knew where. And after the general, on the way to Novorossiisk, that was different. I was so damned mad—no elegant words there, just sheer fury. But never once did I really want to leave you,
dushka
, my soul, and that’s God’s truth. It was love even then, despite Peotr, despite the general, despite everything.” Rolling over, he pulled Kitty into his arms. “I love you. You’re my life,” he said very gently. Stroking her cheek softly, his gaze held her wide-set emerald eyes, a smile crinkled the corners of his mouth. “Satisfied?”

“Very, very satisfied. But—” Apollo’s dark straight brows rose at the word
but
. Kitty impishly continued, “Don’t forget Noenia.”

The heavy brows dropped back into place and a lazy smile curved Apollo’s mouth. “I wish you’d let me.”

“But I don’t intend to. I want the
whole
story.”

“I don’t think you do.”

“Think again,” said Kitty, unmoved by his evasion.

“It’s boring.”

“Apollo!”

He grinned. “You’re too damned curious.”

“Concerned,” Kitty said, smiling, “only concerned. I have this impression of Noenia chained in some dungeon somewhere, and I dislike dampness. …”

Exhaling quietly, Apollo said, “If you must know, although this all happened so long ago …” He began to recount a severely edited version of his friendship with Noenia. “… and the last I heard of her she was living very well under the protection of Grand Duke Constantine at Besh-Tau. Knowing Noenia and her well-developed sense of self-preservation, I expect she’s preceded us to Paris. Now,” he repeated patiently. “Finally satisfied?”

Kitty nodded happily from within the circle of his arms. “It’s just that I’m so clumsy and fat now. I can’t move very well, or ride or run anymore. It’s silly, I know,” she admitted with a rueful smile, “but under the circumstances … the insecurities mount. And people like Tamara can be pretty unsettling.”

“Ignore bitches like Tamara, darling,” Apollo replied, even while contemplating the tongue-lashing he intended giving his little cousin. “You’re as lovely as the first time I laid eyes on you, or”—he smirked roguishly—“laid hands on you. You’re absolutely beautiful. Sweetheart, you’re not fat, you’re pregnant. It’s different.”