Sophie woke, naked and alone beneath the furs. She lay still, eyes closed, as reality reestablished itself. Slowly, she opened her eyes and sat up, holding the covers securely to her neck. It was daylight, judging by the grimy square of mica in the window aperture of the sleigh. The brazier was still alight. Someone must have replenished it at some point in the hours she had been asleep.
A tiny smile played over her lips. So that was what it was really like? The journey begun on that star-filled night when Adam had first kissed her had reached its goal. Now there was a new journey to make from this fresh beginning. With a smug chuckle, she snuggled down under the furs again, allowing her hands to roam over her warm, soft flesh. In a curious way, she felt as if she had been reborn. As if during those dark days and hurtful nights in the Dmitriev palace she had been serving a species of apprenticeship, a preparation for the moment when, like the butterfly, she could emerge fully fledged from her chrysalis. She was whole, knew herself capable of arousing passion and of fulfilling her own; of inspiring love and of being inspired by it. Womanhood was hers, with all its magical rewards, its obligations and its penalties, and she looked upon the world with the clear sight of one who was finally wide awake.
“Sophia Alexeyevna, you are a shameless slugabed! It is an hour past daybreak.” Adam spoke in laughing reproof as he opened the door of the sleigh. “If we are to reach Berkholzskoye this year, we cannot lie around in barns.”
“I would have got dressed, but I do not know where my clothes are,” Sophie declared with an attempt at lofty dignity. The covers were pulled up to her nose, the dark eyes, glowing with love and the wondrous memories of passion, laughed at him, even as they invited.
It was irresistible. Adam, conscious of the time and his own frailty of will in certain matters, had determined to remain outside the sleigh until Sophie was once more clothed and beyond temptation. Instead, he found himself kneeling on the fur bed, the door closed firmly behind him.
“Your clothes are where you left them last night,” he announced solemnly, removing his gloves before sliding a hand beneath the covers. “Somewhere in here.”
Sophie squeaked in mock dismay as his questing hand found what it sought. It was not seeking her clothes. “Shame on you, Colonel! To take advantage of an innocent maid in such fashion.”
“Innocent maid, my foot!” scoffed Adam. “You are lying on your chemise. Lift up.” The hand assisted her to comply with the instruction and Sophie wriggled seductively against the flat palm. Lust, brilliant in its purity, sparked in the gray eyes. “Damn it, Sophie,” he groaned, moving his hand abruptly. “We do not have time for this. Boris Mikhailov is preparing the horses and you must have coffee and breakfast. Get dressed quickly, now.” He shuffled backward, reaching behind him to swing open the door, but his eyes remained riveted to her face.
“When will we have time?” Sophie asked matter-of-factly, aware of her own arousal, enjoying it even as she lamented the impossibility of its satisfaction at this point.
“It depends what the day brings,” Adam replied, jumping down. “Hurry, now.”
Smiling, Sophie scrabbled under the covers until she had located her various articles of clothing. Putting them on without exposing herself unduly to the air was a cumbersome procedure, but she succeeded eventually and stood up, buttoning the fur pelisse thankfully over what she knew must be the most crumpled muddle beneath.
“Adam, if I am going to spend a month in the same clothes, I am not going to be at all nice to know.” She spoke as she emerged into the frigid gray light of the barn, where a fire still burned, Adam squatting in front of it. “We cannot even wash.”
He stood up from the fire, holding a mug. “Coffee.” He handed her the steaming mug. “I think cleanliness is the least of our problems, Sophie. We cannot afford the luxury of such refined concerns.”
Sophie sipped her coffee, wondering why she felt as if she had been rebuked. She glanced at him over the rim of the mug and saw that his mouth was drawn, his face set, anxiety in the gray eyes. “What is troubling you?”
“The weather,” he said shortly. “Boris says he can smell a blizzard, and the sky does not look at all inviting.”
“Perhaps we should stay here today, then,” she suggested, both practically and hopefully. For all its lack of creature comforts, the barn did provide dry shelter and a measure of warmth.
Adam shook his head almost impatiently. “If we do not move whenever there is the possibility of ugly weather, we will never get anywhere. We cannot spend forever on this journey, and the weather will not improve before the spring.”
Sophie shrugged, draining her mug. “Then let us start. There seems little to be gained by standing around fretting.”
Adam’s laugh cracked in the dry air, chasing the worry from his eyes. “That’s my indomitable Sophie! There’s bread and honey for your breakfast. Eat quickly while Boris and I harness the horses.”
Sophie munched on bread and honey while ensuring the saddlebags were securely packed, shaking out the furs from the sleigh and replacing them. She refilled the brazier with the last of the fire. It was certainly going to be an improvement on the previous day’s journeying.
She remembered that cheerful thought later that morning, and the memory brought a hollow laugh. By ten o’clock the sky was as dark as a starless night. Adam’s expression became more grim by the moment as he looked anxiously through the window, rubbing at the dirt with a sleeve as if it would improve the visibility.
“I don’t think it’s the dirt,” Sophie commented from her cocoon of furs. “Boris has always been able to smell a blizzard.”
Adam merely grunted, continuing his anxious watch until, abruptly, they were enveloped, blinded by an impenetrable yet constantly moving wall of snow. The temperature dropped even further, and the already feeble warmth emitted by the makeshift brazier ceased to penetrate a cold that was almost solid. Sophie found herself struggling for breath.
“Get on the floor!” Adam’s voice came, harsh, cracked with effort through the darkness. His hands on her shoulder forced her to the floor. “Pull the furs over your head.”
“But you—”
“Don’t argue with me!”
Sophie decided that perhaps she would not. She huddled on the floor, completely covered by furs. It was easier to breathe the trapped air warmed by her body as she crouched, hugging herself. The sleigh was moving so slowly now that when it came to a stop, at first she barely noticed the cessation of movement.
“Don’t you move!” Adam’s sharp instruction reached her just as a blast of fearsome cold stabbed into her nest. She realized that he must have opened the door, then it banged closed and she was left with the residue of that rapier thrust.
In the minute or so since the sleigh had halted, the snow had drifted above the level of the wooden blades. Adam struggled blindly to the horses, making out the great bulk of Boris Mikhailov astride the lead horse. Shielding his mouth with his arm, the count bellowed up at the muzhik.
Boris’s reply was snatched away in the snow, but Adam had realized the problem for himself. The horse that Boris was not riding was turning to ice as the snow froze on contact with his coat. The animal was wracked with violent spasms as it stood, yielding itself to death.
Adam mounted it, grabbing the frozen reins. The metal of the bit was so cold it burned like the heart of a furnace. It took every vestige of skill for him to get the beast to move, but at last he took a step. Boris’s mount moved forward also, and the sleigh inched out of the rapidly icing drift around the blades. Adam, as he knew Boris would be, was obsessed with worry for the other horses, tethered to the rear of the sleigh; Khan, in particular. They had to keep moving, however slowly, just so that the blood would not freeze in the animals’ veins.
It was impossible to tell whether they were still on the route. Whirling snow blanked out the landscape so that they moved without direction, without purpose, it seemed. Then Adam became aware of a movement in the veiling whiteness, coming up beside him. Stiffly, he turned his deadened body. A white heat of fury sent the blood shooting through his veins. Sophie, crouched low over Khan’s neck, the two other horses on leading reins to either side, was forcing the beasts through the snow, pushing them to increase their speed. Adam bawled at her to get back inside, but the cold froze his lungs, and she ignored him anyway. He could do nothing without stopping, but to stop even for a second would spell disaster. Seething with fury, fueled by terror, he was obliged to accept her presence, knowing, as his own body succumbed to the disembodied sensation of extreme cold, that she must be in the same condition.
For a terrifying half hour, the three of them rode side by side through the storm, until Boris, with supreme effort, raised his arm, pointing with his whip into the white darkness. A shape loomed. Roofed, walled, it was the lifeline without which death was a certainty.
There was a chimney, smoke curling, melting into the snow; outbuildings solidifying, all evidence of a post house. Adam forced himself from his horse; reaching up, he pried Sophie loose from her death grip on Khan’s neck, hauling her to the ground. Boris leaned sideways, grabbed the three reins, and drove the sleigh toward the outbuildings, the three horses obeying blindly.
The door of the post house crashed open under the force of Adam’s shoulder. He stumbled inside, Sophie, whose legs would not work, held against him. They found themselves in a room warmed by a vast potbellied stove set into the wall and a fire blazing in the hearth. Adam shoved Sophie so close to the fire she was almost inside it, then he took stock. Faces—a whole crowd of faces—stared at him through a smoky haze; children, men, women, two ancients rocking beside the stove. The earthen floor swarmed with dogs, cats, chickens, and a goat. They had fallen upon a post house of the most primitive kind, but its one room, although fetid, was warm.
He forced his lips to move. “My servant needs help with the horses.” His hand plunged into his pocket, pulling out a leathern pouch. Stiffly, fingers fumbling, he extracted a coin, handing it to a brawny lad. “There’ll be another when the job’s done.”
The lad touched his forelock, pocketed the coin, and grabbed a wolfskin from a wooden settle by the hearth.
“’Tis a powerful blizzard, lord.” An elderly man was the first person, apart from Adam, to speak, and there was awe in his voice. “Not fit for man nor beast.”
“No,” agreed Adam shortly. “Bring me vodka.” He turned to one of the women. “What can you give us in the way of hot food?”
The woman shook her head in its greasy cap as if trying to dispel hallucination. “Cabbage soup, lord.”
“Then see to it. I want some privacy around this fire. Have you a screen?”
The idea seemed extraordinary, but the memory of that pouch of coins, the richness of the travelers’ furs, the authoritative tone could produce a near miracle. Sophie, thawing painfully, shivering violently as sensation returned to her body, suddenly found herself enclosed in a tent of sheets draped from hooks in the ceiling. The strings of onions and garlic also hanging from the hooks added the strangest decorative touch to a scene so bizarre that she began to laugh weakly.
“Get out of those clothes!” Adam spoke in French, ensuring that they could not be understood by any curious ears beyond their tent. He held the vodka to her lips. “Never, ever have I seen such a piece of crass, mindless stupidity. Half an hour more and you would have been beyond salvation! What did you hope to achieve with that nonsensical act of martyrdom?” He tipped the bottle vigorously, his hand shaking. Sophie choked, the spirits trickling down her chin.
“I expected to achieve what I succeeded in achieving,” she replied in the same language, through chattering teeth. “Don’t bawl at me, Adam. You didn’t expect me to leave Khan to suffer?”
“As it happens, I did,” he said dryly, taking a deep revivifying draught of the vodka. “Foolish of me. Now get out of those clothes. They are frozen stiff.”
Gradually, the point of the tent penetrated her numbed brain. Sophie stared at him. “Here, in the middle of this room? With all those people…?” She gestured vaguely to the grimy curtains. A chicken, clucking cheerfully, pushed beneath one of the sheets to enter the makeshift chamber.
“Shoo!” Adam toed the bird back the way it had come. “Yes, here, Sophie. Now, this minute. You may not realize it, but your clothes are frozen to your body.” He was beginning to unfasten his own pelisse, his fingers tingling painfully as life returned.
“I can’t stay stark naked,” protested Sophie. Then she became suddenly aware of a puddle at her feet as the fire melted the frozen snow from her clothes. An icy wetness seemed plastered to her skin, and she realized the truth of what Adam had said. Fingers fumbling, she began to strip off her clothes, finally standing in her cold-reddened skin.
“Come here.” Adam, as naked as she, began to scour her with a harsh scrap of toweling. “I have to say this was not the way I had envisaged my first sight of you,” he murmured, turning her around, scrubbing vigorously the length of her back and legs. “It is just about the least erotic moment imaginable.”
“You’re scraping all my skin off,” Sophie complained. “I’ll be as raw as a peeled potato!”
“See what I mean? Not at all erotic,” Adam said, with a mock sigh. “Apart from tuberlike, how does that feel now?”
“Alive and warm,” she said. “But what now?”
“Maybe we can beg a blanket.”
“It’ll be flea-ridden, Adam! I’ll be eaten alive.” She huddled into the hearth, scorching one side of her with the blaze, hugging her arms across her breasts. “I feel so exposed.”
“Count?” It was Boris Mikhailov from outside the tent. “Thought you might like your cloak-bag.”
“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.
“How fortunate the movement of a sleigh does not have the same effect upon you as that of a carriage,” he observed with a lazy grin. “One day we must try making love across a galloping horse.” He was quite unable to help a chuckle, despite his own fulfilled lassitude. “If the simple motion of a sleigh can assist one to such heaven, think what—”
A yell from Boris, the violent cracking of a whip, the sudden surge forward of the sleigh brought an end to this interesting speculation.
“Hell and the devil!” Adam pulled away from her, grabbing his britches, yanking them up his body. He flung open the door of the sleigh, leaning out precariously, despite the rollicking speed of the cumbersome vehicle. Across the white plain, galloping toward the sleigh on fast mountain horses, came a group of riders.
“Can’t outrun them!” Boris shouted, cracking the whip again. “I’ll try to make for those trees.”
“Is it brigands?” Sophie, fumbling desperately with her undergarment, which was hopelessly tangled in the folds of satin, cambric, and fur, gasped out the question, her face pink with her exertions. “Holy Mother! What an invitation to rape I must present.”
Adam stared at her in amazement. “If we can’t beat them off, that’s exactly what will happen, before they trample us to death,” he said vigorously.
Sophie looked up. “They’re only brigands. Of course we’ll beat them off. Do you have a pistol for me?”
This was the woman who shot rabid wolves, Adam remembered with a jolt. Chivalrous concerns were out of place. “Here.” He handed her a flintlock pistol. “If we can reach the shelter of the woods before they come up with us, we might stand a chance. Can you prime that?”
The look she gave him told him he shouldn’t have asked the question. “Ammunition and the other pistols are in that pack. Get them organized so we may reload swiftly.” On that crisp instruction, he left her in the sleigh, swinging himself out and up onto the second horse. Their pursuers were gaining, but the woods were a great deal closer.
“We’ve plenty of ammunition. Sophia Alexeyevna is preparing it,” he told Boris briefly. “There are three of us and four of them. Reasonable odds.”
Boris grunted his assent, expertly swinging the sleigh into the cover of the first line of trees. As the conveyance slowed, Sophie sprang down, running to the rear.
“Sophie, what the devil are you doing?” bellowed Adam.
“Releasing Khan,” she yelled. “They’ll do anything to get their hands on him.”
“That goddamned horse!” exploded Adam. “Does she never think of anything else?”
Boris chuckled. “Not often, Count. Although I’ve noticed her attention’s been a bit divided just recently.”
Adam shook his head in wonderment. What sort of people were these products of the Wild Lands? Neither the muzhik nor the woman exhibited the slightest fear. Instead, they made jokes. Sophie had swung herself onto the stallion’s back. “The ammunition and pistols are laid ready for you on the bench.” Then, before he could absorb the implication of her words, she had galloped into the trees.
“Best get inside, Count.” Boris released the horses from the traces.
“Sophie—”
“She’ll be all right—”
A pistol shot cracking almost in range brought an end to further discussion. The two men dived into the sleigh, where four pistols lay ready for them and ammunition was organized for easy reloading. Two pistols were missing. What was she intending to do with them? But at least she was out of immediate danger. If her need to save her horse meant she had saved herself, then he was not going to complain. On that comforting thought Adam settled into the corner of the sleigh, pistol cocked, and aimed through the crack of the door. Boris took up a similar position on the other side.
The brigands, riding low over their horses, made elusive targets as they charged ferociously at the sleigh. Adam’s first shot whistled past harmlessly as its intended recipient swung beneath the belly of his horse. Instead of being three to four, Sophie’s defection left them two to four, and one of them was obliged to reload.
Then a shot rang out; one of the brigands clutched his shoulder, falling forward over the neck of his mount. Adam, on the point of squeezing the trigger, looked in disbelief at Boris. The muzhik was stolidly reloading. “Someone out there is on our side,” Adam said slowly, turning back to the aperture and taking aim.
“Sophia Alexeyevna,” Boris confirmed calmly.
The unexpectedness of their comrade’s injury from a shot that seemed to come from nowhere had thrown the other three brigands into some confusion. Adam’s next shot fell true, and there were now only two men upright outside.
“We’d best get them all,” Adam said grimly. “We can’t afford to leave even one able-bodied.”
A shot smacked against the mica window, shattering it, before burying itself in the floor of the sleigh. “Too close!” muttered Boris. Then suddenly a wild Cossack yell rang out, and Khan leaped into the clearing. Both attackers swung around to face this apparition. Boris’s pistol blazed, and one man toppled to the ground. The other dragged a wicked curving blade from his belt and slashed at the rearing Khan.
Adam aimed but was unable to shoot for fear of hitting Sophie. His heart in his throat, he watched as the stallion sidestepped out of the line of fire with extraordinary delicacy for such a mighty beast. The blade sliced again through the air. Adam fired in the same instant, and the brigand slipped sideways to crumple on the ground.
Clutching her arm, Sophie sat astride Khan, looking down in some disbelief at the blood welling between her fingers. “How did that happen?” she asked in a dazed tone, as Adam pounded up to her.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! Of all the foolhardy…! What did you think you were doing?”
“Creating a diversion,” Sophie said in a faint voice. “It worked, did it not?”
“Oh, yes, it worked—”
“Watch her, Count!” Boris Mikhailov interrupted him sharply. “Can’t stand the sight of blood. Never could.”
“What!” Adam was momentarily speechless, staring up at Sophie, who, without warning, swayed and slumped sideways, tumbling inert from Khan’s back.
Adam managed to catch her, then stood looking down at the unconscious figure in his arms. She swooned at the sight of blood, became hideously sick in a closed wheeled carriage, rode like a Cossack, shot with the accuracy of a skilled sniper, withstood the full force of Paul Dmitriev’s tortuous, devious plotting to break her…Oh, it was unfathomable.
He carried her back to the sleigh; the sable eyelashes fluttered and her eyes opened as he laid her down on the bench. “I do beg your pardon,” Sophie said. “I have the strangest weaknesses.” She turned her head away as he pushed up the sleeve of the pelisse. “It isn’t even as if it were dreadfully painful.”
“It is only a flesh wound,” he said after a silent, thorough examination. “You may count yourself lucky. Boris, pass me the bandages and the salve, please?”
“I would never make a soldier.” Sophie attempted to joke as Adam began to bind up the wound with the medical supplies he had ensured would form part of the provisioning for the journey.
“I would just like to have you under my command for a week,” he declared furiously. “I would teach you a few things about soldiering that you would never forget.”
“You are angry,” Sophie said in surprise. “Why ever should you be so? I was simply playing my part.”
“When I command a military operation,” Adam said with studied calm, “I do not tolerate independent flights. In particular those that are not communicated to me beforehand.”
The color had returned to Sophie’s cheeks. “I do beg your pardon,” she said in dulcet tones. “But I had not realized we were engaged in a military operation, or that you were in command. I had thought we were all fighting off brigands. You must make these things clearer in future.”
There was a moment’s stunned silence. Then Adam began to laugh in rich enjoyment, exclaiming as he had once before, “Oh, Sophia Alexeyevna, what am I going to do with you?”
The dark eyes glowed up at him. “Oh, come now, Colonel, Count Danilevski, you do not in general suffer from a failure of imagination.”