"To please the Tsar, of course. What do you suggest, Alisa? I'm completely ignorant of fashion, existing as I have so long in the country."
And the conversation turned to deciding on the basic requirements she would need to be entertained by the Tsar and Saint Petersburg society.
The next three weeks were like a young girl's dream come true. The Tsar feted Lisaveta beyond the ceremonial functions surrounding the honors given her father. He invited her to small dinners at the palace, he took her out riding in his carriage, he sent gifts and flowers, he danced with her always at the balls he attended, and he wasn't known to exert himself as a dance partner. He was, in a word, assuring Countess Lazaroff's success in Saint Petersburg society. His deliberate patronship was noted and remarked on, although even without the Tsar's recognition, Lisaveta's beauty would have gained her avid attention.
The whirl of parties, dinners, balls, the deluge of admirers, was heady. Enormous numbers of bouquets and male callers descended on the pink marble Kuzan palace on the Neva Quay, and the Countess Lazaroff became the most sought-after belle in Saint Petersburg. Lisaveta enjoyed her first encounter with Saint Petersburg's gilded set; she danced and flirted and smiled; she met everyone of importance and was treated with the deference and fervor her beauty and the Tsar's favor engendered. She appeared in the Kuzan box at the ballet and opera; she attended musical soirees and afternoon teas; she danced till dawn and slept till afternoon; she indulged herself completely in the aristocratic world of luxury and amusement.
But in the rare moments of respite from the dizzying diversions, she would recall the quiet solitude of the mountains and the man she'd come to love. Against the yardstick of that cherished time, the glitter of Saint Petersburg paled. She'd promised Alisa to stay until Katelina's birthday and she would, but after that she intended returning to her country estate. Once the war was over she'd accept the Khan's invitation to return to her study of his collection in Karakilisa. In the meantime, she could begin collating her voluminous notes and, she reflected with a small sigh, try to forget the man who'd captured her heart.
Lying back against the bed pillows, her gaze on the sunlit window the maid had opened to the afternoon air, she determinedly shook away the melancholy of Stefan's departure from her life and briskly thought, Now then, was it a poetry reading this afternoon or a piano recital? And dinner tonight was at one of the numerous grand dukes. Should she wear her emerald satin or her fuchsia tulle? Stefan's pearls would compliment either. She wished he could see her wear them.
That afternoon, though, she decided to forego the piano recital and found comfort instead in the Tsar's gift of a manuscript-The History of the House of Musaffar-a rare and special monograph she'd seen only once before. For a few hours as she immersed herself in the confusion of the minor dynasties who ruled over Fars and Kirman in the fourteenth century, she was able to forget her own confusion over wanting a man beyond her reach. She was even able for a brief time to diminish the powerful presence of Stefan in her mind.
In the following days, she escaped whenever she could to the quiet of Nikki's library and began working again, taking careful, minute notes from the manuscript, translating the sometimes cavalier chronology of Viziers into a plausible sequence, making duplicate notes for the Tsar's collection. Hafiz had lived in a turbulent time and his delicate love songs must have been created to the clash of arms, the inrush of conquerors and the flight of the defeated. Anarchy had prevailed, and invader after invader forced the city of Shiraz to submit to his rule. If Hafiz had survived such chaos and destruction with his inimitable gift of philosophy and song intact, surely she could overcome the melancholy of an unrequited love.
And she found a measure of solace in her familiar tasks.
Stefan heard the first glowing comments a week after Lisaveta was introduced by the Tsar at her first formal ball; one of his officers returned from leave in Saint Petersburg with the news. The Countess Lazaroff had been christened the Golden Countess for her sublime radiance and glorious eyes, he'd been told. She was, Loris said, the absolute center of every male's attention. She was more than beautiful, he'd gone on ecstatically, as though each word weren't doing disastrous things to Stefan's detachment; she was witty and gay with the charming cachet of her Hafiz scholarship. The intriguing possibilities in her exquisite looks and exotic background were a tantalizing lure. Men were lined up for a turn on her dance card, favors were offered for a seat beside her at dinner, and the drawing room of the Kuzan palace, where she was staying, was awash with floral tributes and besieging men. Loris went on at some length, driven by his own enthusiasm but also indulgent to Stefan's known partiality for gorgeous women. Rumor had it, he finished at last, two grand dukes had proposed.
The shock of those initial stories had taken several days for Stefan to rationalize satisfactorily. He'd never remotely imagined Lisaveta as society's reigning queen, although certainly her beauty was breathtaking. Rather, he'd thought her uninterested in the superficiality of society. Loris must have been exaggerating, he decided after several more days of contemplation. And for a man who'd forgotten women as easily as he'd seduced them, Stefan found himself uneasy with his feelings regarding Lisaveta. Eventually with the same kind of determination Lisaveta had summoned in regard to her memories, Stefan decided Loris's statements were probably primarily rumor and so dismissable. Even if they weren't, he had no further interest in the Countess. She'd afforded him a delightful holiday but he disliked prolonged relationships and it was all over now.
He was able to maintain his objective and habitual savoir faire until Dmitri and Kadar returned three days later from their leaves with stories of the Golden Countess as their foremost topic of conversation. They discoursed endlessly on her abundant attractions: she danced like an angel, and Stefan found himself inexplicably annoyed he'd never danced with her; she could make you laugh effortlessly without the silliness of other women, and Dmitri and Kadar both detailed numerous instances of her humor-to which the officers in the staff tent guffawed aloud; her gowns were lush like her beauty, but then Nikki Kuzan understood feminine fashions and had taken her to his wife's dressmaker. When Dmitri began describing Lisaveta's voluptuous form, Stefan glowered. He almost said, "You can't touch her," and only caught himself in time. But when hey both remarked on the canary diamonds she wore in her ears, so perfectly matching the gold of her eyes, Stefan abruptly said, "I gave her those," as if the four short words acknowledged his territorial prerogatives.
All the officers in the large tent looked at him. They were curious he knew the Countess, of course, also they heard the temper in his voice. Most of them took cogent note of his tone. If Bariatinsky was laying claim to the woman, it wouldn't be wise to step in his way. Although in the past Stefan had never shown enough concern for a woman to exert himself, perhaps the Countess was different. She must indeed be special.
It was Captain Tamada, just returned from the western front, who added the final straw a day later. To a brooding and unusually moody Stefan, who was playing a silent game of solitaire in the officer's mess, he said, "What you need, Stefan, to lighten your mood, is a night with the newest belle in Saint Petersburg. I saw her myself only a week ago, and she puts the delectable Helene to shame. Have you heard of the Golden Countess?"
A moment later, after Stefan had swept his cards on the ground and stalked out, the Captain turned to a fellow officer who was writing a letter home. "What did I say?"