* * *

The same breeze refreshing Stefan drifted over Lisaveta's face as she lay in the crook of his arms. Her eyes fluttered open. Immediately in her line of vision was a bronzed, austere male face, dirt streaked, unshaven. With a terrified start she wondered if she'd been recaptured by the Bazhis. But as her panic-stricken gaze moved downward, she saw the silver insignia of regiment and rank on his uniform collar and shoulder and the frenzied beating of her heart subsided fractionally. He was clearly in the Russian army, but his looks suggested he could be a native warrior. Was he wearing a trophy of war? Without moving, she allowed her gaze to slide downward. He wore a ring on his right hand, a large unfaceted emerald, and that hand was resting on a thigh encased in filthy white leather breeches. Thank God! The natives didn't wear jewelry and would never wear tight-fitting breeches for riding. He was Russian! She was saved!

Her heartbeat slowed to normal and a strange lethargy overcame her, as though all signals to her brain had received the message of her salvation. She lay for a few moments more without speaking, feeling utterly safe, feeling as if she were waking from a sleep, her gaze fixed on the man who held her. The officer's face, framed by the brilliant light, was streaked with sweat, and his dark eyes of a distinctive Tartar cast were narrowed against the hot glitter of the sun. He had a surprisingly young face, she thought, for the general's rank on his shoulder, a classic aquiline face with an etched handsomeness enhanced somehow by the dark stubble of beard shading his jaw. He had a compelling masculine severity of face and form, a mythological pagan quality of animal strength and grace despite the dirt and sweat. He also looked surprisingly familiar.

And then she found herself staring into midnight-black eyes, saved from absolute opacity only by curious golden flecks near the pupils.

His gaze was both benign and dismissive, but his deep voice when he spoke was courteous. "How do you feel?" he asked in the local dialect.

Her lashes lifted completely so the tawny gold of her eyes was visible to Stefan for the first time. His reaction was immediate, instinctive: Kuzan eyes. His friend Nikki Kuzan had eyes like that, slightly oriental, tilted marginally like hers and of the same unusual shade. And then he remembered she was a native girl three thousand miles from Saint Petersburg. She could hardly be related to a Russian prince simply through a coincidence of eye color.

"I feel marvelously alive, thanks to you," she answered in French.

"Ah," he murmured in surprise. "You speak French." French was the language of the Russian aristocracy, but she hardly qualified. Was she a teacher of some kind?

"And several other languages as well, all of which I'm appreciative in," she informed him in a voice unshaken and calm. "The caravan I was traveling with was attacked and I was abducted," she continued in a firm declarative way. "If you hadn't come to my rescue, there's no doubt I would have been those bandits' victim. I'm deeply in your debt and will surely reward you at my first opportunity."

She spoke so assertively it startled him for a moment, as did the style of her speech. Obviously she wasn't a native. He glanced at her again with a less desultory curiosity. Maybe she was the wife of a merchant or some minor official; her dress was too modest for any higher position. Stefan's tastes, although catholic in rank or status, were inclined toward lush females with silken skin and feminine ways, so his scrutiny of her was brief. She didn't pique his interest in any of these areas. Furthermore, he took mild offense at her offer of a reward. He was Prince Bariatinsky on his paternal side, the only noble family directly related to the Tsars, while his mother's family, the Orbeliani, had been the wealthiest and most powerful dynasty in Georgia since the third century. He took issue at being offered a reward like some bourgeois shopkeeper when he justifiably considered his act no more than simple chivalry. She would do well, he peevishly thought, to learn the accepted way of the world. In his milieu, men gave and women took, not the other way around.

"No reward is necessary," he replied in a mildly repressive tone. "Think nothing of it."

"But I'd feel so much better if I could show my appreciation."

And under ordinary circumstances when Stefan heard those words from a woman, his reaction was predictable.

But this woman was too plain and unattractive, so for the first time in his life he rejected that invitational phrase. Inherently polite, he declined with courtesy. "To know you're unharmed, madame, is reward enough," he said.

"Mademoiselle," she casually corrected.

"I'm sorry. Was your family-" He didn't precisely know how to ask if her family had been killed in the attack.

"Oh, I was traveling alone," Lisaveta said, interpreting his hesitancy.

After a life significant for a wide and varied profligacy, Stefan considered himself beyond shock, but he found himself momentarily confounded. Young unmarried women didn't normally travel alone, although he realized the war had raised havoc. "How is it," he inquired, both curious and mildly astonished, "you were traveling alone in this war?" He was not a martinet for protocol, but he did not consider a war zone exactly the safest place for a single young female.

"I didn't begin my journey alone," Lisaveta explained. "Javad Khan sent an escort with me…"

Stefan immediately recognized the name. Javad was a power to be reckoned with in western Azerbaijan. Was she one of his harem being sent home on a visit? No, he decided, glancing at her peasant clothing. Javad's houris would never be so poorly dressed, nor would he send them out in this no-man's-land. And, he thought next with masculine bias, Javad Khan's taste in women was much superior to this female in his arms.

"But we were so close to Aleksandropol when we met the caravan," Lisaveta went on, oblivious to Stefan's assessment, "that I insisted Javad's men return to Turkish territory. I was on Russian soil now and traveling in sufficient company for safety. Who would have thought Bazhis were in the vicinity, so few miles from Aleksandropol?" She looked up at him then with a translucent gaze reminiscent of an artless child.

A simple woman, he thought, so naive in the ways of the world. And dressed like a peasant, yet sent out under escort by Javad Khan himself. Nothing quite connected.

"Do you live in Karakilisa?" he inquired, thinking perhaps she was a special member of Javad's household staff-a favored housekeeper or cook or harem servant.

"No, I was only visiting Javad, studying his Hafiz manuscripts, when the war broke out," she answered plainly, just as she'd answered all his questions. "He'd granted me permission to use his private archives and I was planning on staying several months more to take advantage of the opportunity, feeling that in that time the campaigns would have moved west anyway, but then… well… circumstances required I leave precipitously."

Now any one of her disclosures would have been enough to startle him, but in the entirety the result was stupefying. First, women were rarely scholars-particularly of Persian erotica. Second, women weren't allowed any freedom of scope in Karakilisa. It was a provincial Turkish city and Muslim law strictly prevailed. Women lived in harems or under rigid restrictions. They didn't have free rein in a Khan's library. Actually, very few of them were literate.

"Did you say-Hafiz?" he carefully inquired, persuaded on further reflection that he must have misunderstood entirely.

"Yes. Do you know his work?" she asked blandly, as if he'd casually questioned the competence of her dressmaker.

He found his eyes drawn to her again when she reaffirmed her unusual activities at Karakilisa. Definitely unsightly, dirty and overweight. No, his first assessment had been correct. How odd. She and Hafiz. It made no sense. He wondered whether he'd been out under the hot sun too long. But she seemed to be waiting for his answer so he replied, "I know of him, of course. I've several of his works in my library, but frankly-" He stopped before he overstepped good manners.

She smiled and her teeth shone surprisingly white against the smudged grayness of her face. "I realize it's unusual," she said, answering his unspoken thought in what he was discovering was her habitually direct style, "but it happens to be my current area of study. And if you shouldn't mind, I'd very much like to see the copies you have."

No delicate wallflower here, he thought, not quite sure if he was offended or not at her forwardness. Both breeding and rank had made the Prince firmly a product of his age, an age that viewed women as pretty, gay, delightful amusements but looked askance at women who dared to be assertive.

"The fact is," she continued amiably as though she openly discussed Persian erotica with any stranger she met, "I'm Count Lazaroff's daughter, Lisaveta Felixovna." She pronounced her father's name with obvious pride, conscious it would be instantly recognized. And of course it was. The recluse count had been, before his untimely death three years ago, the premier Russian scholar of Persian manuscripts.

There, Stefan thought. An explanation for the plain dowdy woman and her unorthodox studies. It helped ease his sense of uncomfortable rapport. Women fell into distinct categories for him: female relatives he treated with kindness and friendship; beautiful women he treated as potential lovers with flirtatious charm; the rest generally received only polite civility on the rare occasions he noticed them. As for female scholars, he'd never met one.