He hadn't touched her except to steady her when she landed in his lap, basking in the glory of her jubilant kisses and joyful hysteria, letting his own sense of unutterable joy inundate his mind.

"I love you," Lisaveta whispered, "so much I thought I'd die if I lost you."

"I love you, dushka," he softly said, his dark eyes beneath his heavy brows intense with emotion, "enough to give up my command."

"You didn't!" Her exclamation was an explosive whisper, vibrating with shock. "I would have."

"No!" Her single word was as firmly declarative as his admission. She'd listened to the sadness in his voice those weeks in the mountains when he'd spoken of his father. She couldn't face him if he'd made that same sacrifice for her.

"If it came to a choice, I would." His statement was without subterfuge or arrogance. No longer the commander of the Tsar's cavalry or his father's son, Stefan was only a man in love, a man who'd discovered happiness after years of dismissing the concept as poetic license. "So…" He covered her small hands with his. "Will you mind a very precipitous wedding tonight?"

"Tonight?" Her squeal was spontaneous feminine surprise, the kind reflecting wholly practical considerations like dresses, flowers, family and guests, all the ritual every young girl dreams of as fairy-tale magic.

"We leave in the morning." Stefan's voice was tolerant male but wholly practical, too. He had a war to fight, and dresses and flowers and family hadn't even remotely crossed his mind.

"In the morning?"

"Am I speaking in some unintelligible language?" he amusedly asked.

"Maybe we shouldn't," Lisaveta abruptly replied.

"Don't even start," Stefan said. "I sold my soul."

"That's what I mean," she protested. "I don't want you to sell your soul." She pulled her hands free. "Maybe you'll be sorry in a week or a year… maybe Vladimir will change the Tsar's mind and then you'll hate me for ruining your life. Maybe-"

"God, Lise, stop being noble."

"I'm not being noble, I just don't want to hurt you. I don't want you to decide later our marriage was too hasty." The petulant moue she made signified her uncertainty and disquietude.

"I could always divorce you-" Stefan's grin was playful "-if that happened. Boris divorced his wife one weekend when he was out shooting with the Tsar. Alexander signed the special decree and Helene discovered her new status on Monday."

"Well, I could divorce you, too," Lisaveta immediately retorted, her sense of outrage aggravated by his teasing male arrogance and the ease with which he could expedite a divorce if he wished.

"So there. We're perfectly matched. Why not take a chance?" His casual words were disconcerting and reminiscent of the transience of his affairs and, after his last remark about divorce, not precisely the tone conducive to a romantic concept of marriage. She could feel her heart pounding at the nonchalance of his remarks, alarmed he might in truth view this marriage as an indulgent whim. She wanted her deep love returned in kind, and resentment prompted her reply. "I don't wish to marry someone as a speculative venture."

She looked very young in white eyelet and tumbled curls and a petulant scowl, and Stefan thought that although in many ways she was learned beyond her years, she was also ingenuous and unsophisticated in feminine wiles. There wasn't a woman of his acquaintance who would have risked refusing his proposal.

"Look, darling," he said with a winning smile, conscious of her pursed lips and high color as well as the temper in her remark, treading lightly because he was never absolutely sure of her response, "I'm leaving in the morning. I don't want to but I must, and while I prefer not pulling rank on you and I love and adore you in all your moods, you needn't be fearful or noble or testy about our marriage. I'll never divorce you, I swear. I was teasing. So just humor me and say, 'Tonight would be perfect for our wedding,' and I'll have the palace staff do their damnedest to follow every little order you wish to give and we'll live happily ever after till the end of time, my word on it, dushka." And his smile not only touched her heart with its boyish winsomeness but made her feel guilty for her temper.

"I don't have a wedding dress," she said in a very small voice.

"Oh, Lord," he said softly, "is that what this is all about?"

"No, it isn't," she hotly retorted. Instantly she chastised herself for another overheated response, and with a faint sigh that encompassed the impossibility of putting all the normal wedding preparations into the minutes allotted her, she added, "It's about… everything."

"Everything?" Reaching up to ruffle the curls at her temple, he cordially inquired, "Do I have time for a definition of 'everything'?"

"You're not very romantic." Her expression was that of a pouty small girl and utterly delightful.

He smiled, apologizing, promising to be romantic, this man who had always scoffed at the notion, then pulling her into his arms, he held her tight, thinking himself the luckiest man alive. Not only did he love beyond the mountains of the moon but he'd never be bored.

Her plaintive "ouch" brought him out of his cheerful reverie.

"Your embroidery," she softly reproved, the sheer eyelet of her nightgown no barrier to bristly metallic thread.

Pulling his shirt out of his trousers, Stefan undid the buttons at his neck and tugged his shirt over his head in one swift movement. The dark China silk fell in fluttering folds to the floor. "So fill me in," he said, drawing her back against his chest, "on 'everything,' and we'll have the staff take care of it."

"How much time do I have?" Lisaveta asked, looking up at him. "Does that sound impossibly pragmatic?" she went on in a tentative voice, then answered her own question in the next breath. "Well, maybe it does, but I've always dreamed girlish dreams of frothy gowns and flowers and priestly choirs and candles and music… and true love."

Stefan touched the fullness of her bottom lip lightly with one finger and said with a quiet intensity, "You have true love, dushka, and you can also have all your girlish dreams. And there's nothing wrong with being pragmatic… it's your wedding." His smile was indulgent. "Is two hours enough?" It was a man's question and he thought a reasonable one.

"Two hours!" she wailed.

He could see their concepts of reasonable differed. "Four hours then, how about that?" he generously offered. "But anything after eleven o'clock, I draw the line." He shrugged and gently reminded her, "The Turks won't wait."

"We'll have to tell Nikki and Alisa," she said, capitulating.

"I already told them on the way home."

"Some men are terribly sure of themselves." Her fine brows lifted in teasing rebuke.

He grinned. "Years of practice."

"I can still change my mind," Lisaveta warned, her golden eyes bright with laughter. "No, you can't."

"Why can't I, pray tell? I'm not obliged to marry you." Her glance was mischievous.

Your cousin Nikki may disagree with you there, Stefan thought, but said instead, "All the guests will be disappointed."

"All the guests?" she said in a very tiny voice.

"And the Tsar."

"The Tsar?" she whispered.

"The chapel candelabra are being polished even as we speak." His expression was amused.

"What if I'd said no?"

"You already said yes."

"I could have changed my mind," she said in a feminine way that over the centuries had been bred into every female on earth-the art of being contrary on principle.

"Well, then I'd have to change it back. I'm good at that." His dark eyes were suddenly as suggestive as his voice, and she was momentarily reminded of his… competence.

"How many guests are invited?" she asked with a studied casualness, aware he was correct in his assurance and wondering in the next beat of her heart how many of his former lovers, how many recipients of his "competence," would be in attendance.

"I think the chapel holds three hundred."

"How many are women?" There. She'd said it. It would have been impossible to be subtle, so her blunt question conveyed the full extent of her concern.

"Just wives of friends," he carefully replied. "I didn't count." Did she really think he was that insensitive?

"I'm jealous," she candidly said.

"So am I. None of your gallants were invited." His voice was gruff.

She smiled at his vigilance. "We agree then."

"I hope so. I wasn't dancing with every man in Saint Petersburg."

"I thought you were probably doing something much less innocent wherever you were."

"Well, I wasn't," he huffily said, as if after years of dalliance she should have intuitively realized he was being celibate across two thousand miles of Russia.

"I adore your jealousy." Lisaveta soothed the crease between his black brows.

"Humpf," he muttered, all his territorial feelings too new to fully assimilate.

Reaching up, she kissed him in selfish gratitude and miraculous wonder, her heart so full of love she wanted to laugh and cry and shout her happiness to the world. And when one small tear spilled over her eyelid and trailed down her cheek, Stefan followed it with kisses, his breath warm on her cheek.

"Don't cry," he murmured, "everything will be perfection. I'll be more understanding, promise," he said in blanket pledge to stay her tears, "and I'll never look at another woman and you can have more than four hours if you wish."

He almost said, "I'll hold back the Turks," but the telegram waiting for him when he'd returned from his audience with the Tsar was worrisome. Hussein Pasha was on a forced march from Erzerum. That startling news sharply curtailed Stefan's timetable. Although Hussein's chances of reaching Kars before Stefan were almost impossible, Stefan had learned not to disregard the impossible. At the thought of his return to battle, his arms tightened around Lisaveta.