Her face was lifted to his, flushed and rosy-cheeked, snow-flakes clinging to her lashes, her golden eyes as sunshine beautiful as he'd remembered, her smile more perfect than memory. "I was afraid, too." And her arms tightened around his waist.

Concealing his wince of pain he smiled back. "I'd dreamed so often the past weeks of precisely this, I thought I'd hallucinated."

"Kiss me, please," Lisaveta whispered, her simple plea underscored with fear and uncertainty. Could she be imagining all this in the desperation of her longing? If he kissed her, if she felt the coolness of his lips on hers, could she in safety know he was real?

"I'll kiss you for a lifetime," Stefan murmured, and touched her lips gently, a sweet aching tenderness filling his heart and soul. The snow blew past them and around them, sparkling crystals falling and melting on their faces, the darkening twilight of the storm surrounding them, and they were complete and whole.

"In all the world…" Lisaveta whispered, the reality of their kiss lingering breath-warm on each other's mouth.

"I was coming home," Stefan answered, his voice husky. He understood her cryptic phrase, knowing that while they both lived, they would have found each other through distance and time and adversity. "But, thank you," he murmured, a small smile creasing his wind-chapped cheek, "for shortening the journey."

"Nikki let me come," Lisaveta replied, her voice still tremulous with emotion.

"Let?" Stefan teased in familiar mocking irony.

And she thought how relentlessly strong he was and seemingly indomitable, holding her against the buffeting wind, chaffing her with his habitual impudence as though they weren't standing knee-deep in the desolate snow-swept landscape of Kurdistan, as if he hadn't been lost to the world for weeks, as though he weren't so debilitated he'd only raised himself from his knees moments ago.

"You're wounded," she exclaimed, guilt-ridden she'd only considered her own happiness.

"Not too badly," he casually replied, the blood from his saber cut running down his chest in a sluggish trickle.

"And I've been thinking only of myself," she apologized. "Let me do something, help you somehow…am I hurting you?" Her arms fell away in self-reproach.

Stefan grinned. "I'm fine, darling, more than fine now. I could recuperate from sheer joy alone. But Haci, though-" His tone abruptly changed, concern drawing his brows together, his voice deepening. "He needs a doctor. I love you," he went on in another mutation of resonance, "you know that, but-" His arms, too, released their hold and he half turned to gauge the progress in bringing Haci forward. Turning back, he softly said, "He's like a brother to me. He's the only one of my bodyguard to survive." His voice broke briefly as he finished. "He saved my life… and now… I must save his."

At the road Haci was transferred from Nikki's arms into Stefan's, and they slowly traveled the last few miles to the caravansary. On the way, Stefan related in a neutral voice how he and his bodyguard had stood together in those last desperate minutes before they'd been overrun and how one by one they'd fallen. He'd been the last standing and his final memory was the rushing charge of Turks coming in for the kill as he screamed his defiance, his sword raised high. He'd been struck from behind a moment later by a saber blow and blackness engulfed him.

"Haci tells me," Stefan quietly said to Nikki and Lisaveta, who flanked his mount as they rode side by side, "he regained consciousness, found I was still breathing and dragged me away into the cellar of a nearby house until the fighting passed us by. We'd been saved, he said, by two Turkish soldiers falling dead on top of us and protecting us from the next counter-attack."

Nikki noticed Stefan didn't mention how important that concealment was. It had been a close thing apparently. The Turks routinely bayonetted all enemy wounded. They didn't take prisoners. Their inhumanity extended to their own troops, as well. They brought no ambulances to war, and the handful of surgeons and hospital staff were primarily volunteers from Europe.

"He found horses after the main assault had moved on and carried me away from what appeared at the time to be a Russian defeat." Stefan's smile was gentle. "Obviously, there was a reversal."

"Thanks to your charge, the story goes," Nikki said.

"Thanks to my soldiers," Stefan replied softly.

"He didn't know the ultimate conclusion of the battle when we left, but there were Turks everywhere, Haci said, so he took me into the mountains. He found a shepherd's hut with enough goat cheese and dried millet stored against next season to sustain us. In nursing me back from the grave he endangered his own health. I think he has lung fever…and I didn't know when we started out yesterday whether we were walking into enemy territory or not, but he wouldn't live without medical care so I took the risk. Perhaps we could get to a village at least… You were a miracle…an answered prayer." He looked suddenly defenseless and vulnerable, as he must have felt knowing Haci needed help or he'd die.

"Haci must live," he said, exposed and powerless against the angel of death, his voice no more than a whisper. "I pledged him my word."

They were traveling down one of the deep-slashed ravines, the red sandstone rising like lofty enclosing walls on either side, the wind silenced, the snow falling gently now in the motionless air.

"We'll be at Meskoi in less than an hour now, Stefan," Nikki gently said, "and Haci will have help."

Stefan wrapped his burkah more tightly around his friend, oblivious to his own pain and wounds. "He was raised with me like a brother, we've fought together since we've been sixteen," he murmured, "and I promised him."

Reaching out, Lisaveta touched Stefan's arm, and when he turned to her, his dark eyes were wet with tears. "Our sons will be friends," he softly whispered. "I promised him."

"They will be, Stepka," Lisaveta quietly replied, wishing she could bear some of his pain and ease his sorrow. "We're almost there now. He won't die."

Chapter Twenty-One

You are their darling Prince," Lisaveta said on Christmas morning, her golden eyes warm with happiness as she lay beside Stefan. The heat from the porcelain stove was like summer air, the harmony of church bells mellifluous background to their own blissful pleasure.

The bells had been ringing in triumph for three full days, their resounding melody echoing sweet joy at Stefan's return. All of Tiflis had turned out to welcome him home.

The narrow streets of the old quarter had been decorated with garlands of jasmine and laurel, looped from one overhanging balcony to the next. Every house, rich or poor, had hung out its finest carpets in glowing display. The spacious boulevards had been lined with troops, saluting in the way of the mountain warriors with volleys shot into the air. And over all had sounded the bells, every church pealing its glad tidings that the White General, Prince Bariatinsky, their favorite son, was home. The chimes floated across the misty river, along the steep banks where the bridge built by Alexander the Great still stood, past the Tartar bazaars, where Persian jewelers weighted turquoises by the pound; they reached the dark booths of the Armenian armorers, where the fine gold and silver damascened weapons were fashioned. The bells swept past the fretted balconies, up the steep hills, through the eucalyptus groves to the palace on the heights and then to the mountains beyond.

Stefan lay sprawled at Lisaveta's side, both his arms thrown over his head in peaceful repose, his dark hair and eyes, his entire bronzed body, in stark contrast to the pristine whiteness of the linen sheets. "I know," he said in tranquil surety. "The Orbelianis are well liked." It was a modest statement, considering the ecstasy with which his return was being received. "And Papa was admired for his justice and courage."

Lisaveta marveled briefly at his calm acceptance of the adulation, done without humility or arrogance but rather with a serene grace, both regnant and oddly informal.

"They're devoted to you," she said, as they would be to a divine ruler, she thought.

His slender hand reached out to touch the gentle curve of her shoulder. "As I am to you."

His simple words warmed her. This man whom all of Russia adored and revered loved her. It was heady stuff. But she said softly in the next breath, "I want forever," because she was in her own way imperious. "Am I selfish?" Her question was touched with that dutiful courtesy one learns should supersede egoism.

Stefan smiled. She always was so much more polite than he. "Don't apologize, dushka. You must always in this world want only the best…" His fingers drifted up her slender throat and traced the perfection of her graceful jaw, sliding upward to end in a silken caress of her gamine brows. "And in all this world I found you," he tenderly said.

"And I you." He was very beautiful, but more than that, intelligent and kind.

He grinned. "Thanks to the Bazhis and," he added irreverently, "your reckless ignorance."

"It wasn't my fault they attacked so close to Alexsandropol," she protested, cheerful and unintimidated.

"Nothing perhaps was your fault except-"

"Except?" Her pale eyes were amused, although her voice was coolly sardonic.

"Except for your choices of intellectual pursuit. If not for your research on Hafiz, you would have been safely at home doing whatever women are supposed to do."

"Supposed to do?" Her sarcasm was a shade less sportive and her expression now demonstrably attentive.

He enjoyed the small sparks of fire in her eyes, reminded of their first night in Aleksandropol, when they'd amused themselves with various poems of Hafiz… when he'd first realized a woman could inflame his mind and soul as well as his senses. "Well, you know," he deliberately teased, "play the piano, embroider, drink tea and chatter."