Free Seized by Love by Susan Johnson Page A

to live.
    Now, the one time she
ignored reason, negated logic, passionately made a daring, bold grasp for
momentary happiness, she'd been utterly shamed and humiliated. Maybe there
truly was no hope for joy or pleasure in her life, Alisa sorrowfully thought.
But she
had
been happy, deliriously happy with Nikki for however brief
the moments.
    And she cried afresh at her
wounded heart and pride. She cried for all her sorrows and all her misery these
many years and sobbed all the sobs that had been so long suppressed. Then at
length, when she'd finally drained all the pent-up tears, she took herself to
task with the indomitable spirit that had always sustained her.
    Be sensible, you'll survive
this mortification, she told herself. She still had Katelina and before long,
perhaps they'd be able to leave Forseus and make their way in the world. Ami,
her father's old groom, Maria, her old nanny, and Rakeli, Katelina's nanny,
were devotedly loyal and always ready to assist her, should that hope become
reality.
    Alisa washed herself
hastily at the river, then dressed carefully and adjusted her clothes into a
semblance of order, her face in a spurious repose, and walked home.
    Nikki partially assuaged
his black rage and frustration by summarily driving Cernov and Illyich out of
his lodge, spurring their departure with a string of vivid obscenities. With a
considerably more polite choice of words, Nikki convinced his young cousin
Aleksei to repair to the town house in Petersburg for a few days until Nikki
joined him. The Gypsy girls were promptly ousted as well, piled into a carriage
in which they contentedly counted their money all the way back to the city.
    Nikki immediately shut
himself into the music room with two bottles of brandy and a brooding anger
that turned into a brooding melancholy by the bottom of the second bottle.
    He roared for his musicians
and commanded they play sorrowful, quiet Finnish love songs, the old familiar
songs of Nikki's childhood. His mother's Tzigane ancestors had settled north of
Lake Ladoga over a hundred years ago, when a grateful noble had deeded them a
large tract of land and citizenship in return for having preserved an only
son's life from a runaway horse. Nikki's paternal grandfather had begun
construction of Le Repose, northeast of Vüpuri, in 1810; the country estate was
to become the favorite seat of the Kuzan family. Nikki had been reared there
and grew up in an atmosphere of Karelian tradition.
    Play "Kalliolle
Kukulalle," he would sullenly mutter every second song, and the musicians
would lapse again into the sad minor key and play the single melody Nikki
wanted to hear.
    Kalliolle kukulalle Rakenan mina majani Sine hajan oman ystavan Asuman
minuu ransani.
    The poignant lyrics spoke
of a lover bringing his sweetheart to a secluded forest cabin and plunged Nikki
still deeper into an agonizing, gloomy depression. He couldn't dislodge visions
of Alisa from his mind. They had shared a sexual response that had struck even
the surfeited, world-weary Prince as rare and unique. She was a beauty,
unutterably so, artless, dazzling, sensual. He
must
see her again!
    At one o'clock in the
morning Nikki's glazed, drunken eyes lit with a brilliant flash of an idea. He
impatiently waved the musicians away and called for his steward. After sending four
riders out with a message for his father's gar-dener, Nikki, eminently
satisfied with his resourcefulness, fell into a drunken sleep, having left
adamant orders to be wakened when the messengers returned.
    Fifty versts (33 miles)
away, in the sunny breakfast room of Le Repose, Prince Mikhail Petrovich
Kuzan's principal seat and model estate of 172,000 dessiatins (484,400 acres),
Nikki's parents were enjoying the early morning companionship of a breakfast a
deux.
    "What in the world is
Nikki up to?" his mother curiously inquired. She was a petite, dark-haired
Tzigane woman, still lovely and slim at fifty.
    "Need you ask?"
his father replied dryly. "When Nikki