the book in her hand. Once awake, she rarely went back to sleep. She opened the small volume, not awake enough to read, either, but willing to glance at the illustrations. She rifled through it and stopped at a thin sheet of crinkled, transparent paper protecting a hand-colored page underneath.
This she lifted carefully, revealing a picture of a Russian church, its onion-shaped domes decorated with dazzling touches of real gold. Peasant women in bright skirts and shawls stood by its massive doors.
Then, before her disbelieving eyes, the doors in the picture swung open and the women passed between them, their skirts swaying. She even heard their voices, tiny, sweet, and distant—and was that thread of smoke issuing from the sanctuary…incense? She swore she could smell it.
No. It could not be.
For the second time in one night, she had seen things that were not there. She was awake but still somehow dreaming. The solution to that was to go to her bed. Something about the comfortable chaise made her indulge in wayward fantasies, and Kyril had made them worse.
Unless there was some hidden magic in the book of Russian folktales…she dismissed the thought as impossible and slid the thin ribbon bound into the spine over the page to mark her place.
Vivienne raised her head, looking toward the window. Black, utterly black, the sky showed not a trace of morning light. The darkness outside seemed to press against the panes. She was glad for the circle of light that the lamp provided.
Her bedroom would be just as dark and her bed would be cold. If the chambermaid had brought up a warming pan of coals, the effect would be long gone. Slipping between chilly sheets by herself did not appeal to her. She decided to stay where she was. Vivienne opened the book at random to another page and began to read.
In the far, far north lived the Roemi, men like no other, warriors of legendary strength, born under the blue sun that never sets. They were magi, endowed with supernatural powers…and masters of the great ice wolves that are no more. The Roemi rode the freezing winds that howled down over the vast steppes of Russia…
The tale captivated her. So did the illustration of a Roemi warrior. She marveled at his fierce beauty. For all that he was standing in snow, he wore a loincloth and not much else. There were tattoos upon his bare chest that outlined his muscle.
The picture was beautifully detailed. She could see the stippled patterns on the soft boots laced with hide that covered his calves. His mighty thighs were bare, bulging with more muscle that looked real enough to touch. The warrior was about to throw a spear, his brawny upper body half-twisted, his throwing arm drawn back. His hair was long and dark, with thin braids at the temple.
Vivienne admired him, noting with an inward smile how much he resembled Kyril, who was also tall and dark and beautiful in a very masculine way. His movements had the same quality of utmost readiness as this imaginary warrior, eternally poised to strike down an unseen enemy.
She read more of the fanciful tale, then turned back to the picture, touching the Roemi man with a fingertip. He felt…warm. How very odd. She touched the middle of his chest and—dear God—felt a faint but unmistakable heartbeat. Vivienne flung the book away from her.
It fell facedown on the floor and lay there. She put a hand over her own heart, willing it to stop racing, and breathed deeply.
She sat upon the chaise and extended her foot toward the book, pushing it away from her with a stockinged toe. Nothing happened. She heard no sound, however faint. But she was not going to pick it up again.
Not until morning. The sun would most likely shine strongly tomorrow after such a heavy rain, with matter-of-fact cheerfulness that would erase her weariness and her strange thoughts. Her restless hours of sleep had been worse than none at all. Exhaustion was causing her to imagine things.
Vivienne stood, stepping carefully around the book, and went to the mirror on the study wall. Her hair was half up and half down, badly tangled where her head had pressed against the pillow. She lifted the lid of a small box that contained a hairbrush and ivory hairpins, and set to work.
When her dark chestnut hair was once again arranged and pinned up to her satisfaction, Vivienne smoothed her rumpled dress. If a servant should come in, hard at work before dawn to clean the grates and lay new fires, she would not look too disheveled.
Of course, she was not supposed to care what servants thought, but the role of mistress of a household was still new to her. The Cheyne Row house was hers, certainly. Horace had deeded it to Vivienne at the conclusion of their love affair.
She had furnished it to her own taste with the large sum of money he had given her as well. Owning things that were new and entirely hers was a very great pleasure. That was why no man had yet slept in her rose-curtained bed—knowing that Kyril was likely to be the first made her smile at her reflection.
It had been worth enduring the duke’s awkward caresses now and again. He had become her lover because she was beautiful and remarked upon by everyone—a female worth having simply because everyone wanted her. Easily distracted, he had moved on eventually to someone else, an event that had troubled her not at all.
His regretful letter of farewell had explained everything. She remembered it but hadn’t bothered to keep it.
I shall remain, my dear Vivienne, ever your champion and obedient servant, and wish you happiness in each and every day of your life without me. Do understand that it is I who am unworthy, and not you. But I have met…
A brassy-haired actress who had all of London at her rather large feet. Vivienne had seen her, but only from a distance.
She did not miss the duke as a lover, if that word could be used to describe him. But she was very grateful to him. She straightened up tall as she looked at herself in the mirror. Being bought off was not the worst thing that could happen to an intelligent and independent woman. The philandering duke had provided handsomely for her.
Vivienne went to the shelves and began to set her other books to rights, tucking in the ones that went on and off the shelves, novels and the like. Their worn covers showed her affection for them. She blew the dust off more worthy volumes, leatherbound and ponderous, that she had yet to crack. She felt calmer now. What she had seen was only an illusion.
Seen, heard, smelled, said a little voice in her mind.
She ignored it. Her fatigue—and frustration had left all her senses overly stimulated. In any case, the volumes of folktales was a thoughtful gift and could not be left on the floor. She pushed over the leaning books on one shelf, and slanted one to hold a space open. Then she went to where the book still lay facedown, picking it up.
How silly she was to imagine herself bewitched by it. Forcing her actions to seem casual even though there was no one there to judge her, she slid a finger between its pages, hearing a familiar crinkle of transparent paper. Another illustration. She flinched when she opened the book to look at it.
It showed a Roemi warrior, fallen in battle, his broken body lying alone upon the killing field. His wounded face was still beautiful, even in death.
She dared not touch the page. The hand-colored blood seemed so fresh as to be real. As respectfully as one might shroud the dead, she covered the valiant hero with the transparent paper again, half-expecting to see the scarlet pigment seep through.
It did not. The blood—the paint, she told herself fiercely—was quite dry.
Very slowly she looked through the pages and found the first Roemi warrior she’d seen.
He had thrown his spear.
Vivienne gave a soft cry. If this was a trick, it was a very good one. Kyril must have expected that she would say something about it to him, but she simply accepted his gift at the time, feeling awkward for weeks afterward because she had not yet read it. Not even skimmed it so that she could pretend she had.
Was Kyril only a conjuror and a charlatan, and not a rich Russian gentleman, after all?
His air of mysteriousness had been noted and commented upon nearly as often as his sexual