Authors: Susan Johnson
“Excluding those ‘slight’ problems”—Nikki’s eyebrows emphasized the euphemism—“my father would horsewhip me or have one of his apoplexies if he caught wind of such an escapade. Forseus’s land marches with ours along the entire river, and Father insists on friendly relations with the locals, so he’s forever lecturing me that one must govern with mildness and justice. He’s absolutely adamant about not misusing one’s power and influence in autocratic actions. Why do you think I always import my females? It’s safer than wenching all around the countryside and leaving by-blows so close to home. Father says the winds of change
are bringing a new era, in which noble, bourgeois, and peasant will dwell together in a vast social mutation of some kind. You know he is perpetually concerned with the productivity of his estates, the conditions of his peasants, maintaining the dignity of the workingclass, and establishing a rapport with the hoi polloi. God, the whole idea is unmentionable!
“Besides, have you ever met Forseus? He’s not entirely rational, I suspect; his eyes burn with a fever that’s unnatural. I shall, with your gracious consent, beg off this particular female if you don’t mind, Illyich.”
“Nikki, I don’t mind one whit.
Au contraire
, an easy profit, I say. That’s fifty thousand sweet roubles, and I frankly admit, I don’t mind taking it from you, Nikki dear, since you can so readily afford it.”
“Damn!” Nikki exploded sullenly. “I didn’t renege on the wager. I just think you should choose another woman.”
“Sorry, Nikki, you said it was my choice, and there is my choice,” Illyich said, and pointed theatrically toward the small figure on the opposite bank, completely oblivious of the attention she was attracting, unaware that her virtue was a subject of interest and debate among complete strangers.
When Nikki recognized that argument was pointless, with his characteristic charm he graciously conceded Illyich’s point.
“Daresay, I might as well be off to commence the chase. There’s no time like the present, et cetera, et cetera.” He smiled, already half amused and anticipating the flirtation. For Nikki, obstacles existed only to be swept aside. He brushed away impediments that would bring lesser men to their knees and more sensible and prudent men to a cautious standstill.
“Nikki, reconsider,” his young cousin Aleksei interjected uneasily, “it’s not right. Your father, depend on it, would
find it totally unacceptable. Suppose he does catch wind of it.”
“With any luck, Father won’t find out,” Nikki responded calmly to his cousin’s objections. “The lady scarcely would be inclined to bandy the news about, and we all are capable of holding our tongues.”
Once Nikki’s mind was made up, he could be unusually obstinate to change and, after all, he did have fifty thousand roubles riding on the outcome. Even though he didn’t personally need the money, it would indulge his pet project of embellishing his cavalry troop. The magnificence of his troop outshone all others, and outfitting the men and horses in such extravagant adornments gave him a great deal of pride, but the personal expense was astronomical. He contemplated the new tack that could be purchased with the fifty thousand roubles. Some dark blue leather bridles ornamented with silver had caught his eye just a week or so ago at Neimeyers. Besides, after a few moments Nikki had convinced himself that the confrontation wasn’t so insuperable as first imagined. His growing excitement over the unique and piquant diversion was enough to allay any slight misgivings he might still harbor.
Once a decision was made, Nikki faced all prospects undaunted. He looked on the world as available for his pleasure alone, and therefore his inclinations, however extraordinary, must be satisfied.
Nikki stood gazing across the small river with a cold, calculating look. Half musing, half aloud, he quietly murmured, “Now, this calls for a nice judgment, this art of seduction. You must be plain but not too plain, be adept at murmuring fulsomely expressed endearments with a delicate sincerity, and you must smile politely as you pretend to take what is, in fact, willingly given. It goes without saying that one cannot be overhampered by scruples.”
“That may all be very fine in the society in which you
move, Nikki,” Cernov retorted, “where everyone knows the rules of amorous jousting and seldom departs from the proscribed formula, but in the case of Forseus’s wife, I think you’ll be dealing with a female unfamiliar with those ‘niceties.’ ”
“I am credibly informed,” Illyich stated with cheerful maliciousness, “that she’s untainted by scandal.”
“So
far
, she’s been untainted by scandal,” Nikki remarked humorlessly, and with a careless gesture of farewell walked toward the river.
Thus these elegant, bored, restless young blades became involved in this peccadillo to breathe some freshness and vitality into their boredom. The nascent industrial energy of the age had doubled their already princely revenues without efforts of their own. They were, in the words of a contemporary chronicler, “dulled by luxury, enervated by ease, staled by amusement.”
As for the object of this chase, the pursued, the diversion to the restless young birds of paradise, Alisa, the young wife of the old merchant Forseus, was an innocent. She wasn’t an innocent to deliberate cruelty or coldness of a man (no one who had lived with Valdemar Forseus for six years was unacquainted with evil), but unschooled and innocent in receiving kindly overtures from a man playing the game of seduction. An education from books, however exceptional, lacks the necessary information that real-life experience teaches. In the gilded circles of Petersburg society, amatory dalliance and flirtation had attained the status and perfection of a fine art, and over the years Nikki had refined and polished his practical and aesthetic skill to a virtuoso proficiency.
So here we have the age-old confrontation.
The unsophisticated and untutored young girl encountering the master technician with an artist’s touch.
Nikki’s career in dalliance had, in fact, begun in earnest when he was barely seventeen, and that first episode had disastrously left its mark.
One afternoon, sixteen long years ago, while squiring
Maman
to one of her numerous visits in the manner of a dutiful son, he’d caught the practiced eye of one of his mother’s friends; in fact, had almost heard the audible click in Countess Plentikov’s beautiful head when she had, for the first time, seriously noticed that the moody, sulky, darkly romantic boy had turned into a man.
Even at seventeen and not grown to his full height, Nikki was formidable, inches over six feet, lean, with raw-boned, powerful shoulders tapering to a narrow waist and slim hips. The sulky coltishness, restless under the conflicting urges of his adolescence, had suddenly intrigued the Countess. With the eye of a confirmed connoisseur of male flesh, Soronina’s glance had appraised the splendid young body as if he were standing at stud.
Countess Soronina had known Nikki from the cradle, and at thirty-six she had two marriageable daughters of her own. She was, however, still an exquisitely beautiful woman, slim, petite, golden-haired; her figure was carefully maintained, the soft, pale complexion still perfect, although its beauty took increasing time to care for.
Like most patricians of their class, the Count and Countess Plentikov had many years before acquired the habit of being unfaithful to each other, but out of tacit agreement and courtesy had overlooked each other’s numerous infidelities. Count Plentikov spent more time in the country or on the Continent than he did in Petersburg, and this arrangement was mutually satisfying. Soronina’s
silver and white boudoir had been the scene of many tumultuous encounters as a succession of men had paid amorous homage to one of the reigning beauties of the day.
Nikki absently listened to the ridiculous flow of trivial remarks and pleasantries that fell from Soronina’s full red lips that first warm summer afternoon. He gave the obligatory answers in a desultory fashion, but he preferred to let his eyes play over her bounteous curves while visualizing that soft body under his.
Nikki at seventeen was by no means the consummate lover, but not altogether unskilled either, and Soronina was definitely offering him more than sherry and madeleines as they sat in one corner of the huge drawing room, conversing. His mother would occasionally glance toward them during the course of the visit, knowing full well what Soronina was up to, but resigning herself to the inevitable. For half a lifetime Soronina had been aware of the seductive power of her beauty and had never failed to exert its influence successfully. In this case Nikki was more than willing to be agreeable.
And so began a long summer of sweet delirium for them both. The sweetness overtoppled mind and sense; they had something unique, something to be cherished. She taught him much about women and love and she drew from him bittersweet memories of what raw, uncontrolled youthful passion could be. He was to her simultaneously both anguish and ecstasy, anguish for her youth forever beyond recall, and the ecstasy of blossoming under Nikki’s ardent naked desire. There was no permanent cure for the dreaded fears of approaching middle age that plagued Soronina, only temporary relief in the arms of the young Nikki, who made her forget for the moment the threat of the future without her beauty.
Nikki’s parents returned to Le Repose after a month, but he stayed behind. He had come into an inheritance from
his grandfather on his sixteenth birthday which allowed him to further indulge his propensity for independence. Nikki’s mother attempted to persuade her son to return with them. She felt he was being drawn in too deeply, after having seen Soronina’s overt, frankly loving gaze envelop her boy one evening at a ball. It was so unlike the frivolous, shallow Soronina and terrifying in its possible consequences. Much as Princess Kaisa-leena adored Soronina as a friend, one did not care to contemplate her as a daughter-in-law. Prince Mikhail kept his peace and forbore issuing any unwanted words of fatherly advice, hoping that his reckless son would tire of the affair in due course. If not, time enough then to intercede.
That summer the affair swiftly reached notoriety as Nikki, with blazing indiscretion, escorted Countess Plentikov everywhere. He arranged his life to please her because it pleased him also. When they went out he was at her side, masterful, proprietary.
However, on the rare occasion when he would decide to leave town for a few days, no amount of coaxing, either amorous or petulant, would change his mind. Regardless of their easy intimacy, Soronina lacked her usual control. Nikki simply went when he wanted to go. He never stayed long, and when he returned, she would look into those tawny, brooding eyes and a shiver of pleasure would run through her.
By the end of August Prince Mikhail stepped in. The gossip and rumors were becoming serious. Never one to pander to discretion, Nikki had practically installed himself in Count Plentikov’s town palace during that nobleman’s absence. Dangerous rumors were making the rounds of the clubs to the effect that the cuckolded husband was about to ask for satisfaction from the young pup warming his wife’s bed. Because Count Plentikov’s reputation as a superb sportsman was nonpareil, Prince Mikhail didn’t wish to
contemplate a duel between such unmatched parties. Nikki didn’t have the experience to survive an encounter regardless of his skill with rapier and pistol. His youth was quite dramatically a disadvantage on the dueling field in contrast to its obvious advantage in the bedchamber.
One morning Nikki was bodily removed from Countess Plentikov’s city palace by four of Prince Mikhail’s body servants as he strolled down the marble stairway toward the breakfast room to join Soronina. All that day Nikki raged and stormed and threatened his father as Prince Mikhail attempted to explain the seriousness of the dilemma. Unfortunately neither party was open to reason.
Late that night Nikki managed to elude his jailers and immediately returned to the Countess, who was distraught over the possible repercussions of this scandal. Having long adhered to the aristocratic principles of unlimited dalliance so long as no hint of it reared its ugly head, she was beside herself now with terrified misgivings. What had come over her this summer to so wildly throw away all restraint and discretion? Nikki’s impetuous temperament had overcome her sensible prudence. Dreadful forebodings of being cut from polite society plagued her.
Pacing her bedroom chamber, Nikki pleaded with Soronina to marry him, but she shuddered to think of a May-December marriage between a youth and a woman old enough to be his mother. She could not tolerate the ridicule. Then he begged her on his knees to go to the Continent with him. He had plenty of money, they would have a glorious life together, they would be happy. Again she shuddered—to be a kept woman was beyond her comprehension. Nikki insisted he would then kill her husband in a duel. Again she was appalled at the raw, passionate nature of her young lover. Tears came to her eyes and spilled over onto their entwined hands.
Above all, their love must not be lost, he said. No hazard
was too great. He wildly promised her anything she wanted. He waited for her answer.
But it was impossible. All her life Soronina had unquestioningly accepted the dictates, the refined etiquette, and protocol of exclusive Petersburg society and would no more consider ostracizing herself from the comfortable confines of that world than she would consider becoming a circus performer. She tried to explain to Nikki that one must do what’s expected of one’s class, understand the necessity for society’s conventions, serve as an example.
Even at that young age Nikki was sufficiently his father’s son to curl a well-bred lip. When he broke in contemptuously, standing erect, and spat coldly at her to spare him any more of those inconsequential platitudes, Soronina was grief-stricken and the young boy’s heart reached out and longed to give her comfort, but he couldn’t give her what she wanted: security—safe, comfortable, snug, luxurious security. She cried harder when the door burst open and Nikki’s father and servants once more dragged young Prince Kuzan away. She wept bitterly and whispered, “I’ll never be the same.”