Golden Paradise Read Online Free

happens to be my current area of study. And if you shouldn't mind, I'd very much like to see the copies you have."
    No delicate wallflower here, he thought, not quite sure if he was offended or not at her forwardness. Both breeding and rank had made the Prince firmly a product of his age, an age that viewed women as pretty, gay, delightful amusements but looked askance at women who dared to be assertive.
    "The fact is," she continued amiably as though she openly discussed Persian erotica with any stranger she met, "I'm Count Lazaroff's daughter, Lisaveta Felixovna." She pronounced her father's name with obvious pride, conscious it would be instantly recognized. And of course it was. The recluse count had been, before his untimely death three years ago, the premier Russian scholar of Persian manuscripts.
    There, Stefan thought. An explanation for the plain dowdy woman and her unorthodox studies. It helped ease his sense of uncomfortable rapport. Women fell into distinct categories for him: female relatives he treated with kindness and friendship; beautiful women he treated as potential lovers with flirtatious charm; the rest generally received only polite civility on the rare occasions he noticed them. As for female scholars, he'd never met one.
    "So you're following in your father's footsteps. Commendable, I'm sure," he said politely. "And you're welcome, of course, to make use of my library," he added in deference to good manners. "I still don't completely understand, though," he went on, inexplicably intrigued by the sheer bravado of this strange woman, "why you left the safety of Karakilisa to venture into the midst of the war?"
    "I simply had to leave," she answered in that same clear, affirmative tone he now decided was what displeased him. It made her sound like a man. "Although my host graciously overlooked my nationality when I was detained by the hostilities, and I continued to work, his nephew Faizi Pasha, a colonel in the Turkish army, visited unexpectedly one day. On meeting me, he decided to add me to his harem. Naturally, I was opposed to the idea." Her voice was filled with cool disdain, as if she were saying, "I had to refuse my dancing master's proposal of marriage."
    Stefan wondered what in the world the Pasha had seen in her that appealed to him, although the Turks did appreciate what he considered excess female flesh. "I understand your problem," he courteously replied, thinking soon he would be free of this decisive managing woman who grated on his nerves.
    "So there was nothing else to do. I had to leave."
    Again. That authoritarian certainty.
    "And the combined forces of the Russian and Turkish armies be damned," Stefan found himself saying with only a mildly disguised sarcasm.
    Lisaveta looked at him briefly, her gold eyes reflective. "I didn't care to consider a future locked in a cage," she said quietly, "no matter how gilded the bars."
    Stefan immediately regretted his lapse in manners. "Forgive me." She had sounded very human for a moment and he reminded himself she had come through great danger. "And you escaped one peril only to face others."
    "None so dangerous in my mind as Faizi Pasha's advances. There's a certain finality about harems… like a prison door shutting for life." Her voice held a winsome quality, and had he known her background of independent living, he would have realized how important freedom was to her. "And my host, Javad Khan, saw that I was well escorted with a dozen Afshar guides. When they left me with the caravan so near Aleksandropol—at my insistence, I might add—I assumed the rest of the journey would be uneventful."
    The sheer naïveté in the word uneventful renewed Stefan's exasperation. With difficulty he refrained from remarking that only a stupid female would term crossing through the battleground of two armies "uneventful," even with a hundred guides.
    "And if I hadn't given my horse to an enceinte woman, I probably could have escaped and arrived in