Seized by Love Read Online Free PDF Page B

superb sportsman was nonpareil, Prince Mikhail didn’t wish tocontemplate 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 hazardwas 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.”
    The young Prince was never the same either. What shreds of romantic illusion and idealism and naïve belief in happiness he had managed to retain in the brittle society in which he lived were swept away that night and eventually obliterated during the next two years he spent in Europe.
    Prince Mikhail had not taken any chances of losing his only child to some dueling pistol held in the hands of an irate husband. He had kidnapped Nikki to save him. And after his confrontation with Soronina, Nikki was unhappy, disillusioned, and consequently could be persuaded to sojourn away from Petersburg.
    “You will forget her, my son,” his father had said, and he was partially right. Once in Europe, nothing was too rash to attempt. Morality, never of great concern, was gonefrom his mind. Unfettered feverish activity prevailed, and before long the pursuit