She lay for a few moments more without speaking, feeling utterly safe, feeling as if she were waking from a sleep, her gaze fixed on the man who held her. The officer's face, framed by the brilliant light, was streaked with sweat, and his dark eyes of a distinctive Tartar cast were narrowed against the hot glitter of the sun. He had a surprisingly young face, she thought, for the general's rank on his shoulder, a classic aquiline face with an etched handsomeness enhanced somehow by the dark stubble of beard shading his jaw. He had a compelling masculine severity of face and form, a mythological pagan quality of animal strength and grace despite the dirt and sweat. He also looked surprisingly familiar.

And then she found herself staring into midnight-black eyes, saved from absolute opacity only by curious golden flecks near the pupils.

His gaze was both benign and dismissive, but his deep voice when he spoke was courteous. "How do you feel?" he asked in the local dialect.

Her lashes lifted completely so the tawny gold of her eyes was visible to Stefan for the first time. His reaction was immediate, instinctive: Kuzan eyes. His friend Nikki Kuzan had eyes like that, slightly oriental, tilted marginally like hers and of the same unusual shade. And then he remembered she was a native girl three thousand miles from Saint Petersburg. She could hardly be related to a Russian prince simply through a coincidence of eye color.

"I feel marvelously alive, thanks to you," she answered in French.

"Ah," he murmured in surprise. "You speak French." French was the language of the Russian aristocracy, but she hardly qualified. Was she a teacher of some kind?

"And several other languages as well, all of which I'm appreciative in," she informed him in a voice unshaken and calm. "The caravan I was traveling with was attacked and I was abducted," she continued in a firm declarative way. "If you hadn't come to my rescue, there's no doubt I would have been those bandits' victim. I'm deeply in your debt and will surely reward you at my first opportunity."