"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 Aleksandropol completely unharmed," Lisaveta added with the self-assurance Stefan found so annoying.

"Good marksmanship," the Prince said evenly, his irritation evident in the hard line of his jaw, "is a given with the native tribes. And the Winchester.44 round will outrun a horse, guaranteed. Your horse might have saved you and it might not have."