There was not a tree in sight, not a blade of grass, just a relentlessly barren plateau too close to the sun and too high for rain.

Prince Stefan Bariatinsky was hot. He was beyond hot. He was bone weary, sweating hot, exhausted hot.

And he'd been swearing under his breath for the last half mile.

"Are you going to make it?" Haci, his lieutenant, asked.

"Hell, no. I want a big funeral." Stefan smiled, mitigating the harsh severity of his face, which was swarthy by birth and further bronzed by years of soldiering for the Tsar. Although he had his tunic unbuttoned so that it hung open, his heavily muscled chest was sleek with sweat beneath the silver-trimmed uniform, and his leather riding breeches felt slippery against his skin. "With Gypsy girls to dance over my bier," he added with a facetious lift of his black brows.

Not that Stefan had ever restricted himself to Gypsy girls. He was in fact, next to the Tsar, the most feted man in the Empire, adored by a great variety of women, and not just for his rank and wealth.

He was the most fearless officer in the Empire.

And handsome as sin.

Too handsome, men said, watching their wives' eyes dwell on him.

Too handsome, jealous young ladies said, watching him flirt with a rival.

Too handsome, like his father, older wags remarked, remembering the scandalous ways of the elder Prince.

But impetuously charming, they all agreed.

"It's not much farther," Haci pointed out, for forty of the fifty miles from Kars to Aleksandropol were now behind them. "And in a few days you'll be at the lodge, with Choura dancing on your-well-wherever," he finished with a grin.

Stefan's Gypsy lover was waiting for him at his mountain retreat and she was capable of taking one's mind off any mundane problems. "That thought," Stefan returned, his mouth quirked in a smile, "might just keep me alive until Aleksandropol."