SAMPLE THE STORY BY READING CHAPTER ONE

Book I

The Love of Sergei Soltykov

One

1.

It was her wedding night. 

The sixteen-year-old girl shivered in her nudity even though the August night was warm. Her eyes moved from the painted walls of the huge bedchamber of the Summer Palace to the dark oaken door that remained shut against the coming of her bridegroom. Peter was somewhere out there. He could not have forgotten that he had been married this afternoon! 

She wanted to cry, and felt her eyes flood and her chin quiver. This past year in Imperial Russia had been so hard! Ever since she had left her beloved Stettin, life had been a nightmare for Sophia Augusta Frederika, princess of Anhalt-Zerbst. All she had done was study, study, study! The Russian language, the history of Russia, and the manners of the Russians (with their habits, and their whimsies that were translated into customs). She had even embraced their Orthodox religion as was required. 

Of course, she was a Grand Duchess now, and heir with Peter to the throne occupied by the Empress Elizabeth, his aunt. It was for this she had been selected (out of all the other princesses in the world) and brought to Saint Petersburg. The Grand Duke Peter Feodorovich would be emperor of all the Russias when his aunt died, and his wife—the little German girl, Sophia Augusta Frederika, (who had been re-named Catherine Alexeyvna according to the rites of the Orthodox Church)—would be his empress. It was a dazzling prospect for a girl who had been the princess of a down-at-the-heels corner of Prussia until this afternoon. 

Yet Catherine was not happy about her future. 

She was concerned only about the present, and her bridegroom. Out of the corners of her eyes she caught a glimpse of her reflection in the standing mirror between two tall floor candles. 

She turned fully to stare at herself. 

A little of the loneliness and misery went away at the sight of her own beauty. For she was beautiful, even at this early age. Her skin was as white and as rich as new cream. Her hair, a true gold, fell to her gently sloping shoulders in a flood of yellow. Her breasts were neither large nor small, yet they were fully fleshed and plump, and leaped a little when she moved. Her hips were gently curved and her belly made a mound of warm snow. Thighs that were slightly heavy firmed into dimpled knees and shapely calves. 

As she stared, her hands lifted to touch her breasts. She found them terribly sensitive, and the nipples stood up in almost aching delight. Peter, you fool! Where are you? I could be so good to you! I have listened to the kitchen-maids whispering. I have over heard the Court ladies telling tales and anecdotes behind their fans. I know what to do, even if you do not. I will— 

The door opened behind her. Catherine whirled. 

It was not Peter but a young guardsman. He went red when he saw her standing naked in the candlelight but he was too well-trained to retreat. He would look at her and pretend she did not exist even while he feasted his gaze on her flesh. 

“Your highness, the Grand Duke bids me inform you that he is presently occupied and will not come to bed for several hours." 

Catherine reached for a robe but dropped her hand. It was so pleasant to see the admiration in the face of this tall young soldier! It made her skin crawl with delight and lifted her already tingling nipples to rigidity. She turned to the mirror, fluffing up her hair, and seeing in the glass that his eyes had dropped to her dimpled buttocks. 

“Does the Grand Duke wish me to wait up for him?" 

“He did not say, your highness." 

"Fetch me my robe—this red one here. I will go myself to see him.” Her tone was imperious. She had been used all her young life to command and to be obeyed; in Anhalt-Zerbst and now in Russia. Still naked, knowing the candlelight flickered in a radiant shower over her flesh, she stood proudly while the young guardsman advanced and lifted the red robe, holding it up for her. 

She turned her back; he stepped forward.

"Closer,” she breathed. 

Her eyelids felt suddenly heavy as she felt him against her, touching gently. Ah, Peter might not think her exciting, but he and his aunt, the Empress, had healthy young soldiers who found her quite en chanting. Catherine smiled and let her hips slide back and forth as she tied the ribbons of the silken peignoir. 

"You will accompany me to the Grand Duke," she told him, lifting her long lashes to smile up into his flushed face. "I would never dare walk the palace corridors without protection in the dead of night.” 

She did not say what it was she feared in the palace. It was enough for Catherine to have a man beside her as it was enough for the young guardsman to stride a foot behind his future empress. He had found her perfume as heady as her nudity, and was in an agony of mingled fright and happiness. 

They walked from the bedchamber and along corridors dimly lit by torches thrust into golden sconces, showing brightly painted scenes from the past. When she had first come to St. Petersburg, Catherine had scanned these scenes with childish eagerness, anxious to absorb as much Russian culture as she could. Now she ignored the pictured forms of Ivan the Terrible and Prince Igor, the wooden walls of the first Moscow enameled with snow, the great steppes where painted Cossacks rode eternally on their shaggy ponies. She was wrapped in a much more intimate eagerness. 

She would find Peter. She would tempt him to come to bed with her, if she must. The mere touch of the tall young giant at her back had been enough to rouse the latent fires of her womanhood. 

She had forgotten her pride. It did not strike her as odd that she should be stalking her bridegroom in a welter of sensual hunger; that Peter should be seeking her out for the delight of the nuptial couch. She wanted her husband, and she was honest enough to go hunting for him. 

On the wide palace staircase she came to a stop. It occurred to her that she was walking aimlessly. She turned and looked up at the soldier. 

“Where is the tsarevich?”

"In his game room, your highness." 

Oh! Catherine knew well enough that the Grand Duke Peter was simple. If she should find him in the game room now, playing with his soldiers when he should have been in her arms, she would die of embarrassment. She had no desire to face his aunt, the lovely Elizabeth, and confess that their marriage night had been a fiasco. 

Lips tightening, she walked down the stairs and turned to the right. Her slippers made steady tappings on the painted floor. Just ahead now was the partially opened door of the room where Peter kept his miniature armies. 

She put her hand to the door and pushed. 

Peter was crouched over a six inch replica of himself in full uniform. Some feet away from him was a kitchen-maid, a strapping wench from Pskov, pretty and firmly fleshed. She clutched a toy Cossack in her right hand, waiting for the Grand Duke's command. 

As the hinges creaked, Peter swung about, face dark and furious. He was a tall, thin youth with a long face blotched from smallpox, easily given to rages and wild weepings. He had laid aside his powdered wig so that his dark hair was bound in a club at the nape of his neck. 

"How dare you intrude?” he screamed. "I am in the midst of a revolt by the Dnieper Cossacks, you little fool! Can't you understand the seriousness of the situation?” 

The kitchen maid was more of a realist than her overlord. She squatted on her bare heels and whimpered. Catherine was so dumbstruck that she did not hear the girl; her whole attention was on her new husband. 

"Peter, we were married today. I was waiting ..." 

His laughter was harsh, discordant. “German sow! Is that all you can think of—making love? Oh, I know. You and my aunt are as one in your thinking. You want me to give you a fine, strong son. Another heir to the throne. Well, I won't. I'm crushing this revolt and I intend to continue. Martha!” 

The maidservant stared at Catherine with bulging eyes. Slowly she swung them toward the tsarevich. “Yes, my lord?” 

"Tell the Grand Duchess who you are!” 

"I am Yuri, the hetman of the Dnieper Cossacks, your highness. I have rebelled against the kind rule of the great Tsar, Peter Feodorovich.” 

Catherine stared at her until the girl lowered her eyes. It was not her fault, poor drab. The voice of her husband interrupted her thoughts. 

"I am punishing him for his temerity, Catherine. Surely you can understand that? Everybody says you're so smart, learning to speak our language and knowing all about our customs inside the year you've been here. You know that a ruler must exact obedience from his subjects?” 

She looked at her half hysterical young husband. If only he were more like his grandfather Peter, called the Great! He got his height from him, why could he not also have inherited his fine mind? Even at her sixteen years, she knew that the fates had cheated her by wedding her to this strange child-man. 

Soothingly she said, "I do understand, Peter. I realize how wrong I was to interrupt the policies of State." She smiled at him saying, “You must forgive me. I am not used to my—royal duties as yet.” 

Instantly he was mollified and began to explain his strategy. "I have caught Yuri far from his supply base. My armies have him almost surrounded. He has only one recourse open. He must retreat across the river. But look beyond the river. Do you see my cavalry under Field Marshal Apraxin? It is hidden in the woods. It will sweep down out of concealment once Yuri is committed to cross the water." 

The room was a long one, and quite forty feet wide. It afforded the Grand Duke plenty of room to march his soldiers—fashioned of wood and lead and silver—back and forth across the plains and forests, even rivers, which cunning craftsmen had built for him here in the game room. Catherine had marveled in the past at the toy soldiers which Peter possessed. They were gifts from as far away as England where George II ruled, from France which had Louis XV as its king, from the Turkish Sultan Mahmud I in Constantinople, and from any number of lesser princes, counts and barons. 

Peter spent hours each day here. He delighted in making up battles, in pretending he was Dmitri Donskoi overthrowing the Mongols at Kulikovo, or Ivan the Terrible before the walls of rebellious Novgorod. At times he became his own grandfather, Peter the Great, defeating the Swedes at the battle of Poltava. Catherine wished wryly that his imagination extended from the game room into the bedroom. 

She shivered in the thin red silk dressing gown. Originally she had planned to open it for Peter, to let him look at her naked body, but the presence of the kitchen drab prevented such a display. 

"All right, Peter. I'll leave you to your battle and go back to bed. When you come, I'll be waiting." 

"Don't stay awake for me," he growled, squatting down and lifting the six-inch figure of himself in uniform. "I'll be here a long time. Martha makes a good Yuri. She's afraid to make a move and I don't blame her. She knows she's in a trap.” He giggled at his own brilliant maneuvers. 

With that giggle in her ears, the young Grand Duchess turned and moved out into the corridor where the guardsman stood rigid. As she went past him, he fell into step behind her. Catherine told herself she would be justified in taking this giant of a man into the nuptial bed. Peter could not complain, certainly; but she was afraid of his aunt, the Empress Elizabeth. She simply did not dare, though she was well aware that the empress herself had lovers, and that the Russian Court was a hotbox of scandal and intrigues and open affairs. 

Frowning and biting her lip, she entered her bed chamber, glancing at the huge four-poster with its down-turned coverlets. The ducal bed should be Peter's battleground this night, not the game room, and his playmate should be his wife, not the maid. 

Not caring whether the young guard was watching or not, she let the silken robe slip to the floor. Naked, she walked toward the painted chest where she had laid out her nightgown of French silk embroidered with blue forget-me-nots. It was a transparent thing through which one could see the tints of her body. As she reached for it, bent forward, she glanced back over a shoulder. 

The guardsman was standing in the doorway, staring. His eyes seemed to blaze with fire as he studied her plump white buttocks. She posed for those wild eyes, laughing softly. Let the youth stare his fill. Peter did not care! Then she was standing, and slipping the thin gown over her head and down past her breasts and hips, veiling herself from his gaze. 

"What is your name?" she wondered.

"Sergei Soltykov, Highness."

“You see in me a neglected bride, Sergei.”

“The Grand Duke is—” 

She smiled, moving toward him, and knowing that the candles behind her were turning her French silk nightgown to thin mist. His eyes told her that she might as well be naked. 

“Yes, Sergei? What would you say to me?"

"I dare not say what I would, Highness.” 

She was very close now. He seemed like a giant to young Catherine. She put her hand on his arm. "Make a muscle. Let me feel how strong you are. Oh, my gracious! I'll bet you'd crush your bride in your arms if you were married.” She stepped a little closer until her soft middle was against him. “What else would you do to your bride, Sergei?” 

"Highness," he choked. “I beg you not to—to tease me." 

"I only tease myself,” she answered candidly. 

His control was close to breaking, she saw. A fine film of sweat covered his forehead. It would take very little to turn him into an animal. And something inside Catherine needed an animal very much at this moment of her bridal night. Her hand fell from his arm to his hip.

Yes, he was very muscular. His side was solid with strength, as was his lean middle. Ah, and below that... 

He gave a soft cry. His arms lifted and locked about her, raising her feet from the floor, crushing her silk-clad nakedness to him. His mouth was a flame at her lips. She trembled and felt his hands move up her slender legs until they reached and cupped her tight buttocks. “I am a virgin,” she breathed heatedly. 

“I know," he groaned. “I know.”

“Only the Grand Duke can deflower me.”

“Yes, I know." 

He held her so tightly she could hardly breathe but it was a pleasant discomfort. She knew that he was suffering and wanted desperately to relieve his anguish. She writhed against him and placed her lips close to his ear. “When I was younger, I had a French governess named Madeleine. She tutored me in many things.” She giggled, muffling the sound against his uniform collar. “She was a wonderful teacher ... and I was a most precocious student." 

“What are you saying?” he murmured. 

“That there are ways by which I could retain my virginity and yet ... know something of the delights of being married. Do you now understand, Sergei Soltykov?" 

He swept her up in his arms and carried her to the bed. She lay back, smiling, her childish legs dangling over the edge. A thrill coursed through her as she felt him raise her nightgown high to expose her nakedness. She heard his throaty murmur of admiration and she felt compelled to embellish the sensation of being looked upon by altering her position wantonly. 

"Do I please you?" she asked, moving her young body. 

“Yes ..."he whispered, touching her. 

It struck her, as she stared up at the canopy, that this was a gesture of revolt against the unnatural position into which Peter had pushed her. For a long time she had known that hers was an independent spirit. At once she was the pride of her father and the des pair of her mother, the Princess Joanna, because of that stubborn independence. It was not ladylike to stand up so firmly for one's rights. She would do better to lie crushed by humiliation and weeping with frustration in her marriage bed than recline this way with a young guardsman kneeling before her. 

Catherine Alexeyovna cried out softly, writhing. Her fists were clenched at her side, very tightly. Again and again she beat on the coverlets with them, moaning and sobbing softly. Only vaguely was she aware of her name and the fact that she was Grand Duchess of all the Russias, that she was the bride of the future Tsar Peter. 

She would not be a nobody at this Russian court! She would not bend like a slave to the whims of her half-mad husband! If he played at soldiers, she would play at love. Oh, but cleverly. So cleverly! Even the empress would not know what she had done on her wedding night. She would stay a virgin for all the world to marvel at, yes. But the Grand Duchess was no ninny-hammer to faint away because her husband ignored her. She would strike a blow for her own life, to mold it as she herself wanted it to be molded, not as others decided it should be. Go on, Sergei! Adore your future Empress. Pay her the homage that should be her right. 

In a little while she would caress him, too.

But not yet, not yet. 

This mad delight must go on and on, until she could bear it no longer, until she forgot everything about herself but that she was a woman. She screamed softly, shuddering, then bit down on a fist to stifle her outcries. Her last conscious thought was of her husband. Had he defeated Yuri the Cossack? Or was Martha still afraid to move her soldiers? Poor Peter. He was such a child. 

Much later, when the candles were guttering in their golden holders, Sergei Soltykov crept from the bedchamber. Behind him, the Grand Duchess lay on her back, the coverlets up to her chin. She was smiling faintly in remembered pleasure. 

When Peter came to join her, she was still awake.

“Did you punish Yuri?” she wondered. 

“After I destroyed his army and captured him," he nodded, removing his garments. “I punished him for rebellion in a proper manner. I tied him to a spit and roasted him slowly over a fire.” 

He slipped between the covers to lie beside her. "Insubordination must always be punished, Catherine. A tsar must not tolerate disobedience.” 

“No, Peter. Of course not." 

His head turned on the pillow so that he could look at her serene features. “You understand also that I will not be as other husbands are? I married you because my mother insisted that I marry and you are pretty. Other than that we shall be only friends." 

"Yes, Peter." 

In the face of her meekness, he became more animated, rising onto an elbow. "I have nothing against you. I like you very much, as a matter of fact. It's just that there are more important things in life than—than making love. You are my wife. You will be Empress beside me, when I am Tsar. If we understand each other at the outset, it will be better for everyone, all around.” 

“Go to sleep, Peter. You must be at your best in case there are more revolts tomorrow or in the days to come.” 

“Yes, Catherine. You are right. Goodnight.” 

She did not answer him. She was remembering what Sergei Soltykov had done to her and what she in turn had done with the young guardsman. It was a most unusual wedding night, and though she would have liked to go over it in her mind, step by step, her eyelids were so heavy she must close them. 

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