"A great pity she didn't take more care."
Laura sighed. "Yes, but it was the way Tatyana would have chosen to go. She was still beautiful, still able to bewitch every man who looked at her. She would have hated being defeated by age. For her, riding carefully would have seemed like a small-spirited surrender to the inevitable."
"Like my sister, your mother sounds a bit overpowering."
"You would have adored her," Laura said with conviction. "Everyone did, even women who disapproved of her. Apart from the fact that my mother was not melancholic, my parents were very much alike—beautiful and headstrong and passionate. They had wild fights and equally wild reconciliations.
"Once, to apologize for some failing, my father filled the drawing room and bedroom with flowers, even though it was winter and must have cost a fortune. Another time my mother lost her temper and threw every cosmetic and bottle of perfume she owned at him. He just laughed and dodged the missiles. Said she had a terrible aim and that the bedroom was going to smell like a whorehouse.
"I was lurking in a corner and made the mistake of asking what a whorehouse was. Tatyana rang for my nurse to take me away, so I didn't learn what my father meant until years later." Laura's mouth hardened as she remembered the scarlet rouge splashed across the wall, for the memory immediately triggered one that was infinitely uglier.
Ian lightly touched her hand. "Such parents make for colorful stories, but it must have been a somewhat alarming existence for a child."
"It was." Laura gave a wry smile. "It's hard to believe that two peacocks like my parents produced a wren like me."
"You're not a wren," Ian said affectionately. "More like a swan who has the wrongheaded notion that she's a goose."
His tone warmed Laura right down to her toes. "More like an owl than either. In fact, Kenneth called me his little owl sometimes. It's strange, but temperamentally I'm far more his child than that of my natural parents."
"Your first father sounds very different from your second."
Laura grinned. "That's because my mother had me choose her second husband."
Ian's brows lifted. "Really?"
Laura built up her pillows so that she could lounge against them as Ian was doing. "After Tatyana consulted me about my preference, she accepted Kenneth, who was my choice." She glanced at her husband and saw that the loose robe he wore had fallen open over his chest. She had a powerful desire to touch him, to brush her fingers across the dark auburn hair, to pull aside the robe so she could explore further...
Hastily she turned her gaze away. "After... when my first father was gone, my mother decided that she needed to get away from St. Petersburg, so she took me to a spa in Switzerland. I think she decided that it was the best way to find a new husband. Not only was she short of money, but she was the sort of woman who had to have a man in her life."
"From your tone, you don't quite approve of the haste with which she remarried," Ian said shrewdly. "Yet for most women, marriage is the preferred choice. Few have the courage to voluntarily face the world alone, as you were willing to do."
His comment made Laura wonder if some of her own stubborn determination to stay a spinster had been a result of distaste for the speed with which Tatyana had sought another husband. She filed the thought for later consideration. "There was no danger of her being alone for long. Men always surrounded her like bees around a jam pot and the Swiss spa was no exception. Some only wanted affairs and those she dismissed immediately. But it didn't take her long to acquire several serious suitors."
"How did Kenneth Stephenson manage to enter the race? He doesn't seem to have been the sort to spend his time lolling about a fashionable spa."
"It was pure chance," Laura replied. "He was returning to England to teach at the Company training college at Haileybury, The friend he was traveling with had health problems in India and wanted to visit the spa, so they did. Kenneth told me once that as soon as he saw Tatyana, he knew that he wanted to marry her. He was a dozen years older than she and not at all dashing, but he was very determined once he made up his mind."
"When did you mother solicit your opinion?"
"One day over ices she calmly asked if there were any of her suitors I would prefer for a father," Laura smiled reminiscently. "One was an enormously rich Italian count, another an equally wealthy Swiss banker. There was a French silk merchant and a Prussian general. Looking back, I realize that Kenneth had the least money of the whole crew."
She chuckled. "I did rather well out of the competition, because several of the suitors were clever enough to try to buy my favor. The Italian count gave me an exquisite doll, then suggested I play elsewhere with it. The banker always brought the most incredible sweets, the Frenchman supplied me with ribbons, the general arranged for me to ride a pony, and so forth.