Inside the study, seeing a fire crackling in the grate, Ivan shut off the lights. "I prefer firelight," he told her. She nodded. "A fire warms the spirit." She sat in the platform rocker that no one but Liisi ever used.

Ivan stood by the mantel.

"Sit down," Liisi said, not quite an order but more than a suggestion. "Where I can see you."

He didn't want to sit but he didn't care to oppose his mother so he chose one of the leather chairs opposite hers. "What went wrong between you and Arno?" she asked. Though he'd thought he was braced for the question, the words seemed to pierce his heart. Taking a deep breath, he said, "Arno eloped with the woman I loved." His mouth twisted. "They were kind enough to leave me a note. As if anything could explain such a betrayal."

Never mind that he'd seen the truth in Griselda's eyes even before Arno reached their table at the Ritz--Griselda would never have gone away with Arno if he hadn't bedazzled her, hadn't urged her to marry him. Arno, who could have any woman he desired, had taken away the one woman Ivan had ever loved.

"I suspected a woman was at the bottom of it," Liisi said. "Who is she?"

Haltingly, he told her about Griselda.

"Part gypsy, is she?" his mother said when he finished. "No wonder Arno couldn't help himself."

Ivan stared at her, shocked. How could she defend what his twin had done?

"Did she say she loved you?" Liisi asked. "Make you feel you were the most important man in the world?"

Ivan shook his head.

"Then how did she delude you?"

"She would've come to love me in time. She'd have married me."

"Sooner or later Griselda and Arno would have met. It's fortunate for all three of you that they met before you convinced her to marry you." Liisi leaned forward. "Don't you understand? Arno would never willingly hurt you any more than you'd hurt him. The truth is he and Griselda were destined for one another and he couldn't help himself. Neither could she. I know you're deeply wounded but don't bear a grudge against your twin, Ivan. That's like hating yourself."

He flung himself to his feet. "I never want to see either of them again!" Stalking to the door he yanked it open and left without looking back.

No one understands, he thought bitterly as he grabbed a bottle from the liquor cabinet without so much as glancing at the label. He stomped up the stairs to his room and slammed the door behind him.

Tomorrow morning I'll go into the hills, he told himself as he swallowed the fiery liquid--brandy, by the taste. I'll camp by myself. Just me and the trees. I've forgotten how a woods should look, should smell. A woods of living trees, not dead and broken ones.

But when he woke in the morning with one hell of a headache, he saw the grayness pressing against his window and groaned. Tule fog. He was trapped inside the house.

Late that night he came downstairs and, sitting on the piano bench, morosely picked out the tune to "Mademoiselle From Armentiers" with one finger, a glass of whiskey--not his first--in his other hand. Hearing a noise, Ivan looked up to find Samara standing in the archway in a white nightgown, her feet bare. He said nothing, hoping she'd go away. Instead, she marched into the music room and over to the piano where she stood beside the bench, glaring down at him.

"So you think you're an outcast." Her voice was sharp, antagonistic.

"You're feeling pretty damn sorry for yourself, aren't you?"

His eyes widened. What in hell was she up to?

"What've you got to be sorry about?" she demanded. "Did you watch your twin slaughtered before your very eyes?

Killed by a stalker? Were you raped by that same vile stalker? Did you bear his child, a child everyone fears? A child who's truly an outcast? Do you wake screaming at night from dreams of suffocation while some faceless monster pierces you with hideous pain?"

"No, Samara," he stammered, aghast at her attack but too befuddled by the whiskey to defend himself.

She reached down and took the glass from his hand. "Can you escape what's in your head with this? If so, maybe I should try it." She lifted the glass to her lips and downed its contents, staring at him defiantly when she finished. "That's right, look at me," she said. "Take a good look at this thirty-nine-year-old woman whose father was a beast and whose mother deserted her. A woman who's never been held lovingly by any man. What man would want me?"

"I--I find you attractive," he managed to say. And damned if she wasn't at the moment, her dark eyes blazing, her face flushed with emotion, her hair unbraided and cascading over her shoulders. The nightgown, though not revealing, hung from a yoke above full breasts that pressed against the white cloth.

The sudden realization that she quite probably wore nothing under the gown quickened his breath.

"You find me attractive? I don't believe you."

"But you are." Ivan rose from the bench and put his hands on her shoulders. She felt warm and solid under his fingers and she smelled of lavender. And woman.

She blinked up at him. "Do you mean it?" Her words slurred slightly.

Ivan let one hand slide to her waist. With the other he waved expansively. "Prettiest thirty-nine-year-old woman I ever saw." He knew he was feeling the whiskey but what the hell did it matter? Samara was pretty, by God.

Samara giggled.

"Ssh," he warned. "Wake everyone up." He urged her toward the stairs. "Brandy in my room. We'll have another drink."

She leaned against him. "I don't drink."

Maybe not but she'd finished off his whiskey like a trooper. He led her up the stairs, down the hall and into his room, excited by the feel of her softness pressing against his side.

She sat on his bed. "I've never been in your room--not when you were in it."

He eased down beside her and put an arm around her shoulders, drawing her closer. She didn't resist. A tiny voice in his mind warned him he was drunker than he realized but he paid no attention.

"I'm forty-three," he confided. "Never had a woman love me."

She stroked his cheek. "Poor Ivan."

"They all loved Arno."

"I don't."

He kissed her, finding her lips warm and willing, if inexperienced. When he touched her breast he knew he was right--she wore nothing under the gown. Desire flamed like a torch.

"What are you doing?" she asked when he shifted her so she lay on the bed. "Won't hurt you--want to hold you in love." "Love," she echoed as he stretched out beside her and gathered her into his arms.

Ivan woke to the second day of fog with another headache. He groaned, turned over and froze. Samara, her dark hair spread over a pillow, lay next to him, asleep. What in hell was she doing in his bed?

Fragments of the night before drifted within reach and he tried to put them together. Samara in her nightgown, haranguing him. The two of them climbing the stairs together, his arm around her. The soft weight of her bare breasts in his hands...

Though he couldn't remember the details, he must have made love to her. To his niece. Good God! He groaned again and she opened her eyes, blinked and then stared at him with mixed apprehension and interest.

Not knowing what to say, Ivan smiled weakly. Actually she was only his half-niece since he and her dead father had been half, not full, brothers. No more whiskey, he vowed. No more liquor of any kind.

Someone tapped at the door. Ivan tensed. "Who is it?" he asked. "It's Liisi," she called through the door. "I'm worried. Samara seems to have disappeared. Her bed hasn't been slept in and--"

"I'm here," Samara said before Ivan could stop her. Liisi opened the door. As she stepped into the room, Ivan resisted the urge to bury his head under the covers. No explanation he could make would excuse his behavior. The silence lasted for what seemed an hour.

"Well," Liisi said finally, "I see I was wrong when I thought I was too old to be surprised by anything. Shall we have the wedding before or after Christmas?" Ivan was too stunned to speak. Wedding? Jesus, what next? He expected Samara to laugh, to protest. She did neither. After one swift glance at him, she turned to Liisi. "I think that's up to Ivan," she said calmly. "Very well." Liisi brandished the yellow paper she held in her hand. "A telegram arrived early this morning. From New York. Arno and his new bride will be home for Christmas."

Damn them both to everlasting hell. Rage ripped through Ivan, shattering every other emotion. He started to spring from the bed, recalled at the last moment he was naked and had to content himself with sitting up.

"Samara and I will marry as soon as possible." He spoke through his teeth."Certainly before Christmas." "A wise choice," his mother told him, her silver eyes enigmatic. It took him until the following day to realize how neatly she'd manipulated him. Manipulated Samara, too, for all he knew, into accosting him in the music room. Had it been Liisi's plan all along to marry them off to one another? If so, she'd never admit it.

Frustrated and angry though the thought made him, he said nothing. Because he wanted his own wife by his side when Arno and Griselda walked into Volek House. And Samara would suit as well as anyone.

During the hurried flurry of preparations, Wolf returned from the camping trip with the twins. The three of them took the news so calmly that Ivan wondered at times if everyone had been in on the conspiracy.

Only Melanie looked at him askance. "You really are going to marry my mother, aren't you?" she asked the day before the wedding.

"It looks that way," Ivan told her.

"Then I guess you'll be my step-father as well as my great uncle." Her dark eyes regarded him dubiously.

She looked so forlorn that Ivan impulsively put an arm around her shoulders and hugged her. An outcast, Samara had labeled the poor kid. If her appearance wasn't so woebegone she'd be a pretty girl.

"You can go on calling me Ivan if you want. Or you can call me papa, because that's what I'll be."

She smiled hesitantly. "I never had a father."

"You will after tomorrow."

He'd try to be a father to the girl, he vowed. Just as he'd try to be a decent husband to Samara. They might deserve a more loving father and husband but he was what they were going to get so it was up to him to do his best.

On the morning of the wedding, Liisi didn't come down to breakfast. When Ivan, concerned, went to her room, he found her dressed but resting on the chaise longue. He knelt by her side, alarmed by her pallor and the dark circles under her eyes.

"Are you all right, mama?"

Liisi sighed and rested a hand on his shoulder. "I had a vision during the night." She took her hand away and edged over. "Sit next to me, son."

Ivan obeyed. His mother smelled faintly of cloves and, when he held her hand between his, he found it cold as a Sierra glacier.

"Czar Nicholas II," she said. "Russia."

Ivan waited but, when she didn't go on, he said gently, "The czar and all of his family were killed by the revolutionaries in July, if you recall."

"Of course I remember. Do you think I'm growing senile?" Her tartness reassured him. "But it wasn't Nicholas himself who appeared in my vision, it was Rasputin, the Holy Fool, the man who dominated the czar's court. Do you know what a Holy Fool is?"

"I've heard Rasputin called everything from mystic to charlatan."

"He was both. And, as are most Holy Fools, he was also mad. In my vision his ghost stood between you and Samara at your wedding, separating and yet joining you, one to the other. He laid a bony hand on Samara's abdomen and at the same time, with his other hand, touched your genitals.

"'From these will come one greater than I,' he said and laughed. Crazy, lunatic laughter I could hear in my head long after the vision faded."

Ivan stared at her. "We don't plan--that is, Samara and I--well, we don't want a child. She already has Melanie." Liisi sniffed. "Melanie is a grown woman in years if not in spirit. And, remember, I foresee what is true."

"I won't argue. But why should that vision upset you? It seems harmless enough."

"That was the first vision. The second was of a shaman, Indian by the look of him, old, wearing a necklace of bear claws. 'Darkness gathers,' he warned. 'See the stones fall.'"

"The Miwok medicine man is named Bear Claw," Ivan said. She waved that aside as of little import. "Do you realize what he meant?" she demanded.

Ivan shrugged. "Volek House is built of stone."

Liisi frowned. "You don't take this vision seriously enough."

"Mama, I'm getting married today, I'm not altogether sure its the right thing to do and I'm nervous as the devil. Forgive me if I'm preoccupied."

"If Rasputin himself assures you the marriage was meant to be, I'd say you could stop worrying." Again she spoke tartly.

How could he reply to that?

"I had a third vision." Her voice grew somber. "One I can't reveal. Not to anyone. After I--" She paused and began again. "After the wedding you must tell Wolf that I had three visions in the night. Promise me you won't tell him until then."

Her request seemed harmless enough. Actually he was pleased that she spoke to him of her visions rather than to Wolf. "I promise, mama."

"Good. Now leave me. I'm tired from being awake most of the night and must rest so I can enjoy the wedding."

She looked old, older than he'd ever seen her. And frail. Ivan bent to kiss her cheek. "You're sure you're feeling all right?"

"If I wasn't, I'd send for Druse. Run along and do your worrying elsewhere."

He left her room, descended the stairs and opened the front door to test the weather. The fog was definitely lifting, the day promised to be pleasant. He'd taken one step onto the porch when something large and white startled him by swooping out of the mist and flapping past on soundless wings before disappearing once more into the thinning fog. An owl, he realized belatedly. A great snowy owl. A night hunter. Never before had he seen one fly during the day. He stared at the concealing mist, shaken. Much as he resisted belief in omens, he couldn't help but wonder if seeing the damn bird at such an unusual time meant bad luck. ###

Chapter 19.

The wedding at St. Catherine's Church in Thompsonville passed in a blur for Ivan. He must have given the right responses because the ceremony went off without a hitch. The guests were to motor to Volek House for the reception. He and Samara ran the gamut of rice-throwing, climbing into his open Mercer runabout to lead the way. As he accelerated onto the road, Samara clutched at her headdress, laughing, as her veil blew behind her in the wind.

He smiled at her, thinking he could have done worse than to marry Samara. His good spirits lasted until he saw the low-slung roadster pulled up outside the gates. It could, of course, be a guest's car but somehow he knew it wasn't. As if sharing his premonition, Samara laid her hand over his on the steering wheel.

Without a key there was no way to get in, since Chung was chaffeuring the family Dusenberg, Gei with him, and the day servants, busy in the house, had been given no instructions to open the gates.

As they pulled alongside the roadster, Arno got out and came over to the driver's side of the Mercer. He started to offer his hand, apparently thought the better of it and drew it back. "Hello, Ivan," he said. "Samara. We heard about the wedding when we passed through Thompsonville. Congratulations." He didn't quite meet Ivan's eyes.

"I'm glad you've come home safely, Arno," Samara said. Ivan found himself unable to greet his twin. Without speaking he held out the key, never once glancing at the passenger in the roadster.

Arno opened the gate and waved the Mercer past.

"You didn't even say hello," Samara said as she and Ivan entered the house.

Ivan didn't reply. What was between his twin and him was his private affair and he had no intention of discussing it, not even with his wife. He deliberately turned his back when Arno and Griselda came in the door, ignoring them as they climbed to the second floor--though he heard every footstep. A persistently honking horn announced the first of the cavalcade of guests--or so Ivan thought, glad he'd be distracted by the reception. Not until Druse burst through the door did he find he was mistaken.