Silver Nights (6 page)

“You think me harsh, I know,” he said. “But, in truth,
ma chère
, you must go. If this prospective husband does not please you, you must talk to the empress. In many ways, she is an enlightened despot.” He smiled with a tinge of irony. “It is said that she rules with a scale of justice in one hand, a knout in the other. I do not know how true that may be when it comes to personal matters, but I do not believe her to be utterly tyrannical. I do not think she will force you into a marriage you find repugnant.”

“Then why must I go at all?”

“Because you are the last Golitskov. You cannot remain in obscurity. I have always known it, and the empress has been watching you from your earliest years.” Seeing her puzzlement, he told her of the secret agents and their surveillance.

“Why would you say nothing of this before?” Sophie, in her bewilderment, saw only betrayal. “You made no attempt to prepare me for—”

“No, I did not wish to spoil your pleasure in the life you led,” he said sadly. “I was perhaps in error, but I did it for the best.” He went to the secretaire and drew out the strongbox again. “I will not send you into that world without some armor. You will have Boris Mikhailov. If you are in distress, or have need of anything, you will send him to me with a message. He understands that. He will serve you, not your husband.” Sophie listened, feeling some measure of comfort. “Here are the Golitskov jewels. They also belong solely to you.” The prince laid upon the desk a silver casket, inlaid with mother-of-pearl. “If you have need of money once you
are married, these will supply you, and you have my permission to use them however and whenever you feel the need.”

She knew what the casket contained—gems worth some three hundred thousand rubles. They had been in the Golitskov family for generations, and this extraordinary blanket permission to use the inheritance as she saw fit destroyed her moment of comfort as it somehow underscored her own unfocused terror. She looked at her grandfather in blank distress.

“Lastly,” he said quietly, “as I said to you this morning, Berkholzskoye will be yours. And it will always be here for you. But first you must go and try this new life, a world in which you should have a part.”

“How does a wife leave her husband?” Sophie asked. “You tell me I have this option, but I do not know how it could be exercised.”

“If you should find yourself in such desperate straits that that action should be necessary, you are resourceful enough to find the way with the tools that I have given you,” said the prince. “I have taught you to be resourceful, to look after yourself. Apply the rules of the Wild Lands to the imperial court,
ma chère
, and you will not go far wrong.”

Sophie took up the casket. Her grandfather had given her all he could; the rest was up to her. As she walked to the door, he offered one last piece of advice. “Do not engage battle with Adam Danilevski, Sophie.”

She did not turn, but replied simply, “I do not go willingly and I will not pretend that I do.”

Prince Golitskov sighed. He had done his best. The two of them must fight it out. In fair combat, they would probably be evenly matched, but this was hardly fair combat.

Sophie became aware of the soldier of the Imperial Guard as she crossed the hall for the stairs. He was standing beside the front door, his posture that of a sentry. Frowning, still clutching the casket, she went around the house. At every outside door stood a sentry. She went back into the hall. “Excuse me.” With a half smile, she pushed open the door, stepping out onto the gravel driveway. She was not pre
vented, and the sentry did not move from his post. But as she walked toward the stables, another soldier appeared, keeping pace behind her.

She swung around on him. “Are you following me?”

“Your pardon, Princess, but the colonel's orders,” replied the guardsman impassively.

Sophie stood still, feeling the sun warm on her back, the vast expanse of the steppes stretching on all sides, offering their freedom. Clutching a casket containing a not-so-small fortune, wearing a thin muslin gown, she was hardly equipped to taste that freedom and to challenge the man who would curtail it. She returned to the house.

The great gong sounded from the courtyard, signaling the dinner hour over the entire estate. Craftsmen and laborers downed tools and went to their homes or the kitchens of communal houses; the domestic serfs gathered in the big kitchen of the mansion, the soldiers congregated in the parlor set aside for their use; Count Danilevski and Prince Golitskov came together in the dining room.

“Where is Sophia Alexeyevna?” the prince asked Anna, who was placing a dish of sliced pork upon the table.

The housekeeper sniffed. “Couldn't say, lord. There's borscht and salted cucumbers on the sideboard. The pirozhki went to the dog.”

“What the devil are you talking about, woman?” snapped the prince.

“One of the dogs stole the dumplings from the kitchen.” Sophie spoke distinctly from the door. “I beg you will excuse me from joining you, gentlemen. I find I have no appetite and would prefer to ride.”

Both men turned in some surprise. She was wearing her riding habit, her hair twisted into a knot at the nape of her neck. She gave Adam a look of ineffable distaste. “Which one of your soldiers is deputed to follow me, Count? I will alert him to my departure.”

The count's gray eyes sparked sharp anger at her look and tone. “Excuse me, Prince.” He bowed to his host, then stalked past Sophie into the hall.

“Soldier!” He beckoned the sentry at the door. “Take Princess Sophia to the stables. If Boris Mikhailov is available to accompany her on her ride, then you may wait there until her return, when you will accompany her back to the house. If Boris Mikhailov is not available, you will escort Her Highness to me without delay.” He marched back into the dining room. “In such a circumstance, I will make some other arrangement to accommodate you, Princess.” He gave her a mocking bow.

“You are too kind, Count. I am overwhelmed by your consideration.” She bobbed a curtsy, her lip curling. “I suppose I should be flattered that you consider twelve men necessary to guard me. I had not thought myself so fearsomely dangerous, I must confess. In general, I only shoot rabid wolves.” She whisked herself from the room.

With a furious exclamation, Adam took a step after her, then turned back to the table. The old prince appeared unperturbed by the manner of his granddaughter's entrance and exit. “I cannot help feeling, Prince, that you have sadly neglected your duties where Sophia Alexeyevna is concerned,” the count declared savagely.

“Quite possibly,” agreed Golitskov with a placid smile. “She does have a mind of her own, doesn't she? Allow me to pass you the pork.”

The first jubilant, bragging crow of the farmyard cock was quickly answered by his fellows from farms for miles around. The hens began their gossipy gabble and the new day dawned.

Sophie had been dressed for an hour. She sat on the window seat of her bedchamber, watching as Tanya fussed over the portmanteau, putting garments in, then taking them out again, grumbling to herself. The maid had long since given up expecting any decisions or assistance from Sophia Alexeyevna, and contented herself with this scolding mutter that made no impression whatsoever on its intended recipient.

The awaited knock came at the door. Sophie, still determined that she would show no indication of consent to this forcible removal, had refused to present herself downstairs of her own accord. Tanya opened the door to Prince Golitskov.

“It is time,” he said quietly. “Do not make it any harder upon either of us than it must be.”

They had said their farewells the previous evening, and Sophie had cried all the tears she had to cry. Now, she rose and went past him, down the stairs to the hall, where the household was gathered in an atmosphere both solemn and excited. Sophia Alexeyevna was going to St. Petersburg, to the czarina. She would meet Russia's “little mother,” and she would marry a great prince. Such a glorious prospect brought vicarious exaltation to all those who had cared for the princess and been a part of her growing.

Sophie bade them farewell amid their kisses and their tears.
Her own well of sorrow was dried up and she was able to keep her composure until she went out onto the gravel sweep before the house.

The twelve men of the Preobrazhensky regiment were mounted, drawn up in front of the door. Their colonel was on foot, his horse held by a guardsman. Boris Mikhailov was astride one of his little mountain horses, and he held the unsaddled Khan on a leading rein. A closed carriage, drawn by six horses from the Golitskov stables, stood awaiting its passengers.

Count Danilevski bowed formally to the princess before moving to the carriage. “If you would be pleased to enter, Princess.” His face was expressionless, his voice even.

Sophie went the color of milk, the dark eyes becoming even larger in the smooth oval of her face. “I will not ride in the carriage,” she said in stifled tones. “I cannot…you cannot insist…”

“I am desolated to cause you discomfort, Princess, but I must insist,” he said in the same even tones. “Would you please ascend? Your maid will travel with you.”

“But…but you do not understand.” Her eyes were wide with distress now. “I must ride. I become sick with the motion of a carriage. I cannot travel shut up in that manner.” She looked beseechingly at her grandfather, but although his heart was in his eyes, he had no help to offer. He had known since yesterday that this was the count's intention, and realistically he could not blame him.

“I cannot permit you to ride that horse,” Adam said. “You have made it clear that you come with me only under compulsion. I cannot put into your hands the means of flight.” He gestured to the carriage. “Please get in. We have many miles to cover today.”

Still she stood on the sweep, making no move. She reminded him again of some small wild animal of the steppes, anguished in a manmade trap. The image was so painful, reflected so poorly on his own role in this abduction, which was what she was making it with her obstinacy, that he wel
comed anger to his aid. He strode toward her, his voice harsh. “Must I put you in?”

With a horrified exclamation, Prince Golitskov stepped between them, and Sophie seemed to come out of her trance. She touched her grandfather lightly on the arm, then walked past him to climb into the carriage. Tanya, laden with baskets and packages, scrambled up behind her. The door closed.

“God damn it, man!” Golitskov had lost all his calm, the ironic veneer wiped away as if it had never been. “She cannot bear confined spaces, and she becomes travel sick in a carriage.”

Adam bowed, clicking his heels together so that his spurs rang in the cool morning air. “I did not choose this, Prince. I must bid you farewell, and thank you for your hospitality.” The polite phrases tripped off his tongue in his haste to have done with this agonizing scene. The longer they stood here, the worse it would be for both the princess and Golitskov. He turned, swung onto his horse, raised his hand in a signal that they should move out, and the cavalcade set off.

Sophie sat huddled in the corner, unable to bring herself to look out of the window for one last sight of her beloved home, of the man who had been all and everything to her since she could remember. She did not know that he stood in the doorway until the carriage had passed out of sight at the bottom of the poplar-lined drive.

“Cheer up, now,” Tanya said, patting Sophie's knee, offering cheerful peasant wisdom. “Don't think of what you're leaving, think of what you're going to.”

“I am trying
not
to think of that,” Sophie said, then gave up. How could she explain how she felt to Tanya, who from the moment of birth had never expected to have any say in what happened to her? Tanya was another man's property, his to do with as he pleased. She counted her blessings daily that her master was a kind and just man. She had never felt the lash, never gone hungry. What greater happiness could there be for a serf? And now she was going to St. Petersburg with a mistress who was about to take her place in the wonderful
world of the court. Tanya could see only joy and magnificence ahead.

The interminable morning wore on. The carriage swayed and jolted over the ill-paved road that was the main highway to Kiev. By the end of the first hour Sophie felt the tightening around her scalp that heralded the violent headache and the wretched nausea of the motion sickness she could never escape when traveling for any distance in this manner. She slumped despairingly into the corner.

An hour later, Tanya leaned out of the carriage window, calling to the coachman. He pulled in his horses and Tanya helped Sophie's hunched figure to the ground. Sophie stumbled behind the feeble privacy afforded by a scrawny bush. Tanya bent over her, rubbing her back as she vomited miserably, the pounding in her head increasing to near-unbearable pain.

“What the devil is the matter?” Adam rode up to the halted carriage.

“The princess, Your Honor, isn't feeling well,” responded the Golitskov coachman stolidly. “Can't abide carriages…never has been able to.”

Adam cursed with soft fluency. Of all the damnably ludicrous things: that that strong, fast-shooting, hard-riding Cossack woman should suffer from travel sickness! He waited until the two reappeared, and his heart sank at Sophie's deathly pallor. “For God's sake, is there nothing you can give her?” he demanded of Tanya. “You must know what to do.”

“Not much to be done, lord,” said Tanya, clucking soothingly at Sophie as she encouraged her back into the carriage. “She'll be right as rain as soon as we stop moving.”

They stopped moving with dreadful frequency throughout the rest of the day, and Adam began to despair of covering the fifty versts to Kiev in the next two days. He had hoped to cover almost half the distance, some fifteen miles, by nightfall, but he was appalled by his charge's distress, even as he had no idea what he could do to relieve it. He could
not allow her to ride Khan. Even with a leading rein, the mighty horse would be unstoppable.

By mid-afternoon, Adam knew they could go no farther that day. Sophie seemed to be shrinking before his eyes, a wan shadow of that glowing, vibrant creature to which he had become accustomed in all her infuriating vigor.

They reached a respectable-sized posting house, where he called a halt, going inside to inspect the accommodations. The postman was able to offer a private chamber at the rear of the house. It was not pristine, but it was a great deal less primitive than many they would experience on this journey, as Adam well knew.

He went back to the carriage, opened the door, and stepped onto the footstep. Sophie, still huddled in her corner, did not seem to be aware of her surroundings. Her eyes were lackluster and sunken in her ashen face. “Come,” he said gently. “You will be better in bed.” When she showed no inclination to move, he twisted awkwardly in the confined space, slipping his arms beneath her to lift her against him. She was no lightweight, for all her slimness and present fragility, he reflected absently, stepping backward to the ground, where he was able to adjust his burden so that she lay in his arms.

The long sable eyelashes fluttered. “I do beg your pardon,” she said in a thread of a voice. “It is feeble, I know, but I cannot seem to help it.”

“I did not imagine you could,” he observed on a dry note. “We all have our weaknesses.” He carried her into the posting house, laying her upon the cot in the bedchamber. “The postman's wife will help you with whatever you need,” he said to Tanya as he left the room.

“Oh, don't you worry, now, Your Honor,” Tanya said comfortably, bustling over to the baggage piled in the corner of the room. “I'll make the princess a tisane, and she'll sleep for a little, then she'll be ready for her dinner, I don't doubt.”

Adam stared. The idea that one who had been painfully spewing up her guts every twenty minutes throughout the day, and was now collapsed in a state of complete exhaustion, could possibly be ready for her dinner any time within the
week struck him as pure fantasy. He went outside to see to the disposition of his troop and wrestle with the problem of the morrow. A month of days like today would fell an ox, and Sophia Alexeyevna, for all her wiry strength, was not of that breed.

He returned to the posting house two hours later, when the savory smells of cooking filled the air. In the one living room, already sitting at the plank table, he found Sophia, pale, certainly, but composed.

“I am famished,” she stated matter-of-factly, cutting into a loaf of black bread and helping herself to a dish of salted pickles. “The stew smells wonderful, does it not?”

Adam sat down opposite her. “Wonderful,” he agreed, bemused by this astonishing transformation. “Oh, thank you.” He took the slice of bread she offered him on the point of her knife. “You are feeling better, it seems.”

“Oh, yes,” she said cheerfully. “I am not such a milksop that I cannot recover once the motion stops.”

“Clearly not. I cannot imagine how I could have thought otherwise,” he murmured, reaching for the pickles.

“It is a chicken stew,” Sophie informed him through a mouthful of bread. “The postman's wife killed it in your honor. I am not in general in favor of fresh-killed chicken, myself. I think the flavor is better, the flesh more tender, when the bird is allowed to cool before plucking. But I gather the good woman did not have anything else she considered suitable to put before such an important soldier.” Her voice was utterly innocent, yet he could have sworn that there was a glimmer of mischief in the dark eyes, which seemed amazingly to have recovered their glow.

“I am honored,” he said. “But I shall be more so if I can find something to drink.” He looked around the room.

“There is klukva.” Sophie passed him a jug of cranberry liqueur. “The postman's wife makes it. It is really quite tolerable. But she said that if it is too strong for you, you may have kvass, instead.”

“Thank you, but I do not care for weak beer,” Adam
replied. “You, however, should not be drinking liqueur. It cannot possibly be good for your stomach.”

“It is very warming,” she declared blithely. “Do not tell me, Count, that I am not even to decide what I may eat or drink on this journey.”

The arrival of the postman's wife bearing the chicken stew saved him from response, and throughout the remainder of their meal his companion offered him no further provocation, except that she drank klukva as if she had hollow legs. It appeared to have no effect on her whatsoever, and he decided this version could not be as strong as some he had tasted. Either that, or Sophia Alexeyevna had been taught to hold her drink with the same ease with which she held a pistol. Knowing Prince Golitskov, Adam wryly suspected the latter to be the case.

She led the conversation in the manner of an experienced hostess, asking him the inoffensive social questions about himself and his family, never intrusive, yet giving the appearance of genuine interest. There was not a trace of the bitter anger, the obstinate refusal to accept her situation, to which he had become accustomed, and he was at pains to discover what had produced this change of mood. Perhaps her wretched day had caused the softening effect.

It seemed as if that was the case. When she rose from the table, she yawned delicately, saying, “You will excuse me if I retire, Count. I find myself somewhat fatigued.”

“Of course,” he said, rising politely. “I am sorry, but we must leave again at dawn. I would like to reach Kiev by nightfall, if it is at all possible.”

“I expect it will be, Count.” Not a flicker crossed her face, not a hesitation in the equable tone. “I am not made of porcelain.” She curtsied, and he found himself looking for a hint of irony in the remark as he bowed in response. But he could detect nothing, and her fatigue could hardly be feigned after such a day.

As she disappeared through the rear door into the chamber beyond, he went outside into the now chilly evening. His own choice of resting place was limited. The one bedchamber
having been appropriated for the sole use of the princess and her maid, the postman had been able to offer his distinguished guest a cot in the living room, unless he would prefer to share the family's accommodations in the living quarters behind the kitchen. Or, of course, there was the hayloft over the stables, where the troop, the coachman, and Boris Mikhailov were already installed. Adam had opted for the cot in the living room, but found himself unwilling to seek his rest until the rich aromas of chicken stew and klukva had dissipated somewhat.