Tempting Fate (7 page)

“Irina Andreivna,” Ragoczy said as he pulled her arms down, “no, you must not do this. Believe me, this no longer has anything to do with you, only with the chance of your birth and station. If you were a shopkeeper or a peasant or an artisan, you might be as mean of spirit and abusive as you liked and have approbation of those climbing to power. But you were born to rank, and nothing can excuse that: it is your rank that is being punished—you are innocent.”

“Am I?” She let her fingers close around his. “I thought I was, but when I read the accusations against us … There was such a document delivered, just before Ilya…” She pulled away from him and went unsteadily across the room. “I never intentionally deprived any of our household of bread or a decent place to sleep or fuel for warmth or had the grooms knouted for my amusement—what a horrible thing!” She took a deep breath. “I have never felt the lash, but I remember the rods of the instructresses at Smolny Institute, and I would not find it amusing to see others used so. As for the knout…”

“It isn’t pleasant,” Ragoczy interjected quietly, remembering the times he had had his back laid open.

“No. But,” she went on in a smaller voice, “none of those things, the food and fuel and punishments, mattered to me very much. I did not concern myself with them. My servants were well-treated because any other usage is folly, but poorly-handled servants are not willing and cheerful, and it is impossible for work to get done. It may be, then, that I am truly as bad as the worst of rank. I was not kind out of any sense of humanity, but for my own convenience. I have thought about it a great deal, Count,” she said seriously, meeting his dark eyes and then looking away. “At first I decided that the complaints were absurd, but in the last few days, I see there may have been good reason for them to accuse me.”

Ragoczy did not approach her. “It would not matter what you did,” he said. “You might have been the harshest aristocrat here, or the most humble and pious, the denouncement would have come in either case. You say that you treated your servants well because it was convenient. That’s not an unworthy motive. The world may dismiss it, but it is as laudable as any other.”

“You sound so … certain,” she said.

“Think of France, Duchess. Their Revolution was intended at first merely to redress egregious wrongs. Look what it became. Not only aristocrats, but teachers and poets and seamstresses lost their heads for no more terrible crimes than a word of disagreement, or imagined disagreement with those jockeying for power. There have been other instances when similar—”

“It is an outrage!” Irina cried out. “They are dead, and for what? These accusations defame my husband’s memory: I will not have him mocked! He died for them, and they … they…” She gave a deep sob and sank to her knees. “Saints protect me. I am at the end of my strength.” She crossed herself and tried to pray.

Ragoczy copied her gesture, but in the Roman manner, left to right shoulders, “Irina…” He came to her side and went down on his knee. “Irina, it is not a fault in you that you mourn. Do not think it.”

“I keep believing that this isn’t true,” she said unsteadily. “I wait to awaken, when I am certain I will find my children alive and well and Leonid sympathetic and amused by my fancies. It won’t happen, will it? They are gone, aren’t they?”

“They are gone,” he said with such poignance and compassion that she could no longer comfort herself with her illusions. He saw her face change as anguish possessed her; he braced her with his arm and stayed close to her as she keened for everything she had lost.

When at last she was quiet, she kept still for several minutes, her long, disarrayed hair concealing her face. Finally she looked toward the stranger beside her. “I will be all right now.”

“You’re certain?” His compelling eyes searched her pale, mottled face.

“Yes.” She pushed back from him, feeling faintly queasy now that she was past her greatest outburst. She moistened her lips and wiped her face with trembling hands. It was difficult not to be angry with Ragoczy, for he had seen too much of her inmost suffering. Without being obvious, she moved away from him as she got to her feet again. “It was good of you to—”

“You wish to curse me, Irina,” he interrupted her, not accusing her or showing indignation. He rose, watching her.

“Yes,” she murmured. “I would curse the whole world if it would lessen my pain. But nothing will.” Her dressing table was near and she sat in the velvet-upholstered chair in order to keep from stumbling, as she feared she would if she tried to walk the dozen steps to her bed. The few crystal vials were dusty, and the mirror had not been cleaned in months. Looking into the glass, she was shocked to see how altered her face was. Her cheeks were gaunt and her eyes sunken and the flesh under her chin had started to sag. She braced her elbows on the table and leaned her head on her hands. Nothing was left of the world she had known; not even her own body remained. Now there was a starved and haunted wraith where she had been a woman of warm and opulent beauty.

“Irina,” Ragoczy said quietly. He did not move toward her yet, sensing that she did not want to have him near her.

The Duchess looked up, her eyes on the mirror, to the place where Ragoczy’s reflection should have been. At first she was puzzled, for there was no sign of him. She turned around, thinking that perhaps he had moved. “You—”

“I know,” he said, lifting a hand to stop her. “It is my nature, Irina Andreivna.”

“Your nature?” She stared at him, then glanced back in the mirror. “How? How is … this your nature?”

He did not answer her directly. “Your husband knew me as a foreigner and was nonetheless my friend. Yet my … alienness is greater than he supposed.” The last time he had seen his own face reflected, he had been thirty-three years old; his mirror had been a shield of polished copper. It was an effort to remember that day, so very long ago.

“Do Europeans have no reflections?” she asked lightly, feeling suddenly as if she had been catapulted once more into the world of her dreams.

“You know those who do not have reflections,” he said gravely.

Irina laughed once, a little wildly. “That’s a fable, a tale for children and English novelists. Peasants believe such things.”

Ragoczy said nothing. He saw her face in the mirror as her expression changed again, though she could not see him.

“It’s ridiculous,” she insisted. “It must be a skill, like those magicians who are forever turning women into lions and back into women again. You must not trick me this way, Count. I … I am not able to … appreciate such humor at the moment.”

“It is no trick,” Ragoczy said.

“No trick? But it must be.” She wanted to sleep, to shut out the treasonous world, where all her family could die in less than four months and this foreign guest cast no reflection. She reached for the small golden crucifix on the chain around her neck and was momentarily reassured by it. “You crossed yourself,” she said impetuously as she recalled this.

“Yes.” He held out his small hand. “Place holy water here, or any blessed thing. I will not flinch, or turn into a puff of smoke. Had I been able to do that, they could not have held me in prison,” he added grimly, unable to smile.

“Of course not,” she agreed, fighting hideous laughter. “Nor would you have had to climb up the trellis to my window.” All at once she clapped her hands over her mouth and turned away from him, not knowing whether it was hysteria or nausea that threatened her. She bent over, her head brushing her knees, her mind in turmoil, so that she did not notice Ragoczy’s approach, nor the assuasive touch of his hand on her shoulder.

“Irina, do not fear me; I will not harm you.” His voice was at once so calming and so sad that she dared to lift her head and look at him.

“I’m not afraid, not of you. You’re nothing, compared to…” She could not continue.

“Do you still wish me to stay? If you’d rather I left, I will want to be away before too much time goes by.” He paused. “I am … somewhat exhausted and it is … easier to travel at night.”

To her own amazement, she heard herself say, “You needn’t go. I don’t want you to go.”

He bowed to her. “For that, Irina Andreivna, I am more grateful than you will ever know.” Then he lifted her hands and kissed them.

“Count…” She did not know what she wanted to tell him, for the confusion of this night almost overwhelmed her. Inwardly she was aware of the attraction of this man—for surely he could be called nothing else—which was born as much from his kindness as from her response to his superb manner. His dark, arresting eyes held hers, and she had the dizzying sensation of falling into them, Frightened by this intensity, she drew back.

“Ah, no, Irina,” he said, dropping her hands; his gaze never wavered from her face. “Perhaps I should leave, after all.” He said this almost to himself, so softly that Irina was not certain she heard him speak at all.

The prospect of passing the night alone, however, terrified her, and she clutched at his sleeve. “No. No, you must stay. Please.”

Ragoczy looked down at her hand. “As you wish, Duchess.”

“And you?” Her boldness came from her fear; she did not care how censorious her friends would be—her friends were in flight, in hiding, or dead.

“I? This is a welcome haven, Irina Andreivna,” he said in a carefully neutral tone. “It would not be … pleasant to go out in that”—he cocked his head toward the ice-shiny windows—“again.”

“No,” she said, subdued. It was an effort for her to release his sleeve, but she did so, joining her hands together so that she would not be tempted to touch him. “I am glad you will stay, and not only because I don’t want to think of you out there.”

“I’m flattered, Irina,” he replied rather distantly. He watched her with growing speculation, wondering what it was she wanted of him.

“There’s no food to spare…” Wisely, she made no attempt to apologize for this lack.

“I have … other requirements,” he said.

“Oh. Yes.” Her hands tightened around themselves.

“Do not concern yourself with me; I shall manage.” He stepped back from her. “Is there a dressing room, or a pallet that I may lie on, Irina Andreivna?”

She stared at him, uncomprehending. “A pallet?”

“Yes, Irina. Even I must sleep.” His wry half-smile took the sting out of his words. “I’m not fussy.”

“But a pallet?” To her dismay, her thoughts had anticipated a different course for her tonight, and until he dashed them with his sensible request, she had not permitted herself to be aware of what she desired. Her face suffused with color and she got up from the dressing table so that she would not be so close to him. “A Count on a pallet?”

His response chided her amiably. “A Duchess without heat in the winter? Be assured, Irina, that I have slept on less enticing beds than any you might provide.” The memories of many of those places he had rested danced through his mind: prisons, temples, fields, mountain trails, ditches, burrows … “My own bed,” he added truthfully, “is narrow and quite hard. A pallet will not distress me.” He did not mention that the thin, down-filled mattress on his bed lay over a chest of his native earth.

“But…” Her courage nearly deserted her. “My bed is large. Surely…” There; she had said as much as she was able, and was quite shocked with herself.

Ragoczy did not speak for the better part of a minute. “What is it you want of me, Irina?”

“Companionship,” she answered at once. “I have had only the thoughts of my losses to keep me company. If you are not offended, I would welcome someone beside me.”

“Is that all?” He unbuttoned his longish suit jacket. “I do not wish to offend you, either.”

Irina was unable to say more. She paced the length of the room, pausing once less than an arm’s length from him. “No, that is not all,” she said in a tense, hushed voice. “You were Leonid’s friend. You knew my children. I…” She faced him squarely. “Must I say it? Isn’t it awkward enough that I must ask at all? What can you think of me, now?”

Ragoczy chose to answer the last of her questions first. “I think you are brave, Irina, and alone. If you want me to lie with—”

“
Want?
Oh, no, Count. I
need
you to hold me in your arms, to drive away the ghosts.” She reached out to him, certain she would die if he did not accept her.

He enfolded her, his arms secure about her. “Irina, I have a need, as well.” His lips brushed her cheek, touched the corner of her mouth, the angle of her jaw, her throat.

She made a small, choking sound, then tangled her hands in his dark, loose curls, tugging him close against her. How shameful she felt, and how restored! Nothing prepared her for the delirious tumult of her senses, for the spurt of her pulse, the warmth that burned through her, the heady ignition of her desire. Her ill-fitting robe fell away from her, and she felt herself being lifted with easy strength, carried across the bedchamber.

The sheets were musty, but neither of them noticed. Ragoczy drew the covers up around Irina, then paused long enough to remove his jacket before pulling off his boots. At last he sank down beside her, sensing the urgency of her ardor. He took her face in his hands and kissed her mouth so slowly, so lingeringly, that she was quieted, capable of pleasure instead of frenzy. Now his kisses came quickly, lightly, like the caress of a butterfly’s wing. One arm slipped beneath the covers to hold her, then the other.

Irina was stirred now, her passion growing without urgency, and for the first time in years, perhaps in her life, she relinquished her avidity and was doubly fulfilled. Her body, warmed with the probing of his hands and mouth, exulted, so that she wept again, but not for grief or pain.

Only once in that dazzled night did she realize that he had given all the coverings to her, as a kind of soft cave to warm her where he could not. “But you haven’t a blanket…” she protested, suddenly concerned for him.

His dark eyes were luminous. “I am not cold.”

Text of a report from Former Acting Major, Former Corporal Nikolai Ivanevich Rozoh to his commanding officer, Colonel Alexei Sergeivich Genadov.

Petrograd