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Protasova wore an expression of patient boredom. Catherine was chatting with the Zavadovskys. She looked up and smiled at me and motioned to a footman to attend to my needs, the perfect hostess looking out for her guests. I turned down coffee and ice cream but accepted a glass of light wine. Prince Golitsyn asked me if I had enjoyed seeing the paintings, and I managed to fake an appreciation I had been too distracted to feel.

Half an hour passed and, protected by my shield, I managed to present a polite social facade. Catherine was gracious and charming, acting her part superbly, and no one suspected the heartache she must be feeling. Potemkin roared and rollicked, transferring his attention from Peter to Anna Zavadovsky, who tittered nervously. Madame Koshelev dropped off to sleep in her chair, brown wig askew, and, after a tactful signal from Catherine, Protasova announced that it was past Peter's bedtime. Catherine said it had been a lovely evening and thanked us all for coming.

She accompanied us to the main hall and chatted pleasantly as we were handed our wraps. Potemkin had disappeared.

Protasova had already taken Peter away. Standing near the door, looking very regal, Catherine told the Zavadovskys goodbye and smiled as Prince Golitsyn led a drowsy, befuddled Madame Koshelev out to her rented carriage.

Gregory helped me into my white mink cloak and whirled the sleek black sable around his shoulders, very dashing, very confident. Catherine acknowledged my curtsey with a polite nod.

" Good-bye, Miss Danver," she said.

Her voice was cool. I returned the nod.

"I wonder if you would stay a moment longer, Gregory,"

she said. "I would like a word with you."

" Of course, my Catherine."

"Stefan will show Miss Danver to the carriage."

The footman took my arm and led me down the steps to the drive where another footman stood with torch held high. The Orlov carriage circled around. I was helped inside.

It had started to snow lightly, large white flakes swirling lazily in the night. I settled back against the velvet upholstery and wrapped the cloak around me, prepared for a long wait, but only a few minutes passed before Gregory came down the steps. He moved slowly, haltingly, like a man in a daze, and in the pale orange glow of the torch he looked completely stunned.

The carriage door was opened for him and Gregory climbed inside and sat down across from me, silent, hardly aware of where he was. He looked at me as though he had never seen me before in his life, then turned to stare out at the night as the carriage began to move. He sat very still, one large hand gripping the edge of the seat so tightly the velvet upholstery ripped. Horse hooves tapped on the pavement with a steady clop clop. The carriage rocked gently.

Moonlight wavered through the windows, and in the misty silver haze the man sitting across from me looked ten years older. His face seemed to sag. His eyes were dark with dismay. The dream he had cherished for such a long time had been utterly, irrevocably destroyed.

"I do not understand," he said after a while. His voice was hoarse. "I do not understand."

I made no reply. He was not speaking to me.

ee 'I think St. Petersburg is beginning tc tire you,' she tells me. 'I think you will be happier in the country. I expect you to leave tomorrow.' She tells me this. She gives me no explanation."

"I'm sorry, Gregory."

.. 'You will be happier in the country,' she tells me. This is a direct order. I am banished to my country estate in the north until she lifts the ban. I do not understand."

There was nothing I could say, and he would not have heard anyway. He kept repeating himself in a hoarse, hollow voice, and when we finally reached the Marble Palace and the carriage stopped he raised his head and looked at me as though to inquire where we were.

I climbed out. Gregory followed me. We went inside and a servant took our cloaks and carried them away and Gregory looked around at the elegant foyer, seeing only his own despair. In the bright glow of candlelight his face looked even worse, the color of damp putty, the full mouth twitching at one corner. His hair looked a duller gold. All energy and vitality seemed to have been drained out of him, and that powerful magnetism that gave him such a radiant glow was completely missing now.

"I think I will go on upstairs," I said.

He turned, really looking at me for the first time.

"No," he said.

"I'm very tired, Gregory, and-"

"You will stay with me. We will have a drink."

He might have been speaking in his sleep, yet his voice was firm. I knew it would be a mistake to agitate him in any way, and I meekly followed him into the drawing room, watching as he poured peppered vodka into a glass.

"Will you have one?" he asked.

"No, thank you."

He swallowed the vodka and stared across the room, and color began to return to his face. His mouth tightened. I could sense the fury slowly mounting inside him, and I felt a vague tremor of alarm. I knew full well that Gregory Orlov was unbalanced, and at this point anything might push him over the edge. He had sustained a great shock, and when he found out that Lucie was gone ... I felt suddenly chilled.

"She refused to give me an explanation. 'Why do you do this, my Catherine?' I ask her, and she looks at me with eyes like blue ice and tells me that the Empress of Russia does not have to explain herself. She tells this to me!"

He scowled, splashing more vodka into his glass. The shock had worn off now, and bright spots of color burned hotly on cheeks that had been ashen only minutes ago. I must leave tonight. I realized that now. I mustn't be here when he discovered Lucie was gone. I would slip back downstairs after he went to sleep and I would open the safe and take the money he owed me and. . . and, yes, I would go to the British embassy. Bryan's father didn't like me, didn't approve of me, but he wouldn't deny me sanctuary for ... for a day or so. Orlov had to leave St. Petersburg, and when he was gone I could book passage and ...

"What do you know about this?" he asked.

I looked up. He was studying me with hard, shrewd eyes.

"I –I don't know what you mean," I said.

His glass was empty again. He refilled it a second time and gulped the vodka with a jerking motion of head and hand.

"You know something. I can tell this. It is written on your face."

"That-that's ridiculous, Gregory.'"

"You go to see her at the Hermitage. The two of you talk, conspire against me. You laugh at me."

"You're imagining things-"

"All this time you know she is not going to take me back.

She tells you to humor me."

There was a strange tremor in his voice, and his eyes, now, seemed to burn with maniacal light. The mighty Count Orlov couldn't accept blame for his failure, his ego wouldn't permit that. He had to blame someone else, and in casting about he had accidentally stumbled upon some truths, and. . . and I had to remain very, very calm. He set his empty glass aside, rage simmering, smoldering, threatening to erupt.

"You know that's not true, Gregory," I said.

"You are against me. You are all against me. I was going to have my apartment in the Winter Palace again and I was going to have power and I was going to have glory as I did before and there would be triumphal arches erected for me as they were before and another medal cast in my honor and everyone in Russia would know Orlov was back where he was meant to be. Catherine wanted me back, I know she did, and you-you undermine me!"

"Gregory-"

"It is true!"

His eyes were blazing, and my blood turned cold for I knew he was no longer rational. I knew he had finally lost that precarious mental balance and toppled over the edge.

He pressed his lips together and took several deep breaths.

The fury that raged inside him was controlled, held in check, and a lethal calm possessed him now. It was far more disturbing than his rage would have been. He took a step toward me, stopped, stared at the doorway.

"What do you want?" he asked harshly.

Vladimir stepped into the room. I felt the color leave my cheeks.

"Lucie is gone," Vladimir said.

"Lucie is gone?" Orlov did not seem to understand. "Lucie is in her room. Lucie would not leave me."

"She left hours ago," Vladimir told him. "This one"-he jerked his head at me-"she tricks me. She pretends to have a bad ankle. She leads me away from my post."

"Lucie is gone?" He spoke the words as a child might, slowly, without comprehension.

"I go back to my post after you leave with this woman. I knock on the door after a while and there is no answer. I think she is sulking. I wait. I knock again. I go inside and she is not there."

"Lucie is not gone," Orlov said. He shook his head.

"We search the palace. We search the grounds. She is nowhere to be found. One of the men remembers seeing Vanya leave the grounds with a maidservant. All the maidservants are accounted for. None of them left the palace tonight. One of them says her cloak has been stolen."

Orlov looked at Vladimir and looked at me. He clenched and unclenched his hands. My heart was palpitating.

There was no way out. There was no escape. I was trapped between a madmanand a savage who hated me with a vengeance.

Vladimir curled his lip, glaring at me.

"This one helps her. She and Vanya. Vanya returns and I order the men to seize him. He puts up a fight. He wounds two of the men. He is badly wounded himself, but he gets away."

Count Gregory Orlov continued to clench and unclench his hands and finally curled them into tight fists. He looked at me thoughtfully, as though wondering how I came to be standing in his drawing room.

"Vanya gets away," Vladimir said. "This one does not."

"This is so," Orlov replied.

"From the first I know she is going to make trouble.

What are we going to do with her?"

"This I will have to think about," Orlov said.

Panic swept over me like a tidal wave and receded just as quickly, leaving me dazed for a moment, and then a strange calm possessed me and I faced both of them defiantly, too proud to cringe, too proud to cry, and determined to show no fear.

"Lucie is gone," Orlov said. "You helped her."

"I helped her," I said.

"Where is she?"

"She's beyond your reach now."

"Where is she?" he repeated.

"If-if you must know, she's on a ship. It left Kronstadt at ten. She's safe. Thank GDd she's safe. She's going to marry Bryan. You'll never be able to touch her again."

"Your ankle was not hurt."

"I faked it."

"You-you tricked me."

"I did what I had to do."

"You-the necklace-" he said suddenly, and his eyes grew wide with disbelief. "You do not wear the necklace.

You-"

"I gave it to her. She was entitled to it. She-she told me everything. Lucie told me how you raped her, how youyour own niece! Yes, I tricked you, and I'm glad. I'm glad!"

Count Orlov stared at me in shocked disbelief, and the bright spots of color began to burn on his cheeks again. He tightened his fists. The rage he had held in check was beginning to overflow, beginning to consume him. He shook his head from side to side and then threw it back and let out a roar and I stared in horror as he charged, one arm swinging back, swinging forward, the huge fist flying through the air like the ball of a mace.

It crashed against my cheek and lights exploded inside my head and a thousand hot sharp spears stabbed as I stumbled; fell, hurtling into a spinning oblivion of blackness.

I whirled in blackness, burning, falling faster, faster, and it grew darker and I heard a moaning noise like an animal whimpering and it was far, far away. Blackness swallowed me, smothered me, and then it turned to dark purple and then gray and the pain was worse than ever and strange silver-orange lights were spinning before my eyes and I was groping through layers of thick fog and there were voices, distant, distorted.

"-do with her now?"

"-leave tomorrow-take her along-will decide later what punishment is fitting for what she has done to me-"

Silver-orange lights whirled and spun and the fog lifted and the pain was a shrieking, shattering thing that stormed across my brain in violent flashes. Between those blinding flashes I saw a woman in sky blue silk sprawling on the floor, two gigantic men looming over her like immense tree trunks in a glittering forest of crystal and gilt and marble. The forest began to spin and colors began to blur and pain seared and blackness swallowed me again, pulling me intp welcome oblivion.

Chapter
Twenty
..
Two

THE SILENCE IN THE NORTH WAs A TANGIBLE

presence, hovering just beyond vision, holding its breath.

The air was still, and when a bird cried out in the woods surrounding Count Orlov's estate, the sound was magnified, echoing loudly, finally fading, the silence even more ominous after that shrill intrusion. Though the trees were encased in ice and the ground covered with snow, it wasn't that cold as I strolled restlessly over the grounds.

The sky was a translucent white, blurry with pearl gray streaks, and there were pale amethyst shadows on the snow. In the distance the house crouched squat and ugly, a long, low two-story structure of dark gray stone with a dull greenish gray slate roof, leaded windows like glazed reptilian eyes watching me.

The front door opened. A tall figure in dark blue livery and black fur hat stepped out. Although he was too far away from me to discern features, I knew it was Vladim:ir.

He never let me out of his sight for too long, was forever"

checking on me, watching grimly, waiting for me to make a foolish move. We were isolated here in the bleak north country. This was the end of the earth, it seemed, and I had been given complete freedom ever since we had arrived two and a half weeks ago. What could I do? Where could I go? Were I insane enough to attempt flight, they reasoned, I would freeze to death in the woods-if I weren't torn to pieces by the starving wolves whose chilling howls could be heard every night: