The Jewel of St Petersburg (23 page)

“Good evening to you, sir.” Jens gave a courteous bow to her father and received a curt nod in response. Wrapped in his thick fur coat, General Ivanov resembled a bear lumbering into its den as he threw open the front door with a grunt of satisfaction.

“Inside, Valentina. Now, please. I wish to have a word with you.”

He walked into the house without waiting for a reply. She stood where she was until the car moved away toward the garage at the back of the house, and for a brief moment they were alone again.

“Jens,” she said, “don’t forget what I have promised you.”

“No,” he said in that low voice that burrowed under her skin, “I won’t forget. Have nothing to do with him.”

She nodded, and in the slash of light from the doorway she saw his mouth curve into what might have been a smile. But now he was out of reach. She watched him move with long easy strides toward his carriage, and the horse whinnied a soft welcome. Valentina knew she couldn’t stop the words that had to come next.

“Jens.”

He halted. The lamplight caught the edge of his jaw and a twist of his hair.

“Jens, will you do the same?”

“What do you mean?”

“What about the woman who wears green gowns and who sinks hooks into you with her eyes? The one who walks as if she owns the world.”

He frowned. “Countess Serova?”

“Ah yes, she looks like a countess. That one.”

“What about her?”

“Will you have nothing more to do with her?”

She heard his intake of breath.

“Will you?” she insisted.

He started to return to her, one hand extended, palm up, the way he would hold out an apple to a horse. “It’s complicated,” he explained, “not so easy to ...”

“I see.” She clamped her teeth together.

“No, you don’t see at all. I do promise that I will have nothing to do with her in the way that you mean, but I still have to visit her because ... Valentina, don’t ...”

It was too late. She had vanished into the house.

I
T’S COMPLICATED.
WHAT DID HE MEAN BY THAT? How could he still be intending to visit Countess Serova? Surely he realized that ...

“Valentina,” her father was saying, “I want to start by stating that I have good news for you.”

He was going to agree to the nursing. She relaxed and gave him a grateful smile. “Thank you, Papa.”

“You’ve met Captain Stepan Chernov?”

“Da.”

“A handsome man, I’m sure you’ll agree.”

Valentina nodded. She was trying to be agreeable. She had not forgotten
Number 4
on her list.
Make Papa forgive me.

“His father is Count Chernov,” he expanded, “head of one of the most distinguished families in Petersburg. The captain is an extremely wealthy young man. Are you aware of this?”

“Mama mentioned it to me.”

“I want you to marry him.”

The words cut her. Razor sharp.

“Papa.” She didn’t shout. Didn’t beg. Instead she spoke quietly. “I don’t intend to marry anyone. I intend to take care of Katya.”

For a moment he wouldn’t look at her. “Captain Chernov has asked my permission to pay his attentions to you. It is a great honor.” His cheekbones were working, as if he were chewing on something hard. “I don’t want any more of this foolishness from you, Valentina. Your mother and I are in agreement about this. As your father, believe me, I know what is best for you. You will thank me when you are older.”

She stood immobile on the Persian rug. “Papa, I don’t wish to cross you, honestly I don’t, but neither do I wish to marry Captain Chernov. I’ve explained that ...”

Color rose to his cheeks in a dark flush, and his heavy brows bunched together over disappointed eyes. She knew he felt she was letting him down.

“Please don’t disobey me, Valentina.”

“Or what, Papa? What will you do?” She tried to smile. “Horse-whip me?”

He walked over to her, put an arm around her shoulder and kissed the side of her head. “Thank you for saving Katya. Now I need you to do this for me. It’s as simple as that.”

H
ER ROOM WAS COLD BUT VALENTINA DIDN’T NOTICE. She slipped out of her clothes, dropping them on the floor, but she couldn’t slip out of her skin. She crawled into bed and pulled the quilt over her head. Shivers came.

As simple as that.

Nothing about this was simple. Not with her father and not with Jens.

“Jens, I made a promise to you.
Nothing to do with him
. I swore it to you.”

Outside the wind tapped at the window.

“So why, Jens,” she whispered, “why wouldn’t you make the same promise to me?”

She stilled her pulse, waiting for that low voice of his to murmur in her mind. Minutes ticked past but no voice came, so she threw off the quilt.

W
HAT ARE YOU DOING OUT HERE?” Valentina jumped. “Nothing.”

She could just make out the looming bulk of Liev Popkov in the darkness. He was ten paces away, leaning against a wall of the house, and her eyes would not have picked him out of the dense layers of black if he hadn’t spoken.

“How long have you been standing there?” she asked.

“Long enough.”

“Spying on me? For my father?”

He grunted. She heard him spit.

They were outside on the gravel at the back of the house, where by day the sun barely reached at this time of year and by night it froze hard. Ice and snow bunched in treacherous ruts. Valentina was scraping them with a stick, prodding at them, sliding her gloved fingers over them. With great care she examined them inch by inch in the light that fell from the music room window. She wanted to ask Liev to help her but the words stuck in her throat, so she continued her search alone and in silence. For a full five minutes neither spoke.

“Looking for something?” he asked at last.

“Yes.”

“What is it?”

“That’s my business.”

“It’s cold out here.”

She said nothing but continued to scrape at the ice. Another five minutes of silence.

“Is this what you’re looking for?”

Her head snapped up. He hadn’t moved from the spot but he was holding out his hand. She walked over, wary of the ice, and stared at his big paw. In the center of it lay something that gleamed, something metal. She snatched it from him, closed her fingers tight on it. It was the key to the piano.

“You bastard!”

He laughed, loud and boisterous.

She slapped his knee with her stick, then tossed it aside and started laughing with him. A strange isolated sound, their laughter echoed in the freezing folds of the night air.

“You bastard,” she said again.

And stalked back into the house.

V
IKTOR ARKIN WATCHED POPKOV AMBLE BACK TO THE stables. He’d seen the big man skulking in the shadows for hours, indifferent to the snow and the raking wind, waiting to see if the girl would come in search of whatever it was she’d lost. He’d observed the way Popkov baited her, teased her till she lost her temper with him, and he envied the careless ease of it. As if Popkov didn’t give a damn. She’d called him a bastard but they had laughed. Together they had laughed. Arkin couldn’t work out why.

He felt awkward with women, tongue-tied and mystified by what it was they wanted to talk about. The women at his political meetings and on the committees were all vociferous and aggressive. Wanting to be men, it seemed to him. He sometimes felt the urge to talk to Valentina and her mother, to stop the car and really talk to them, to find out what was in their minds. There was something about Valentina that didn’t quite fit in. That was why she had startled him so much when she caught him unloading the ammunition in the church, because he had no idea how she would react. It was obvious she was suspicious, but would she voice her suspicions to her father? Would she ask him to call for the Okhrana?

He would have to be more careful, more than ever now. He walked silently back to the garage, let himself in, and closed the door behind him. His nerves tightened, but hardly anyone else came in here. It was safe. Always it was the same, this fire that was consuming him, this need to march forward into the new tomorrow. Impatience plucked and pulled at him, and he tried to quiet it by moving to the back of the garage behind the car. Against the wall he had arranged a tidy stack of cardboard boxes containing engine parts, oil cans, polishing cloths, spare tools, machine bits and pieces, all things that belonged in a garage. No one would suspect, no one would delve deeper.

Only he knew of the crate that lay at the bottom of the boxes. Only he knew what it contained.

Sixteen

N
URSE SONYA WAS TO BE VALENTINA’S CHAPERONE FOR the afternoon. Her bulky figure sat upright on the seat in the Turicum in her best black coat and gloves, and Valentina noticed that her hat with its red velvet band was new.

“We are very privileged,” Nurse Sonya said, eyes bright. “To see the tsar.”

“That’s true.”

It
was
true. Valentina was acutely aware of that fact. But Arkin was sitting in front of her at the wheel of the car, and she wondered what thoughts were crowding through his proletarian brain. When the car drew up, the place wasn’t remotely as she had been expecting. She had imagined a wooden hut next to a giant hole in the ground and a rusty metal ladder fixed to the inside of the hole. She’d been nervous about climbing down and had abandoned most of her petticoats to make leg action easier. She wore a fox fur coat and hat at her mother’s insistence, as she would be in the presence of Tsar Nicholas, but underneath she’d chosen a simple wool dress with a high neck for warmth and a loose design for freedom of movement.

“Excited?” she asked the nurse as they stepped out of the car.

“To meet Tsar Nicholas will be one of the best moments of my life.” Nurse Sonya shook her head in astonishment. “I never thought I would live to see the day that I would receive such an honor.”

Arkin was standing beside the step to help her out of the car, and Valentina glanced up at his face. But she saw nothing there. He was wearing his usual bland expression, but she would bet her sable muff that he was listening to their conversation.