The Jewel of St Petersburg (51 page)

He leaned back against the pillows. “And what conclusion did you come to? That revolutions won’t get anywhere until they learn to shoot straight?”

“No. But he was the same man who shot at us in the sleigh the night of the ball at Anichkov Palace.”

“What?”

“It’s true, Jens. I saw it clearly.”

She felt his intake of breath and a wince of pain as he did so, but his hand continued to stroke her hair in a steady rhythm.

“Twice he shot at me,” Jens muttered. “Twice he didn’t kill me.”

“I know who he is.”

“Who?”

“Viktor Arkin. He was my father’s chauffeur. He was the one who hid the grenades in the garage.”

“For which I was briefly arrested, I remind you.”

“Yes.”

“So.” He breathed carefully. “So this Arkin is determined to do harm. To you and to me.”

“I stabbed him.”

“You did what?”

“With one of Dr. Fedorin’s scalpels. But it wasn’t deep enough, so he ran away.”

“Oh, Valentina!”

He drew her into his arms, her head on his shoulder, and tucked his quilt around her as though he could hold her safe. She could feel a quiver in his jaw where it lay against her forehead, words struggling to escape.

“Jens, when I was young we were told that the people of Russia loved the tsar. Where has all that love gone?”

“Eighty percent of Russians are peasants. They have an ancient tradition of devotion to their tsar even if they hate their own land-lords. Many still feel that way despite all this unrest. Look at the revolt in 1905 when they marched on the Winter Palace with Gapon. It wasn’t meant to be a revolt. It was to tell the tsar of their troubles. They were convinced that if he knew of their suffering he would help them and make their lives better.” He gave a snort of anger. “Little do they know the kind of man this Tsar Nicholas Alexandrovich Romanov really is.”

She rested her hand on the dressing of his wound. “Jens,” she said lightly, “I think it’s time you had some medicine.”

She slid from his grasp and stood beside the bed, watching his green eyes grow greener as she started to undo her buttons.

H
OW COULD HE KEEP HER SAFE?

The scent of her skin filled the caverns of his mind. But even while her lips lingered on his throat as she tried to kiss away the pain, still his mind would not let go of the question. It lay like a bullet in his brain, jamming all other thoughts. How could he keep her safe?

And what did Viktor Arkin want?

With slow hungry movements he slid his hands up along the length of her naked thighs as she sat astride him. He traced the line of her hips and the tight curve of her buttocks, warm and yielding, cradled in his palm. He adored the angles of her bones, loved the way they moved against each other, creating hollows and shadows in her flawless skin. And he listened. Breathless. To the sounds escaping from her, the purrs, the whimpers, and the secret mews of pleasure.

She held him pinned to the pillows, whispering in his ear, her hair a wild curtain around him, its fragrance enticing, its strands intimate and familiar across his face. Her breath swirled in his damaged lungs as if she would climb inside him, and her touch stirred places deep within him that had lain cold till now. She moved him in ways he couldn’t understand, excited him in ways he couldn’t explain. And fired him with such strength, such desire for her that the weak and wounded body in its sickbed vanished.

There was a ferocity to her lovemaking that he had never found before, and as he kissed her breasts, tasting the firm sweet rise of her nipples, he was aware of the pulsing heat of their bodies molding them together, forging them into one. It was always like this for him. As if a lifetime of her would never be enough.

A
RKIN WAS CAREFUL. IT WAS DARK AND ST. PETERSBURG’S roads were busy. He backtracked time and again as he made his way to the Hotel de Russie, ducking into doorways and dodging down side streets. No footsteps behind him, no quiet tread or quick turnabouts by agents in black raincoats. He skirted the broad boulevards, past Brocard’s French perfumery, and doubled back over the bridges, crossing and recrossing the Fontanka. His collar was tucked up around his ears against the sleeting rain, and he cursed himself for a fool. This filthy weather made his journey across the city safe, but it didn’t make it wise.

He had followed the girl earlier and he knew exactly where she headed each day when her hospital shift was over. It was to an elegant house on a tree-lined avenue, with wrought-iron gates and a coat of arms paraded on the gateposts. The kind of house his mother had always yearned to be a servant in. He had learned that it belonged to a Dr. Fedorin. He was one of the despicable intellectuals, part of the liberal elite who liked to count themselves among the upper classes but prided themselves on doing charity work with the poor. As if they could patch the wound that lay at the heart of Russia, place a frail gauze bandage over a ravine and hope that it would hold together.

When the revolution came, such people would be trampled underfoot by the boots of the masses. In the chaos that would surely follow the toppling of the hated Romanovs, people like this doctor would never understand that they could no longer be in control. That a grubby peasant from Siberia or a factory worker from the Putilov works would have the right to order them around. These people, whether doctors, lawyers, or teachers, would always be traitors to the socialist cause because their minds were incapable of believing in their own subservience.

He shook the rain from his face, dull anger digging at his gut. So what of upper-class women? What of them? They were used to being controlled and directed, told what to do and what to think by their husbands or their fathers. Was there any hope for them?

Damn such thoughts! He hated himself for wanting the answer to be yes.
Da!
Yes, they can be remolded. Yes, they can be taught to make themselves useful, like the Ivanova girl.

But what of the mother? Clinging to her pearls and her prejudices. How could she ever be of use to the cause? She’d been angry with him. When he told her how he’d stopped the duel, she had berated him. Sharp words had poured from her, her ivory cheeks filling with hot blood and her eyes glittering with fury. It had surprised him that this woman had such fire hidden away in her belly. It drew him to her against his will.

He had sat knee to knee with her in the Turicum, and when she had finished he took her quivering hand in his. But this time he undid the buttons of her calf-leather glove, so fine it felt more like silk than leather, and peeled it off. Her skin was unblemished, no marks on it of a life being lived. It lay cradled in his thick fingers like a bird, nervous and trembling. He’d had no idea a hand could ever be so soft.

A carriage barged past him in the darkness as he crossed Mikhailovsky Square and doused him in a slick wave of filthy water from the gutter. He cursed. He was irritable tonight. His thoughts jumpy, sharp as razors in his head. He should have killed that Hussar outright in the forest. It would have meant no more than aiming a notch higher. God damn his weakness. He should have done it, owed it to Karl, whose young life had been sliced open in the railway sidings. Instead he’d done as Elizaveta Ivanova asked.

God damn his weakness.

At the corner of the square stood the Hotel de Russie. He turned quickly down a side road and slipped unchallenged through the hotel’s back entrance, past the busy kitchens and up the broad stairs. On the second floor he moved silently along the corridor and knocked on one of the doors.

“Come in.”

His pulse quickened as he entered the room. In the shell-pink glow from the wall lamps Elizaveta Ivanova was standing there, without pearls, without gloves, wearing only a silk kimono, her hair curling like a haze of summer sunlight around her shoulders. The sight of her drove all thought of Chernov from his head.

Thirty-one

T
HE DAYS GREW WARMER AND THE CITY DELIGHTED IN shedding its choking shroud of fog. It had grown tattered and stank like an old man’s coat. The golden church domes began to gleam once more as skies brightened and palaces shook off their mood of gloom, throwing open windows so that sunlight could linger in the rooms, settling on armchairs and stretching out on rugs like a ginger cat. The Fontanka and the Moika thawed, allowing boats to set about their business of carting coal and logs to the outlying factories. The streets grew rowdier. Markets sprang up. Hawkers shouted their wares, traders thrust apples and cinnamon, shoes and paintbrushes under the nose of every passerby. St. Petersburg ruffled her skirts and started to smile.

Valentina smiled too. Jens was waiting for her. How could she not smile? He claimed that the walk to the hospital each day exercised his lungs and did him good, but she wasn’t so sure. His breathing was still labored and at times made thin strange whistling noises as he stepped up and down the curbs.

Just the sight of his angular figure, his hair like copper in the last rays of sunlight, and the thoughtful way he leaned his head forward as he paced back and forth made quiet corners of her vibrate with life. This whole business of living became more vivid when she was anywhere near him, more important, more vital. Today in the hospital she had seen her first birth, and she had been stunned. That life should begin with such violence and yet at the same time with such beauty, the new infant so perfectly formed. She had wept.

But even that was pale and insipid in comparison with what happened inside her when she saw her Danish engineer waiting for her. She wanted to hurl herself at him. To wrap her arms around him and devour him. Every day it was the same. Instead she walked over to him, smiled up into his eyes, and took his hand in hers.

B
Y THE TIME THEY REACHED THE STREET IN WHICH HIS apartment lay, the sky had taken on a muted lilac haze that turned the buildings into dainty dollhouses. Jens had his arm around her shoulders and spoke little, needing to save his breath for walking, so she was entertaining him with a story of how
Medsestra
Gordanskaya and Nurse Darya had almost come to blows over the loss of a doctor’s stethoscope, each blaming the other till the air in the sluice room was thick with swear words and Gordanskaya’s grand bosom was threatening to pop the buttons of her uniform.

He chuckled, but abruptly she felt his body go rigid. She sensed the laughter draining out of him into the gutter and something darker sliding into its place as he tightened his grip on her shoulder. She followed his gaze and saw a smart carriage with a gilded family crest and liveried servants parked outside his house.

“Whose is it?” she asked, already certain of the answer.

“It’s Countess Serova’s.” He halted his step and looked down at Valentina, his eyes intent on her face. “I’ll tell her to leave at once.”

“Why would she come?” she asked.

“Alexei might be ill.”

Valentina felt a shiver flick up her spine. Countess Natalia Serova was clever. She was more than capable of using her son if she had to. The carriage and the hallway were empty, so Jens started up the stairs two at a time but halfway up he stalled, one hand pressed against his chest as he fought to drag in air. Instantly Valentina was with him, taking his weight on her shoulder. Her arms encircled his waist, and in the icy silence inside her head she cursed the countess.