The silence in the lofty dining room was oppressive—part of the heavy mantle of apprehension and gloom that cloaked the entire mansion. Sophie sat at her place at the massive, elaborately carved mahogany table, a footman behind her chair. There were three place settings, and behind each chair stood a powdered footman. The butler, a napkin draped over one arm, was poised at attention, ready at the door, his eyes darting anxiously from the table to the footmen to the clock, which showed the second hand approaching the hour of two o’clock.
Precisely at two o’clock, the sharp click of boots on the tiled floor of the hall was heard. Sophie’s stomach tightened involuntarily in the now-familiar reaction to the approach of her husband.
Prince Paul Dmitriev strode into the dining room. His gaze swept the room in close examination, and the butler trembled. However, it seemed that the prince found nothing out of order. He walked to his place at the head of the table.
“Good afternoon, Sophia.” He took the carved armchair pulled out for him by the footman, who settled a heavy, cream-colored linen napkin on the master’s lap.
“Good afternoon, Paul.”
Sophie sometimes thought she was losing the power of speech, she spoke to so few people these days, sweltering in the hot dimness of this city palace. All of St. Petersburg society had left for their summer palaces along the Gulf of Finland—all but the Dmitrievs. The prince had said he preferred to spend the summer in seclusion with his bride. The time he spent with her, however, was limited to the hour at the dinner table and the nightly visits he made to her bedchamber, where, with the conscientiousness he brought to all necessary activities, be they pleasurable or no, he set about the task of fathering his heir.
“I had understood that Count Danilevski would be joining us for dinner,” she said, taking a tiny sip of wine, praying he could not detect in her voice the great black wave of disappointment washing over her at the aide-de-camp’s absence.
“I imagine he was delayed,” Paul said indifferently. “There were some important regimental matters to be attended to this morning.”
“I see.” Silence fell again, broken only by the buzz of a fly, the soft-shoe whisper of a servant moving about the room, the tiny scrape of cutlery on china, the murmur of pouring wine.
Paul observed his young wife in covert satisfaction. The last two months had wrought some considerable transformation. No longer did she meet his eye with that bold, glowing gaze of fearless candor; no longer did she stride around the house with restless energy and vigor. No, she moved slowly, keeping in the shadows almost, her eyes lowered. She spoke in hesitant murmurs, then only to respond if he chose to make some remark to her, or to beg him for some small favor that in general he refused, surprising her just occasionally by granting it. It had not been as difficult as he had feared to achieve this docility, although it had taken longer than it had with his previous wives. But then they had been bred from a more conventional mold and were half-broken by the time they had come to him.
He had not been entirely successful with Anna Kyrilovna, of course, the prince mused, twirling the stem of his wineglass between his fingers. She had become quite impossible with her endless tears, her silent reproaches. In the end he had had to have her cloistered. Had she not been barren, of course, he might have been able to endure her.
He looked at Sophia Alexeyevna again. He did not think this one would suffer a nervous collapse, for all that she had lost her previous ebullience, the self-confidence of one secure in her place in the world. By the time society returned to the city in a week or two, he would feel confident in permitting her to attend court occasionally, to participate a little in the round of social visiting. His training was secure enough now to withstand exposure to the outside world.
The sound of voices from the hall shattered the brooding silence of the dining room. Sophie kept her eyes on her plate, even as her heart leaped in her breast, and her fingers trembled.
“My apologies, General.” Count Danilevski stood in the doorway. He saluted his general, then bowed to Sophie. “Princess, pray excuse my tardiness. I was obliged to wait for the arrival of a dispatch from Moscow.”
“Do not apologize, Count,” Sophie said, raising her eyes to look at him for the first time since he had come in. Her face was expressionless, her smile purely perfunctory. “Please join us.” She gestured to the third place.
Adam sat down. He knew the effort it was costing Sophie to maintain that cool indifference because he was paying the same price. But if Dmitriev were to catch the faintest inkling of the powerful current flowing between his wife and his aide-de-camp it would be catastrophic for Sophie.
She had lapsed into submissive silence again, while the general questioned his aide-de-camp about matters that the husband would not expect to interest his wife. But Adam was aware that the meek posture, the lowered eyes, the mute respect concealed a volcano of rage and rebellion. What it would take for that volcano to erupt, Adam did not know.
Sophie did not know, either. She only knew that protest, complaint, even tears would meet with cold reprisals. When Paul had told her in the second week of their marriage that he was sending Tanya Feodorovna to his estates in the country because she was not suitably trained as a lady’s maid, Sophie had exploded in outrage, violently protesting that he had no right to dispose of her serfs. He had demonstrated her powerlessness by showing her how it was possible for a husband to assume whatever rights he chose. Tanya Feodorovna had disappeared overnight, to be replaced by a dour, silent woman who watched her mistress with sharp little eyes, who listened with ears pricked, and who, Sophie knew, reported every detail of her mistress’s behavior to the prince.
She had wept with anger when her protests met only the blank wall of callous indifference, and the prince had sent for the physician. They had forced laudanum down her throat for her “excitation of the nerves,” and for a week she had been kept in a state of semisedation. She had learned the lesson well, now playing the part her husband would have her play, while she waited. For the moment, in virtual imprisonment in this gloomy mansion in the deserted city, she had no redress. But at some point, this enforced seclusion would come to an end. When the court returned from the country her husband could not continue to keep her away from human contact. Until then, she would continue to draw her lifeblood from the times she was in Adam Danilevski’s presence.
Even when she dared not look at him, when not a word beyond the formalities passed between them, she was infused with his strength and spirit. It had been so from the first time he had entered this mansion to greet her as his general’s wife. One all-encompassing look had seemed to tell him every detail of the unforeseen ordeals that had left her fearful, disillusioned sometimes to the point of desperation as she searched for some indication that this present reality was only a temporary condition, that there was some possibility of escape, of relief, of change. The unexpectedness of her husband’s behavior, the complete switch in his personality, once he had her secure under his roof, had shattered her composure more effectively than the subtle cruelty itself.
What she did not know was that Adam, who could have prepared her, saw himself as culpable. As she thrashed blindly in the morass of bewilderment and frustration, seeking a reason why her husband should want as his wife a person other than the one she was, the count was consumed with compassion, with the overpowering need to help and support her. Whenever she was in his company, Sophie felt the unspoken power of this need, and drew from it the strength to hold on to herself, to conceal her rage under the required meek demeanor, to control the urge to rebel. For as long as her husband believed he had the upper hand and she knew he had not, then she was still whole. Somehow, she knew that Adam saw this, and was willing her to stay strong.
Prince Paul did not consider it necessary to include his aide-de-camp in the proscription on society requisite to this training of his wife. The colonel was simply a soldier, a senior member of Dmitriev’s regiment, whose duties involved his frequent visits to the Dmitriev palace. If the count happened to meet Princess Dmitrievna on one of these business calls, it was a matter of indifference to the general. There was nothing social in the visits, and even dining together as they were now doing was simply an occasion for the discussion of regimental matters. The princess was as excluded as if she had not been in the room. The prince did not know that as she sat, ignored in her silence, she was more vibrantly alive than ever. He did not know that the count was aware of her every move, however infinitesimal, was aware of every breath she took.
The meal came to an end. Sophie, following old Russian custom, curtsied to her husband as the head of the family, thanking him for her dinner. It was yet another example of the protocol to which the general/prince was addicted. Every aspect of life in the Dmitriev household was regulated by protocol. Failure to adhere to the rules brought instant punishment, and rarely a day passed without screams shrilling from the courtyard at the back of the palace as a serf suffered beneath the cane or the knout. Sophie had learned to close her ears. She was powerless to intervene, as the servants all knew. The household ran without her supervision, in an atmosphere of dread and mistrust. It was an atmosphere that accompanied General, Prince Paul Dmitriev wherever he held sway.
Now he nodded with the appearance of approval as his wife duly performed the ritual. Emboldened, although without much hope of success, Sophie asked if she might go for a ride that afternoon.
The prince frowned but spoke with apparent solicitude. “I do not wish you to run any risks, my dear. It is far too hot, and I am afraid you will get the headache. No, you must rest quietly in the shade.”
Sophie knew why she was not to run any risks. Her husband lived in the continual hope that she had conceived. Her failure to do so, so far, meant increased restrictions on her physical activities; implicit in these restraints lay the paradoxical message that should she become pregnant, much more freedom would be permitted. As if, Sophie thought bitterly, she had any control over the matter. Her husband was certainly doing his part, and if passive submission was all that was required of the female in these affairs, then his wife was doing hers.
She was too accustomed to disappointment these days, and too adept at hiding her feelings from her husband to allow him the satisfaction of seeing so much as a revealing flicker enliven her bland expression. “I am sure you know best, Paul.” The tone was as neutral as her expression. “If you would excuse me…Count.” Another little curtsy in the vague direction of the count, and she left the dining room.
As she brushed past him, Adam caught her scent, felt her vibrant warmth, and the urge to take hold of her stunned him with its power. But he was helpless—as helpless to ease her lot, except with his mute understanding and support, as he was to fulfill the need to hold her, to feel again those lips opening sweetly beneath his. She was another man’s wife, and he would not do to another, however much he despised that other, what had been done to him. Sometimes he thought that if he could avoid seeing her he would do so, but he knew that even though he could not help her practically, he had to know what was happening with her.
Dmitriev caused her no crude physical injury, except insofar as the enforced inactivity, the confinement within the house would hurt such an active individual for whom the freedom of the Wild Lands had been necessary for happiness and the soul’s peace. No, the injuries were to the spirit, a subtle erosion of the person she had been, the fragmenting of her integrity so that she would cease to believe in herself. He had seen his general use similar tactics within the regiment when he identified a square peg. The nonconformist would be humiliated, derided, deprived of the things that gave meaning to himself and what he considered his place in the world. When he had lost those self-defining factors, had lost his self-respect, then he could be rounded to fit the hole in the general’s pegboard.
Adam knew that he had to prevent that from happening to Sophie, and he sensed that she drew strength from his presence, for all that they barely exchanged two words most of the time; so he continued to expose himself to the torment of her company, to the abysmal frustrations of helplessness and deprivation. Once the court returned to St. Petersburg, Dmitriev would have to widen the bars somewhat. She would be expected to take her place in society, and her failure to appear would draw remark. If she could hold out until then, survive this diabolical honeymoon, matters would have to ease for her, and he could cease this self-martyrdom, request a mission outside St. Petersburg, return to the self hardened by disillusion, retreat into his carapace again, become whole again. So Adam told himself, struggling to believe it, as he watched her and tried to guess how close she was to breaking.
“I will go to the barracks and see to this matter myself,” the prince was saying, unnoticing of his colonel’s preoccupation. “There has clearly been an error in the dispatch.” He marched into the hall, calling for his sword, hat, and cane. “Would you, Colonel, go through the copies of the dispatches sent to Moscow last month? You will find them in the bureau in my study. I must ensure that the error did not originate with us.”
Adam wondered if he had heard aright. The general was going to leave him in the house with Sophia Alexeyevna. But then Dmitriev believed his colonel to be an embittered misogynist, in addition, of course, to being a loyal officer of the Imperial Guard whose only interest could be in regimental affairs; in short, one quite safe to be permitted under the same roof as a cowed wife. “As you command, sir.” He offered a smart salute, waiting until the general had left the house before turning toward the stairs leading to Dmitriev’s study on the second floor.
The door to a small parlor stood open, inviting his questing eyes. She was standing at the window, looking out, her appearance as forlorn and despairing as that of a caged bird. He stepped into the parlor, unable to help himself.
Sophie did not know how she knew it was Adam, but she had no need to turn to identify her companion. “I am dying,” she said dully. “Inch by inch, minute by minute—”
“Do not talk such maudlin nonsense!” The lowness of his voice in no way detracted from the fierceness of his tone. He closed the door. “What would your grandfather say to hear you talk such defeatist rubbish?”
“Then I shall kill him,” she said simply. “Only he has taken away my pistol.” Her shoulders sagged again. “I cannot abide knives; I never have been able to.”
Adam covered the distance between them in two long strides. Catching her by the shoulders, he spun her to face him. To touch her after so many weeks of holding himself away from her with a restraint that clenched his muscles, knotted his belly, was like laying hands upon the Holy Grail. The pale oval of her face was upturned, no longer brown with health, the dark eyes seeming larger than ever in its wan thinness, but as he stared into them, a shadow of the former glow shimmered in their depths. Her lips parted. Was it in invitation or surprise?
It was a question of supreme irrelevance, he found, as he kissed her, felt her shudder against him as she had done before, sensed the hunger that matched his own. And this time, augmenting the hunger, was a fierce desperation, a shared desperation. Then she was fighting against the arms that held her, the mouth that caressed her. He drew back and read the fear in her eyes.
“No…no,” she gasped, pulling away from him, one hand pressed to her warmed, tingling lips, her eyes darting in panic around the room as if in search of a spy. “If we are discovered…”
“Your husband would kill me,” Adam said with a calm that surprised him. “If I did not kill him first.” That look of abject terror upon her face filled him with an icy rage greater than any he had ever felt. “He has gone to the barracks, Sophie.”
“Yes, but Maria…” Again her gaze swept the room, fell upon the closed door.
“Maria?” He frowned, taking her hands. They quivered, cold despite the warmth of the late September day.
“When he sent away Tanya Feodorovna,” she explained, “Maria came in her stead. She is a spy.” It was a flat statement. “Everything I do or say is reported to Paul.” She took her hands out of his. “It is no secret. I am supposed to know of it. Paul repeats things to me at night, when…when he comes to my room.” She wrapped her arms around herself, facing him with a small, bleak smile. “He is a frequent visitor.”
She was another man’s wife. His mind filled with the distasteful images conjured by her statement. Adam drew away, burned by the unpalatable truth that he was honor bound to respect. How a man chose to manage his wife was no one else’s concern. He was her lord, under God and the laws of the land, and he could make whatever dispositions he thought necessary or convenient. Yet, even as he recognized these truths, Adam could not accept their implications, not when applied to Sophia Alexeyevna.
“I will see if I cannot contrive for you to ride Khan,” he said, moving swiftly to the door, his step agitated, rapid as if he could not get away from her fast enough. “I will do what I can.” Then he was gone.
Sophie stood by the window. The imprint of his lips upon hers, of his arms around her, maintained the impact of reality. Yet, true reality was composed of other lips and arms. Not that her husband ever kissed her; the softness of caresses was no part of the reproductive act, although she assumed he was fulfilling some other need while he tried to father a child upon her body. The coupling certainly seemed to give him some strange pleasure, and it always brought that gleam of satisfaction to his pale eyes as he looked at her, lying beneath him, spread to receive the assault of his manhood. But somehow she felt that it was not herself he was seeing in her subjection. Curiously, this feeling made it easier to bear, made it easier to separate herself from her body until he left her, returning to his own chamber without a word or a touch.
The contrast between a gray-eyed Polish count with a beautiful mouth that could give such exquisite pleasure, and the cold disdain, hard pale eyes, and thin lips of the man to whom she was wedded made the present even harder to endure. What could have been if fate had taken a different turn was as hopelessly unattainable as a return to the past, when a young woman had ridden the steppes without a care, secure and strong in her own world.
Sophie turned to the door. She could at least visit Khan, even if she was not permitted to ride him. Her husband had not forbidden her to visit the stables. And in the company of Boris Mikhailov she could gain some comfort, although, after the removal of Tanya, they were both careful not to be seen in conclave.
It was a week before Adam was able to fulfill his promise to arrange for Sophie to ride Khan. In the planning and execution of an elaborate deception, he found the pleasure of action overcoming the torments of his helplessness. It was not much he was doing for her, yet it would give her inordinate joy. He had to arrange for the absence of the prince, a stable yard deserted of all but Boris Mikhailov, and some way of getting a message to Sophie, explaining his plan.
As it happened, fortune intervened to ease matters for him. A messenger arrived from Czarskoye Selo, the empress’s summer palace outside St. Petersburg, requesting information on the present disposition of the Preobrazhensky regiment. It took little persuasion from his colonel for the general to agree that he should answer the imperial summons in person. All Adam had to do was ensure that the general was obliged to stay at Czarskoye Selo overnight. Sophie could then ride before dawn, before the household was up and about, and be back in her chamber with no one except Boris any the wiser.
Alerting Boris was a simple enough matter. The muzhik, as befitted his previous privileged position with the Golitskov family, was as literate as he was intelligent. He did not blink an eye when the count, riding into the Dmitriev stable yard one afternoon, slipped a folded piece of paper into his palm as he gave his horse into Boris’s charge.
Adam strode into the mansion with the attitude of one on an important errand. He asked for the general, although he was well aware that Dmitriev was attending a brigade review. “Then, perhaps I might beg the favor of a word with Princess Dmitrievna,” he said, when informed of the prince’s absence. “She could convey my message to the prince. It is of some importance, as it relates to his journey tomorrow.”
It was quite clear from the butler’s expression that he was uncertain how to respond. The princess did not receive visitors; it was an unspoken rule. Yet Count Danilevski was not an ordinary visitor. He was the prince’s aide-de-camp, frequently in the house, and frequently in her presence, although always in her husband’s company.
“I am not sure where the princess is, Count,” he said hesitantly. “Perhaps I could convey your message to His Highness?”
Adam had been afraid of this, knowing that he could not insist upon seeing Sophie if she was not there by chance. He was about to accept defeat and give his fictitious message to the butler when his quarry came into the hall.
“Count Danilevski,” she said on just the right note of surprise and indifference. “My husband is not here, I am afraid.”
“No, your butler was just telling me so. I have a message for him. Perhaps you would be good enough to convey it for me.” He held out his hand in polite greeting.
Sophie curtsied, took his hand, felt the crumpled ball of paper against her palm. There was not so much as a flicker in her eyes as her fingers closed over the ball, her hand dropped to her side. “What is your message, Count?”
“Why simply that the papers he wishes to take to Her Imperial Majesty tomorrow morning have had to be recopied. However, even if the clerks must work all night, they will be ready for him when he comes to the barracks in the morning.”
A somewhat unnecessary message, Sophie thought, but it did not seem to strike the butler as such. He still stood sentinel in the hall. “Nikolai, you will ensure that His Highness receives the message,” she said with studied indifference. “Good day to you, Count.” A polite smile touched her lips before she turned, walking slowly toward the stairs.
Adam remembered that long-legged stride, the way her skirts swished around her ankles, the crispness of her step, and he contemplated the slow death of General, Prince Paul Dmitriev.
In the privacy of her chamber, Sophie uncrumpled the scrap of paper. Your husband will not return from Czarskoye Selo tomorrow. If you wish to ride, Khan will be saddled and waiting for you two hours before dawn on the following day. Ride to the north gate of the city. I will meet you outside the gate.
How did he know Paul would not return the next evening, as was his declared intention? But that did not matter. Her heart lifted in her breast, the blood began to dance through her veins, bringing warmth and a resurgence of the quickness of life. She had not ridden Khan for two months. On the very few occasions she had been permitted to ride, it had been in her husband’s company, sidesaddle on a mild-mannered mare. Boris told her that he had been instructed to exercise the stallion regularly on a leading rein, and to give him the best of care. It was the muzhik’s somewhat caustic opinion that the prince knew a fine and valuable animal when he saw one, but hadn’t yet decided how best to capitalize on this unusual beast.
But now she was going to ride Khan…ride like the wind through the night freshness, through the false dawn, see the sun rise…. And she was going to share this ecstasy with Adam Danilevski. To be raised from the despondent depths of hopeless acceptance to such dizzying heights filled her with a joy so powerful that she felt almost sick with it.
Joy notwithstanding, she still kept her head, ripping the message into tiny shreds until it resembled confetti. When Maria came into the chamber to help her mistress dress for supper, the maid saw only the neutral expression to which she was accustomed, heard only the flat, resigned tones of a prisoner who has given up all hope of regaining her freedom.
When the prince left her bed that night, he told her that he would depart at dawn and would return in the evening. “You need not wait supper for me,” he said, retying the girdle of his robe. “If I am unable to leave Czarskoye Selo until late in the afternoon, I will not return before ten o’clock. But I will come to you when I have supped.”
“I look forward to it,” Sophie heard herself whisper, insolently sardonic. She froze, praying he had not heard her.
“I beg your pardon, Sophia?” her husband said, frowning.
“I wish you a safe journey, Paul,” she said, closing her eyes, lest he should see the gleam she knew they contained.
“You will remain within doors during my absence,” he told her crisply. “I do not wish to be anxious for your safety, my dear, and will only be easy in my mind knowing that you are protected by my people.” A thin smile touched his lips as he offered this considerate order for imprisonment. Protection meant surveillance, as Sophie well knew, but never did her husband acknowledge the true facts of her existence. Every restraint was presented as an indication of his care for her. He had to be the most caring and considerate husband in St. Petersburg, Sophie reflected ironically as the door closed on his departure. She was quite sure that that was how his constant watchfulness would be interpreted by others once he considered her sufficiently submissive to be permitted to venture forth into society.
Gingerly, she got off the bed, going to the ewer for the cool water that would ease her soreness—the inevitable aftermath of these nightly rapes upon an unprepared and unaroused body. At least tomorrow night she would sleep alone, if Adam kept his promise, and then…She hugged herself with fierce joy as she looked upon the prospect of such a ride in the exclusive company of Adam Danilevski, away from all eyes.
When General, Prince Dmitriev arrived the following morning at Preobrazhenskoye, the regiment’s barracks, it was to be met with chaos. A fire had started in a wastepaper basket in one of the offices. It had been discovered before it had got out of hand, but there had to be an investigation, an examination to see which documents had been destroyed, an exhaustive search for the careless culprit. The general was obliged to set these matters in train before leaving for Czarskoye Selo. His aide-de-camp could have seen to these things himself, but as that aide-de-camp knew well, when it came to issues of discipline the general preferred to deal with them personally.
The culprit would elude discovery, since no one would suspect Count Danilevski of firesetting, but the regiment trembled as the general set off some four hours later than he had intended, promising with customary cold ferocity that the one responsible would pass six times beneath the rods of a hundred of his comrades.
Fervently trusting that a flayed back was not in his stars, Adam continued conducting the pointless investigation started by his general, and reckoned that Dmitriev could not reach his destination until mid-afternoon, even if he did not stop for dinner. His audience with Her Imperial Majesty would be of several hours’ duration, then he would have to eat. It would be well past nightfall before he could start for home. He would not bother; there would be no point in exhausting himself and his escort, when they could leave first thing in the morning, after a night’s rest. And by the time he returned, Princess Dmitrievna would be safely back in the house with just a little hope in her heart.
Sophie barely closed her eyes all night. Terrified that every sound heralded the return of her husband, she tossed and turned amidst the fiery tangle of sheets until the clock struck three. All her Berkholzskoye clothes, which she had kept as reminders of the past, although they were hopelessly unfashionable and could not possibly be worn in St. Petersburg society, had been burned at her husband’s orders. But she had managed to preserve her riding habit from the grasping clutches of Maria. It was bundled at the back of the garderobe. Now she put it on, feeling as if she was putting on her own familiar self again as the divided skirt freed her stride.
The house was silent, corridors dimly lit by occasional candles set in wall sconces. The night watchman would be dozing in the kitchen, Sophie knew. He made his rounds on the half hour, but hopefully he would not notice that the window in the dining room was not properly fastened. Her heart beat uncomfortably fast as she slipped down the stairs, into the dark dining room. The window opened with the smooth ease to be expected in Prince Dmitriev’s well-run household. She swung herself onto the sill, remembering with a stab of nostalgia that other window, on another flight, in another life…. That flight had brought her into the arms of Adam Danilevski.
And this one…? Not a permissible train of thought. Sophie dropped to the soft earth of the flower bed, reaching up to pull the casement closed behind her. It lay snug against the frame and would pass casual scrutiny, although a touch of the finger would swing it open again. Keeping to the shadows, she hurried to the stable yard, which at first glance appeared deserted, as would be expected at that time of the night. Then the gigantic bulk of Boris Mikhailov emerged from the shadows, Khan stepping at his side.
Sophie ran to her horse, whispering to him, before flinging her arms around the quietly smiling muzhik, hugging him tightly. “I will be back before sunrise.”
“Have a care. He’s not had a saddle on him for two months,” was the only response from Boris, although the gruffness of his tone was belied by the softness in his eyes.
“Do I not know it, Boris?” said Sophie bitterly. But now was not the time for bitterness, and she put it from her. Gently, she talked to Khan as she took the reins, lifting one foot into the stirrup. The great beast raised his head, snorting at the tug on the saddle, but when her voice continued in soft reassurance he became still. Nimbly, she sprang upward, landing lightly in the saddle. Khan quivered, then at the flick of the rein took off out of the yard as if feeling his freedom as vividly as did his mistress.
The nighttime city streets were deserted, and there was no one to witness the exultant charging progress of a magnificent Cossack stallion and his long-haired rider. The guards at the north gate, in the absence of orders to halt anyone passing through, merely looked in sleepy surprise as Khan galloped by, so fast they could almost have imagined his passing.
About a mile along the dusty, winding road stood a break of poplar trees. In their shadow, astride his own mount, was Adam Danilevski. Watching her coming toward him, he could feel the vitality emanating from the erect figure, her hair streaming in the wind. It was a vitality that he hadn’t seen since he’d delivered up his charge to the czarina, and its resurgence under his contriving brought him an immense satisfaction.
“Is it not wonderful?” She drew rein beside him, the dark eyes glowing in the milky starlight, her crooked smile wide with pleasure. “I cannot thank you enough, Adam.”
“You already have,” he said quietly.
“How so?” Her head tilted to one side. The smile became more quizzical.
“Just by your presence and your pleasure,” he heard himself say. “You see, I love you.” How slowly were the words of truth dragged from him. Yet he felt a great peace with this final acknowledgment of a fact that he had been trying to deny for longer than he could imagine. The force of his compassion, his overwhelming need to protect and arm her, they were drawn from the well of love, not remorse.
A perceptible quiver shook the slender frame. Her smile faltered, her eyes darkened. “Do not say such a thing,” she said in stifled tones. “It can do no good for either of us, and can only increase unhappiness.”
“It is the same for you, too?” Despite her plea, he could not help persisting.
There was a long silence. Sophie looked out across the plain bathed in the false radiance of the Nordic night. She saw years stretching ahead of her, a barren eternity of imprisonment under a cold, vengeful tyranny. It was a lot shared by the majority of the empress’s twenty million subjects. What right had she to protest? She was not starved, tortured, beaten like many of those others. She was just shriveling away in the arid presence of the ungiving.
“Yes, I love you,” Sophie said. Admitting the truth could not worsen the situation, and, indeed, she too discovered that the admission brought a measure of peace. “But what difference does it make?” She looked across at him, her eyes shadowed with the knowledge of futility. “Let us ride.” On the words, Khan sprang forward, out onto the plain.
Adam followed, knowing that the purpose of this ride was not social. She would not wait for him, not yet at least. He was content to have it so. Had he not arranged this escape in order for her to do just what she was doing? And in the solitude of his own thoughts, he could savor a shared love, for all that it was an impossible one.
It was half an hour before Sophie drew rein, slowing Khan to a trot, then to a walk. The hooves of Adam’s horse pounded the plain behind her; she turned to look over her shoulder as he came up beside her. “Do you think I could ride Khan from here to Austria?”
Adam stared at her, as if trying to determine whether she was serious. He decided that she was more than half so. “No, of course you could not. Not unless you wish for rape and murder at the hands of brigands. Do not talk nonsense, Sophie.” The impatience in his voice was feigned, but he could not let her see his own frustrated grief at a wretchedness that could produce such a desperate suggestion.
Sophie did not say that at least it would be a relatively quick end. She did not know how she could endure returning to the prison of her home after this heady taste of freedom, but without Adam’s prompting, she turned Khan back the way they had come. The subject of love was not touched upon again. The fact lay open between them, the impossibility of its fulfillment as inexorable as death.
At the break of poplars, they halted. “I want to touch you,” Adam said softly, “but I dare not.”
Sophie looked at him in bleak acceptance. “No, I do not think I could bear it, either.”
“Go!” he ordered, shockingly abrupt. “It will soon be sunrise.”
She hesitated. “Adam…”
“Go!”
Without another word, Sophie left him beneath the poplars and galloped back toward the north gate of the city.
The stars were fading as she clattered into the stable yard of the Dmitriev palace. In the middle of that yard, his cane beneath his arm, his back erect, pale blue eyes as polished as diamond chips, stood General, Prince Paul Dmitriev.