“Disappeared! What the devil do you mean, Boris Mikhailov has disappeared?” Prince Dmitriev brought his cane down in a vicious swipe across the top of his desk, although his voice did not rise above a normal pitch.
The head groom trembled, flinching, knowing that his shoulders could well be the next target. “Sometime in the night, lord,” he stammered. “It must have been…when he went.”
“It is now the middle of the afternoon,” announced the prince with deadly calm. “How is it that no one has noticed his absence until now?”
“Your pardon, lord, but he keeps to himself, that one, and since that great horse was sold he’s kept apart even more. Just goes about his business. You don’t notice he’s there most of the time.” The man subsided, miserably aware of the inadequacy of his explanation.
“You realize that he has had perhaps a twelve-hour start, don’t you?” inquired the prince pleasantly, caressing the smooth oak of the heavy cane.
The groom swallowed, taking a step backward. “Yes, lord.”
“Then I suggest you find him and bring him back.” The prince smiled his meagre smile. “By tomorrow morning. If you fail, then you shall pay his penalty for him—the penalty of a runaway serf.” The smile stretched thinner. “You understand me?”
“Yes, lord.” The groom backed to the door, bowing until his nose reached his knees.
“Take six of your strongest fellows with you,” the prince instructed. “He’s to be brought back in chains.”
The door closed on the still-bowing groom. Dmitriev slammed the cane across the desk again. Did Sophia Alexeyevna know of this? In principle, Boris Mikhailov belonged to her, although in practice, as they would both discover to their cost, he belonged to Dmitriev, the man under whose roof he slept, whose food he ate, whose tasks he performed. The muzhik would be trying to return to Berkholzskoye; it was the only rational destination. He would seek he protection of Golitskov, and it would not be denied him because in theory he was still Golitskov property.
He had to be found and brought back to suffer publicly the fate of a runaway. Were such a flight to succeed, there was no knowing what precedents it might set. Dmitriev was well aware that he ruled his vast households with the scourge of terror. For such a rule to remain impregnable, there must be no perceived cracks in the system; one successful uprising, however insignificant, could lead to wholesale mutiny.
Cold fury filled him. Was this flight made with the connivance of Sophia Alexeyevna? He had prevented her from writing to her grandfather in the last two months by the simple expedient of failing to provide the means by which a letter could be carried. The two letters she had received from Golitskov were locked in her husband’s bureau, unopened, and she had given up asking if the carriers had brought anything for her. But had she decided to provide her own messenger? What would she have said? Not that it mattered. Her grandfather had no jurisdiction, no possible right to come between a man and his wife. But Prince Paul Dmitriev did not like his affairs made public.
Leaving his study, he went to his wife’s apartments. She was dressing for a reception at the palace, the czarina having returned from the country some three days earlier. Sophia Alexeyevna had been bidden to attend at court this afternoon, and even had he wished to do so, her husband could not refuse the invitation for her. Purely social invitations he could oblige her to accept or refuse as whim took him, but an imperial summons must be obeyed.
Sophie’s surprise at this unexpected visit showed for a moment on her face, then disappeared as she smiled. “Do you accompany me to the palace, Paul?”
The cold blue eyes skimmed her expression. “But of course, my dear. You would not imagine that I would expect you to go without a husband’s escort.”
“No, of course not,” murmured Sophie, bending her head slightly as Maria fastened the clasp of an emerald pendant.
“I do not think you should wear the emeralds with that gown, Sophia.” His fingers hovered over the contents of the gem casket on her dressing table. “Something a little less flamboyant, I think.” He selected a string of pearls. “Allow me.” With his usual flat smile, he unfastened the emeralds.
Sophie’s skin crept at the brush of his fingers, even as she wondered what lay behind these unusual attentions. She knew that her sole possession of the Golitskov gems infuriated him, but it was one thing he could do nothing about, although he could prevent her from wearing the emeralds if he chose; that did not matter to her in the least. But what was he doing here? He only ever came into this chamber at night, and he left it the minute he had done what he came to do.
“I have just been informed that the muzhik who accompanied you from Berkholzskoye has disappeared,” he said now, casually, as he fastened the pearls around her neck, his eyes examining her reflection in the mirror. There was not a flicker of an eyelid, not a quiver of a muscle to betray her—if, indeed, she had anything to betray. He waited for her response with a politely interested expression.
Sophie shrugged, raising one hand to adjust the tortoiseshell comb in her hair. “His only task was to care for Khan.” Her eyes met her husband’s in the mirror. “I expect he felt he was no longer needed.” Behind the mask of indifference her mind was racing. It had been a week since she had given Boris the letter, and she had been waiting in ever-growing impatience to hear that he had made his escape. He would have planned it with meticulous care, she knew; but the knowledge could not mitigate the dreadful anxiety for his safety, now that the waiting was over.
His hands slipped to her shoulders, rising in soft ivory from the low neck of her gown. Fingers curled like spines as he continued to smile at her in the mirror. “My dear wife, it is not for a serf to decide where and when he is needed. He will be brought back. And when he is, he will suffer the punishment of a runaway.” Did he imagine that minute tremor in the skin beneath his fingers?
Make no response, Sophie told herself. There was no reason to suppose they would catch Boris, and she must show only the most casual interest in the affair. Were her hands trembling? She smoothed down the skirt of her turquoise taffeta gown, lowering her head as if to concentrate on the task. When would he take his hands from her creeping flesh?
“If you are to accompany me, Paul, had you not better change your dress?” It was unusual for her to make such a definite statement, but she could think of nothing else to do. To her relief, he appeared to show no surprise at such directness.
“Yes, you are right, my dear. We should leave within the half hour.” He went to the door. “I will join you in the drawing room at half past four.”
The door closed on his departure, but still Sophie must maintain the impassive front before the spy, Maria, who had become both more vigilant and increasingly hostile since her whipping. Sophie could hardly blame the woman, but now, when she wanted to pace the bedchamber, giving vent to the agony of apprehension for Boris, and for herself, she must dab perfume behind her ears, flutter her handkerchief, check the contents of her reticule. At least, at a thronged court reception she could perhaps let her guard relax just a little. Paul could not watch her constantly. She would be able to talk naturally, to laugh, even to dance; and in these ordinary activities she would find momentary surcease from this overpowering apprehension.
Maybe Adam would be there…maybe he would dance with her. It would not look strange for him to do so, quite the reverse. And during the dance, words could be exchanged without audience. She rose from the dresser stool. “Thank you, Maria.” Her voice was cool, distant. “I do not know how late we shall be, but you will wait up for me.” With that slight, but satisfactory exertion of authority, Sophie swept from the room. Maria would wait up for her anyway, just as she would sleep across the door to the corridor, but it still gave Sophie the illusion of control.
All evening, she was on the watch for the tall, lean figure, immaculate in dress uniform, for the deep gray eyes that would rest upon her for a second of warmth and complicity. Her ears strained through the chatter, through the melodious plucking of strings, to identify the light tones, carrying just the faintest hint of accent, yet it was so faint one could hardly call it an accent. It was more of an intonation, more noticeable when he spoke Russian than French. But then, of course, French was the language of the aristocracy in Poland as well as Russia, so he would not have had to learn that language when he had been transplanted to St. Petersburg all those years ago.
These irrelevancies flitted in and out of her head throughout the evening, yet they were not really irrelevancies, because they related to one of the two subjects that absorbed her, body and soul. In Adam’s presence, some of her anxiety about Boris would be relieved simply by sharing it.
But he did not come to the Winter Palace that day.
The czarina greeted her former protégée kindly, but the sharp eyes noted the absence of the previous glow and vibrancy. The early days of marriage were a cross all young women had to bear, Catherine reflected. Perhaps the princess was pregnant. That would account for the slight listlessness, the pallor. Her husband, on the contrary, appeared mightily pleased, and kept a most flatteringly close and uxorious eye on his bride. If she were carrying his long-awaited heir, it would certainly explain such care and attention.
Catherine dismissed the question when she dismissed Sophia Alexeyevna with the instruction to enjoy herself amongst the friends she had made at court before her marriage. Before her instruction would be obeyed, however, Prince Dmitriev took his wife home.
Only Prince Potemkin, with the sensitivity drawn from his vast experience of women and their ways, was uneasy. There was something about the lowered eyes, the set of her head, that bespoke trouble. Potemkin knew General, Prince Paul Dmitriev better than did his empress. They were both soldiers, after all, and Dmitriev had served under Potemkin on more than one occasion. Potemkin did not care for Dmitriev’s style of command, any more than did Adam Danilevski, but like Adam he was obliged to recognize success. He stood staring with his one eye and scratching his chin; then he shrugged. When all was said and done, a man’s wife was his own. Sophia Alexeyevna had shown no reluctance for the marriage, and she had had time enough to become acquainted with her prospective bridegroom. No, it was probably the unfamiliarity of wedded bliss that had disturbed her…that and the heat. Whatever had possessed Dmitriev to keep her in St. Petersburg throughout the summer? Shaking his head, Potemkin went in search of vodka.
It was noon of the following day when the nightmare began. Sophie was in the mausoleum of the drawing room, made even darker by the rain scudding from a leaden sky beyond the windows, where, as in all St. Petersburg palaces, mica substituted for glass. She was seeking consolation and distraction from anxiety in her usual fashion. Her husband did not appear to find anything potentially subversive in reading and, indeed, ignored her pursuit of this leisure activity. She was now deeply absorbed in a volume of the letters of Madame de Sévigné when the sounds of disturbance came from the hall. Voices were raised—an unheard-of occurrence in this deadened house. The great front door slammed, footsteps scurried, clattering across the marble floors.
A cold sweat broke out on her forehead, trickled down her back; her hands began to shake uncontrollably; nausea rose in her throat. She knew what was happening even before her husband flung open the drawing room door and stood looking at her, silently, a mixture of rage and triumph in his eyes.
“I have managed to retrieve my property,” he said in his customary calm tones. “Unfortunately for him…although most fortunately for me…he met with some delay on the road so the pursuit was able to catch up with him without difficulty.” The thin lips flickered in a snake’s smile. “Come into the hall, my dear. Boris Mikhailov has something to return to you.”
Sophie wondered if her legs would bear her weight, if she would manage to swallow the nausea, or if she would collapse upon the rich Persian carpet, vomiting in helpless humiliation as the fear became uncontrollable. But strength came from somewhere. Slowly, tentatively, she rose from her chair. There was no point pretending she did not understand what had happened, that she knew nothing of the letter; and there was no point attempting to conceal her fear, even had she been able to do so. Her legs somehow obeyed the order to move. She walked past her husband, politely holding the door for her, into the hall.
Despite the leg irons and the manacles, Boris Mikhailov held his head high. His lip was swollen, crusted with dried blood. One eye was closed, purpling with a great bruise. His shirt was torn and bloodstained, drenched with the rain that dripped from his hair and beard.
“You have something that belongs to the princess, I understand, Boris Mikhailov,” came the silkily smooth tones of Prince Dmitriev. “Return it to her.”
Between his manacled hands, Boris grasped the letter. Now, painfully, he extended his hands toward her, holding out the paper. Moving as if through a blanket of fog, she stepped forward, unable to meet his eyes, which held a plea for forgiveness, as if the failure of his mission was entirely to be laid at his door. She took the paper, and for an instant her fingers closed over his.
“Perhaps you would read the letter to me, my dear wife,” requested the prince. “Just to refresh your memory.”
To be obliged to read aloud the catalog of hurts and mortifications to the one who had visited them upon her was a refinement of cruelty beyond belief, she thought distantly. “Have you not read it yourself already?” she heard herself say. Amazingly, her voice sounded quite steady.
“I would like to hear it from you,” he replied, looking at her with that snake smile, reminding her of one of those reptiles, which, having paralyzed its prey with venom, can take its time before delivering the final blow, enjoying the victim’s dreadful helplessness, the terror of anticipation.
Slowly, she unfolded the document, quietly began to read it in the hushed hall. She kept her voice as low as she could so that the men guarding Boris would not hear clearly, but the humiliation was still so great she did not know how she managed to endure it.
Adam Danilevski stood in the shadow of the staircase at the rear of the hall. Obeying an ordinary summons from his general, he had entered the house from the rear, having left his horse in the stable. The minute he walked into the building, a breathlessness in the atmosphere had told him that something more than ordinarily unpleasant was happening. Instinctively, he had rejected the escort of an overly nervous Nikolai and had made his way, almost stealthily, to the front of the house. Now he stood concealed in the overhang of the staircase, watching this ghastly scene unfold before his eyes. He could be of no service to Sophie or to Boris by showing himself, could only wait and listen.
Sophie finished reading. She folded the letter again. Blood smeared the back of the paper. Boris Mikhailov’s blood. That thought came from a great distance as she stood immobile before her husband, waiting for the next stage of the nightmare to be revealed.
“Chain him in the stables,” the prince now said, cool and dispassionate. “He may spend the afternoon in contemplation of the punishment for a runaway—fifty blows of the great knout.”
Violently, Sophie was jerked back from her distant plane. A man of Boris’s stature and strength could conceivably survive fifty blows of the ordinary knout, but no man could live through such torture from the great scourge. In essence, Boris Mikhailov had just received a sentence of “cruel” death. Paradoxically, a sentence of “simple” death by hanging or beheading was not permitted the master of serfs, but he could condemn to torture, and if it resulted in death then that was simply a misfortune.
“You cannot order such a thing!” she exclaimed, wringing her hands in horror. “Boris is my serf. He was in my service, obeying my instructions—”
“Then he and you must learn that only I give orders in this household, Sophia Alexeyevna. And the only serfs under my roof are mine.” Dmitriev brought his face very close to hers, so that she could feel his breath on her cheek, was impaled by the ferocious cruelty in his eyes, the invincible power of some hatred that she knew was directed at her, yet she knew not why.
“No…no, please, you must not.” She was begging now, slipping to her knees on the hard marble floor, heedless of shame. “The offense is mine, not Boris Mikhailov’s. It is upon my back your lash should fall—”
“My dear, you are not very clever.” Her husband interrupted her coldly, looking down at her as she knelt in front of him, the dark eyes imploring in her upturned face, deathly white. “Do you think I do not realize that you would heed your own punishment less than you would heed his, earned for you?” Contempt laced his voice. “Maybe this last lesson will teach you to understand what it means to be my wife. But believe me, Sophia Alexeyevna, if further lessons are required, you shall have them.” He gestured to the guards. “Take him away!” Turning his back on the still-kneeling figure, he marched for the stairs.
Adam kept himself hidden only with the exercise of supreme control. He wanted to run to her where she knelt, head bowed in defeat, skirts heaped around her, sunbright yellow, a shocking, incongruous burst of color in the rain-dark gloom of the hall. But Boris Mikhailov could not be saved if Adam’s presence at the scene were revealed. No one must know he had been a witness. Silently, agonizingly, he left her alone in her grief and despair, melting into the shadows as he slipped from the house by a side door.
He sauntered into the stable yard some ten minutes later, when he was sure sufficient time had elapsed for Boris to be chained and the excitement of his recapture had died down a little.
“Do you wish for your horse, lord?” A groom came running as the count entered the yard.
“No, I left something in the saddlebag,” Adam responded easily. “I would prefer to fetch it myself.” A note of sharpness in his voice, an eyebrow raised with a hint of derision, and he managed to convey the perfectly reasonable impression that he did not trust anyone in Dmitriev’s stables to meddle with his possessions. The man bowed, returning to the tack room.
Adam went into the long, low stable block. The rain beat down upon the roof, which had sprung several leaks so that water splattered noisily into iron buckets set beneath the holes. The floor was wet beneath his feet, the straw soggy, and the stables’ occupants hung their heads in the resigned patience of their kind. Boris Mikhailov was in the last stall, an iron collar around his neck fastened to a ring in the wall, shackles on wrists and ankles similarly fastened. Adam barely glanced in his direction as he passed, seemingly in search of his own horse, but the look showed him what he had hoped to find. The keys to the chains hung upon a hook set into the wooden partition of the stall.
“Hey! You, there!” Imperatively, he summoned the only other free occupant of the building, a young lad mucking out a stall across the gangway from him.
“Yes, lord.” The lad dropped his spade and came running, tugging his forelock.
“Look at this!” Adam gestured into the stall that held his horse. “Is this the way you treat animals belonging to your master’s guests?” He allowed his voice to rise with anger. “It seems to me Prince Dmitriev cannot be aware of such insolent negligence.”
All the color drained from the boy’s face; he began to stammer wildly. “Please…please, Your Honor, I didn’t realize. It wasn’t my fault, Your Honor. I didn’t stable him, I didn’t, lord…It wasn’t me—”
“Fetch fresh hay at once!” snapped the count. “The water in the trough is dirty, and there is nothing but bran dust in the manger!”
The lad scuttled off, fear and bewilderment on his face. He could see nothing wrong in the stable, but it was the master’s prerogative to find fault and no right of the serf to disagree.
Adam ran to the stall holding Boris. “I will create some sort of a disturbance in the next few minutes,” he whispered, swift and low, fitting the key into the locks on the chains. “I cannot promise to draw attention for long. But try if you can to make your way to my house. Take this.” He slipped from his finger an intricately worked signet ring, tucking it into the muzhik’s hand, still held against the wall. Boris said nothing, but his fingers curled over the ring. “Show this to my butler and he will take you in.” There was no time for further words. The chains were unlocked although still in place; they would pass casual inspection.
Adam was going through his saddlebags when the lad hurried in with a pail of fresh water and an armful of straw. “What the devil…!” Adam bellowed, and the lad dropped the pail. “There was a pouch of rubles in here.” Adam grabbed the collar of the threadbare shirt. “Who else has been in here?”
The boy began to wail piteously. To be accused of theft was the ultimate terror for a serf. Men boiled into the building as Adam’s accusations gathered volume and momentum and the lad’s cries of innocence grew more frantic.
“Who is in charge around here?” demanded Count Danilevski, staring around at the stunned circle of heavy peasant faces. “Someone has stolen a pouch of rubles left in my saddlebag.”
“No…no, lord, no one would have done such a thing.” The head groom, whom Adam had last seen guarding Boris, stepped forward, trying to sound calm and strong, but they were all jumpier than usual as a result of Boris’s flight, his recapture, and the appalling knowledge of what was to happen to one of their number in the courtyard that evening.
“Outside! All of you!” Adam instructed brusquely. “I can see nothing in here.” He hearded them out into the pouring rain, where they stood miserably, turning out their pockets, knees knocking, feet shuffling, fear and dread on every face. And while they did so, Boris Mikhailov slipped loose from his bonds, gritted his teeth as the pain from his fractured ribs stabbed sharply, and inched his great bulk through the window at the rear of the building, melting into the rain to make his way to the house where he had visited Khan.
Adam, in a most credible imitation of his commanding officer, managed to intimidate the group of stable hands to such an extent they no longer seemed to know what day of the week it was. Those gray eyes seemed to see into their very souls, and the questions were barked in an endless stream, allowing no time for reflection, demanding answers whether they had them or no. After five minutes, although the search had turned up nothing, they were all so demoralized, so utterly convinced that they were about to be convicted of theft by this terrifying soldier, that they would be quite unable to reconstruct the events of the last half hour, if asked to do so when the disappearance of the captive serf was discovered.
Adam kept them quaking in the yard until the noon dinner gong rang. Then he dismissed them, confident that they would not think to check on the securely chained prisoner in the stable after the ordeal they had been through, and with the prospect of the main meal of the day cooling on the table. He was unable to quash a guilty stab as he stalked out of the yard, threatening further investigation after he had talked with Prince Dmitriev. But the sacrifice of those poor, petrified souls had been necessary. The image of Sophie, on her knees in front of the cold, brutal bully she had drawn as husband, her softly despairing pleas, the head bowed in submission, would not leave him. Never had he known such a murderous rage, and he did not know how he was to conceal it from Dmitriev. But he had to keep the appointment, had to appear oblivious of anything untoward in the household, had to hope that in the uproar when Boris’s escape was discovered Nikolai would not see any relevance in the fact that Count Danilevski had actually been admitted to the house once already. It was not unreasonable to expect Nikolai to have forgotten such an insignificant fact in the extraordinary turmoil. And if nothing more was said about the alleged theft from the count’s saddlebags, the stable hands would breathe a sigh of relief. They would not bring it up, praying instead that the incident would remain buried. They would have no reason to draw any connection between a runaway serf and the general’s irate aide-de-camp. No one would, except Sophie.
Sophie sat for hours in her bedchamber, staring sightlessly at the wall. She was as dazed as if she had been felled by a blow to the head. Boris Mikhailov was going to die in slow torment, and she had sent him to that death. Khan would have died if it had not been for Adam. God alone knew what fate had befallen Tanya Feodorovna. She clasped her hands over her breasts, trying to enclose herself, to imprison the badness within her—this rot that led to so much suffering for those who had any affection for her. Why was she afflicted in this way? Why did she have this…this unidentifiable fault…that made her husband loathe her to such an extent that anyone connected with her must suffer horribly? From now on, she must live quite alone. She must offer no one a smile, a word, lest they too should fall beneath the evil umbrella of her affection.
She did not go downstairs at dinnertime and received no summons. The dark, rainy afternoon trickled past. No one came near her. Untended, the fire in the porcelain stove built into the wall died down. The rawness of mid-October had descended upon the capital with a vengeance; the green-and-gold warmth of September vanished as always with the abrupt onset of winter. But Sophie did not feel the chill, damp air, did not notice that she sat in darkness. She was waiting for the moment when her body would tell her that Boris’s long, slow road to death had begun.
The door opened. She looked up with utter indifference into the scared eyes of Maria. “Is it over?” she asked, although she knew it could not be. She had not felt it yet.
Maria shook her head, her eyes darting this way and that, as if she would see something in the shadows.
“I’m sure you can speak to me,” Sophie said dully. “It is only those for whom I hold any affection who must suffer.”
Maria stood gawking at her. “He’s escaped,” she said, finally. “Disappeared from the stable where he was chained.”
Life shot through Sophie like a spurt of flame in a revived fire. “When?” was all she said, remembering she was in the presence of a spy.
“No one knows,” Maria told her, bustling over to draw the curtains against the night. “Sometime during dinner, it’s thought. Didn’t see no need to put a guard on him, chained up as he was.” For once, she was talking to Sophia Alexeyevna instead of performing her duties in sullen watchfulness. But the habits of caution were now entrenched, and Sophie was not to be seduced, despite her almost disbelieving joy and her need to know every detail the maid might have to offer.
She did not have to pretend to be indifferent to Boris’s fate, since the truth would be known throughout the household, but she did not have to give the maid any clues as to the depth of her present feelings. “How did he escape?” she asked, in the same dull tone.
Kneeling in front of the stove, Maria opened the door and began shoving fresh logs onto the embers. “Fire’s almost out,” she muttered. “Cold as death in here. No one seems to know how.” She got to her feet, smoothing down her apron. “His Highness bids you sup with him. What gown will you wear?”
“I really do not care, Maria,” Sophie said, wondering how she was to break bread with her husband after the shame of this morning. Then she remembered that the miracle had occurred. Her shame was as nothing compared with Boris’s reprieve. Her head went up. “The rose silk, I think. And I will wear the rubies.”
Prince Dmitriev, locked in an icy fury, balked of his revenge, greeted his wife’s arrival in the drawing room with stony silence. There was no possibility that she had been implicated in the muzhik’s escape. Maria had been guarding the princess’s door from the moment she reached her bedchamber only minutes after Boris Mikhailov was taken off. But if it had not been Sophia Alexeyevna, who could have provided the necessary assistance?
An afternoon of interrogation had produced nothing but the confused tales of the terror-struck, all trying to escape blame. Now, as he looked at his wife, he sensed that he was losing. There had been a moment of supreme gratification that morning when he had brought her to her knees, a supplicant whose prayer he had denied. Now she seemed to have regained some core of strength. She curtsied as meekly as ever, her eyes lowered, her voice soft, but there was a vibrancy about her now, a rich luster to match the Golitskov rubies clasped with such defiant insolence around the slender throat.
Sophie felt the impotence of his rage and reveled in her private rejoicing. She knew now what she must do. In the decision to take action, desperate though that action was, she found herself again. No longer the passive, bewildered recipient of inexplicable hurts, she was again capable of implementing change.
She was going to appeal to the czarina. Annulment by imperial manifesto was not unheard of. Surely, when Catherine learned of the full catalog of the prince’s enormities, she could not fail to grant her subject permission to return to obscurity. Dmitriev would still hold title to her fortune, and he would be free to find another wife.
And Adam? Thoughts of Adam followed the previous thoughts as naturally, as inevitably, as day follows night. What part had he played in this? How could she be so certain that he had had a hand in it? But she was certain. The current that flowed between them told her so, even when he was not with her.
For the same reason the sound of his voice in the hall came as no surprise, although Prince Dmitriev frowned. A visit from his aide-de-camp at this time of day could only mean regimental business, and he had thought they had dealt with everything earlier in the day.
“Colonel, Count Danilevski, Highness.” Nikolai bowed in the door, and Adam stepped through.
“Your pardon for disturbing you, General, but I thought you would wish to see this dispatch from the Crimea immediately. Princess, pray forgive this intrusion.” He bowed toward Sophie, who remained seated.
“Please do not mention it, Count,” she said softly. Her eyes looked the question. He nodded fractionally, but it was enough. Boris Mikhailov was safe with Adam, that was all she needed to know. And it was to tell her that, that he had come here this evening.
Dmitriev looked up from the dispatch. “There appears no special urgency, Colonel, but I commend your diligence in bringing it to me on such a night. Let us have supper.” He z135" />glanced coldly at Sophie. “I suggest you sup abovestairs, madame. Your presence can add nothing to our discussion.”
“As you command, Paul,” she murmured, rising immediately. “Count, I bid you good-night.”
With a soft rustle of rose silk she had gone, brushing so close beside him that her special fragrance—one that always reminded him of spring flowers—lingered in the air he breathed. The warmth of her skin burnished his own. A smile riveted to his lips, murder in his eyes, Adam turned toward his general.