“Is it a good idea for him to eat worms?” Adam said in a tone of mild inquiry. He strolled down the garden basking in a soft April sun.
“I didn’t realize he was eating them.” Sophie sat back on her heels, regarding Sasha, who, with the concentrated dedication of a six-month-old, was crawling in her wake, picking out squiggly worms from the earth newly turned by her trowel. “I thought he was just trying to hold on to them.”
“The route from hand to mouth is immutable,” Adam reminded her with a grin. In confirmation, the baby abruptly thumped onto his padded bottom and stuffed a fat, dirt-filled fist into his mouth.
“I do not suppose it will hurt him. It’s all God’s good earth,” Sophie said easily, returning to her weeding. “And he will only howl if we try to stop him.”
Adam sat on a low stone bench, stretching his long legs with a luxurious sigh. “Do you think he is a trifle spoiled, Sophie?”
She looked over her shoulder at Adam in surprise. “Of course he is. All babies should be spoiled, Tanya says. I was, and it never did me any harm.”
Adam’s eyes narrowed against the sun as he drawled, lazily provocative, “I seem to recall one or two occasions when I have taken issue with that conclusion.”
Sophie threw a handful of earth at him, and Sasha, with a gleeful gurgle, offered his own imitative effort.
“You are a most irresponsible parent,” Adam declared severely, brushing dirt from his sleeve. “You set the most appalling examples.”
Sophie chuckled, shuffling on her knees across the grass to where he sat. “Like this, I suppose.” Resting her forearms on his lap, she reached up to kiss his mouth.
Her hair, still short, but thick and luxuriant, smelled of sunshine, her skin of lavender and the good, rich earth caught beneath her fingernails. Cupping her face between his hands, he drank deeply of her fragrant sweetness, rejoicing in the very fact of his wife.
“Oh, dear, Sophie, Sasha is eating worms!” The vague tones of the elder Countess Danilevska broke into the charmed circle as she glided in stately fashion down the path toward them, her hoop setting her turquoise silk skirts swaying, the breeze fluttering the ribbons on her lace cap.
“I know, chère madame.” Still on her knees, Sophie turned to smile at the woman who had welcomed without question the bruised and battered piece of human wreckage her son had brought to her six months earlier. She had taken her prospective Russian daughter-in-law to her ample bosom, looked vaguely surprised at being told that her grandson, so clearly her son’s child, was known as Prince Alexander Dmitriev, although for reasons not vouchsafed he did not bear a patronymic, and proceeded to forget all the oddities attendant upon her son’s choice of wife. She had welcomed the arrival of a rather irascible Prince Golitskov, a weeping but clearly competent Tanya Feodorovna, a giant muzhik, and a Cossack stallion who had terrified her own stable hands. She had arranged the wedding, very simply dealt with any niggling objections to those arrangements expressed by the old prince by ignoring them while offering smiles and vodka; and had the immeasurable joy of seeing her beloved son obviously married in love.
“I wonder if it is good for him,” she now said, examining her grubby grandson, who was beaming his one-toothed beam proudly through his dirt. “What would Tanya Feodorovna say?”
“That what goes in has to come out,” Sophie promptly replied. “Méchant!” Springing to her feet, she swooped on the child, lifting him into the air so that he squealed and kicked his chubby legs gleefully.
“Have you told Sophie about the imperial messenger, Adam?” the countess asked.
“I was about to do so, Maman, but Sasha’s gastronomic predilections distracted me,” Adam replied.
Sophie stiffened, glancing at her husband, unable to hide the flash of anxiety in her eyes. “A letter from the czarina?”
“Give me the baby, ma chère. I will take him to Tanya Feodorovna to be cleaned up.” Her mother-in-law took Sasha from her. “His great-grandfather has been asking for him, but he won’t welcome him as dirty as he is.” Tickling the child’s stomach so that he shrieked with laughter, she bore him off toward the long, low house.
“Grandpère is anxious to return to Berkholzskoye,” Sophie said absently. “I would wish to accompany him. We could perhaps spend the summer there, if your mother does not mind.” Her voice caught. “What does the empress say?”
Adam patted the bench beside him, reaching into his breast pocket with his other hand. He drew out two documents, both bearing the imperial seal. “There is one for you, also.”
Sophie sat down and took the document. “Every time I have received one of these it has spelled disaster,” she said slowly. “I cannot help it, Adam, but I feel sick. Will you open it for me?”
“Let me tell you what was in mine first,” he said. “Then maybe you will not feel so sick.” He unfolded it carefully, then laid it on his lap, looking over the garden as if he knew the contents of the letter by heart. He smiled ruefully. “I am first roundly scolded for not presenting myself in St. Petersburg by the first of the year as the empress had instructed. Then I am thanked for my report on my mission to Warsaw.” Bending, he picked a crocus peeping through the grass at his feet. He threaded it into the rich, dark head leaning against his shoulder. “I seem to remember some other occasion with flowers…” he mused.
Sophie choked with laughter despite her anxiety. “Yes, you proved a most skilled gardener! Now do not keep me in suspense. You have not reached the important bits yet.”
“My request to resign my commission in the Preobrazhensky regiment is granted.” Sophie gave a whoop of joy. “Although with some reluctance,” Adam continued. “Her Imperial Majesty, while recognizing that I now have other responsibilities, ones that would inevitably interfere with the single-minded dedication of a career officer, requests that I hold myself ready to serve my country in the event of war.”
Sophie shivered. “I suppose such a stipulation was only to be expected.”
“Of course it was,” he replied briskly, dismissing the caveat as of no further importance. “Finally, Her Imperial Majesty grants me permission to retire to my family estates for eight months of the year. For the four-month period from the end of November to the end of March I am to bring my wife and family to court.”
“Four months!” Sophie groaned. “I suppose I will survive.”
“Sophia Alexeyevna, you ungrateful monster!” exclaimed Adam. “Do you not realize how indulgent the czarina has been?”
“I want it all,” Sophie said, sighing.
“Spoiled brat! Open your letter now.”
Her fingers shook slightly, although she knew now that her own communication could contain nothing too dreadful. She read it through silently, then leaned back, looking up into the spring-silver foliage of a willow tree. Fingers of sunlight massaged her eyelids, and a great peace filled her.
“Well?” Adam demanded. “Are you also castigated?”
“Only mildly,” Sophie said. “For not waiting the correct mourning period before remarrying. I am, however, commended for having committed that indiscretion discreetly, if you see what I mean.” Adam nodded. “She says that Prince Alexander Dmitriev is recognized as heir to the estates of General, Prince Paul Dmitriev, his father. The unfortunate circumstances of the general’s death at the hands of brigands are much lamented by the czarina, who writes that brigands remain one of her empire’s greatest scourges.”
They sat silent in the afternoon sun, while the final shadow was lifted from the little world of happiness they had inhabited the last months. The stain of illegitimacy would not touch their son, who would inherit the vast Dmitriev fortune that had been augmented by his mother’s.
“The empress who rules with a knout in one hand and the scale of justice in the other,” Adam observed.
“She has a softness for lovers,” Sophie said, turning her head against his shoulder, lifting a hand to caress the strong profile, to linger upon that beautiful, smiling mouth. “Could we have done anything, love, to alter the course of this? Sometimes I have wondered if we could have done something…said something…that would have averted…Oh, I do not know what I am trying to say.”
Adam caught her chin. “I know what you are trying to say. And the answer is no. We could have prevented nothing. Dmitriev had his own agenda, the empress had hers, and for a while we were caught in them both. Caught, until…” Smiling, he touched her lips with his finger.
“‘I will a round unvarnish’d tale deliver of my whole course of love; what drugs, what charms, what conjuration, and what mighty magic.’”
Sophie frowned for a second, then she began to laugh. “‘A maiden never bold; of spirit so still and quiet, that her motion blush’d at herself.’ Adam, I will not play Desdemona to your Othello! It would be an appalling piece of miscasting.”
“I had forgotten the rest of the speech,” Adam confessed through his answering laughter. Then his laughter died abruptly. “And I will never play Othello to your Desdemona, my love.”
“You will never have cause,” she said. Suddenly her eyes danced mischievously, dispelling the moment of gravity. “Not that Othello did, either.”
There was a short silence, then, with quiet deliberation, she said, “I can promise that you will never have to play Adam to my Eva. The past is behind: yours, mine, and ours. All such matters are abolished by imperial decree!” Jumping to her feet, she seized his hands, pulling him up with her. “Come, I would ride Khan in celebration.”
Adam planted his hands on his hips, saying slowly and with emphasis, “You would do what in celebration?”
“A slip of the tongue,” Sophie said hastily.