Katrina climbed into the sleigh next to her brother and made no effort to conceal her mood. Dmitri had begged leave to depart with his friends; what had begun as a dream ended as a nightmare.
“Why, Katitchka,” said Sergei affectionately, “you look awful. Did that nice boy you were with not treat you well?”
“Oh, pooh to him! He wouldn’t know how to treat a lady—well or otherwise.”
“I’m sorry if you did not have a good time.”
“Sorry, ha!” she snapped back. “It is your fault!”
“Mine?”
“How could you humiliate me so? Going off and skating with my maid, when I invited you to come today to skate with me!”
“You seemed to be in good enough hands.”
“Oh, Sergei, you’re impossible! You have no decency! How could you take her under your wing like that? Next thing I know she’ll get uppity on me, and I’ll have you to thank!”
“So that’s what this little tiff is all about!” He shook his head. “Your superior attitude does not become you, Katrina.”
His sister sat pouting, unwilling to tell him that the real reason she was upset had nothing to do with either Anna or him.
“Your Anna happened to be cold, alone, and in need of some lively company. I merely did what any halfway considerate young man would have done under the circumstances.”
“But . . . a maid!”
“I did not see a maid when she was standing there in the snow, but a nice-looking young girl whom I thought I might be able to cheer up.”
“Didn’t you see the plain woolen scarf tied around her unruly hair, or those hand-knit mittens her mother made for her? Why, she stood out on the ice like a sore thumb!”
“To tell you the truth, until you mentioned it, I hadn’t even noticed.”
“What will people think of you, skating with a scullery maid?”
“You forget, Katrina—she is not so lowly any longer. She is personal maid to a princess!” His eyes sparkled with teasing fun. “And besides, I don’t care a straw what people think. Let them say what they will.”
“You are impossible. You act as if there is no difference between a peasant girl with woolen mittens and a nobleman’s daughter wearing gloves of fine calf skin! But there is a difference—and you know it!”
“Maybe the texture of hands is different, or what those hands wear to keep out the cold. But inside, if there indeed is a difference, I for one do not know what it might be.”
“Don’t let Papa hear you talk like that.”
Sergei did not reply. Now it was his turn to be silent and thoughtful.
The sleigh behind them moved quietly along, making its way back through the estate. Had Anna suspected that she was the central topic of conversation in the sleigh they were following, she would surely have been horrified. Even deeper would have been the mortification to know that she was the cause of dissent between the young prince and princess.
“Where did you find her, Katitchka?” asked Sergei after a lengthy pause. His voice had now resumed its normal congenial tone.
“In the Promenade Garden,” replied Katrina in like manner. She really didn’t want to be angry with her brother. They had always been on good terms, despite that she saw so little of him lately. He was the only one she would ever allow the privilege of calling her by the diminutive of her name, “Katitchka.” She hated the childish nickname, but it was somehow acceptable coming from him.
“What was she doing there?”
“She sneaked in from the kitchen where she had been working. Now that I know what a timid thing she is, it surprises me she had such gumption.”
“She is a remarkable girl, Katrina,” said Sergei, his serious voice containing sufficient genuine admiration to alarm his sister all over again. Yet she respected Sergei, and thus his words could not help but begin to put her peasant maid in a new light.
“Do you know that she reads?” Sergei went on.
“I see nothing so remarkable in that,” answered Katrina matter-of-factly.
“I mean reads! Not just that she knows how, but that she is an extremely literate young girl. Pushkin is one of her favorites. She understands him and can quote him. Also Lermontov. And probably others for all I know. I didn’t have a chance to find out much more than that. But I do know that she loves to read, yet very little has been accessible to her . . .”
Katrina yawned and gazed at the passing sights in the descending dusk.
“Katrina, promise me you’ll give her access to the library.”
“That’s really up to Papa.”
“He’ll do whatever you ask.” Sergei paused. “That girl should be given whatever advantages are possible,” he went on. “She might even be a help to you in your studies.”
At the moment Katrina couldn’t have cared less, either for Anna or her studies!
“Now there is an idea!” Sergei went on with growing enthusiasm. “Let her sit in during your lessons, Katrina. It would be a great benefit to you both.”
“Oh, Sergei, really!”
“Katitchka, do it as a favor to me? Won’t you?”
“I suppose I have noticed that there is something different about her. But why should you care what happens to Anna?”
“I don’t know. She just seems . . . that she ought to be more, somehow—that she deserves the chance to see what she can make of herself.”
Katrina turned toward her brother. This was an entirely new side of him she had never noticed before. Was the army turning him not only into a social liberal, but an ally of the downtrodden as well? She eyed him curiously. She wasn’t sure whether she liked him taking such a personal interest in a servant—especially her own maid. Whatever reforms he wanted to undertake with the lower classes, let him do it with someone else’s people! She was not ready to lose Anna or to have her start putting on airs because of ideas her foolish brother had put into her head. Let her brother toy with servants and peons if he wanted, but not with her servant! She had worked too hard to get her.
“I’ll think about it, Sergei.”
“Do, Katitchka. I am sure it would benefit you as well.”
Katrina eyed him noncommittally. Who could tell, maybe it was a good idea. Even Katrina would not deny that she needed help with her studies. And she was probably making too much out of the day’s events. Sergei had always been a hopeless do-gooder, and who was she to think she could change him?
Still looking deeply into her brother’s face, Katrina tapped her finger against her lips.
“Sergei, might you do something for me . . . in exchange?”
“Anything.”
“You are attending the New Year’s ball at the Winter Palace?”
“Of course.”
“Then let me have a dance with you.”
“Your older brother is flattered!”
“You will grant my request?”
“Certainly, but why?”
“I just don’t want to be stuck dancing with children or fourteen-year-old boys all evening!”
“Oh, my little Katitchka! You wish to grow up so quickly.”
“And what is wrong with that?”
“Nothing, I suppose,” mused Sergei, though his tone obviously was meant to convey the opposite.
“I’ll be sixteen in a few months.”
“But, Katitchka, growing older will only place many more burdens on your shoulders, things you cannot even imagine now.” He gazed with melancholy eyes out on the white sidewalks, now grown gray in the fading light.
“You take life too seriously, Sergei.” The conversation had not exactly gone the direction she had anticipated when she began by asking him a favor. Nevertheless, she pursed her lips determinedly and went on, bringing their talk back to the New Year’s ball.
“Could I put the names of one or two of your friends on my dance card?” she said. “Dmitri, perhaps . . . ?”
“Of course. I’ll ask him. I am sure he will be more than happy to dance with you.”
For the time being Katrina was content, and her gloomy countenance lifted sufficiently to allow a brief smile of thanks to her brother. They settled back and rode the rest of the way in the silence of their own thoughts.
How Katrina expected a dance with Dmitri to be any more effective than the disastrous afternoon on the icy river, she could not imagine. But if young Katrina Viktorovna Fedorcenko possessed nothing else, she did have an enormous reservoir of confidence in her own charm, good looks, and personal abilities—a characteristic self-reliance that would one day prove both her greatest strength as well as her mortal demise.