‘My papa,’ Katya said, lightly, but with a faint, wry edge to her voice that belied her laughter, ‘is not pleased with me.’
Margarita turned, startled. ‘Your father? Good heavens, how in the world have you managed that?’ For Mischa to express real disapproval of his indulged daughter was all but unknown. ‘Have you murdered someone?’
‘It’s not so much what I’ve done,’ Katya gave the vase of flowers she had been arranging a last tweak and set it upon a nearby table, ‘as what I haven’t. And what I don’t, if I can possibly help it, intend to. At least for as long as is possible.’ They were in the ballroom of the Bourlov apartment. Around them the frantic activity that necessarily accompanied the preparations for a coming-of-age ball was reaching its climax. A small army of floor polishers skated about the gleaming parquet floor, soft cloths on their feet. A low stage upon which the orchestra would sit was being decorated with swathes of gold and green silk and set with huge potted plants and flower arrangements. In the centre of the floor a ladder was set precariously beneath the chandelier, which was being painstakingly cleaned, its swinging crystals jingling like sleigh bells on a winter’s night.
Katya led the way out onto one of the balconies. Margarita followed; watched as Katya produced a long cigarette holder and a packet of cigarettes. Katya proffered the packet. Rita, fascinated but reluctant, shook her head. ‘Papa would kill me.’ Katya laughed, lit her cigarette, blew smoke into the clear autumn air. It was September, and there was a chill in the almost imperceptible breeze that was all too familiar. Summer was over. Winter, inexorably, was approaching.
‘So. What is it that you haven’t done?’ Margarita, as ever, could not contain her curiosity.
‘Can’t you guess?’ Katya waved her empty hand eloquently, as if the whole of St Petersburg must surely know of her misdemeanour. ‘I haven’t married. I haven’t, God help us all, even become engaged. And consequently I haven’t produced, or am not imminently to produce, the Bourlov heir that poor Mischischa so desires. And neither will I if I can help it!’
Margarita raised fair eyebrows. ‘What’s so wrong with being married?’
Katya turned on her a look of such pained astonishment that the other girl could not help but laugh. In the three years since Anna had left the city these two, each for her own reasons and despite the difference in their ages, had developed a mutually advantageous relationship that could at a casual glance be taken – mistakenly – for close if light-hearted friendship. Margarita unashamedly and for reasons she made no attempt to hide preferred the Bourlov home to her own and determinedly spent as much time there as was humanly possible. She was sixteen years old, and she had plans; plans whose natural starting point was here, with her wealthy relations and their contacts, not at home on the Venskaya with her mother’s migraines and her father’s sober and grinding respectability. For her part Katya enjoyed having the younger girl around, and would have been less than human not to have enjoyed the open hero-worship that her cousin was all too ready to bestow upon her; though, shrewd as her father, she was perfectly aware that the basis of that apparently artless admiration owed as much if not more to envy than to any warmer emotion. Margarita coveted everything about Katya’s life, from her pretty clothes and her father’s money – that in these past years of industrial boom in Russia had grown to no mean fortune – to the relaxed indulgence with which her parents treated her. Katya did little to discourage or disabuse her; it suited her admirably to have this pretty, malleable youngster in tow – for Margarita, chatterbox that she was, was nevertheless astute enough to know when to keep her mouth shut and could be quite remarkably and cheerfully devious when it came to the small intrigues and adventures of which Katya was so fond.
‘What’s wrong with being married, my dear, is just about everything. The idea of handing oneself over lock, stock and barrel to some – man –’ Katya pulled a mockingly ferocious face ‘– who, quite absurdly, will take it upon himself to lecture you, order your affairs, make sure you behave yourself for the rest of your life – it’s abominable! What’s wrong with marriage? You might as well ask what’s wrong with prison!’
‘But I thought you liked men?’
‘I do. Oh, I do. In their place.’ Katya slanted a small, wicked glance over her shoulder. ‘I’ve come to the conclusion that our smart and sneaky Anna had it right all along, you know. Marry a man old enough to be your grandfather, and rich – then the one thing you can guarantee is he’ll pop off and leave you a free and wealthy widow. What bliss!’
Rita’s pretty laughter pealed again, delightedly scandalized. ‘Katya!’
‘But a young man? God, no! Noisy, bossy, opinionated folk are young men.’
‘Your father doesn’t approve of your plan to marry a rich old man?’ Rita picked a petal from the flower she still carried and dropped it over the edge of the balcony, watching as it fluttered brightly through the still air to the ground.
‘I’m afraid not.’ For a moment the shadow of real gloom showed in her cousin’s face. ‘I told you. He wants a grandson. Two. Three or four if possible. He’s absolutely fixed upon the notion. What a perfectly terrible idea! And there’s worse!’
‘There can’t be.’
‘Oh, yes there can. He’s actually found someone!’
That caught the younger girl’s attention. She turned, her laughter dying. ‘You mean – someone he wants you to marry?’
‘Exactly. Can you imagine? I’ve refused of course. The idea’s monstrous.’ Katya leaned back, drew on her cigarette, blew smoke into the air.
‘And – that’s why your father is annoyed with you?’
‘It is.’
Margarita cast mildly caustic eyes to the room behind them. ‘He can’t be too angry. It hasn’t stopped him giving you a most splendid party for your birthday.’
‘Ah, but that’s all part of it, you see. This beastly man is going to be at this blessed affair tomorrow. We’re supposed to –’ Katya shrugged ‘– get to know each other.’
Her cousin was watching her, bright-eyed and interested. ‘Who is he? What’s he like?’
Katya stubbed out her cigarette. ‘It’s immaterial, Margarita, my pet. I plan to make myself so utterly objectionable that he’ll refuse even to consider me as a future wife, money or no money.’
‘He’s marrying you for your money?’ The words were openly astonished.
Katya smiled again, that singularly wicked smile that Rita, having observed its effect on several young men, spent much time emulating in front of her mirror. ‘You aren’t listening, Rita. He’s not going to marry me at all. I’ve quite made up my mind.’
‘Before you’ve ever met him?’ Rita was doubtful.
‘Oh, I’ve met him. Once or twice, in Finland. His sister’s married to Turnakov, the industrialist – he’s a friend of Mischischa’s. She isn’t bad, actually.’
Margarita waited. Katya said nothing more. Exasperatedly Margarita gave in and asked, ‘Well? What’s he like?’
‘Turnakov?’ Katya asked, innocently. ‘Oh, he’s just the kind of person I was talking about – a very great catch – old, and rich, one foot in the grave almost – but I told you, he’s already married.’
‘No! The other one! The one your father wants – oh, Katya, don’t be so trying! What’s his name? What’s he like? Why does your father want you to marry him?’
‘His name is Johannes Lavola. Everyone calls him –’ she paused, spoke the next word with flawless disdain ‘– Jussi. He’s Finnish, for God’s sake!’ She lifted unbelieving eyes to heaven at the very thought. ‘Finnish! He’s tall. Fairish. Not very good-looking. And most assuredly not very well off.’
‘But – why would your father – ?’
Katya shrugged. ‘He’s a Count. Or something.’
‘A Count?’ The word was hushed. ‘A real one?’
‘No. A Finnish one.’ Dismissively Katya dropped her cigarette to the floor, crushed it with her foot. ‘But that’s the problem, you see. Mischischa wants this fictional grandson of his to have a title, even if it is only a Finnish one. He also wants closer ties with Turnakov, family ties. It’s all very complicated and if you ask me rather greedy; Mischa already has far too much money for his own good, and I told him so – but he won’t listen; he wants grandsons, he wants the title and he wants to tie Turnakov to him; so I’m to be sacrificed on the cold stone altar of marriage.’ She smiled, very sweetly. ‘Except that I won’t be.’ She moved back through the doors into the busy ballroom.
Margarita followed. ‘But – what are you going to do about it? How can you stop it?’
Katya pulled a long fair curl across her mouth, nibbled at it. ‘Watch me,’ she said, and all trace of laughter had left the blue eyes. Then, ‘Now, let’s get out of this shambles, it’s worse than a circus ring! Come and have some tea. I forgot to tell you, I’ve had a letter from Anna –’
Margarita dodged across the dance floor behind her, missing a skating polisher by inches. ‘We had one a couple of weeks ago. From Vienna. Guy paid for her to study under some famous teacher for the summer – I’ve forgotten his name –’
‘She’s back in England now.’ Katya led the way into a small but extremely elegant parlour, reached for the bell pull. Her face was suddenly pensive. ‘It’s interesting, isn’t it? I mean, Anna of all people! Well, she seems remarkably happy, I must say.’
Margarita settled herself decoratively into a chair. ‘You’re surprised?’
‘Yes. I think I am. Didn’t it all ever strike you –?’ She stopped.
‘What?’
‘– as a little – well, odd? Anna and Guy – it was all very sudden?’
Margarita shrugged, disinterestedly. ‘Guy’s not young; once he made up his mind I suppose he reasoned that he didn’t have much time to lose. And Anna – well, I suppose she must have seen her chance to get out and took it.’ She rolled expressive eyes. ‘Just give me such an opportunity; you won’t see my heels!’
Anna was indeed happy; and her cousin Katya was not the only person to be surprised that it should be so. Anna sometimes wondered herself at the twist of fate that had brought her to Guy and to a life richer and fuller than she had dreamed could be possible. It had been hard at first – harder than she had ever conceded, to herself or to Guy. The world to which she had so precipitately fled had been an intimidating place to start with. She had been desperately homesick, and the wound of the brutal break with Andrei had been a longer and more painful time in the healing than she had allowed herself to admit or to show. But of course always there had been Guy; with patience and, she later realized, love, Guy had been her guide and her protector; he had neither hurried nor tried to dominate her. He had introduced her to his world, and his world had welcomed her; the world of the artist, the writer, the musician. She could not fail to have been seduced by it; more extraordinary had been the slow but sure awakening of her deeper feelings for Guy himself. For his generosity, his kindness, his understanding, she could not help but love him as a friend; as time had moved on and the memory of Petersburg and of Andrei had begun to dim, she had come, to the delighted surprise of them both, to love him wholeheartedly as a man. Now, three years after the wedding the unlikely union had become a joy and a pleasure to them both. And if still, sometimes, a ghost stood between them, a phantom that neither would admit to seeing, and if Anna rarely if ever played the music of the Russian composers that Andrei had taught her to love, it in no way diminished their pleasure in each other.
‘It’s Katya’s birthday.’ She stood at the window of the small flat in Westminster that Guy used for his trips to the capital, looking out across the busy river. ‘Tomorrow. Her twenty- first.’
Guy lifted his head, looking at her. Tall, slim and graceful, she was dressed in the colours in which he most loved to see her, soft greens and blues, the narrow tunic skirt tapering to her ankles, matching jacket fitted to her small waist, the shirt-like collar turned up to frame her sharp-boned face. Her hair was the colour of the first of the autumn leaves that moved in the breeze outside the window. No longer a child, no longer the gauche, artless, defiant Anna who had faced him in Andrei’s work room, this was a woman of confidence and of style. His wife. The thought still had the power, sometimes, to startle. ‘Are you missing St Petersburg?’ he asked after a moment, with that quick intuition that could be so very disconcerting. ‘Would you like to go back – for a visit, perhaps?’
The silence maybe lasted just a shade too long. Anna, her back still to him, did not move. He watched her, quietly, waiting. Saw the sudden sharp, negative movement of her head. ‘No.’ She turned. She was smiling a little, her face serene, though he fancied that a shadow lay somewhere in her eyes. ‘No. Not yet. Soon, perhaps. But not yet.’ Her English was clear, slightly but not unattractively accented. She came to him, stood beside him, her narrow hand upon his shoulder. ‘Is your business in London nearly finished? Could we go back to Sussex? The garden at Sythings is so beautiful at this time of the year.’
He smiled, nodded. ‘We’ll go tomorrow.’
She touched his cheek with her finger. ‘Home,’ she said. ‘We’ll go home.’
Katya’s coming-of-age ball was nothing if not ostentatious. More than two hundred people packed into the Bourlov apartment to take advantage of Mischa’s lavish hospitality. The evening began at seven, decorously enough, with tea and cakes. Maids moved through the glittering, chattering throng with trays of cups and small sweet cakes. A serious card game was already in progress in the large parlour, the stakes high, the protagonists – two dowagers, a crusty General and a member of the German Diplomatic Corps – old and shrewd enemies, the game undoubtedly set to last into the small hours. Tea finished, and with more guests arriving by the minute, tables containing vast dishes of fish and meat, pâtés, hams and cheeses, the inevitable caviar, vodka, liqueurs and champagne were wheeled into the ballroom. A string quartet – the best available in Petersburg, naturally – played upon the stage, fighting a losing battle to be heard over the hubbub of talk and laughter. Bejewelled fingers fluttered, bare shoulders gleamed in the light, diadems and coronets glittered upon elaborately-coiffed hair and peacock shades of silk, satin and shimmering velvet, reflected in the tall, gilded mirrors, turned the ballroom into a kaleidoscope of shifting light and colour. Katya was everywhere, vivid in sapphire-blue silk, her bright face the centre of any group she joined, her laughter ringing clear and gay. This was her evening, she intended no one to be in any doubt of that; and she was going to enjoy every single second of it.
Margarita stuck to her cousin like a burr. Where Katya was, there was Rita, arm in arm, laughing with her, basking in reflected glory. She had wheedled a new dress from her father for the occasion and, with shrewd and new-found subtlety, had had the wit to opt, over Varya’s pained objections, for dove white, artfully simple, with a rose-pink sash. In the hothouse opulence of the ballroom the dress stood out like a splash of pale innocence against a swathe of scarlet sin. She looked young, fresh and enchantingly pretty, and she knew it. She wore pink and white flowers in the mass of her hair, pinned high upon her head, and upon the bodice of her dress; lacking decent jewellery she had decided, again to her mother’s consternation, not to wear any at all. The effect was striking; calculatedly so. Margarita knew exactly what she wanted; tonight was the night she intended to take the first steps towards getting it.
‘Rita, my dear, how very lovely you look!’ Her uncle kissed her soundly upon both cheeks, put his arm about his daughter’s trim waist.
Katya leaned back from him, laughing up into his face. ‘You look remarkably handsome yourself, Mischischa darling. Quite the best-looking man in the whole room! I insist you start the dancing with me! I’ve kept the first dance free for you.’ She laughed, mischievously, knowing he would not be able to refuse her. To grant any young man the first dance on this most special of occasions would be to give him a public advantage over his fellows, something she had no intention in the world of doing.
Her father, knowing perfectly well what she did, laughed. ‘How can I refuse? But –’ his arm tightened a little as she made to slip from him ‘– only on condition that you come and make yourself extremely pleasant to my friend Turnakov and his young wife. They’re over there by the window. Come.’ He caught her hand and began to weave between the tables, acknowledging greetings, stopping for the odd polite word, never relinquishing his firm grip upon his daughter’s hand. Perforce, the rebellious Katya followed, and quite shamelessly so did Margarita.
‘Yuri Alexeievich! Welcome! And Elisabet.’ Mischa bowed over the hand of a tall blonde girl dressed in deep red velvet. Rubies picked up the same vibrant colour at ears and throat, and her fair hair was simply dressed. Her face, whilst by no means beautiful, was strong and clear-boned.
Her smile was warm, her blue eyes cool. ‘Mischa. What an extremely grand party.’ The appraising eyes moved to Katya, assessing her; the smile was apparently unaffected and genuine, though still those cool, intelligent eyes weighed and measured, oddly severe. ‘Katya, you look lovely, as always.’ The steady blue eyes moved to Margarita, questioning.
‘Margarita Victorovna, my niece,’ Mischa said. ‘Rita, this is Yuri Alexeievich Turnakov and his wife Elisabet.’
Margarita smiled dazzlingly, and was rewarded by a twinkle in the older man’s eyes as he bent over her small hand. There was a brief, slightly awkward silence. Elisabet made no attempt to acknowledge the introduction. Around them the talk and the laughter rose and fell like the sound of waves beating upon a sanded shore. ‘I’m afraid,’ Elisabet said, calmly, ‘that my brother Jussi hasn’t arrived yet.’ She smiled at Katya, frank and unapologetic. ‘I can’t think what’s happened to him. He’ll be here directly, I’m sure.’ There was a small, sharp edge to her voice that boded ill for the missing brother. Her Russian was smooth, only slightly accented.
Katya had disengaged her hand from her father’s. Her smile matched the other girl’s for brightness, and for wariness. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said, and waved an airy hand at the gathered guests, ‘we really aren’t missing him. It’s been so nice to meet you again, thank you so much for coming – I’m sorry, there really are so many people that I should –’ and she was gone, slipping into the throng like a fish into water. Margarita cast a single look at her uncle and followed; Katya was her touchstone, her talisman for the evening; she must not lose her.
Mischa turned a look of quick and exasperated enquiry upon Elisabet.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘He should be here. I can’t think where he is.’
Beside her, her husband laughed, and raised experienced eyes to heaven.
‘Such a pity that Lenka couldn’t come.’ Zhenia Petrovna Bourlova linked arms with her sister and guided her towards the card game. They stood for a moment, watching.
Varya managed a faint, becoming blush. ‘She’s – indisposed.’
Neither Zhenia’s look nor the faint snort that accompanied it could have been described as ladylike. ‘Pregnant again, you mean! Honestly, Varya, how you could have allowed her to marry that – that rat of a man!’
‘Zhenia, please!’ Varya was very much on her dignity. ‘Pavel Petrovich is our son-in-law.’
‘He’s a rat,’ Zhenia said, calmly. ‘And as for poor Lenka being with child again – how many times is this?’
Varya nibbled her lip. ‘Since Tonia – three I think, all ending in –’ she cleared her throat ‘– that is, ending in unfortunate circumstances. This is the fourth.’
‘Do you see anything of her?’
Varya, suddenly apparently absorbed in what was happening at the card table, shook her head vaguely. ‘Not much.’ She allowed a small silence to develop. ‘She was always a difficult child,’ she said, plaintively.
Zhenia took quick breath to speak, held it, exhaled it slowly. Even a sister could go only so far. ‘And Dmitri? He and his little Natalia are to marry?’
Varya nodded. Another disappointment. That her only son, so soft, always so very manageable, should have taken this one stand against her was a sore point. Not that she had anything against young Natalia – unless one counted her looks, her lack of vigour, her personality. She sighed.
Zhenia smiled. ‘Made in heaven, that one,’ she said. ‘Be thankful. They love each other – well, goodness, they’ve been like Siamese twins ever since they met – oh yes, think yourself lucky, Varya. They’ll be happy, those two, together.’
Varya said nothing.
‘And your little Margarita – you have your hands full there!’ The words were indulgent. ‘Such a pretty child.’ Zhenia slanted a not unaffectionate look at her younger sister. ‘Very like her mother. How well I remember you at that age.’
That pleased Varya, as Zhenia had known it would. She glanced into a mirror that hung upon the far wall of the room, noted in the soft glow of the candles how her eyes still gleamed, her golden hair shone, with not a trace of grey.
‘I was wondering?’ Zhenia hesitated. Varya looked at her. ‘Perhaps she might like to spend more time here, with Katya? She’s such a lively child. A positive delight. We could perhaps be of some help –’ she waved a vague hand ‘– introductions, and such?’ She let the words trail to nothing, knowing the unspoken offer would be well understood. Each time Zhenia Petrovna Bourlova looked at her bright-faced niece she remembered the sister she had manipulated into marriage with a safe, stolid, boring man, and conscience, very slightly, gnawed.
‘I’m sure she’d love to.’ Varya was positively proud of the calm understatement; of all of her children Margarita was the only one she truly understood. Margarita, she knew, would kill to stay at the Bourlovs’.
Zhenia linked her arm again into her sister’s. They strolled back along the crowded corridor and into the ballroom. The dancing was about to begin; tables had been moved to the side of the room, a full orchestra had taken their place upon the stage. Guests stood in groups about the floor, laughing and talking. ‘And Anna,’ Zhenia said. ‘Katya received a letter from her the other day. She seems happy?’
Varya turned surprised eyes upon her. ‘Well, of course she is,’ she said. ‘Her husband has money.’ They walked on into the busy ballroom. ‘I still can’t think how she managed it,’ Varya added, a little vaguely; and wondered why her sister laughed.
More guests arrived; the party gathered momentum. There was dancing, more food, dancing again and yet another feast. Vodka and champagne flowed, loosening tongues and lifting laughter. Katya flitted still, like a bright and restless butterfly in a field of flowers, and Margarita followed. Followed, that is, until, at last, a pair of particularly bright eyes met hers, eyes set in a young and handsome face above an equally handsome dress uniform. He was slim, slightly built, moderately tall and of more than moderate good looks. The vodka bottle that stood on the table before him was empty. But where others had been loud, he was quiet, where other advances had been harshly confident, his were diffident, almost gentle. She settled beside him, a dove come to rest.
Her brother Dmitri, eighteen years old, slim, pale, tall now and habitually serious, hovered by Natalia’s side, uneasy in his cheap, ill-fitting evening suit, his whole attention upon his love. Natalia, equally out of place in this gathering, smiled at him, a calm, motherly smile, and held his hand. They did not dance, nor often did they speak. There was no need. Together they sat upon a curved sweetheart chair, in silence, hands clasped, a small, still core of quiet that waited for this silly storm of celebration to pass. Varya, catching sight of them, clicked her tongue and shook her head. ‘Those two,’ she said to Victor, ‘they’re like an old married couple already.’
Katya whirled from the dance, extracted herself from her partner’s enthusiastic embrace, took another glass of champagne from the tray proffered by a smiling manservant.
‘Women in Finland,’ a clear, self-confident voice said, somewhere close by, ‘have been voting since 1906. It doesn’t seem to me that the Duchy has exactly descended into depravity and chaos.’
Diverted, Katya turned. It was the Finnish girl Elisabet, of course – she had recognized the voice and the accent immediately – who smiled with utter self-possession into a florid face. ‘Women pay taxes, do they not? To refuse them a say in the spending of their own money is surely the height of injustice?’
‘Stuff and nonsense, girl!’ The florid face empurpled further. ‘Yuri Alexeievich, you surely don’t agree with this rubbish?’
Elisabet’s husband smiled, mildly. ‘My wife’s views are her own, Sergei Sergeiivich, she needs no brief from me to hold them.’ His voice was amused.
Elisabet turned her head and caught Katya’s eyes upon her; then her gaze moved beyond her, and her usually well-schooled face changed slightly. Katya turned. A tall, very fair young man was advancing across the dance floor, talking as he came, a group gathering about him. His pale hair was tousled, the jacket of his formal evening suit unbuttoned, his tie not quite straight. He wore a bright but lamentably wilted flower in his buttonhole. Leaving a buzz of conversation in his wake, he moved with long strides to where his sister and her husband waited; stood before them, bright-eyed and slightly dishevelled. ‘Someone’s tried to assassinate Stolypin,’ he said cheerfully. ‘In Kiev. Word is they’ve probably succeeded.’ He looked around, relieved a servant of the last glass of champagne on his tray, drank thirstily.
Elisabet’s mouth snapped shut. She stared.
Her brother put the empty glass back on the tray. ‘The news has just come in. It’s all over the city. He’s in a bad way, it’s said – he isn’t expected to survive. Sorry I’m late.’ His eyes rested, belatedly, upon Katya. Unabashed, he came laconically to something approximating attention, took her hand, bowed over it. ‘Yekaterina Mikhailovna – my apologies. My late arrival is, I know, absolutely unforgivable.’ His formal use of her name contrived somehow to sound faintly mocking; he made not the slightest attempt to inject into the words the smallest part of repentance, nor did he seem aware of the disturbance and stir his news had brought to the room. Pyotr Stolypin, the Tsar’s Prime Minister, was as admired by some as he was detested by others. Dubbed ‘Stolypin the Hangman’ for his brutally efficient crushing of the Revolution of 1905, yet few would in honesty doubt his integrity, and his recent attempts to break the growing and sinister hold of the monk Rasputin over the Empress and through her the whole of the Imperial family had met with wholehearted support in many quarters.
Katya looked coldly down at the bent fair head. ‘Do you make a habit, Jussi Lavola, of arriving at other peoples’ celebrations – as you say yourself – unforgivably late, and looking as if you’ve come from a street fight?’ she asked crisply, and loudly enough for a great many people to hear. The orchestra had stopped playing, dancers stood together on the floor, discussing the news.
‘Katya.’ Elisabet was beside her, a hand on her arm, surprisingly conciliatory. The look she shot at her brother was a flash of blue steel. ‘Jussi didn’t mean to –’
Katya, firmly, shook her arm free. ‘What Jussi meant or didn’t mean to do is immaterial.’ Jussi was watching her, and, infuriatingly, he was smiling, genuinely amused. There was a faint smell of alcohol about him, he rocked gently on the balls of his feet, balancing. ‘He’s drunk,’ Katya said, in her voice an unfeigned and steely anger that anyone who did business with Mischa Bourlov would have recognized.
Elisabet shook her head. ‘Katya –’
Her quiet words were drowned by Mischa’s lifted voice from the stage. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, please – if I might just give the little news we have? There has apparently been an attempt to assassinate Prime Minister Stolypin this evening in Kiev. He is reported shot, badly injured. That is all we know. Now, sad as the news is, might I suggest that there is little or nothing to be gained in abandoning our small celebration?’ He moved back, nodding to the conductor who stepped once more upon the podium, baton raised. Music lifted, the sweet, lilting strains of a Strauss waltz.
‘How is it,’ asked a man’s voice, deep, oddly disembodied, ‘that we Russians can find no way forward, except in violence?’
‘Forward?’ Another voice took up the challenge, fiercely. ‘You call it a step forward to murder such a man?’
The music, thankfully, drowned out any reply. Dancers took again to the floor.
‘Yekaterina Mikhailovna.’ Immaculately formal, his expression still gracelessly and unflatteringly full of laughter, his stance still far from stable, Jussi Lavola extended a long and startlingly grubby hand. ‘May I have the pleasure?’
Katya surveyed him, her swift temper gone, calmly smiling. She knew a winning game when she saw one. ‘No,’ she said. ‘You may not.’ Coolly she nodded to Elisabet and her husband and turned away, hiding the sudden lift of laughter. The idiot had played right into her hands. A smile lit her face as a young Cossack officer bowed over her hand. ‘Good heavens, my dear, is it our dance already?’ No-one, least of all her father, could now expect her to entertain the thought of accepting this provincial boor – this Finn! – as a husband, title or no title. And it would take time to find another suitable applicant for the post. Meanwhile – she smiled up into the ardent dark eyes of her Cossack officer – she could not, for the moment remember his name – meanwhile, she was free.
‘You fool, Jussi.’ Elisabet’s voice was tartly conversational. ‘You damned fool! Will you never stop playing games?’
Jussi laughed. Despite every effort the sound was not easy.
She turned her head to look levelly at him. ‘You’ve been with that woman again.’
He shrugged. She waited. ‘Yes,’ he said.
Elisabet took a long, slow breath, containing fury. ‘Jussi. You simply can’t be so irresponsible! We agreed. All of us. What you do with your private life is, I suppose, your own business. But this marriage is essential. The money is essential. Yuri is becoming suspicious.’
‘She’s a spoiled brat,’ he said. ‘Indulged. Arrogant. And with as much intelligence as a moth. And apart from anything else it isn’t fair to involve her –’
‘Jussi – she’s rich.’
He looked out across the glittering, shifting sea of dancers. ‘I don’t like her.’
His sister’s hand clamped upon his arm. ‘You don’t have to like her. You have to marry her.’ Her voice was flat.
He shook his head, as if to clear it.
‘Jussi, listen.’
‘I know,’ he said, sharply, and then again, ‘I know.’ But the smile had gone from his face and the expression left in his eyes was rebellious.
Margarita was in a seventh heaven. The young man was dark, and very handsome. He was an officer in the Preobrajensky Guards; the uniform was magnificent. He was the incarnation, the very picture, of her dreams. And he was looking at her as a starving man might look at a banquet. His name was Alexandr Feodorovich Kolashki; he had already begged her to call him Sasha. He had utterly refused to relinquish her hand to the young man who had had the forethought to book the supper dance, but had whirled her himself into a dashing and light-footed mazurka that had attracted satisfying attention from the onlookers about the dance floor before escorting her himself into the supper room. This was the one. She wanted him.
She smiled, dazzlingly. ‘Alexandr Feodorovich –’ she hesitated, blushing, dipping her head shyly ‘– Sasha, it’s so very warm in here –’
‘The balcony,’ he said, drawing her small hand into the crook of his arm. ‘It’s cooler out there. Come.’
Varya watched from across the room, smiling a little. How lovely Rita looked tonight; the very image of her mother all those years ago. And how very clever she was. Varya slipped her arm into her husband’s, gently manoeuvring him so that his back was to the tall window towards which the handsome young officer was so attentively escorting his youngest daughter. One could never tell with Victor; he could be the most dreadful spoilsport. For a moment she stood, allowing the small blade of envy to cut at her heart. If she had had such opportunity, what might her life have been? If she had married such a one instead of dull, respectable Victor – ‘I’m sorry, my dear?’
‘I said,’ Victor repeated, testily, ’that we really should begin to think of leaving. It’s one o’clock in the morning – really far too late for the children to be up.’ He glanced about him. ‘Where are they? Where’s Margarita?’
‘I believe she’s resting, in Katya’s room, with the young Lubachova girl. She’s perfectly safe,’ Varya said, smoothly, steering him towards a group that contained a face she had been looking out for all evening. ‘Come now, Victor, the party goes on until two – we really can’t be so ill-mannered as to leave now. Look, the girls are lining up for the cotillion – just see how many ribbons Katya has collected! It is her birthday, of course, the young men are bound to try to please her – why, General – how very nice to see you!’
No fairy waved a wand, no magician arrived to turn back the clock; inevitably the party had to end. At three the last of the revellers left – a group of young men in the midst of whom Katya spotted Jussi Lavola, heading she guessed not for home but for the delights of the shadier side of the night-time city. Jussi had not been near her for the rest of the evening after his unconventional entrance, except formally to take his leave. She stood at the window, watching the young men in the street below, rowdy as schoolboys, pushing and shoving each other, laughing and talking with no regard whatsoever for those more sober citizens abed and trying to sleep. As they passed beneath a lamp the light struck upon the pale, untidy thatch of the young Finn’s hair. He had his arm about the shoulders of another of the young men, though who was supporting whom was impossible to guess. With any luck they’d both fall over. Katya smothered a smile and turned back to the wrecked ballroom. She had a strong and satisfying feeling that she’d seen the last of Jussi Lavola.
She was wrong.
He called the next day, to her utter astonishment, asking first for her father. Katya, pale and feeling by no means well in body or in temper after the excesses of the night before, was outraged. She prowled the floor of her room, refusing to come out, forcing her father to send for her which, in due course, he did. On entering his study she was quite spitefully pleased to see that Jussi, standing tall and excessively pale by the window, looked even worse than she felt. She pitched her voice just a little higher than usual as she returned his subdued greeting, smiled very brightly and watched in satisfaction as he winced.
Her father regarded her repressively, but could not for long keep the amusement from his eyes. ‘Jussi thought you might like to take a stroll in the sunshine with him. Unlike most young men he had the good sense to ask me first.’ The amusement was open now. Katya scowled at him. He sustained her glare with equanimity; nodded towards the door. ‘A breath of air will do you good, child.’
She opened her mouth. ‘I don’t –’
‘You do. Yes, you do, my dear.’ Her father smiled again, with firm purpose.
Katya subsided. Even she could not best or deflect her father when he was in this mood and she had the sense to know it. With ill grace she fetched cape, hat and gloves, jamming the long hatpin into her mass of hair as if she could think of many better uses to which to put it. With some care Jussi took her elbow and negotiated the stairs without jolting his thumping head too much, flinched as they stepped out into the windy September sunshine.
‘What a wonderful idea,’ Katya said, heavily scornful. ‘Thank you so much. I can’t think of anything I’d rather do today than take a stroll in the biting wind. With you.’
He did not respond, at least not verbally, but his grip on her elbow tightened and his long-legged strides lengthened until she was all but running to keep up with him.
‘Let go of me!’
‘Oh, do shut up,’ he snapped.
She wrenched her arm from his, glared at him.
He stopped, put a hand to a head that felt as if it might split.
She waited, watching him fiercely. His face was thin and at the moment quite translucently pale; unusually he was clean-shaven, the line of his mouth straight. He could by no means be described as handsome, though she supposed some might find him attractive. For herself she preferred dark men. She thought she might tell him so.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ruefully. ‘I’m not handling this very well, am I?’ He laughed a little, too obviously self-deprecating. ‘I really do feel quite dreadful.’
Katya raised fair, scornful eyebrows. ‘A self-inflicted injury, I think?’ Wild horses would not have dragged from her a confession as to the state of her own head.
He grinned suddenly, appreciating the jibe despite himself. ‘Quite the worst kind, don’t you think?’
They turned, began to walk together along the wide boulevard that ran alongside the canal. ‘I don’t understand,’ Katya said, abruptly. ‘Whatever possessed you to come to the house today? What is this – this charade?’
He slanted a glance down at her, a small appreciative gleam in his eyes, but said nothing.
They walked on in silence. Beneath trees that tossed in the chill, strengthening wind stood a wrought-iron bench. He stopped, wiped the seat with his handkerchief, settled her upon it. She sat bolt upright, as far from him as she could possibly manage without actually falling off the end of the armless bench, watching him.
‘Is it possible for you to stay quiet for two minutes while I explain?’ he asked with a sudden spectacular smile.
Beyond a tightening of the lips she did not deign to answer.
He played with the handkerchief, folding and unfolding it. He had long, thin fingers, and good nails. ‘The world,’ he said at last, ‘for its own reasons, seems to be determined upon our marrying – or at least our giving the thought some consideration.’
‘Over my dead body,’ she said, venomously pleasant.
‘Quite.’ He lifted his head, regarded her steadily and thoughtfully. ‘My sentiments exactly. Except that if my sister gives me one more lecture upon the benefits of marriage and a secure and steady life I fear it might be over her dead body; and since I’m really rather fond of her I’d like to prevent that if I can.’
She refused to be tempted to laughter.
‘So. It occurred to me that –’ He hesitated, shook out the handkerchief again.
Composedly Katya leaned forward and removed it from the fidgeting fingers. ‘It occurred to you?’ she prompted.
‘– that we might come to some –’ he shrugged ‘– some arrangement that could be to our mutual advantage.’
She eyed him warily. ‘How?’
‘If we gave them the impression that we were – how shall I put it – at least trying to accommodate them all, that is, if they thought we were meeting on occasion, spending some time together –’
Light had dawned. Pensively Katya put a finger to her mouth, her blue eyes intent, though still wary. ‘Except – that we aren’t?’ she asked, softly.
His smile was beatific. ‘Exactly.’
She tapped her lip, still watching him. There was a very long silence.
‘There is, I assume, another –’ she hesitated ‘– lady involved?’
‘Yes.’
‘A married lady?’
He nodded.
‘And you want time – shall we say that doesn’t have to be accounted for? Furthermore,’ she laughed a little, genuinely amused, ‘you want your sister to stop nagging you?’
Jussi’s smile was bland. ‘Put simply: yes.’ Time, he told himself, that was all he was buying; a little time. Convictions and causes were one thing; tying oneself for life to a flibbertigibbet who no more wanted you than you did her was quite another. Anyway, as he had said to Elisabet, it simply wasn’t fair. The thought made him feel positively virtuous; an unaccustomed feeling that he took a self-indulgent moment to enjoy.
The wind caught a strand of her hair and whipped it free. She turned her head to look at the rippling water, remembering the ardent look in the eyes of her young Cossack captain last night, remembering too his last, whispered words –
‘What an extraordinarily good idea,’ she said.