The summer sun in Petrograd stretched long and languid into the evening, and though Olga knew that the bright nights were time stolen from the dark winter to come, she adored the fact that midnight resembled late afternoon; that the sun, in its reluctance to set, merely dipped below the horizon at the witching hour, leaving behind an indigo sky that never truly deepened to black. In the weeks of perpetual daylight, time itself felt suspended, as if the city existed beneath the glass dome of a bell jar: the ticking clock slowed, and each magical moment felt like a gift not to be squandered by something so commonplace as sleep. Were they in Petrograd, Olga knew the buildings along the Nevsky Prospect would be washed pale by the midnight sun, the streets along the canal crowded with couples walking arm-in-arm, jewel-laden and tireless as they strolled to their boxes at the ballet.
At the Annexe, the white nights worked their wonder too. After dinner, patients streamed into the hospital garden, and though Dr. Gedroits’ nursing schedule remained rigidly set for early mornings and early evenings, Olga felt little compunction in traveling down from Alexander Palace with her sisters to join the officers in quiet celebration. Walking along the gray-green wall of a cypress grove, Maria wheeled a young officer out from the common room, a book tucked beneath her arm to read aloud; nearby, Anastasia was playing badminton, amusing the assembled onlookers as she dove for the shuttlecock, her ribboned hair flying. Beneath the swaying branches of a weeping willow, Tatiana was talking to Viktor Kiknadze—with his brilliantine hair and self-satisfied smile, he was too arrogant for Olga, but Tatiana seemed to be enjoying herself: she leaned close and rested a hand on Kiknadze’s arm, and Olga felt a pang of regret for Dmitri Malama, off fighting at the front.
As for Olga, she was content to sit in the garden, watching Mitya over the chessboard between them. They’d been playing for nearly three quarters of an hour, and Olga had steadily closed her pieces in on Mitya’s king; now, within one move of victory, she watched as he lifted his knight and shifted it across the board with stiff fingers.
“You’re sure that’s the move you want to make?” Olga asked.
“Well, now I’m not.” Mitya grinned, his finger still resting on the knight. “What’s wrong with it?”
Olga shrugged. “I wouldn’t be much of an opponent if I told you,” she replied, as Mitya studied the board.
Finally, he lifted his finger. Without preamble, Olga moved her queen across the board and checkmated his king.
He shifted in his seat, resting his elbow atop his walking stick. “Well, an Emanuel Lasker I am not,” he said finally, knocking down his king with a flick of his hand. “I ought to practice more.”
“We’ve been playing almost every day,” said Olga as she pulled out a wooden box from beneath her chair. “And you are getting better. Chess takes time, that’s all. You’d never learn if I let you win.”
She began clearing the pieces from the board, sweeping them into the box one by one. As she reached for the white queen, Mitya’s hand met hers. He ran his thumb along the back of her palm, sending fire into the pit of her stomach.
“Win or lose,” he said, “I enjoy the fight.”
Olga met his gaze, savoring the feel of his hand on hers.
“Sister Romanova!” Olga pulled her hand out of Mitya’s grasp and turned. Dr. Gedroits was standing at the door to the Annexe, packing the bowl of her pipe with tobacco.
It was clear that Dr. Gedroits had only just finished her work for the evening: though she’d removed her medical overcoat, her shirtsleeves were wrinkled from the day’s wear, the cuffs pushed carelessly to her elbows. As was her custom, the doctor was dressed in trousers and a waistcoat, her tie neatly knotted beneath the vee of a stiff collar.
“You’re here awfully late,” said Olga as she met the doctor at the hospital’s entrance, leaving Mitya to finish clearing up the chessboard. Belatedly, she realized she was still holding the white queen, and hastily stowed it in her pocket. The doctor inclined her head in her perfunctory concession to Olga’s station, and though the lack of deference might have made Mamma bristle, Olga didn’t mind: within the hospital grounds, the doctor reigned with earned authority.
Dr. Gedroits pushed back a wisp of hair that had fallen loose from its bun. “Working on a paper about blood transfusion,” she said, lifting the pipe to her lips. Olga glanced into the hall behind her: when Dr. Gedroits worked late, Sister Nirod usually lingered on the ward to walk her back to her palace apartment.
Olga offered her a lighter, and the doctor nodded her thanks as she took it.
“Nearly done, I hope?” Olga asked as Gedroits lit the pipe, the smell of tobacco blossoming between them. “Your hard work does you credit.”
“It’s not my work I wish to discuss, but yours.” Gedroits returned the lighter and leaned against the hospital’s brick façade. “It’s awfully conscientious of you to come on your time off, Grand Duchess.”
Something in the doctor’s tone made it clear to Olga that the comment wasn’t meant as a compliment. “We wanted to cheer the men up. Neither Tatiana nor I had any committee meetings tonight, and Maria and Anastasia spend so much of their free time at the other hospitals...”
“I can see that,” the doctor murmured, looking out across the lawn at Mitya as he hobbled across to join the onlookers at the badminton net. “And Her Imperial Majesty? Has she joined you on this visit?”
“She’s at Alexander Palace.” Olga resisted the urge to elaborate—to tell Dr. Gedroits that Mamma, while unaware of the visit, would no doubt sanction it, because it was to the benefit of Russia, was it not, to make the army’s officers feel valued? “She’s helping the tsar with important—important policies—”
“And what about you?” Dr. Gedroits’ face was impassive. “How long do you plan to stay with the officers? To cheer them up? It’s nearly ten o’clock, and you and Tatiana have an early start.”
Olga glanced back at the grounds. Though Anastasia was still locked in her badminton match and Maria was bent over her book, using its cover as a lap desk on which to transcribe a letter for the officer in the wheelchair, Tatiana and Kiknadze had vanished; wandered, no doubt, around the side of the hospital.
“Not much longer, I should think.”
For a moment, Dr. Gedroits was silent; she stared at Olga, tightening her grip on the pipe’s bowl. “Tomorrow, I’d be grateful if you would see to Lieutenant Kiknadze’s dressing.”
Olga hesitated. “Of course. But doesn’t Tatiana usually take care...?”
“Your sister is needed elsewhere—and between the two of us, it’s not wise to form strong attachments to any one patient.” She turned her attention back to the badminton game, watching as a cheer went up from the officers as Anastasia returned a particularly challenging volley. “Perhaps it’s a lesson you ought to take to heart as well, Grand Duchess.”
Olga, too, watched the shuttlecock’s progress, her fingers tightening around the chess piece in her pocket. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean, Doctor.”
“Don’t you?” Dr. Gedroits fitted her pipe in the corner of her mouth, the ember flaring orange. “I don’t mean to be overly familiar, but our work here is more important than our personal feelings. We cannot afford to become overly invested in the welfare of one individual. Not when so many others need our attention.”
Olga reddened. As Mitya’s nurse, Olga enjoyed the moments she could spend with him, even welcomed his company as she changed bed linens and delivered tea to the other officers on the ward, but she’d always let the cap and veil of her nursing uniform stand between them. She took a professional pride, even, in his increasing dexterity, his steadily improving mood—and though she’d tried to tell herself that this late visit to the Annexe, in her best day skirt and lace blouse, was nothing more than a courtesy call intended for all the officers in the blue-lit yard, she’d spent time with no one but Mitya.
She’d wanted to spend time with no one but Mitya.
“If this is about Shakh-Bagov, I’ve been helping him with his recuperation,” she replied. “He’s been displaying signs of traumatic neurosis. The chess is a means of helping him to gain strength in his hand while improving his mental—”
Dr. Gedroits pulled the pipe from her lips and knocked the overturned bowl against the brick wall; the ember fell loose, and the doctor tamped it carefully beneath the heel of her shoe. Behind her, Olga could see Sister Nirod, who’d changed out of her nursing uniform, lingering at the end of the hall. “The chess is an excuse to spend time with a handsome young officer. Don’t flatter yourself by thinking anyone sees it differently,” she said. She turned to go back inside, then looked once more at Olga, her expression softening. “I’m not entirely without feeling, but the fact of the matter is that we are not friends to these men. We’re professionals. To give them the wrong idea is to nobody’s benefit, least of all your own.”
The doctor inclined her head before returning inside, but Olga remained rooted to her spot in front of the hospital door. Was it really so obvious? If Dr. Gedroits, with her countless responsibilities, had noticed Olga’s growing affections, who else was whispering behind their hands, making veiled comments as they followed the trajectory of Olga’s crush?
For that was what it was, Olga reminded herself as she slowly made her way back along the green: a crush. Nothing more. How could it be anything else, when her duties as a nurse—her duties as a grand duchess—would always come first? Dr. Gedroits had been right to remind her of that undeniable, incontrovertible fact. Affection was a luxury she could ill afford, an indulgence made inappropriate by the circumstances of war.
And yet, if they were living in times of peace, Olga’s feelings for Mitya would still be an indulgence. They would be non-existent, Olga reminded herself. Were it not for the war, Olga would never have met him—she would never have grown to admire his tenacity, his soulfulness; his quiet reserve. The thought of it saddened her: to think of a world in which she and Mitya had never met.
Mitya stood at the side of the badminton net, his broad back accentuated by the spread of his shoulders as he leaned on his walking stick. He was so different from other men. Not impulsive like Pavel, nor entitled like Felix. Not impassioned like Dmitri Pavlovich or condescending like Prince Carol. Though Papa had told her once he’d never force her to marry anyone she didn’t want, Olga suspected that his permissive tone would extend no further than the narrow pool of men deemed, through some accident of birth or privilege, worthy of her bloodline: sycophants paraded in front of her by the government, courtiers huddled in corners like bureaucratic cupids, whispering about dynastic alliances.
Mitya turned as she reached the badminton court, his expression quizzical as she passed behind him and disappeared across the road, into the overgrown park that abutted the hospital’s west wing.
Though the midnight sun still burned orange behind the trees, the sky above Olga had finally darkened, sending the purple bruise of a sunset long across the heavens. Olga paused in a clearing, allowing her eyes to adjust to the gloom; behind her, she could hear the sound of Mitya’s footsteps as he made his way through the undergrowth.
“This feels awfully risqué,” he said. From beyond the curtain of cypress needles they could hear the sound of the distant badminton tournament; closer by, the thin ribbon of a gramophone record echoed from a far-off window. “What’s this about?”
Before she could lose her nerve, Olga stepped close to Mitya—far closer than she’d ever dared, outside of the normal proximity of nurse and patient. She lifted her hands to his chest, her heart beating furiously as she savored the feel of him beneath her fingers: his collarbone; the ridge of his scar.
Mitya let his stick fall as he wrapped his hands around her waist. “I’ve hoped, but I never believed...”
She felt it in her throat, first: the anticipation, the thrill, as she succumbed to something she’d too long denied. She pressed her lips to his, knowing that he was already slipping through her fingers: that theirs was a connection built on the shifting sands of circumstance. One day, duty—his and hers—would pull them apart, but here, now, Mitya pulled her closer and the world slowed just enough for her to feel the glorious free fall of a skipped heartbeat.