She wouldn’t use the phrase, but she certainly thought about it. How would it feel to have Filip hold her, caress her, meet her lips with his own? She touched her lips with her fingers, wondering, dreaming, and longing.
Chapter Twenty
Filip and Kral stared at the map. After taking Krasnoyarsk, the legion had seized several hundred miles of track. They had more equipment now—rail carriages in addition to their boxcars, clothing, and ammunition. And a great many prisoners, most of them Austrian and German war prisoners who’d joined the Bolsheviks to keep from starving to death.
Kral tapped the map. “Irkutsk is next.”
“Would you like me to go?” It would mean another scouting expedition, but maybe after Irkutsk they’d have a break. Filip had been hoping for a rest since Chelyabinsk. So far, it hadn’t happened. Six weeks of hard fighting, and no end in sight.
“Not now. The White Russians have been feeding us information.”
“And?”
Kral grimaced. “Twenty-five thousand men, an armed fleet on Lake Baikal, and artillery.”
“What type of men?”
“Mostly war prisoners. About the time we left Chelyabinsk, they attacked our men there, tried to disarm them per Trotsky’s orders. But the legion rebelled, took Irkutsk. Some Americans arranged a truce and sent our men through to Vladivostok. Gajda wants them court-martialed for not holding the city once they had it.”
“Irkutsk.” Filip pronounced it like a curse because it was one more obstacle in their path to freedom. Beyond Irkutsk lay Lake Baikal and an intricate system of rail tunnels that sounded like it would be their largest hurdle yet. “What are your orders, Brother Lieutenant?”
“For today, help repair the rails.”
Filip grunted. “I’m better at tearing them apart than I am at putting them back together, but I’ll do what I can.”
He spent the day laying wide-gauge rails because he could swing a hammer as well as the next man. Men with more skill worked to repair a bridge the Bolsheviks had blown. Others gathered wood for the wood-burning engines—an easy enough task when thick forests crowded either side of the track. But as evening cast its shadows along the trains, everyone was in a celebratory mood. All along the line, train depots were surrendering to the legion. They controlled everything along the southern route from the Volga to the outskirts of Irkutsk, a stretch of roughly three thousand miles.
When Filip finally finished for the day, he washed up the best he could. Then he went to the hospital train, in search of his wife. He hadn’t seen her in weeks.
The boxcar was busy, worse than he remembered from Omsk, but many of the cases seemed minor. He climbed up, and Nadia met his eyes and smiled at him across the bodies of the wounded soldiers. He still hadn’t told her that they could get an annulment whenever she wished, and at that moment, he decided he didn’t want to tell her, not yet. He’d let himself have one day more to call her his, one day more married to the most beautiful, most resilient woman he’d ever seen.
“How are you, Nadia?” he asked when she approached. Whenever he saw her, he felt different. Better. Nervous, too, but eager to be with her.
“I’m well, thank you.” She glanced at the patients and at the orderly. “I’m free to leave, if that would be agreeable to you.”
“It would be quite agreeable.” Why did he suddenly feel like an awkward schoolboy again? At least he’d shaved and put on fresh clothing. His words might be clumsy, but he was clean. He hopped from the boxcar and offered a hand to guide her to the ground.
“They’re still serving supper. And there’s music, if you’d like. Probably in several places.”
She smiled. “Supper and music both sound wonderful.”
They ate a soup of cabbage, potatoes, and pickled fish at a table made of scrap wood. She told him about the men she was tending, and he passed on the news he’d heard from Dalek. Though parts of the northern line, like Yekaterinburg, were still in Bolshevik hands, the legion had pried open a huge swath of its escape route.
“It’s extraordinary.” Nadia looked into the distance. “I hope the legion’s luck holds. And that we get to Vladivostok before winter.”
“Eager for an annulment?” Filip did his best to sound casual, as if he didn’t care one way or the other if they stayed married.
Nadia’s lips turned down. “Actually, I was thinking of the weather. General Winter wasn’t kind to Charles XII or to Napoleon. I don’t know what he might do to the Czechoslovak Legion.”
“We’re trying to leave, not take over, so perhaps he’ll be merciful. We ought to be in France by then anyway. Have you ever been?”
Nadia shook her head. “No. My father . . . he was trying to convince my mother to go there—to start a new life in Paris. Then the Cheka found us.” A note of grief threaded its way into her voice, making it waver. She swallowed as if to gather her thoughts, and the emotion disappeared. But he didn’t think it was gone, just hidden. He wasn’t sure he ought to, but her hand lay on the table, and it seemed as if she needed comfort, so he put his hand over hers. She didn’t pull away. Instead, her face softened.
“I’ll get you to Paris if that’s where you want to go. I promise.”
“You seem like the sort of man who keeps his promises.”
“I try.” He wasn’t sure what to say beyond that. He studied her face, trying to memorize every bit of that warm, smooth skin and those beautiful, elegant features. “I, um, I promised music, didn’t I?”
Her perfect lips pulled into a smile. “Yes, I believe you did.”
“That’s a promise I can keep tonight.” He helped her to her feet, and they wandered to the nearest source of music. Dalek stood before a boxcar, playing, and listeners sat nearby or danced in a clearing of grassy taiga. Filip pulled a log over so they’d have somewhere to sit and settled next to Nadia. He should have picked a shorter log—it would have given him an excuse to sit closer to her.
Nadia closed her eyes and leaned back, as if that could help her hear the music better. As much as he admired her gray eyes, there was something equally appealing in her calm concentration, her graceful neck, her silky black hair, and the contentment on her face. Dalek was back in practice again. The music was better than normal. She seemed to be inhaling it, as if each note was feeding her soul.
“I went to Petrograd the summer before the war, when it was still Saint Petersburg. Music and dancing every night. My mother had a dozen new gowns made for me. It was such a different world back then.”
Dalek smirked at Filip as he ended one song and began another. What was behind that knowing nod? If Filip hadn’t been so worn out from six weeks of fighting and a day of hammering rails, he would have suggested they change groups. Filip wasn’t eager to be the butt of whatever prank Dalek was planning.
Nadia opened her eyes at the new song. “A waltz. Do you dance?”
“Me?” Filip laughed. “No. At least not like they do in Petrograd.”
“But do you waltz?”
“That’s a type of dancing, isn’t it? No, I don’t waltz.”
Her eyes followed Anton and Veronika, then Larisa and Petr. She glanced at him again. “Would you like to learn? I could teach you. You’ve taught me so much. Maybe I can return the favor in some small way.”
The couples dancing to Dalek’s music seemed like they were having fun. Not all were graceful, but they looked happy, as though the connection in their hands was creating a deeper joining of their minds and hearts. Filip envied them but didn’t dare join them. The last time Nadia had waltzed, it had probably been with a noble who had taken lessons for years. What would she think of Filip’s clumsy attempts? “I doubt I can be taught to waltz.”
“Oh.” She looked at her lap, and the corners of her mouth pulled down. “I would undoubtedly make a poor teacher.”