He took her hand and kissed her palm. “I can spend all night, if you wish, proving that I love you and no other.” She had reason to be angry, but he couldn’t see that emotion, not in the soft cast of her eyes or the tantalizing curve of her lips. He gently pulled her into him and began his penance with a kiss.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Nadia was half asleep when Filip dressed for his patrol the next morning. Days were short in the winter, with the scarce sun garnering its strength until summer came again. Like the sun, she’d needed more sleep lately. She suspected it was because her body was growing a new little human. Filip pulled on his boots. Should she tell him? No—she’d wait until she was sure. No reason for them to both be disappointed if she was wrong.
When Filip saw she was awake, he sat beside her and bent to kiss her goodbye.
“Be careful.” She said it every time he went out on patrol. It might have been repetitive, but it was sincere.
“I will, but I doubt we’ll run into anything.”
“You’re only saying that so I won’t worry. It won’t work. I’ve seen the casualties coming through.” Sometimes she felt sick inside for Veronika. Anton was in the worst of it, and they were advancing but only at a high cost.
Filip sighed. “I just want to take you home to Czechoslovakia.” He smiled whenever he spoke the name of his new country. He was in love with Czechoslovakia, and he was in love with her. “We weren’t supposed to get caught in the middle of a civil war. But I better go.” He kissed her again and left.
Nadia fell back asleep until sunrise. Then she pulled on most of her clothes and a few of Filip’s and headed to the stream. She needed to do laundry, but she wasn’t sure she’d find water in its liquid form. Spring was still months away, so she might have to melt snow. It covered the ground in abundance, but she wanted clean snow, not the piles in the village.
If she was in the family way, the baby would come in . . . October. She calculated in her head. Then she grinned, a smile she could share only with the snowdrifts. She would tell Filip as soon as he came home. She’d thought she was a week late, but she’d miscalculated. She was two weeks late.
Filip would be thrilled. He’d feel the same anticipation she did, the same hope and awe. Maybe they’d be in Czechoslovakia when the baby came, away from the war and all the bad memories it had created. A new baby born in a new country.
Up in heaven, her parents would be pleased. That had been their wish, the one reason strong enough to make them leave Russia—they had wanted their family, their blood to continue, to grow.
Filip would be a good father, she was sure of it. Would the baby have brown eyes like him? Or gray eyes like her? Curly hair like his? Or straight like hers? She imagined holding the tiny fingers and smelling the newborn-scented hair.
The stream was frozen when she arrived, with a layer of ice too thick to break with her bucket. She’d have to use snow, so she’d need more firewood. She walked along the stream to the woods and gathered as many branches as she could. She would go back and try to borrow a sled, but first, she’d gather what she could carry on this trip. When the temperature dropped, Filip brought home entire logs to keep them warm all night, squaring the sides and pinning them together to make a slow-burning naida, like the prospectors used. She needed a different type of fire for cooking and laundry.
Nadia gathered a few more branches, then paused as smoke met her nostrils. There shouldn’t be anyone south of the village. The peasants lived closer to the train depot, as did the garrison.
Maybe she didn’t need firewood so badly after all.
She turned back for the village. She’d gone farther than she’d realized, and irrational fear sent her rushing away. The smell of smoke probably meant nothing, but why did her instincts tell her to run?
A large man stepped from behind a tree a few paces ahead of her and stood directly in her path. He wore no uniform, no clue as to who he was. Dark ungroomed hair spilled from beneath a mangy fur Astrakhan cap.
Nadia took a step back. Then another as the man stepped toward her. Then she stepped into something and spun around. Another man, not quite as tall but bulkier, and two others behind him.
She turned back to the first man. “Excuse me.” She didn’t know if the man understood Russian, but she tried to move around him. He moved into her way again. “Let me pass.”
One of the men behind her started to laugh.
Nadia bolted. She dropped her firewood, and terror drove her around the tall man. He reached at her, but she turned, avoiding him.
“Help!” She was too far away for anyone to hear, but she shouted anyway. Then she screamed when the footsteps behind her grew louder and one of the men grabbed for her, brushing her clothes.
A moment later, he lunged into her from behind, tackling her and pushing them both into the snow. She screamed as loud as she could until he grabbed her mouth and muffled the sound. His enormous hand grasped her chin and shoved her head to the side. She wanted to bite him, but his hold prevented it. She tried kicking or scratching, but he’d pinned her limbs to the ground. She was absolutely helpless.
The other men stood around her. She didn’t understand their language, but she understood their intentions, especially when they jerked her to her feet and marched her to a group of sturdy Siberian ponies. She struggled against them, knowing she might never see the village again if they took her. One of them struck her in the face so hard her vision blurred. Then they tied her to a pony and left the village far behind.
For a few hours, she held out hope that Filip would find her. But then it began to snow. Every clue about her struggle and the direction she’d gone would disappear.
Reality set in with stark clarity, a dark future as awful as anything the Cheka could do to her. She was the band’s property now, and no one would find her, no matter how much they wanted to save her. Her dreams of a life with Filip were as frozen as the Siberian landscape.
***
Filip scanned the steppe with his field glasses, cursing the falling snow and the way it cut their visibility to almost nothing. “Someone was here, but they’re gone now.”
Maly knelt next to the rail line. “Why did they go through the trouble of prying off the bolts if they weren’t going to tear up the tracks?”
“Maybe they backed away when that White Russian train went through.” The troop train had passed only recently, so the bandits were probably still near. Filip bent next to Maly to see how bad the damage was. “That won’t stop a train, but it needs repair, after we find out who did it.”
“Reds?”
“Maybe.” Filip stood and stamped his feet repeatedly to keep circulation in his toes. “Maly, swing around south. I’ll take my group north.” His brothers in the Urals had enough problems without their supply lines being cut. Were bandits or partisans lurking nearby? The flat, snow-covered expanse went on and on, an endless stretch of white and gray. There were hardly any trees in sight and certainly no packs of soldiers, regular or otherwise.
They mounted. He and his men were infantry, but they used horses for patrols so they could monitor a longer length of track. He had taken to calling his tan gelding Konstantin, after Nadia’s horse. Or maybe it had been her aunt’s horse. Either way, Konstantin’s trot across the proving grounds had led to he and Nadia’s first meeting. He owed a lot to that horse.
The garrison at the little village was only ten strong, plus Dalek and the supply sergeant. Filip and the four men with him rode north from the track, hoping to find some sign of whoever had damaged it. But the snow was getting thicker, and there was no sign of unfriendly forces.
Why had they started their sabotage but not finished? Troop trains moving west were common enough that if they missed today’s, they could wreck the rails for the one that would come tomorrow or the next day. They hadn’t found footprints near the damaged rail ties, so the saboteurs must have left before the patrol had been within range, long enough in advance for the snow to cover their tracks. If the patrol hadn’t scared them off, what was their purpose?