He was being unfair, and he knew it: Sergei had never been her charge. But he wanted to punish her, to hurt her.
She looked at him sadly. ‘Ah, no,’ she protested softly.
The anger drained from his face, leaving him only puzzled. ‘Anna, what happened? You didn’t love him, did you?’
‘How could I help loving him? He’s your son,’ she said.
Sergei looked from one to the other, hearing the warmth, the unmistakable intimacy of the exchange. They were not words spoken merely between employer and employee. The wine flush drained out of him. He was suddenly horribly sober.
‘Papa – not you and Anna?’ He met Anne’s reluctant eyes. ‘Was that why you said it was impossible?’ She didn’t answer. His fists clenched, the words burst out of him. ‘You and Papa? How could you? It’s disgusting!’
Anne could bear no more. She got to her feet, desperate to escape. She swayed, and the Count was there, steadying her. He would always do that – he loved her, he understood.
‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘Go out on to the terrace. No one will follow you.’
She looked up at him blindly, and then stumbled away.
The warm evening air seemed hard to breathe. The terrace was empty, thank God! She leaned against the balustrade and stared into the shadows of the shrubbery beyond. Before her the darkness sang with a monotony of cicadas; behind her the strains of music drifted out from the brightly lit ballroom; between the two she was suspended in a world of anguish. She contemplated the devastation of her life; and the hot, bitter tears began to fall.
Some time later, she was aware that someone was near her. She tried to stop herself crying. Her reticule was left behind on the sofa in the ballroom: she had no handkerchief, and wiped at her wet face uselessly with her fingers. She struggled for control, not wanting to expose herself to impertinent curiosity. Then someone put clean linen into her hand, pleasantly scented. She recognised the scent. It was Basil Tchaikovsky – only him.
‘Here,’ he said kindly. ‘Go on – it’s a good, big one.’
She took it, dried her face, pressed it to her eyes. He was standing beside her, shielding her from anyone who might be looking from the ballroom. She tried to thank him, and began crying again.
‘Oh dear,’ he said, and took her in his arms. There was nothing of the lover in the gesture – he held her against his shoulder in kindness, simply to let her cry more comfortably. He was almost motherly. At first the very quality of his kindness made her cry harder; but at last the sobs began to ease, and after a while she was able to draw a long, shuddering breath and mumble, ‘I’m sorry.’
He held her a moment longer, and then put her gently away. ‘All done now?’ he said. She uncrumpled his handkerchief – damp now – from her clutch, and wiped her face again.
‘I think so,’ she said unsteadily.
‘I saw something of what happened from across the room,’ he said, and then gave her a rueful smile. ‘Fascinating people, these Kirov men! I’m not surprised you fell victim. Which one was it? Or was it both?’
She looked at him in blind misery, hardly hearing what he said. ‘What am I to do?’ she said. ‘What am I to do?’ The tears welled up again helplessly. ‘My life is ruined.’
‘Oh, surely not,’ he said gently. ‘A little contretemps – it will blow over. It will all be forgotten in a day or two. Lives are not ruined in ballrooms – it doesn’t happen, you know.’
She shook her head dumbly. He didn’t know the full gravity of it. ‘I shall have to go away. But what can I do? Where can I go?’ she said. She was utterly lost, helpless, bewildered.
Tchaikovsky looked at her carefully. ‘There is something you can do,’ he said. ‘I don’t mean to press you when you are obviously upset – but if you want to get away from them, you could marry me. My offer still stands.’ She said nothing, and he wasn’t sure if she had heard him. ‘I wouldn’t blame you for wanting to escape them. They do tend to engulf everything around them, like octopuses – well, Nikolai Sergeyevitch does, at any rate, and I imagine young Sergei is going to be just the same one day.’
His light voice, easy as the little night breeze, drifted on past her, soothing her, dispersing the fog of pain, leaving her feeling empty, beyond emotion. She wanted to lean against him, to close her eyes and sleep; but she knew it was not fair.
‘You know that I don’t love you,’ she said. ‘Can you really want me to marry you on those terms?’
‘I don’t mind why you marry me, so long as you marry me,’ he said lightly. ‘It will be all right, you’ll see.’
Running away, she thought. Cowardly. But what else could she do? She must escape, and she had nowhere else to go. She was worn out, and he offered her a haven. As long as she was not deceiving him, there could be no harm – could there?
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘Does that mean you will marry me?’ he said cautiously.
She hardly knew what she had meant by it; but she said again, ‘Yes.’
She heard him draw a deep breath of relief and triumph, and then, permitted now, he drew her against him again. ‘Thank you,’ he said quietly into her hair. ‘You won’t regret it. I’ll make you happy, you’ll see. Everything will be all right.’
Anne stared over his shoulder at the ground. I feel nothing, she thought, nothing at all.
BOOK THREE
1811
Chapter Twenty-Two
The barouche which waited before the steps of the Byeloskoye Palace, one June day in 1811, was new, glossy and very smart. It was French-hung, painted black with scarlet trim on the wheels, and the upholstery was of the shade of pale blue known as Ecstasy, which was all the kick in Moscow that year. Between the shafts were two white English carriage horses, brought all the way from Yorkshire at enormous expense. The black leather harness which lay so vividly against their milky coats was decorated with tasselled Turkish knots of scarlet silk, and their plaited manes were tagged with little scarlet hackles, which stood in a ridge above their proudly-arched necks.
It was an outfit which spoke not only of wealth and high fashion, but imagination too; and the building before which it stood presented the same sort of image. Faced all in white marble, it had the appearance of an enormous Greek temple, complete with soaring, fluted Corinthian columns. These supported a massive triangular pediment on which, in a mood of frivolity, not to mention irreligion, was depicted the Rape of Europa, in bas-relief and considerable detail.
The carriage had not been waiting more than five minutes before there was a movement in the shadows under the portico, and the chatelaine of Byeloskoye came out into the sunshine, pulling on her gloves of lavender French suede, and closely followed by a diminutive French maid holding a lace parasol above her mistress’s head. The groom caught the coachman’s eye and nodded approval. One thing about the Countess Anna Petrovna Tchaikovskova: she appreciated fine horseflesh, and never kept her horses standing about unnecessarily.
The liveried footman handed her up into the carriage, folded up the step and closed the door, while the maid slipped in on the other side. The footman climbed on to the step behind, the groom stood away from the horses’ heads, and the barouche rolled away from the house, crunching over the gravel forecourt towards the wrought-iron gates.
As they moved away, Anne looked back as she always did at the gigantic, tongue-in-cheek replica of the Temple of Hephaistos which she now inhabited when she was in Moscow. She never knew whether to admire or deride, as the remnants of her English conservatism struggled with the romantic flamboyance she had learned from her adoptive country. Moscow itself was a strange mixture of such contrasts: at once Oriental and fiercely Russian, patriotic and cosmopolitan, flamboyant and conservative. Perhaps that was why she felt at home there.