They were to be protected, then, in their wrongdoing, by the loyalty of his servants. Strange irony! And yet all one with the dreamlike quality of the day. To be snatching love like this, when the world – their world – was on the brink of war, was eccentric, and yet somehow right and logical. She dismissed further speculation, and gave herself up to the pleasure of being with him.
Their time was all too brief. The short day was waning when he drove her back into the city, and clouds were beginning to gather, threatening more snow.
‘The thaw’s going to be late this year,’ he said. ‘That will be to our advantage. If the crops are sown late, they won’t be ripe when Napoleon begins his advance. He’ll have nothing to feed his horses on.’
The words dissolved the dream; reality closed round them abruptly. Anne wondered how she was going to be able to face him tonight as her guest without revealing everything in her eyes. Would Basil be back? Would she have difficult questions to answer? The toils of guilt and worry began to tangle themselves around her. Life is long, she thought, and pleasure brief.
‘Put me down at the end of the Oblensky’s garden,’ she said. ‘The house is empty. There’s a gap in the hedge between their garden and ours; I can slip through, and then if anyone sees me, I can say I just went out for some fresh air to clear my head.’ He stopped the troika and kissed her face within the hood. ‘Goodbye, then, my darling, my love. Thank you for today.’ He wanted to say more, but she was restless to be gone now, and pushed him away. He watched her anxiously, wondering about her state of mind, as she jumped down into the snow, and tramped away, opened the shrill and rusting iron gate, and disappeared into the garden.
Anne’s mind was working rapidly now, woken from its enchantment, clicking like a machine through the things that had to be done and the things she had to worry about. Basil had been out all day – some kind of celebration at the Guards’ mess, he had said, so he would probably arrive back late and drunk. She was probably as safe as she could be in the circumstances.
She pushed through the hedge into the garden of her own house. Now, on her own ground, she had a reasonable excuse. This part of the garden was unkempt, with overgrown shrubs, a little plantation, and a sort of summer-house in the shape of an Alpine chalet. Basil and Jean-Luc had been using it recently, and had taken Rose there once or twice for picnics and play. Jean-Luc, with an amused exchange of glances with Basil, called it Le Parc aux Cerfs, which puzzled Anne a little for there were no deer here. Perhaps it was a reference to something; or a pun on the word serfs.
She passed it and was tramping on towards the house when something registered out of the corner of her eye made her turn back. Yes, there was a glimmer of light coming through the closed shutters. She stopped, puzzled, a little alarmed. Someone was in there. Robbers? But surely they would not advertise their presence by lighting a lamp or fire? She went closer, stepped on to the verandah and walked cautiously up to the window, and put her eye to the crack in the shutter which had allowed the light to escape.
It was too small a gap for her to be able to see anything, but as her face was close to the window, she heard Jean-Luc’s distinctive laugh. She felt a surge of indignation and triumph. So he was using the garden house without permission, was he? Probably entertaining some woman in there, some slut from the playhouse – and in the same place that he took her innocent daughter to play! This was her chance to discredit him, to get rid of him. Even Basil would not condone that sort of loose behaviour on his premises. She would catch him red-handed and be free of him at last.
Softly she crept to the door and tried it, but it was locked. If he were there with permission, there’d be no need to lock the door. But she knew another way in. At the back there was a lean-to for storing fuel, and from there, behind the woodstacks, a little door led into the summer-house. The door, being well concealed, was never locked, and she doubted whether Jean-Luc would have thought about it.
He had not. Moments later she was trying the little door and finding it yielding; beyond it she heard the low murmur of voices, and soft laughter. She gathered herself, took a deep breath, and flung the door wide, stepping through that the same instant.
There was only one room in the summer house, square, with a stone-built fireplace, in which a fire was burning steadily. There seemed time in that first second to take in all the details. The fire had evidently been alight some time – the logs were burning on a bed of ashes. The summer furniture had been pushed back against the walls, and in front of the fire was a dark red Turkey carpet, on which, on a heap of cushions, lay Jean-Luc. He was quite naked, except for a gold chain about his neck, and with his long hair spilling down his back, his painted face, and his male body glowing in the firelight, he looked like some appalling hermaphrodite.
He was not alone. Lying with him – indeed, supporting him in his arms – was Basil. Basil, she saw with a dazed sense of unreality, was also naked. He had a glass of wine in one hand, while the other was draped over Jean-Luc’s shoulder and across his chest, the long fingers toying with one of his nipples. Basil had been speaking; now as he saw Anne his voice stopped in a little squeak like a mouse caught by an owl. His eyes widened and his face, drained of colour, went chalk white, cheese white. In her shock, Anne seemed to have time particularly to notice that; and the colour of the wine – deep, glowing red with the firelight shining through it. His hand must have shaken, for a little of it lipped over the rim and splashed on to Jean-Luc’s chest. The drops looked dark and viscous against his fair skin, like blood. He had been looking up at Basil; now, seeing Basil’s expression, and feeling the touch of wetness on his skin, he looked down at himself.
It all seemed to be happening very slowly, and without sound. There was a roaring in Anne’s ears that was like a huge silence. She saw him look down at himself, and knew, as if she could read his thoughts, that he thought it was blood. He opened his mouth very slowly and cried out something, but the words were distorted and boomed soundlessly, as thought he were underwater. He looked up again, and one white hand rose in protest; Basil’s fingers opened, and the glass tumbled very slowly through the air, throwing an arc of blood across Jean-Luc’s white belly, reddening his golden pubic curls, trickling like desperate revenge across his limp white penis and down his thighs.
Anne was already turning away, but she paused and looked back, and in the instant before life resumed its normal speed and she was running, running in desperation away across the garden and towards the house, she saw Jean-Luc turn to look at her at last. His eyes narrowed, but his expression was not of fear or shock; it was of pleasure. Arching a little, leaning back against Basil’s body, he smiled the closed-mouthed, feline smile of triumph of the adored mistress at the despised wife.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The ball was over. It was almost four o’clock in the morning, and the last guests had been wrapped up in their furs and escorted to their carriages, and the purple-nosed coachmen had cracked their whips in the bitter black air and driven them away to their beds.
The ball had been an enormous success. The beautiful blue and cream and gold ballroom had been as full as it would hold of the pick of Petersburg society. The Emperor had come, as promised, intending only to look in briefly out of courtesy to Anne, and to be seen in company with de Lauriston; but Anne had had the foresight to invite Marya Antonovna Naryshkina, the wife of the Grand Master of the Imperial Hunt, who had been Alexander’s mistress for ten years or more. She had been away for some time in Odessa, on the Black Sea, where she had been sent by her doctors, who feared she was consumptive. Now she was back and apparently in perfect health, and more beautiful than ever.