Anne would have moved away at that point, but Lolya seized her arm and hold her back.
‘I’d be happy to, Gran’mère, only Madame Tchaikovsky has just told me that there is someone Papa wants me to dance with, so I must go to him this instant and find out who it is. Come, Anna Petrovna, I’m ready now!’
And she curtseyed to her grandmother and hurried Anne away, gripping her arm in a way that was part command and part appeal. When they were out of earshot of the irate Dowager, Anne said, ‘Now, Lolya, this is too bad of you! I don’t wish to provoke your grandmother – and if you had any sense, you wouldn’t either.’
Lolya looked despairing. ‘Oh, but you don’t understand! She wants to engage me for every dance with the sons and grandsons of her dreary old friends, and I must be free for Andrei when he asks!’
‘Lolya, darling, I don’t think he is going to ask,’ Anne said gently. ‘He is much too old for you, you know, and probably interested in older women.’
‘He isn’t! Anyway, all the older women are married,’ Lolya said, and Anne did not want to take the bloom off her innocence by telling her what interest a married woman might hold for her idol. Then Lolya went on, ‘But the thing is, he may not be able to get away from General de Lauriston – you know how these old people think balls are for talking instead of dancing! – so I want you to take me to him, and then he’s bound to ask me, isn’t he?’
‘No, you unscrupulous child, he isn’t – and I won’t. I’m taking you straight back to your grandmother.’
Lolya’s face was despairing. ‘Oh, please, Anna! You can’t be so crueclass="underline" I love him quite dreadfully!’
Anne looked at her unhappily. ‘Lolya, you’re so young and so pretty! Don’t waste your loveliness on someone like that, who will never care for you, and could never make you happy.’
But Lolya had ceased to listen. Her eyes, restlessly wandering in search of her beloved, had at last found him – and by an infernal piece of luck, found him deep in conversation with his superior and Count Kirov. Lolya gave a little squeak, and before Anne could prevent her, had darted off to join the group, her cheeks extremely pink and her eyes extremely bright. Anne would have gone in pursuit, but at that moment Minister Kochubey claimed her attention, and she could not be so rude as to brush him off.
‘So very brave of you, Madame Tchaikovsky, to invite our friends from the French Embassy! But as I’ve said to His Majesty, it’s sometimes as well to keep the wolf where you can see him!’
In the intervals between nodding and agreeing, Anne watched the little tableau across the room distractedly: saw Lolya approach her father confidently and slip her hand through his arm; saw the three men look first annoyed and then polite; saw the two Frenchmen bow over Lolya’s hand with restrained courtesy. Then the gap through which she was watching closed up, and she saw no more.
A few minutes later, she was called to dance the opening formal minuet with her husband; but when, after the minuets, the general dancing began, she was considerably startled to see Lolya being led into the set by Colonel Duvierge. Startled, and displeased – for Lolya was wearing her heart on her ecstatic face, while Duvierge was looking merely politely amused. Evidently he had been forced into asking her out of courtesy to her father.
Anne was glad to see after that, in the moments she could spare from her own concerns, that Lolya was dancing as she should be with a succession of suitable young men, and looking as though she were enjoying herself. Anne had ordered the new dances to be called from time to time during the evening – the lively mazurkas and polonaises, and the bold and increasingly popular waltz, which had gained ground over the last couple of years to the extent that it was now considered to be respectable by everyone except the very stickiest of dowagers. The last dance before the supper interval was a waltz, and Anne, circling politely in the restrained embrace of Count Chernyshov, was again startled and displeased to see Lolya whirling on the other side of the room with Colonel Andrei Duvierge’s arm round her slender waist.
He had asked her a second time! How had she jockeyed him into that? But as Anne watched them over her partner’s shoulder, she saw that Duvierge was not merely being polite. Lolya looked as though she had eaten Bliss whole, and leaned into his embrace as they danced, it had to be admitted, extremely gracefully together; while Duvierge looked down into his partner’s sparkling black eyes with something like interest.
He had found her sufficiently amusing, it seemed, to have asked her a second time; but then Lolya had said that he had danced with her twice at two other balls. This was a situation to disquiet. She must warn Nikolai to take care of his daughter; though she could not believe that a man like Duvierge would waste much time on an inexperienced virgin like Lolya, and he could certainly not mean her any harm – that would be suicidal in the present climate. But he might encourage Lolya just enough to break her heart, and that would not do at all.
But now the ball was over, and the activities and concerns which had kept Anne preoccupied for so many hours were over, and there was nothing any longer to keep her from thinking about her husband. The last guests had gone; Basil was talking to Mikhailo, giving him instructions about callers the next day – or rather, later that same day – while the footmen went round putting out the lights. Jean-Luc had taken himself off with some of the other members of the company, wisely leaving husband and wife alone.
Anne sent Pauline to bed; and when Basil finished talking to the butler and came up the stairs, Anne was waiting for him at the first landing. He just failed to meet her eyes, made a resigned gesture towards the small drawing-room, and preceded her in.
‘Would you care for something?’ he said lightly, walking across to the cabinet on the far side of the room. ‘I’m going to have one.’
The fire had died almost to nothing, and the room was cold. Anne went to it automatically, poked the ashes into redness and put on some more coal, and then just stood, staring at the tiny flames that began to flicker and pop as the coals warmed into life.
Basil poured himself a large brandy, and then, having had no reply from Anne, poured a second one and carried it over, putting it down on the small table nearest her. He perched nervously on the arm of the sofa and looked at her back, trying to gauge her mood from her posture. At last, unable to bear the silence any more, he said, ‘Well, I suppose there are things you want to say. For God’s sake say them, and let’s be done with it.’
She turned slowly and looked at him, and he flinched from the look. The shock which had been her first reaction was beginning to wear off, and exposing what was underneath, the disgust and contempt and rage. These were what he saw in her eyes now, and he flushed a little, looked away, and drank nervously from his glass.
Anne didn’t at once know what to say. It was something so horrifying that instinct made her want to turn away from it, to deny that it had happened. It was something which had never been mentioned to her directly in all her life – naturally not – although in some oblique and largely wordless way, she had become aware of its existence. She knew, for instance, without precisely knowing how she knew, that in the King’s Navy, it was punishable by death, and that the sentence was regularly, though infrequently, carried out against offenders.
Yet to discover it first hand, and in someone so close to her – someone with whom she had shared her bed – was like suddenly meeting the Devil face to face, curling horns and sulphur-breath and all. It was like pulling back the covers from one’s safe and comfortable bed, and finding it full of crawling maggots. Even now, looking at Basil perched on the sofa’s arm, swirling his brandy in his glass, and looking so ordinary, only a little flushed and embarrassed, as if he had been caught out in some minor misdemeanour, she could hardly believe that it was true.