Adonis nodded. ‘All the more reason. The one will help the other. I can teach her, mistress, if you want me to – but not on the colt. No, nor the mare. Give me the money, and I’ll get a little Cossack pony for her – the cleverest and kindest horses in the world! Once she learns to ride, you’ll see the difference!’
Anne looked at him gratefully, and close to tears. All that she had wanted for her daughter, and had put away, folded in a locked drawer in the back of her mind, came suddenly before her.
‘Do you think she could? Do you think she could ever lead a normal life?’
Adonis’s one eye was darkly understanding. ‘In my village, when I was so big,’ he offered a hand two feet from the floor, ‘there was a girl a couple of years older than me, who got this same sickness, and they said she’d never walk or talk. She grew up into the prettiest girl in the village, and the best dancer, and everyone wanted to marry her. I wanted to marry her, but my brother got in first. So I left and went to be a soldier.’
Anne looked sceptical. ‘This is just a story.’
He grinned. ‘Her name was Marta, and before I left she gave my brother a big fat baby boy to leave his name to. She could ride any horse bareback, and danced the mazurka like a woman possessed.’
‘But that’s a Polish dance,’ Anne objected.
‘It’s similar. You wouldn’t know the name in my language,’ he said with a shrug.
Kirov had taken a pretty little house on the outskirts of the town, with lawns that ran down to the river, property of an impoverished Lithuanian baron who was only too glad to let it and move his wife and too-numerous family to a smaller and cheaper house in the country. As soon as the carriage stopped, the Count was there to open the door and lift Anne down, to hold her hands and smile down at her in the sunshine.
Anne felt a mixture of excitement and peacefulness, a holiday feeling of having nothing more to worry about. This was the beginning, she thought, of their married life together, though they were not, and could perhaps never be, married. But they were together now, and no one could come between them. It was to her that he would return from whatever missions he was sent on, and if the world didn’t like it – well, it could look away.
‘I’ve missed you,’ he said simply.
‘Even busy as you were? I’ve missed you too. This is a pretty place.’
‘You won’t be bored – there are all sorts of things going on. It’s as lively here as Moscow – parties every night.’
‘So Adonis has been telling me. He doesn’t approve. But I shouldn’t be bored anyway: just walking and riding would keep me happy.’
Adonis came round the side of the carriage to lift out Rose, and from the safety of his arms she greeted Nikolai gravely. She didn’t take to him as she did to Adonis, and he, long removed from that stage in his own children, and with the thought of Basil to come between them, was reserved with her.
‘Come inside and see if you approve of my housekeeping,’ he said, turning with relief to Anne. ‘Tea will be brought in as soon as you’re ready, and then you must tell me everything that’s been going on in Petersburg since I left.’
A while later they were settled on the little terrace overlooking the lawns, and Anne was performing the ritual of the samovar. Mlle Parmoutier was pushing Rose around the garden in her wheeled chair, examining the shrubs and flowers and benches and urns, and the child’s high-pitched exclamations mingled with the bird song and the distant murmur of the river to make a pleasant background to their conversation.
‘The river looks high,’ Anne said. ‘Has there been much rain lately?’
‘The weather’s been terrible. This is the first really sunny day we’ve had. But tell me about Petersburg.’
‘Well, de Lauriston’s applied for permission to come here, for a private audience with the Emperor–’
‘Yes, I know. He’s been refused. Napoleon will take it as one more proof that Russia is the aggressor, but better that than have Lauriston send him detailed reports of our plans and state of readiness back to Paris. But I didn’t mean that sort of news. Where’s Basil Andreyevitch, to begin with?’
Anne passed his cup and said, ‘Did you think I would bring him with me? Actually, he did toy with the idea of coming here. “Everyone is in Vilna,” he said. But I think he only did it to torment me. In the end he and Jean-Luc decided to go back to Moscow. I think Jean-Luc felt uneasy with the growing anti-French feeling; and Basil said that Petersburg was intolerably stuffy, and that Moscow was much more cosmopolitan. So I think they will stay there.’
‘Unless Napoleon reaches it with his army,’ Nikolai said drily.
‘You don’t think he will?’ Anne was startled.
He didn’t answer, only shook his head doubtfully. Anne went on, ‘I thought, you see, that when I have to leave here, I ought to take Rose to Moscow, because she will want to see her father. I don’t wish to separate her from him completely.’
‘All we can do is wait and see. If Basil Andreyevitch has to leave Moscow, presumably he will tell you were he is going.’ He sipped his tea, and changed the subject with obvious relief. ‘Have you seen anything of Lolya? I didn’t really like leaving her with my mother, but I couldn’t bring her here without a chaperone – and in any case, I shouldn’t have liked to expose her to the flattery of so many young officers with nothing to do!’
‘You’d never have got her to come,’ Anne said grimly. ‘Where Duvierge is, there Lolya must stay!’
He looked alarmed. ‘She isn’t behaving improperly? Surely my mother wouldn’t so far forget her duty as to–’
‘Oh no, she doesn’t admit him to the house, or have him to dinner. But he is better liked than de Lauriston, and when he’s invited to the same function as Lolya, Vera Borisovna can’t stop them talking to each other, since they were apparently introduced in the first place by you.’
‘Don’t remind me! If I had known…’
‘He behaves very well, I have to say – he’s perfectly proper. But I didn’t like to see his interest in her. They always dance together, though never more than twice; and they talk together, though never apart from the company. I’ve seen him approach her when she’s out shopping or walking with her maid, and stand talking to her for a minute or two. Nothing anyone could object to – but why does he do it at all?’
‘And Lolya?’
Anne sighed. ‘She wears her heart on her sleeve, I’m afraid, though I’ve warned her twice not to make her feelings so obvious. It’s something of an on-dit, though at the moment people are tending to be amused by it rather than shocked. No one, I’m glad to say, suspects Duvierge of having designs on her innocence. They seem to think he’s interested in her as your daughter, and probing her for state secrets.’
‘And is he?’
‘Oh yes, but don’t look so shocked! Lolya may be a wet goose where matters of the heart are concerned, but she hasn’t been your daughter all her life for nothing. Discretion is fundamental to her. Even if she knew anything useful, she wouldn’t tell him. I’ve overheard one or two of their conversations, and she wouldn’t even tell him you had gone to Vilna, though he asked her very cleverly in the form of a statement. “Your Papa has gone to Vilna with the Emperor, of course,” he said.’
‘And what did Lolya say?’
‘She shrugged and said, “Oh, Papa never tells me where he’s going, and I never ask,” and then she asked him wistfully if he would be at the puppet show the next day. I didn’t know whether to hug her or shake her!’