‘I am English,’ Anne replied. Despite his abruptness, she saw no particular threat in his presence – indeed, she was rather enjoying the exchange with so exotic a character. This, surely, was why one travelled in foreign parts!
‘Ah, English!’ said the Prince, baring his teeth in what Anne took to be a smile. ‘English love horses, this I hear! How you like your Russian horse?’
‘She is very beautiful and very swift,’ Anne said. ‘I like her very well.’
He nodded in approval. ‘Russian horse,’ he affirmed.
Anne felt her native honour at stake. ‘Our English horses are also very fine,’ she said.
The Prince ignored this puny attack. ‘The black mare, I buy her from you,’ he said, throwing back his head and looking down at her fiercely, in a way, she thought, that was calculated to suppress any desire to refuse. ‘I give you much gold – one hundred gold pieces for this horse.’
‘But I do not wish to sell her,’ Anne said calmly, and felt Irina touch her hand warningly.
The Prince glared at her a moment, and then turned away to stare thoughtfully at the sky. ‘Two hundred,’ he said at last, looking down at her again. ‘This is enough, even for a mare.’
Anne met his eyes steadily. ‘I will not sell her,’ she said. ‘Not for two hundred, or four hundred – not even for a thousand.’
‘You sell!’ he growled threateningly.
‘I will not,’ she said firmly.
The Prince’s brows drew down in a ferocious frown, and he leaned down from the saddle to put his face on a level with Anne’s, so that she could get the full benefit of it. At close quarters he was quite frightening, but there was that in her which could not endure to be bullied, and she forced herself to meet his gaze without flinching; and in a moment he straightened up, and without another word whirled his horse away, and galloped off down the line. Anne let out her breath in a long sigh.
‘He meant no harm,’ she said, hoping it was true.. ‘I expect that’s just his way of striking bargains.’
‘You should not have provoked him,’ Irina said, her voice shaky. ‘You don’t know what he’s capable of.’
‘Would you have let him have Iskra?’ she countered reasonably.
Irina didn’t answer that. ‘These people can be dangerous. You should not take them lightly.’
‘I assure you,’ Anne said, lifting her hand from her lap and showing the Countess how it trembled, ‘I did not take him lightly.’
The second act in the drama took place that evening when they reached the fortress at Prokhladnoye. The Kirovs were just settling down around the fire in one of the huts when the Prince appeared in the doorway, hand on the hilt of his sabre, and strode towards them, followed by several servants carrying baskets.
‘I have come,’ he announced, bowed, and gestured forward the baskets. ‘You will take dinner with me, English lady – and your people,’ he added, waving a hand towards Irina and the children, as if they were very much a secondary consideration. ‘Never before was I beaten in bargaining – and by an English lady. So, dinner – eat!’
The baskets proved to contain caviar, cold pheasant, meat patties, fruit, including a magnificent bunch of muscat grapes, and several bottles of real French champagne from the Widow Clicquot’s estate. This was better fare than they had expected to enjoy that evening. The Prince was in great good humour, filled their glasses, and raised his towards Anne with a flamboyant gesture that baptised everyone. ‘To your horse!’ he cried.
They drank the toast and then fell with a will on the delicious food. The Prince drained his glass, refilled it, and examined Anne closely and at length. Then at last he reached across and tapped her arm with his whip to gain her attention, and said with decision, ‘I will marry you.’
‘What!’ Anne could not help exclaiming, while the children giggled, and Irina looked nervously from one to the other.
‘Yes,’ he said, nodding firmly. ‘English lady with horse, you make a very good wife. And,’ he added, looking at her sidelong, ‘if I marry you, I get the horse too.’
There was a moment’s silence, and then Anne burst out laughing, realising that he was teasing her. He laughed too, very loudly, showing all his teeth and turning his face from one to another to make sure they were appreciating the joke. After that, the evening went very fast. Despite the language difficulties and the radical differences in their culture, Anne and the Prince managed to get along very well. His harsh laughter and abrupt manner no longer worried her, and he asked her many interested questions about her country and told her stories of some of his more dangerous exploits against the Tcherkess.
When at last he rose to leave, he said with sincerity, ‘English lady, I like you very well. Send to me, Akim Shan Kalmuck, if you change your mind. I think you make a very good wife!’
It would make a good story, Anne thought, to tell the grandchildren one day – if only she were ever likely to have any! It would certainly amuse Emma Hatton. She only wished the Count could have been there to enjoy it, for it was the kind of absurdity that he would like.
At Vladikavkaz, they left the convoy, for here they were met by a smiling, exuberant party of Cossacks from the Kiriakov estate, come to escort them over the last stage of the journey to the safe haven of Chastnaya. It was a large plantation of more than five hundred serfs, containing vineyards, groves of fruit trees, and acres of mulberry trees, on which lived the silkworms whose industry supported the Kiriakov fortune. It was set in the pleasant country where the Caucasian foothills ran out into the plain of the Caspian, a green and smiling landscape of gentle rises and hollows, a sprinkling of deciduous woodland, and numerous little streams making their way downhill to join the great River Terek.
The house itself was different from any that Anne had yet seen, being long and low and rambling, made almost entirely of wood, and surrounded by a deep verandah where a great deal of the family’s life took place. It was sheltered by clumps of dusty false acacia and tall elms loud with rooks. White jasmine clambered exuberantly over the verandah roof, filling the evening air with its rich scent, and to one side an attempt had been made at planting a pleasure-garden: roses, lavender and rosemary bushes, separated by gravel paths.
The Kirov party was greeted rapturously, and Irina was clasped to bosom after bosom, embraced, petted, and called any number of pet-names by her numerous and affectionate family. Anne, watching her smile and bloom under this treatment, began to understand the Countess’s intense reserve when away from them. To have been brought up amongst such an exuberant and demonstrative family, and then to be taken away from them to the formality and reserve of Petersburg life, must have its effect.
The children were next seized, hugged, exclaimed over, and borne away to be regaled with honey cakes and kissell; and Nyanka was openly blubbering in her joy at being home again, and was sprinkling one of her former charges after another with her happy tears. The whole of Irina’s large retinue was absorbed into the Chastnaya household with the ease of a minnow embraced by an octopus; in their warm hearts, and in the rambling honeycomb of rooms which was the house, there was space for everyone.
There seemed so many of the Kiriakovs that Anne had difficulty for a few days in sorting them out in her mind. They all had Irina’s fair, Tartar looks, and a friendly, forthright way of speaking. Irina’s parents were dead, so the head of the family was now her eldest brother, Feodor, who had a wife and four grown-up children. Next came Zina, who was unmarried, and more or less ran the household, though Feodor’s wife was official mistress of the house.