He looked down to where the book rested forgotten on his knee. “Ah, this. A book on botany I found among the research journals and periodicals. It’s mostly filled with medicinal plants, but there’s a chapter on creating the ideal garden from the correct type of soil—do you realize how many types of dirt there are?—to allow proper root drainage. I thought you could use it as a guide for when you plant your own garden.”
She took the book, running her fingers through the pages until stopping on one with the painted picture of a small daisy.
“Chamomile. We have them all around the city and Russian countryside. They smell sweet, like apples. Whenever I was sick our cook would make tea from the crushed petals.” She reverently closed the book and looked at him. “Thank you.”
“Friends again?” He stuck out his hand as the final peace offering.
She stretched her hand out, palm down, in answer. Grasping her fingers, he brushed a kiss over her knuckles. Or as best he could with a mask on.
Perhaps it was the midnight hour darkening her eyes or the lantern light that melted the striking angles of her face into a pale blur. Perhaps it was exhaustion that softened the mask she held in place, for in that moment time inhaled deeply on a breath that existed only for them. In that precious space something new was forged. The shape wound ubiquitously around them, giving no hint of what it would become, only that it could become.
The corners of her eyes creased, indicating a smile beneath her mask. He had the sudden desire to see what that curving mouth felt like against his own lips.
A door banged open. Feet scurried across the floor.
“Madam, you cannot be in here!” One of the Sisters hissed. “This is a contagious ward.”
“Svetlana!” Ana.
Svetlana jumped to her feet and raced out of the tiny cubicle with Wynn fast on her heels. The older princess was dressed in silk and pearls with panic seared across her face. As Svetlana reached her, Ana grabbed her shoulders and spoke in rapid French. With each word, more color leeched from Svetlana’s face.
Sister Elton bore down on them like a U-boat with sights fixed. Wynn took Svetlana and Ana by their elbows and steered them out of the room.
“A sick ward cannot be treated as a hotel with guests coming and going as they please.”
Ana didn’t spare him a glance as she continued her screeching. Wynn’s French was faulty at best, but he picked out money, White Bear, and want. No, that was voulez. This sounded more like—
“Has someone stolen from you?” he interrupted.
Chapter 13
One more dance for the night and she could finally rip off this wretched costume of feathers and pearls. Costumes were meant to invoke the possibility of being someone else to live out a dream. This was a straitjacket, created to restrain the wearer into submission. Svetlana had become nothing more than a dancing bear set to the tune of whatever music Sheremetev played. And play he did as her act brought in more patrons to drink his vodka and gamble at his tables than before the war broke out. All of Paris wanted to see the Swan Princess and she had no choice but to comply.
Choice required money, and money she did not have.
Influenza had decimated half the city, and only a few remained in the church basement. There was nowhere else for them to go. The walls and floors had been scrubbed and every linen boiled in hot water, but contamination was difficult to prevent in such squalid conditions. Nearly a week ago Mama had retired to their quarters after another mandatory scrubbing and discovered their cache of money and jewels gone. She’d looked everywhere, but not a ruble or franc or necklace had been spared. Their only salvation were the loose gems still sewn into their corsets. Just as the Romanov women had done before they were exiled.
After begging Sister Elton to look after Marina, which the old nurse gladly agreed to, Svetlana had swallowed what remained of her pride and gone straight to Sheremetev to beg an introduction to Monsieur Diaghilev of the Ballets Russes, but the master had traveled to America in hope of procuring new investors and wasn’t expected to return for some time. With no option left, she had pleaded more dancing opportunities at the White Bear in order to hasten the payment of their debts. She said nothing of the theft. When she wasn’t dancing, she was at the hospital. Marina was improving but wasn’t yet well enough to be discharged. Where would she go? Back to the dank basement where newly infected cases sprang up despite the careful cleaning? By some miracle, or more likely Wynn’s strict instructions on cleanliness, Mrs. Varjensky and Mama had not been touched.
Most heart-wrenching were the banknotes Wynn tried pressing into her hands each time she came to the hospital. She refused and tried to avoid him, not wishing him to see the depths to which they’d plummeted. The building, however, was only so big, and he knew every room of it. There was no hiding. She’d told him in the broadest of strokes that their funds had disappeared, not revealing how much or how little remained. She could not bear to be pitied, especially not by him.
Taking a break backstage at the White Bear between performances, she startled when a door at the end of the hallway swung open. Moonlight from the back alley spilled over darkened figures kicking a lump in the middle of their circle. The lump moaned and cried. A man! Seized with fear, Svetlana looked all around backstage for one of the security men, but found none.
Shaking now, she stepped toward them. “You there! I command you to stop beating that man.”
The figures halted for a second and shouted back at her in angry Russian. Curses like she’d never heard filled her ears. Then a new figure, this one larger than all the rest, came through the door and shut it behind him with a firm click.
Sheremetev. “My dear princess. Why are you not onstage? You were to start five minutes ago.” He walked toward her, his ruby stickpin glowing like blood in the backstage light and his walking stick tapping staccato on the wood floor.
“Those men need to be stopped at once.”
“Those men work for me as security. They found that miscreant sneaking around.”
“Beating him is not an appropriate response.”
“During war it is. We can never be too careful, people in positions such as you and I. There is always the rabble lot wishing to overthrow us.”
The blood drained from her head. “Is he a Bolshevik?”
Sheremetev pulled a pristine handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his hands. “Soon enough we’ll know. On the stage with you. I’ll handle everything, my dear.”
Svetlana couldn’t control the cold numbing her from head to toe as she performed to yet more shattering applause. Had the Bolsheviks found them? Barely scratching the surface of survival and with Marina bedridden, would they be forced to flee once more? How would they survive another escape?
Legs shaking as she rounded the curtain backstage, she collapsed against the wall. When would the fear finally stop?
“No well, Duchess?” Tatya sat perched on a barstool between a stack of crates smoking a stumpy cigarette. If possible she looked more haggard than the last time. “Look fainting.”
Svetlana straightened. “The dance takes much out of me.”
“I know feeling.” Tatya laughed harshly and dropped her cigarette on the ground, grinding it out with her toe. As she leaned forward, the dim light caught blackness rimming her eye.
“What happened there?”
Tatya jerked back. “Nothing.”