Conversations hushed and questioning glances followed as she guided Wynn through the confusion to the back rows where crass voices melted into elegant French, the language of Russia’s upper class. Here blankets had been hung as dividers for privileged privacy. Narrow windows cut high in the back wall beckoned in a timid light that barely scratched the peasant rows. The blanket wall in the back corner rustled and out rushed her mother and sister with identical expressions of concern.
“Svetka! Here you are at last. What has happened to take so long?” Her mother stumbled to a halt at the sight of Wynn, as he’d so informally introduced himself back at the hospital. “Who is this man?”
While her mother spoke in their customary French, Svetlana kept to English for the courtesy of their guest. “Allow me to present Doctor MacCallan of the English hospital here in Paris.” Drawing her shawl close to hide the exerted beating of her heart from the painful walk, she gestured to her mother. “My mother, Ana Dalsky, and my sister, Marina.”
Mama’s mouth twisted in her way of displeasure. “Her Serenity the Princess Ana Andreevna Dalsky.” She held out her hand to be kissed as if they were standing once more in St. George’s Hall in the Winter Palace.
“Mama! We cannot be so blatant about our titles in this unfamiliar place,” Svetlana said in French. It was rude to cut their guest so obviously from the conversation, but it was safer to trust no one, hunted as they were simply for being nobility. The old life was gone and clinging to it—as desperately as she wanted to—was a death sentence, in soul and body. Mama could never make things easier when it went against her will.
“This man is of little consequence and absorbed in a war little to do with our situation. I will not lessen myself, nor should you.” Mama waggled her waiting fingers, once glittering with rings but now bare, the rings having been sold for scraps of food on their escape.
With only the slightest show of surprise, Wynn bent over Mama’s fingers as any gentleman of standing was required. “A pleasure, Your Serenity.”
Other nobles of ranking—counts, barons, and countesses—peeked around the corners of their blanket walls. Scowls creasing their wane faces, they whispered to one another as Mama smiled in triumph. Once upon a time a visiting physician was nothing to draw jealousy, but here, to host a visitor of any kind was an occasion harkening back to the privileges they all once possessed and grappled to grasp once again.
“Won’t you come in?” With a change back to English, Mama swept into their chamber that was little more than three dividing blankets and a stone wall.
“I’ll see Mrs. Varjensky settled first. She needs to rest.” Smiling in that English manner of politeness, he retraced their steps, seeming not the least bit affected by the stares and scowls.
Mama rounded on Svetlana as soon as she hobbled into their cordoned-off space. “Have you taken complete leave of your senses? That man does not belong here.”
Svetlana kept her voice low. “Then why did you receive him so happily?”
“I may have lost my home, my clothes, and my jewels, but I have not forgotten the simple manners of receiving a visitor no matter how unexpected or unwelcome he is. Good breeding would not allow me to. Good breeding should have taught you not to go to such a hospital and drag back the help.”
Marina helped Svetlana to a bundle of scratchy blankets serving as their shared sleeping pallet. “Mama, Svetka was injured. She had no choice but to go.” A younger version of their mother with dark blond hair and a petite frame that was quickly filling out with her fourteen years, Marina was always the one to seek peace.
“She had a choice not to bring him here. He’ll report us. We’ll be cast out and then where will we go?” Clutching the gold cross dangling from her neck, Mama draped herself across the pallet and turned her face away with a soft sob.
Ignoring the theatrics, Marina knelt next to Svetlana and took her hands. New callouses had developed on her tender palms from carrying in buckets of water each morning. A task once suited to a servant, but Marina never complained.
“Are you all right?”
Svetlana stretched out her leg, flexing and curling her toes. One by one the cramps eased from the tightened muscles. “Yes. He pulled the piece from my knee and bandaged it before dressing Mrs. Varjensky’s hand.”
“Do you think we’re in trouble for staying here? Will he tell the authorities who we are? I tire of running.”
Svetlana smoothed the hair from her sister’s thinning face. Their once impeccably tailored clothes were fitting a bit looser these days. She tried to keep her family fed as best she could, but food was scarce all over Paris. Not to mention shelter. Pain cut into her leg, scuttling guilt across her conscience. If her family were safe enough in this refuge cellar, she never would have gone off last night, and none of the transpiring events would have happened. That insistent man could have stayed at his hospital sharpening scalpels and not be here intruding on their peace of mind.
None of this could she tell Mama or Marina and so she summed a serene smile. “There is nothing to worry yourself about, kotyonok. We are safe.”
“I wish Papa and Nicky were here.”
“They will join us soon enough or send for us when they’ve defeated the revolutionaries. In the meantime we will make ourselves as discrete as possible.” Svetlana stretched out her other leg, easing the strain from having to put all her weight on one side. She had not been in this amount of pain since she twisted her ankle on a difficult jeté landing during rehearsal for La Sylphide. It was the first summer she had danced before the tsar and the tsarina. The White Nights of Russia’s summer had cast a golden glow across the stage as dozens of gossamer ballerina wings flapped in rhythm. If she could have but one more carefree summer such as that— She pushed the longing away. There was no point in dwelling on impossibilities when survival demanded her every minute.
“The Reds will not find us here. Not this far from Russia, will they?” Fear quaked in Marina’s eyes. Terror of the Reds was a fear they had never known until a year ago when the revolutions began. They had come to live with the anxiety ever since. God willing, the White Army would win back the throne for the tsar and they could all return home.
“Papa and Nicky will not allow them. You’ll see.”
“Hello? May I come in?” Wynn stood on the other side of the blanket serving as their door.
Like a spring, Mama bounced up from her prostrate position dry eyed and pink cheeked. She scooted to the edge of the pallet and arranged her skirts into regal folds before clasping her hands in her lap. “Enter.”
Wynn took a single, polite step into the chamber, but it was enough to take up all remaining space. He was tall, taller than Papa, who was considered the tallest of the tsar’s guards, and could easily brush the ceiling if he were to push to his toes. A thick, broad chest that foretold of well-shaped muscles beneath his clothes. Unlike most lanky physicians she’d seen before. His hair that had appeared a dark blond in the morning light now shone light brown; the long locks on top were parted to the side and cut much shorter around his ears.
He was a man at ease with himself and the world and his place in it. Would Svetlana ever feel that way again or would the revolutionaries strip away that hope as well?
“Doctor, how might we thank you for your services?” Mama reached for her handbag, which contained a few coins they’d managed to trade an heirloom brooch for upon arriving in France.