She was, he thought, simply magnificent.
I’ve enjoyed so many women in my short life, why, oh, God, would You decree I must love a deposed princess?
“Whatever happens,” Dostovalov said. “I’ll defend you.”
“And how many girls have you told that?” Olga said, drawing away enough to search his expression.
“One,” Dostovalov said. “I’ve promised one young woman in my entire life that I would defend her no matter what came.”
Olga’s eyes widened, and she took a deep breath, then exhaled slowly, creating a small cloud of smoke between them. She shifted, not out of his arms, but to face him. She tilted her head back and closed her eyes, her lips parted invitingly. Dostovalov leaned in and kissed her.
Her arms encircled his neck and she pressed herself into him with abandon. For several glorious seconds, there was no war, no impending catastrophe, even the freezing indifference of Siberia seemed to abate. When their lips parted, Dostovalov took a deep shuddering breath, Olga’s eyes shone as she smiled up at him.
“You should come inside, Antosenka,” she said. “We’ll catch our death out here.”
“Guards are not supposed to enter the mansion,” Dostovalov said.
“Unless invited to do so,” Olga said. “I’m inviting you for the reason that you will protect us more ably inside with some hot tea inside you. If anyone asks, of course.”
Olga opened the door quietly and pulled Dostovalov along with her into the Freedom House.
Rubbing his hands for warmth, Yermilov grinned crookedly as the back door of the Freedom House swung shut. Two weeks of skulking paid off—the giant oaf really was fucking one of the Romanov girls. The oldest one, the prettiest one. Some of the men talked about the second daughter, Tatiana, but Yermilov had always thought that bitch too skinny, too German-looking with her thin face and cold gray eyes. Olga looked like a Russian girl.
Yermilov had allowed room for little else in his thoughts but revenge on that bastard Chekov for the humiliation he’d inflicted in the canteen. Sadly, after the slip up with the bootlegger, Chekov had proven too clever by half. He did his duties, he ate, he drank, a lot, but never to the point of stupefaction, he slept, he rose and repeated. He and Dostovalov socialized with others from their detachment in the First Rifles, Tsarist bootlickers, the lot of them. The Romanov girls flirted with them like whores, and they curried favor with the former emperor as if he were still in charge of the country. Pathetic.
In any event, Chekov had been too smart to slip up, but his big friend was clearly nowhere near so cautious. Dostovalov was thinking with his cock, and that was going to be the death of them both. And Nikolashka’s little whore daughter might get more than she was bargaining for while he was at it.
Interlude
Tatiana: Tobolsk
Monsieur Gilliard and Papa spent the last few days building a snow mountain. They hauled water by bucket. It was so cold that the ice formed in the bucket as they moved it between the tap and the hill.
But it was a welcome distraction and we were all looking forward to tobogganing.
Unfortunately, Monsieur Gilliard fell and twisted his ankle and wasn’t able to enjoy the hill he’d helped build.
We girls ended up covered in bruises, all from sliding down the hill, but we didn’t care. What were a few bruises to us? We were out in the sunshine, laughing, our hearts beating in our chests, our breaths puffing small clouds in front of our faces. We were alive and, more than that, for a little while we were living.
It wasn’t long, however, until Siberia’s famous winter finally hit us. The crisp, sunny days turned dark and cold. Wind rattled the windows and the rafters, an unwelcome stranger pushing its way in until the glass was thick with ice.
We spent what seemed like endless days inside, wrapped in the thickest, knitted cardigans. Despite wearing our felt boots and our heaviest coats, we were cold as we huddled in the corridor to keep warm.
Sometimes Papa read to us, but today it was too dark and his voice was giving out from a cold. We dozed as we sat up against the wall. Mama, sitting in her wheeled chair next to Papa, had her head propped up against his shoulder, her eyes closed, breathing evenly. A warm blanket lay across her lap. Usually she preferred to sew or write, but the cold made her fingers too stiff.
Sleep was beckoning to me too, but a creaking sound pulled me out. Olga was gone.
I pushed up and quietly made my way downstairs and up the long passageway to the kitchen, the only other room that was warm enough.
Olga was sitting at the table, head in her hands. She’d taken off her woolen cap and her blond hair, still short, like all of ours, from our bout of measles lay plastered to her scalp. It seemed duller somehow and I didn’t think it was the gray light falling through the shutters’ narrow slits.
As I crossed to the table, I stepped on a cockroach. They were everywhere, the filthy things. It was a good thing that Mama didn’t come in here often.
I slid into the chair next to Olga and placed my arm around her.
She’d never taken much interest in her looks or been bothered by how she appeared to others, but now I saw something else—a haunted look that didn’t come from her ill health. It was the look of someone who, having loved and lost, had resigned herself to that loss.
“Are you all right?” I asked.
She nodded and returned her gaze to her gloved hands.
“Missing Mitya?” I prompted. Dmitry Shakh-Bagov had been Olga’s favorite at the hospital where we had worked as Red Cross nurses. A Georgian adjutant in the Life Grenadiers of the Erevan Regiment, he had been the latest in a series of crushes.
Like all the others, he wasn’t an appropriate prospect for a grand duchess, no matter how much Olga wanted him. She hadn’t mentioned him in months and I thought she’d gotten over him, but as I looked into her eyes I realized two things. The first was that she hadn’t, though she may have been in the process of replacing him in her affections. The second was that she was in mourning. For him. For herself. For what it all meant.
I put my arm around her, and drew her closer. It wasn’t just the uncertainty that we were facing. It was the realization that things were getting worse and worse. I no longer believed that we would be allowed to peacefully retire to a private life, whether here in Russia or elsewhere. And I could see now that neither did Olga.
“We have to put on brave faces,” I whispered into her ear. “For Mama and Papa.”
She swallowed and nodded. Tears pooled at the corners of her eyes and the ghost of a smile settled onto her face like the mask that it was.
Did mine look as ill-fitting?
Chapter Five
Kermen, Bulgaria
The sun was still down and the moon not yet up as the locomotive screeched to a halt in a cloud of steam. From inside the cloud—it and the station illuminated by the electric lights of the station—came the shrill cry of the whistle, the shriek of brakes, and the nails-on-a-blackboard sound of steel tires trying to grip steel rails. The whistle, contrary to many suppositions, was not always to warn pedestrians ahead, but also to tell the other locomotive that a stop was coming, so they could brake as well.