The Rose Stone
Page 27
“Well, my dear,” Nicolai’s father smiled at her across the glittering stone, “what do you think now of the Shuvenski Diamond?”
“It’s wonderful.” She paused, and shrugged helplessly, “And terrifying. As I knew it would be.”
“Nonsense.” He shook his head, patted her hand. “Don’t be afraid. You know you have the skill. And such a thing, surely, speaks to you? It is fitting that you should provide the setting for the stone. Remember – your father had the courage to bring it to life – your task is not, I think, as frightening as that?”
She lifted her head. “No. Of course not.”
For most of the day, absorbed, she studied the stone, alone, in an opulent room of high ceilings and tall windows that overlooked the shining river. At a desk by one of the windows she sketched, and frowned, and threw away the paper, and sketched again, drank tea, refused lunch and was startled late in the afternoon by a shadow that fell across the paper.
“We did not,” Nicolai said, his face drolly serious, “intend to take you prisoner. Nor to make of you a slave. Won’t you leave your labours awhile?” He smiled suddenly. “Your industry makes us all feel guilty.”
She looked to where the shadows lengthened in the city. “What’s the time?”
“Five o’clock.”
“Five?” She shook her head. “I’d no idea.” She riffled the sheets of paper abstractedly.
“My father commands—” he tilted his head, smiling that warm smile “—in the politest possible way! – that you join us. Unless, he said, you are so bewitched by the stone that you prefer its company to ours.”
“Oh – of course not. How very rude I must seem.” Anna was flustered.
He shook his head. “No. If the truth be known we are simply jealous. How hard it is for unaccomplished men to see a talent at work so absorbed and so absorbing.” He picked up a discarded piece of paper, studied it. She found herself waiting with strangely bated breath. “You have a fine hand,” he said softly.
She made a small, dismissive gesture. “I came with some preconceived ideas. But they simply won’t do. None of them.” She picked up the box, tilted the diamond so that it caught the slanting rays of the sun. “It’s like a teardrop,” she said quietly.
He was at her shoulder, silent, caught as she was in the web of the stone’s brilliance.
“A tear of sorrow, do you think?” he asked at last. “Or of joy?”
“I don’t know.” The moment was suddenly strangely intimate. Had he physically touched her it could not have been more so. She stood quite still, unable or unwilling to put a name to the emotion that his proximity brought, knowing only instinctively and with absolute certainty that he shared it. She moved, then, breaking the spell. “I won’t come down just yet, if you don’t mind,” she said collectedly, “I’d like to work a little longer.”
“You’ll be down for dinner?”
“Of course.” She had the strangest feeling that they were each hearing words the other was not actually speaking.
“I leave for the country tomorrow,” he said.
“Oh?” Ridiculously, the thought of his going jolted her like a blow.
“My mother and sisters are expecting me. But – you are to join us, are you not? In a few days?”
“I believe so.”
He moved to the window, stood with his back to her, arms stretched to either side of the frame, looking out across the city. “You’ll love Lemorsk. I know you will. It isn’t far. Thirty miles or so, near the Finnish border. There’s a lake. And forests. Do you ride?”
“Not well, I’m afraid.” She was studying his silhouette against the light.
“Then we’ll walk.” The pronoun was naturally and easily used. She made no comment, but watched the strong profile, lined in red-gold against the light sky. How could a stranger become so rapidly a part of one’s thoughts? A part of one’s being? Her love for Joss had grown with her own growing over the years. Standing here in this unfamiliar room in an unknown city she knew that if she allowed it love for this young man could strike like lightning. And be as savagely painful.
“The house is quite small,” he was saying, laughter in his voice. “It’s absurd really – we live like peasants. Well – what mother conceives as the way that peasants live. Which means simply putting up with about half the number of servants as we have in the city. And mother plays at housewives in the kitchen, which means that meals aren’t always what they should be. But it’s the most enormous fun. There are always dozens of us. And it’s all wonderfully informal. Just family, and friends. We have picnics. And swim in the lake. And play silly games—” He turned, smiling. “My sisters and I and our cousins have holidayed at the dacha ever since any of us can remember. Katarina – my eldest sister – swears we revert to childhood the minute we set foot across the boundary. I think she may be right.”
“And your future wife?” Anna found herself asking, very lightly, “Will she be at Lemorsk too?”
His hands dropped to his sides. “No. She is with her parents in the Crimea. She finds the north – not to her taste.” His tone matched hers, but it seemed to Anna that a shadow darkened his face.
“Oh?” She picked up a pencil and spun it idly between her fingers. “And shan’t you miss her very much?”
“Of course.”
In the silence she stopped playing with the pencil, laid it with careful precision on the desk at exact right angles to the paper. She lifted her head. He was watching her, waiting.
“And your husband, Madame? You will miss him?”
“Of course.”
He moved abruptly. “I’ll leave you to your work.”
She watched him to the door. Once there, he turned. “Do you know of the white nights, here in the north?”
“The light? I found it hard to sleep last night, yes.”
He said no more. The tall, elegant doors clicked shut quietly behind him. Anna turned back to the desk, swept aside the paper she had used, picked up her pencil. Very quickly she worked, the pencil held loosely, her face absorbed. A ray of sunshine struck redly a tall mirror, and reflected like blood across the room. She leaned back, smoothed the paper. The diamond was to be a love-gift to a bride. She lifted the stone from its box, looked at it for a moment, then laid it gently in its place upon the design she had sketched. White gold, she would stipulate, and the only other stones, tiny, perfect, brilliant-cut diamonds for the eyes of the doves. And beneath their touching breasts and entwined necks the diamond depended, a blazing teardrop.
* * *
She knew in her heart that once the basic design was finished and enthusiastically endorsed by Prince Vassili, the craftsmen carefully instructed and the work under way she should, Michael’s disappointment notwithstanding, sensibly have refused the invitation to the country and boarded the train for London.
But she did not.
Five days after her arrival in St Petersburg she did indeed board a train, but it carried her north, towards Finland with its age-old lakes and pine forests. She, Michael and Prince Vassili were met at a tiny halt in a woodland glade by a pony and trap, which delighted her. The Prince laughed. “Of course, you are right – it is from England. We bought it many years ago for the children.” The little trap carried them smartly along the forest tracks, their luggage following behind at a more sedate pace in an enormous old farm waggon. The small hooves raised clouds of dust and pine needles, and the resinous scent of the trees was heady. Anna lifted her face to the sun that flickered through the tall trees and fell across their path in banded spears of light. A few days. That was all. Just a few days out of life – a once in a lifetime opportunity she would have been a fool to refuse. Hadn’t Joss himself urged her to accept the opportunity to make friends of this influential family?
And all the while the little pony’s hooves clipped out the name – “Ni-co-lai, Ni-co-lai.”
“I say! Look at that!”
Anna followed the direction of Michael’s pointing finger. Wate
r sparkled through the trees, glittering gemstone-bright against the darkness of pine. The track narrowed and wound down to the shores of a tiny lake across which could be seen a rambling wooden house with a wide verandah.
“Lemorsk.” The Prince said, his voice soft.
Many people were gathered upon the verandah to greet the new arrivals – the Princess Maria, her daughters Katarina, Elena and little Nadia, several servants and a host of small children. They were all dressed simply and colourfully in peasant style, though Anna’s artist’s eye noted that the embroidery upon the full-sleeved blouses and the pretty aprons was far superior to any she had seen upon a true peasant’s dress, as was the quality of the material. The princess’s desire to playact was obviously tempered by her aristocratic tastes. At the sounds of arrival Nicolai and another young man came running round the corner of the house, in open-necked shirts and slacks, tennis racquets in hand. The young man was introduced as a cousin, a Grand Duke with a name which Anna did not catch but which was as long as any she had ever heard, who was called by everyone ‘Mitka’.
“There are more cousins around,” Nicolai waved an airy hand, “but it’s best you meet them bit by bit – you’ll never remember them all anyway.”
“How do you do?” Mitka’s English was not quite as perfect as his hosts’. He muttered something in Russian. The Princess lifted an imperious finger. “No, no, Mitka! We agreed – English only while our guests are with us. Anna and Michael do not speak our language.”
“Oh, please—” Anna was embarrassed. Michael had hardly heard, he was smiling his most beguiling smile at Elena, Nicolai’s middle sister. He had quite obviously already decided that language – or the lack of it – was going to be no hindrance.
The Princess waved her hand. “But of course. It is simple courtesy. And very good for the young people to speak your language. They all grow lazy in the summer! Ah – here comes the luggage. Elena – show Anna to her room, please. And Nicolai – Michael will be sharing with young Igor. I do hope you don’t mind?” she asked Michael, a little anxiously. “We are rather pressed for space—” She bustled away, the very image of a prosperous farmer’s wife making disposal for her weekend guests. Anna shook a bemused head.
Elena laughed. “Mama just loves it here. She was brought up in the country – her family rarely came to court. Now all winter she has to cope with protocol and society and hordes of servants, and balls and dinners and parties and politicians—” she wagged her pretty head back and forth like a small clockwork toy “—and she simply hates it. Here we live the simple life and the only rules and regulations – as Mama is always telling us – are those of good manners and hospitality. If your Queen came to stay Mama would install her in the attic bedroom and go off to supervise her jam! There—” They had climbed several sets of stairs and had come to a small wooden door which she threw open. It led into a tiny, charming room, white painted and with a sloping ceiling. A bunch of wild flowers graced the windowsill, the only furniture was a narrow bed, a pine washstand and a chest. “It isn’t our most luxurious accommodation, I’m afraid.”
“It’s absolutely lovely! It truly is!”
“We hope very much you will enjoy your stay with us.” The other girl smiled a flashing, attractive smile very much like her brother’s.
“I’m sure I will.”
Elena paused at the door. “Do you and your brother play tennis?”
“A little. Not well, I’m afraid.”
The other girl’s smile flashed again. “Oh, la! That’s all right. None of us play well. Perhaps we could make up a foursome later, with Nico? He said earlier that he thought it would be a nice idea. I’ll lend you something to play in if you haven’t brought anything?”
“That – would be fun,” Anna’s voice was unsure.
In a swirl of brilliant material Elena left the room. Left alone Anna wandered to the window. The sky arched to blue infinity above the dark, fronded trees. The small lake gleamed in the light. Someone called in the clear, summer air, there was a splash and the sound of laughter. Someone in the house was singing, a haunting, lilting melody that rose and fell like wind in the forest. Five days. Five long days in this idyllic spot and then it would be back to St Petersburg, and thence home to London. Home. It seemed – it was – a world away. She tilted her head back, breathed the sparkling, pine-scented air. Voices still called from the lake. A group of children scampered, laughing around the side of the house and streamed into the woods.
She turned from the window, smiling, and began to unbutton the jacket of her travelling suit.
That evening after dinner the company played an acting game very like charades at which Michael with what appeared to be a roomful of young ladies to impress, excelled despite the obvious language difficulties – for with the best will in the world and for all the Princess’s insistence not all the company spoke English as excellently as did the Shuvenskis.
Anna sat upon a window seat, watching, smiling, taking no part, the long, strange northern twilight haloing her head.
“Your brother is enjoying himself.”
Startled, she turned and looked into the bright blue eyes she had been avoiding all evening. “Yes.”
“And you?”
“I – beg your pardon?”
“You also are enjoying yourself?”
She had stayed well away from him all afternoon and evening. She smiled brightly. “Yes, thank you. Very much.”
“And the design of the necklace? You are pleased with what you have done? Papa says it is charming.”
“I’m glad he likes it.”
He looked down at her, frowning a little. “Elena says she asked you to play tennis with us this afternoon. Yet you would not.”
She looked down at her hands. “I really play very badly. I didn’t want to spoil your game.”
Laughter rose from the other end of the room. Michael, draped in what looked like an old curtain was on one dramatic knee. “Marry me! Or I will die of love—” Her brother, Anna thought wryly, predictably was making the most of every opportunity. She became aware of silence. She looked up, Nicolai was watching her, waiting for her to look at him. Inexplicably she felt colour rising in her cheeks.
“There is a picnic tomorrow. At the other lake.” He bent his brown head to her. “You’ll come?”
“I – I haven’t anything to wear.”
He regarded her for a very long time, and for the first time there was a hint of coolness in his gaze. “I think, Madame,” he said, softly and clearly, “that you are avoiding me. There is no need, I assure you.”
That brought true colour to her face.
He left her.
* * *
That night she stood at her window staring into the hauntingly beautiful pale night. Down by the lake two figures moved, and merged into shadow. She wondered who they were. Two lovers keeping secret tryst? Her heart ached dully. She should not have come.
She would not go on the picnic.
Joss had sent her here, high-handed and arrogant. So sure of her. Of course. Why should he not be?
She leaned against the window frame, tilted her head back against the wooden frame. The light night made her restless. Cool air moved against her throat. From out of nowhere came suddenly the memory of that night on the verandah of her father’s house, the night when Joss had so unexpectedly, so astonishingly, asked her to marry him. She remembered the fierce pain of his mouth against hers, the strength of his body.
And then it came to her that it was not really of Joss that she was thinking.
She pulled the curtains with a sharp, angry movement, climbed into the cool, narrow bed.
She most certainly would not go to the picnic tomorrow.
Chapter Fourteen
In the event she was given no choice: by the Princess’s command everyone was to go on the picnic and nothing short of a broken leg would have been accepted as an excuse to stay behind. Probably not even that, Anna told herself wryly, as she climbed with
Elena into the straw-filled farm cart. Yet she could not bring herself to regret having the choice taken from her. The day was glorious, the air like wine, the company enormously entertaining. In convoys the two huge carts and the pony and trap set off from the house and wound up the track into the sun-dappled forest. In the first cart the young men rode, and their voices rang through the stilled woodland as they sang, led by one full-blooded bass, all the music of the Russias in the harmonies.
“That’s Mitka,” Elena told Anna. “You’d never guess it, would you? He sings magnificently.” She giggled infectiously, “It’s the only thing he can do, actually!”
They rode for an hour or so at a leisurely pace until they reached the shores of another lake, slightly larger than the one at Lemorsk. Standing out from the shore, its banks lapped by sun-gilded water was a large wooded island upon which movement could already be seen, and the unspoken question that had been in Anna’s mind – how anyone could go on a picnic without apparently taking any food – was answered. Fragrant smoke lifted from charcoal fires, laden tables were spread ready beneath the trees. When the Shuvenskis picnicked they did it in style, the servants were there before them. She smiled to herself, not for the first time, at the Princess’s idea of a simple life.
They were ferried in relays to the island amidst much hilarity in four large rowing boats which were then moored by the small tumbledown jetty on the island. The children, obviously familiar with the place, scattered, calling, into the woods, while the Prince, Princess and their contemporaries settled themselves in the shade with glasses of lemon tea and the young people who fell between those two extremes took themselves off, singly, in pairs or in groups to explore the island, to fish, to laze in the sun, to coquet and to flirt.
Michael bounced up to Anna. “I say – Elena sort of wants to show me the island—” His eyes were upon the group of young people to whom Elena was talking animatedly. He was obviously dying to get away. “Do you mind? Will you be all right on your own?”