The Ice Swan

by J'nell Ciesielski

  Wynn turned on Svetlana, thick eyebrows crushed together. “Why is it I always tend to find you in verbal altercations on random footpaths? Is the church cellar so dull that you seek out entertainment elsewhere, never mind the notoriety of these little run-ins?”

  She dismissed his indignation as the triviality it was. “It is none of your affair.”

  “A lady being assaulted on the street is my affair.”

  “His lack of manners was the only assault to me. It was not the first time I’ve deflected boorish attacks.”

  “This isn’t some fancy salon where a rap on the man’s knuckles with your fan will do the trick. Men like him don’t stop at the word no.”

  “You know this how?”

  “Work in enough hospitals and it’s easy to learn the type when you’re patching them up from pub fights.” Shifting a parcel under his arm, he popped open his umbrella and angled it over Svetlana’s head. The drizzle had turned into a mist that thickened the air with a cloying dampness.

  “What is this pub?”

  Wynn released a gusty sigh that loosened the tense line between his eyebrows. “A public house. A tavern, barroom, saloon. A place where drink inflates men’s egos and they duke it out in the back alley defending said ego.”

  “I would never dare step foot into a place of debauchery.”

  “Good. That rules out half of Paris the next time I’m forced to find you out wandering on your own.”

  This man and his high-handed ways. As if he held the right to intrude on whoever and whatever he pleased. She had more important matters to occupy herself with than wondering when he would next show up. Or what color the light would turn his eyes. Today, touches of brown.

  Svetlana plucked at the shawl clinging to her head to ward off her study of him. “No one has forced you to do anything. I do not understand why you are here in the first place.”

  “The chemist a block over was able to secure a specially made stethoscope for me.” He jostled the package under his arm. “Upon picking up my order, whom should I see but Your Serenity making new friends.”

  “I did not realize that upon our brief acquaintance I am required to provide a list of names of whom I should be conversing with. Might I also note that these persons were not sought out but came to me. Most uninvited.”

  “Does that include me?”

  “Increasingly so.”

  His mouth cocked up at one corner and he rocked back on his heels. The amused reaction felt far more intimate than the generated distance suggested.

  “Why is that? As far as I know, I’ve been nothing but polite and helpful, yet you’re determined to make a nuisance of me. Some might call that ungratefully snobbish.”

  The barb hit quick, its defiance slicing past years of defense erected against its sting. All her life she’d stood apart, followed every rule and protocol for the sake of propriety, never once accepting an offering that was said to be beneath her. It was the expected nature of a princess. It had served her well, but she was not immune to the whispers behind drawing room doors: cold, conceited, condescending. She’d taken them in stride as petty jealousies, but the man before her had no reason for spite. If she’d learned anything about him in their short association, she knew he was not a bluffing man.

  She turned away. “I will not stand here and be insulted on the street.”

  His hand locked around her elbow, halting her departure. “Before you get on that high prancing horse, let me stop you there, Princess.”

  “I do not require your halting, marquee.”

  “It’s marquis, but let’s not get tangled on semantics. I said some people might call you that. I would call you a woman who’s had the path ripped out from under her slippered feet and has fallen back on old world habits. The problem is, this is a different world and old habits won’t survive here. We have to adapt else we lose the fight.”

  Svetlana flushed hot. His blatant philosophy insulted the very essence of tradition her life had been built upon. The foundation of who she was. Without it there was no purpose. She had no purpose. And he had the gall to make a point of it.

  She wrenched from his grasp. “Who are you to speak to me thus? No one speaks to me in this manner.”

  “A shame because they’re doing you a disservice.”

  “And you think you’re the one in service, do you?”

  “If it weren’t for me, you’d be having pickle juice ladled down your royal neck to cure a leg injury. Babushka showed me a jar of mushrooms.” He shook his head. “I never realized how many things can be pickled.”

  He shifted topics quicker than a tiara on wet hair. Could he not allow her righteous outrage to simmer longer?

  “Peasants pickle everything. It lasts longer.”

  “Do they pickle humor? There seems to be a shortage of it.”

  “Unlike Englishmen who abound with the sentiment.” She spiked her eyebrows in pointed disapproval.

  “The English? No, dry as a peat bog in a drought, that lot. My charm comes from pure Scottish roots.”

  “I believe your roots may have hit bedrock.”

  Glancing up and down the street at the people hunkered into their collars against the wet, he leaned down close to her ear. “Careful, printsessa. Your humor is unearthing itself.”

  “Only with you it seems.” She tugged the shawl ends closer around her neck, warding off the heat radiating from him.

  “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  The heat threatened the logic in her head. Not to mention his clean scent of wool splashed with cologne. Svetlana moved away before it proved too great a distraction.

  “And I shall take my leave.”

  He didn’t perceive the hint and moved along with her.

  “Excellent idea. I was heading that way myself.”

  “Your hospital is the other way.”

  “Some days I prefer the long route. Prettier scenery.”

  “I prefer to walk alone.”

  “If the lady insists, but I hope you don’t mind me following a few paces behind. Take my umbrella. I’ve got a hat to cover me and you’ve not more than that soaked shawl. Don’t need you catching a chill.” He held out the umbrella to her. “Funny how I’ll take a patient with a broken arm over a fever any day. There’s nothing worse than having to watch a person wait it out of their system and not be able to mend it straightaway.”

  “You are an impatient man.”

  “Only when it counts. Other things, well, I’m considering they might be worth waiting for.” His gaze settled over her in a direct manner that combed through her tightly woven insides, spinning them out to singular threads humming with awareness.

  She tamped the vibrations into submission. He was a stranger. No one could be trusted, especially not a self-professed charmer. The survival of her family remained paramount to any unwanted entanglements. Entanglements that confronted her with golden-green eyes that deepened under the brim of his hat.

  As if delighting in the inner chaos he created, the edge of his mouth curled. He handed her the umbrella, brushing her fingers as she reached for it. The unraveled threads sang. Traitors to her very dignity. She had no better control of herself than an ingénue standing at her first barre.

  She clutched the handle. “Thank you.”

  “Pozhaluysta.”

  The Russian word rang in her ears as she turned and walked on. How did he manage to manipulate a single word—spoken in a language deemed fit only for peasants, no less—into a flirtatious invitation? More vexing, why did she notice?

  She pushed the unsettling thoughts away, but the man himself was not so easily ignored. His footsteps fell in line behind her. Bits of water from the tips of his shoes sprayed against her skirt with each step he took. She dared a peek over her shoulder. He smiled and tipped his hat.

  He was entirely too cheerful. Very unRussian. And also very wet. Her desire to remain distant warred with her polite breeding. She wouldn’t dare claim it as a spark of humanity lest it f
lame out of control and she suddenly discover herself ladling at a soup kitchen. Best to pass over a few coins in such a situation, but she had no coin at present. Only a soggy man ridiculously smiling at her and, for the life of her, she could not leave him that way.

  “Join me under the umbrella.”

  “I’m sorry. Would you repeat that?” He cocked his head to the side as if he hadn’t quite heard.

  Svetlana gestured impatiently. “Join me.”

  “Is that a command or a request? Difficult to tell in all this rain.” As if to emphasize his point, he frowned and held out his hand for raindrops to plop against his palm.

  He’d heard her perfectly well and they both knew it.

  “Would you care to join me out of the weather under this umbrella you have so thoughtfully provided?”

  “Don’t mind if I do.” He took shelter under the canopied protection, or rather, the right side of him did. The wide expanse of his left shoulder and back remained exposed to the elements. “Is it back to the church or do you have a few more clandestine characters to meet around the next corner?”

  “I have no one to meet. Not in this neighborhood.” Svetlana curled her hand around the gems in her pocket. “Snobbish French. They do not trust us Russians. They are afraid we will bring our revolution to their streets. A hypocritical concern considering their own history with Madame Guillotine.”

  Bam!

  Gunshots. Feet pounding on pavement followed by shouts.

  Bam-bam!

  The terror that had scorched Svetlana’s nightmares since that burning October night clawed for breath. The revolutionaries. They were coming for her. They were here.

  A man barreled out of the alleyway ahead of them. His jacket flapped around him as he twisted his wild-eyed stare over his shoulder. His foot caught. Down he went, smacking the sidewalk with his shoulder. Up and down the street people scattered and screamed like pigeons in a park.

  Bam!

  The man jerked and cried out. Red seeped from his shoulder.

  Svetlana dropped the umbrella and spun away. The revolutionaries.

  They’d found her.

  Chapter 5

  Wynn grabbed her and pushed her against the side of a building, covering her with his body. Svetlana didn’t want to look, didn’t want to see the horrible image before her, but Wynn’s weight immobilized her against the wet stone with her unblinking eyes pinned on the shot man.

  Scrambling backward on his hand, the man pulled a gun from his jacket and fired down the alleyway. The shot ricocheted off the walls.

  “Cowards! Shooting me in back!” he shouted in Russian. Feet scuffled, growing farther away. “That is right. Run!” He collapsed, clutching his bleeding shoulder.

  “Stay here,” Wynn hissed in her ear. His weight lifted from her, leaving a terrible chill in his absence as he rushed to the fallen man.

  The blood rushed from Svetlana’s extremities until they shook from deprivation. She watched as if standing in a water bubble that deafened all sound, thought, and movement. She blinked heavily, yet her eyes could not belie what her brain tried to deceive her with. Reds. Guns. A man bleeding. Wynn bending over him, fingers prodding the wound.

  He turned to her. Eyes urgent as his mouth moved. What was he saying? She couldn’t hear anything beyond the thudding of her heart.

  “Svetlana!” The vacuous bubble burst. Sound and understanding flooded in, shocking her with its force. “Here.”

  She shook her head to clear the vestiges of fog and hurried to his side on wobbly legs.

  “Do you have a handkerchief?” Wynn’s question rolled in her ear, but the ability to discern its meaning eluded her as she stared at the hurt man’s face. Sickly pale and dotted with rain, he clenched his crooked teeth behind thin lips. Wynn’s voice prodded her once more. “Svetlana. Look at me.”

  Slowly Svetlana turned her attention to him as the vacantness threatened its hold once more. Wynn’s gaze was calm, steadying her against the trembling moving through her body.

  “Do you have a handkerchief?”

  She felt her head shake no.

  “Your shawl. Take it off and wrap it around his shoulder while I hold him up. Do you understand?” The man moaned and convulsed. Red seeped between Wynn’s fingers as he pressed against the shoulder. “Svetlana. Look at me. Do you understand?”

  She felt herself nodding. So much blood.

  “Do it now.” His sharpness cut through the haze, severing her from the stupor it trapped her in.

  Whipping off the shawl, she carefully wrapped it under the man’s thick arm and over his shoulder as Wynn propped him up. She tried to focus on her task. Up, over, under. Red splattered the sidewalk. Up, over, under. It feathered out between cracks in the pavement, turning blotchy as raindrops collided with the red rivulets. A life washing into the gutter. She wrapped faster, water squeezing between her fingers.

  “The material is too wet to soak up the”—she swallowed against the roil of sickness—“the blood.”

  “Better than nothing.” Wynn steadied the man’s head as it lolled to the side. “No you don’t, mate. I need you awake.”

  Svetlana didn’t blame the man. If she’d been shot, she’d rather remain unconscious throughout the ordeal as well.

  “What shall I do with the ends?”

  “Tie them. We don’t need the dressing slipping off before we get to hospital.”

  “Nyet!” The man wrestled awake as he cried out in Russian. “No hospital! Do no take me there. Nyet.”

  Fresh blood seeped out from the shawl as he flailed in an effort to throw them off. Svetlana had gone to too much trouble wrapping the wound. This fool wasn’t going to undo it all now.

  She slapped his pudgy cheek.

  “Calm yourself. Do you not see this doctor is trying to help you?”

  The man froze and stared at her in disbelief. “Russkaya?”

  “Da.” She knotted the ends of the shawl and looked at Wynn, who didn’t seem the least bit distressed by the terrifying situation in which they found themselves. “He says he doesn’t want to go to the hospital.”

  “He’s been shot. He doesn’t get much of a choice.”

  “There choice, da,” the man said in broken English, bobbing his head and sending rain from his hair streaking into his eyes.

  Wynn’s brow lifted. “Oh, speak English, do you? Good. Makes things easier.” He glanced at Svetlana. “Not that I don’t appreciate hearing your lovely interpretations. Grab the umbrella and try to keep it over his wound. Hospital is three blocks over. Can you make it, mate?” Swiping his hands against his trouser leg and leaving a swath of red on the dark gray material, Wynn stood and hooked an arm around the man’s thick waist and hauled him to his feet.

  Staggering, the man grimaced in pain. “There choice. Apartment street over. Mine.” He jabbed his finger in the intended direction.

  Wynn secured the man’s uninjured arm around his shoulders while maintaining a steady arm around the man’s waist. “I understand we all want the comforts of home when we’ve taken a beating, but this isn’t going to be cured with an aspirin and a lie-down.”

  The man turned flat brown eyes to Svetlana. Flat face. Flat nose. Flat lips. All Russian. “You tell him. You russkaya. Make him understand. English hospital no good. They find me again. Only safe in apartment.”

  Svetlana formed a protest but snuffed it cold at the terrifying prospect of truth in his words. What was to stop those men from finishing their heinous murder at the hospital? All those innocent people. If it was the Reds, the last thing they should be offered was open grounds to exact vengeance on opposing soldiers too injured to fight back once they’d taken this man’s life.

  “We’ll take him to the apartment,” she said.

  Wynn shook his head. “Absolutely not. I’m the doctor here and this man needs—”

  “He needs you to attend him and you can do that anywhere. Though preferably not in the street, yes?” Walking back to where she’d dropped t
he umbrella, she picked it up along with Wynn’s package, then stared down a curious woman watching them through her window. The woman crossed herself and made a hasty retreat behind her curtains. Others who had fled at the gunshots crept back onto the sidewalk and watched with unabashed curiosity. Ignoring them, she returned and held the umbrella over the man.

  “For the safety of all your patients it is best we take this man to a quiet place. I will retrieve anything you need.”

  He stared at her. His stubborn need for medical superiority warring with concern for all involved patients transpired like a shifting wall across Wynn’s face.

  At last he settled on a decision. “Where’s the flat?”

  * * *

  Wynn scrubbed his hands in the basin of water and soap as his patient slowly regained consciousness on the ornate bed. The man had passed out no sooner than they had entered the building. Rather rude of him considering the four flights of stairs they had to traverse before arriving at his door with limp body in tow, but the blackout proved to be a blessing. Wynn was able to make a quick examination of the entry and exit wounds, clean away debris, and dress the injuries with a few shirts Svetlana had found in a bureau and cut into strips.

  After checking his patient once more, Wynn left the bedchamber and stepped into the sitting room. Expensive furniture and artwork crammed the space with plush Aubusson rugs covering the parquet floor. Faux columns stood in the corners with spiky green plants sitting on top while a marble fireplace was half hidden behind a trolley loaded with amber liquid–filled decanters and tumblers.

  Not knowing what to make of the gaudy taste, Wynn ambled to the kitchen where Svetlana brooded over a silver contraption with a spout that looked suspiciously like an oversize tea kettle. Her hair rested in a limp coil at the base of her neck with escaped silvery strands straggling off in all directions. Her dark blue dress was wrinkled and water stained, but her erect posture didn’t sag under the mistreatment. Nor did her odd foot arrangement, one flat and the other pointed to the side. Snapped to the front. To the side again.

  If one thing could be said for this princess, it was that she was a brick. Not once had she complained or backed away when he requested assistance. If another thing could be said, it was that this princess was no nurse. She’d managed to jab their patient in the exit wound as the dressing was applied and brought Wynn cologne water to wash his hands instead of soap, arguing he had worked up quite the “aroma” on the trudge through the streets and up the stairs. The sweat dampening the back of his shirt couldn’t deny that statement.