The Ice Swan

by J'nell Ciesielski

  “Have I not given you enough excitement as my mother?” He nudged her shoulder, eliciting a glimmer of amusement.

  “More than enough for two lifetimes, and while I love you more than life itself, being a mother is only part of who I am. Don’t be a one-sided bore, Wynn.”

  The truth of her statement dug into his core. He’d made an ivory tower of his ambitions, and when the walls had shaken loose, the bricks fell around him into a heap of disappointment all because he’d put the definition of himself into this one edifice. When the dust settled, he would have two choices. Let the bricks crush him flat on his face, or drag himself from the rubble and start building another life. Svetlana had done it, and if there was anyone to learn from about grace from ruin, it was her.

  “I’ll do my best, Mother,” he said at last.

  Reaching up, she patted his cheek. “I’m so glad you’ve returned home.”

  “Me too. I only wish I could have returned Hugh to you.” He kissed her hand, then slipped his arm around her and drew her to his side. “I miss him. Somedays I look up and expect him to appear around the corner, or I go look for him in the library. Then I remember he’s not here.”

  “His spirit is here now. At least we have that. And each other.”

  They stared out over the dipping slopes and huddled woodlands dotting their estate. Far beyond Thornhill’s borders, the river rippled under the dying sun’s rays. Life still moved on, oblivious to the world’s woes.

  “I should like to erect a monument for him. For all the boys who didn’t return. I believe it could help our people find peace with the losses we’ve suffered. So many of us never got the chance to grieve over a body.” Mother sniffed and wiped at the corner of her eyes with the plaid. “We need a place to honor them.”

  “A fine idea. And very fitting. I think Hugh would wish to be remembered with the men he fought beside.”

  The scent of burning peat rustled on the breeze as families settled into supper and their warm fires against winter’s chill. Wynn breathed in deeply. It was a unique scent, one he’d never particularly cared for, but it was of Scotland and therefore of home.

  Mother shivered and drew her plaid close. “I best get back inside where it’s warm. My half American blood still has trouble appreciating this cold.”

  “The cold lets you know you’re alive.”

  “Spoken like a man who has the internal temperature of a furnace. Though I’m sure your wife appreciates that commodity, coming from a frozen land herself.”

  The mention of Svetlana lanced pain across his heart. “The cold doesn’t bother her as much.”

  “She’s a unique woman. Her manner may be a bit . . . stiff at times, but she has a kind heart, looking after her family and seeing to the tenants. I’m glad you’ve brought her to our family.”

  The pain boiled and spilled down his insides, scorching him with regret. He’d been raised to honor the truth. Mother would be ashamed to know he’d broken his promise of honesty to his wife in the so-called name of honorable protection.

  “Your approval means a great deal to me.”

  “Then you have it and my support. Both of you. Be good to one another and the love will never die.” Burrowing into her plaid, Mother started her way down the path she’d come. “Don’t stay out here too long. Mrs. Varjensky is making something called goulash. It sounds dreadful, but the smell from the kitchen is divine.”

  Wynn turned back to the hills. If Mrs. Varjensky was cooking, the offerings were likely to be delicious, but only he, Mother, Marina, and babushka would be sitting down to enjoy it. Svetlana had chosen to eat in her room these past few nights. No doubt the sight of him would give her acid reflux.

  He flipped the kopek in the air, head over tails, and caught it. A choice to be made, fifty-fifty either way it landed. He’d never had difficulty choosing before, the path always confident under his feet, but the ground had shifted. He could no longer look at the world through the same lens with his future balanced on the edge of a scalpel because unwittingly he’d put that same blade in the hands of his peers. And for what? To prove to himself how great he was? To prove to them how much they needed him?

  He flipped the coin again. When had this monolith of success entered the competition against the human beings he had sworn to care for? His patients and tenants didn’t require him to be the best in his field, and they certainly didn’t care a bit for the arrogance toted around with self-proclaimed prestige. Perhaps a tiny part of it had been for the glory, but what real change did glory mark in the universal scheme when he failed to put his talents to good use on the people entrusted to his care? His talent may never change the history books, but he could change lives worth far more than the opinion of a board of white-haired old men. Hang their opinion and his need for their approval. It wouldn’t stop him from serving those in need whether he received the praise or not.

  At least that was one perspective he could change. Svetlana would take a wee more finessing.

  Not brave enough to face that bitter pain yet again, he pocketed the kopek and hunched his shoulders against the coming darkness as the temperature fell around him.

  Chapter 29

  “Mama, you must eat.” The spoon in Svetlana’s hand hovered in front of her mother’s mouth, but the aging princess turned her face to the lacey pillow and stared out the window. The chamber had been shrouded like a tomb when Svetlana first entered, but she’d peeled back the heavy drapes to let in the sunlight at great protest from the room’s occupant. The words were some of the few her mother had spoken since the news came of their terrible loss.

  Wiping off the bits of sugared oatmeal seeping over the spoon’s rim, Svetlana tried another tactic: her mother’s vanity. “Your figure will waste away.”

  Mama’s only response was a slow blink, as if her lashes were too heavy to hold up. Silver threaded between the dark blond strands of hair hanging past her sunken cheeks. She had always been meticulous about her appearance and aging cover-ups, but grief had woven a tattered spell of carelessness, leaving in its wake a stripped layer of the woman who once was.

  Across the room, Marina shrugged at the daily battle. They’d taken turns coaxing their mother to eat at mealtimes, but Svetlana was never successful. Mama preferred Marina’s administrations, and even then it was hardly more than a nibble or sip. Svetlana could hardly blame her. She wasn’t pleasant enough company for herself these days. Not that it made a difference to her mother. She’d never found her eldest daughter’s company more than tolerable, closing off her affection to shower upon her other children instead. Svetlana had never questioned it, merely accepted it.

  Staring down now at the once vibrant woman shriveling to a gaunt shell of herself, Svetlana realized she never really knew her mother beyond the fancy gowns and tittering parlor room laughter—a laugh she claimed to have first caught Dmitri Dalsky’s attention. It was one of the only claims Father had never refuted, so Svetlana knew it must have been true. A rare connection between her parents when she’d witnessed so few.

  “Father would not wish to see you like this.”

  Mama slowly shifted on the pillow. Her eyes stared with unfocused lucidity as if searching for a ghost on Svetlana’s face. Inch by inch, she raised her head and took a bite of the oatmeal. Eating four more bites, she tapped a brittle nail against the teacup. Svetlana poured the fragrant brew into the cup and held it up to her mother’s lips. Mama took a sip, grimaced, and fell back to the pillow.

  “I know it’s not from a samovar, but we must make do.” Wrapping her fingers around the delicate cup, the more obvious problem became clear. “It’s cold. I’ll ring for a fresh pot.”

  Marina jumped up from her chair near the fire, the book in her lap clattering to the floor. “I’ll fetch one. My legs could do with a stretch.” She took the tray from Mama’s lap and smiled. Sadness still clung to her eyes, but she was doing her best to put on a brave face. “I’ll see if I can find a few mashed cherries to put in the bottom. I know ho
w much you like those. Makes it feel a bit more Russian.”

  As Marina left, Svetlana set about straightening the coverlet across the bed, smoothing the drape pleats, and retying the pink ribbon on Mama’s nightdress after noting one loop on the bow was bigger than the other. Anything to occupy herself, for it was in the listless moments that the unwanted thoughts and feelings found her. The notes of a midnight waltz. The scent of wool and aftershave. The warmth of arms holding her at night. The stab of betrayal and heartache of lies. It all made her feel too much when she preferred the escapism of numbness.

  “You’re like him.”

  The scratchy voice turned Svetlana from the vanity table where she was aligning a tray of hairpins to find her mother watching her.

  Svetlana slid a fingernail between a pin’s blades, the metal cool and rigid like the shining medals pinned across Father’s chest. He’d taught her the name of each one and allowed her the honor of pinning on his Order of Saint Catherine when he was decorated by the tsar.

  “Organized, you mean?”

  “Coldly efficient.”

  After all those years it shouldn’t have stung, but it did. Svetlana nudged the silver pins into straight lines. “A soldier’s trait.”

  “Prince Dmitri Nikolaiovich Dalsky, Captain of the Imperial Forces, with his resourceful mind and steadfast demeanor, and me with my wit and charm. The Dowager Empress Maria herself said we would make the perfect match.” A soft smile curved Mama’s pale lips as her thoughts drifted from the room to a happier time. Svetlana had heard the story of the matchmaking dowager more times than she could count, but it had always been told in a manner of boasting, never with this reminiscent fondness. As if an egg had cracked open to reveal its sweet, runny center, kept unspoiled all these years within its shell.

  Desperate to assuage the earlier sting, Svetlana cradled the image in its delicacy. One false slip and the rare moment of vulnerability between mother and daughter would shatter. “You always looked smart together.”

  Mama toyed with her cross necklace, running her finger over the slanted bottom bar. “There’s nothing more I love than a perfect match of anything. I tried so hard to please him, but I quickly learned there was nothing more he loved than order. I was anything but. No matter how many pretty gowns I wore or opulent dinner parties I threw with all the right attendees, I never pleased him as much as watching his soldiers drill or aligning his army boots in the closet.”

  “I assumed most husbands and wives held their own interests independent of one another. Grand Duchess Xenia was often quoted as it being the only way to sustain a peaceful marriage.”

  “Because you have been taught to think no differently, as all properly brought-up young ladies are.”

  “Yet you wished otherwise, yes?”

  “For a time, when I was young and naïve. Each passing year erected a brick around my heart. A growing wall your father never sought to scale. His eye was caught by too many other battles. He was a good man, but he made loving him nearly impossible.”

  “You’re like him.” The delicate moment of intimacy crackled apart and in blew the bitter cold wind of truth. “Is that what you think of me? I’m impossible to love?”

  Mama’s expression shuttered. She turned her face to the window once more. “Where is your husband?”

  The denial of an answer and change in topic was like a slap to the face after having been spat in the eye. Unlovable and unable to love. In the days passing her fallout with Wynn, Svetlana’s bones felt of ice, as if she were no longer a part of her body. She listened for Wynn’s voice constantly but prayed her steps would not lead her to him. Her emotions were too raw to be reliable. Like a cord of beads strung on one after another with no intent of purpose. The lack of control was nearly as debilitating as the crack in her heart.

  But this weakness she would never allow her mother to witness, not to be seized upon and brought down to Mama’s level of insecurities. Svetlana tapped the hair pin tray parallel to a silver-handled brush. “His time is occupied of late with matters from the medical board.”

  “About that soldier who died under his knife in Paris?”

  Svetlana’s attention snapped up. “Lieutenant Harkin did not die under Wynn’s knife. It was some time after the operation. Where are you hearing this information?”

  “One of the maids has a brother who worked as an orderly in the London hospital when that sergeant—lieutenant?—was there.” Wrapping the necklace chain around her finger, Mama gave her a pointed look. “I have to get my information from somewhere when my own daughter won’t tell me.”

  “That’s because there is nothing to tell. It was tragic that the young man died, but Wynn did his best to save him. As he did—does—with all his patients.” They may have been in the middle of a marital tempest, but no one could falsely accuse Wynn to her face and remain unchecked. He was a good man and a brilliant surgeon and would rather throw himself in front of a firing squad before seeing harm come to another person.

  Had he not done just that to protect the woman he claimed to love? Her head pounded. Yes, he had. With a lie.

  The sound of metal zippering over a chain filled the stretching silence. Mama’s cross pulling back and forth on its chain. “The maids also tell me they’ve been lighting the fire and making the beds in both of your separate chambers.”

  Svetlana crossed the room in an undignified two strides and glared at her mother from the foot of the bed. All pretense of civility vanished at her mother’s gaming attempts to needle her. “The intimate information of my sleeping arrangements is none of your concern.”

  “It tells a lot about a marriage. Particularly the early days.”

  “I’m sure you’d find more delight to hear of me slipping into Sergey’s bed.”

  Mama jerked upright. “There’s no call to be crude.”

  “I’m sorry, Mama. I didn’t realize there was a more delicate way of stating whose bed you’d rather see me in than my husband’s.”

  “Good heavens. I did not raise you to speak this way.”

  “It’s the only thing ladies of the court discuss.”

  “Not in front of their daughters.”

  “Behind the back is preferable? Or only with the maids?”

  “This is not—that is not why I asked. Always twisting my words around to make me a harpy of the worst kind.” Lips pursed, her mother inhaled several times through her nose as her hands scuffed over the bed linen. Ever the victim. Ever so slowly, the high color on her cheeks receded. “I ask because . . . Well, what does it matter now? You’re your father’s daughter.”

  The angry dart flew straight and true at Svetlana’s heart, but it was too late. She’d armed herself since the first attack. “I once felt special when you told me that. Now I know you never meant it as a compliment.”

  “There you go again, knowing all. Whatever would we mere mortals of imperfection do without your insight? Apparently we would have starved, been thrown out into the streets, or killed without you to guide us. I’ve yet to see one lasting ray of hope since we left Russia.”

  “I’ve done the best I can to keep us safe.”

  “I’m sure you think so.”

  With the covers pulled up high on her chest and the pink bow at her throat, her mother was not the bitter harpy she accused Svetlana of making her, but rather a selfish, scared child who knew no better than to lash out when she was hurting. Nothing hurt more than being denied love.

  “Did you love my father?” Did you ever love me? Svetlana burned to ask but held back in fear of what the answer might be.

  “I did, but it was too exhausting keeping up with that much perfection,” Mama whispered, clutching her cross and slumping into her pillows. “Go away. I’m tired.”

  Svetlana turned, crossed the room, and opened the door. Marina stood there precariously balancing a fresh tray of steaming tea. The scent of apples lingered in the strained leaves.

  “Oh good. I didn’t know how I was going to get the door ope
n holding this.” The smile dropped from her face. “Svetka. What’s wrong?”

  “Mama is tired, but I suspect she’ll feel revived after her tea.”

  “We didn’t have cherries, but I strained a few of the chamomile petals you’ve been drying from your herb garden. You don’t think she’ll mind?”

  “Of course not. Your thoughtfulness is always appreciated.”

  “Do you know when Sergey will return? He left rather unexpectedly, and I worry for him in this strange country.”

  Sergey had left not long after their last conversation in the solarium—where he had so brazenly declared himself to her—claiming he needed a few days alone to gather his thoughts while searching for new accommodations. It would be a lie to say she did not feel relief from his temporary absence. She had too many upsets to deal with, and summoning small talk for the man she’d rejected was not one she had the fortitude for.

  “I’m not certain. Perhaps he needed time to clear his head. We Dalsky women can be overwhelming in our plights.”

  Marina stepped close and touched a gentle hand to Svetlana’s shoulder. “Mama will get better, but it’ll take time. We’ll help her. There’s no sense in you worrying so much about all of us.”

  The naïve sweetness on her sister’s face—thinking it was their mother who caused the only trouble—slipped a knife into Svetlana’s heart. “Part of being the big sister is to worry, kotyonok.”

  “Then it’s good you have Wynn to look after you. He’s the only one strong enough.”

  The knife twisted. Svetlana walked away as the pain swelled in her chest, culminating in the prickle of tears.

  “Are we still conducting that village meeting later today?” Marina’s voice trailed down the hall after her.

  “Yes. Be ready to leave by three o’clock.” Svetlana rounded the corner and threw open the nearest window. Icy wind rushed in and froze the tears cresting her bottom lashes. She swiped them away with a decisive flick of her hand before closing the window and continuing on.