When Love Commands

by Jennifer Wilde

  Everything ready now, all preparations made, nothing to do but wait, and that wasn’t going to be easy. I moved back over to the window. The feathery spiral I had seen on the horizon was darker now, definitely smoke, I determined. What could be burning? Restless, nerves beginning to grow taut, I decided to go downstairs and see about dinner. Carelessly cooked, indifferently served, meals were hardly a high point of my day, but I intended to have a solid meal tonight even if I had to cook it myself.

  As I started down the stairs I heard a confusion out front, horses stamping on the drive, voices yelling loudly, footsteps pounding. I paused on the landing, curious, and then the front door banged open and two gloriously handsome gods burst into the hall, both tall and stalwart and glowing with vitality. I had never seen either of them before, but I recognized them at once as they stamped snow from their boots and shook their broad shoulders and filled the air with crackling energy that was almost visible. Both had been here at the house twice before, on the day after we arrived and two or three days ago, but I hadn’t seen them on either occasion.

  The taller of the two had golden brown hair and a short, neatly trimmed beard and flashing navy blue eyes. He was attired in dark brown velvet breeches and frock coat and a gold-embroidered brown brocade waistcoat, a rich brown fur cape slung around his shoulders. In his mid-forties, he had the vigor of a much younger man and the mannerisms of a hearty rake who loved wine, women, and war with exuberant relish. This was Count Alexis Orlov, Lucie’s father, almost as magnetic as his brother Gregory had been, in a much earthier, more primitive way.

  His brother Feodor was leaner, not quite so tall, with dark yellow blond hair and lively brown eyes beneath drooping lids and arching brows. Although the coloring was different, the build slighter, Feodor more closely resembled Gregory feature by feature. In blue velvet and short black fur cape, he exuded the Orlov magnetism, but there was a total lack of refinement, a crude, brutal aura that proclaimed him a tough, a bully, a man who used his fists instead of his head and took pleasure in punishing those weaker than he.

  “Gregory!” Alexis roared.

  “We waste time!” Feodor protested. “We should already be on our way after these butchers!”

  “We need Gregory’s help. If we’re to exterminate them we need a stronger force.”

  “I have fifteen men, you have twenty. Gregory won’t help us. He’s gone off his head, you know that as well as I do!”

  “Shut your mouth, Feodor! Gregory’s having a bad period, we all do, it’s the family curse, but he’s not balmy. He’s merely depressed and drinking too much. Come out, Gregory! Your brothers are here!”

  “The peasants will get away!”

  “Control yourself, Feodor. You’ll be able to spill your share of blood soon enough. We’ll catch up with them and you can kill to your heart’s content.”

  “We waste time!” Feodor repeated. “They are on the run already and instead of charging after them we come here to reason with a madman!”

  “Our brother is not mad!”

  “You’re an idiot yourself, Alexis!”

  Alexis doubled up his fist and banged Feodor on the side of the head and Feodor crashed against the wall and stumbled against a table and a large vase tumbled off and shattered on the floor. Eyes flaming dangerously, Feodor let out an enraged roar and charged his brother with fists flying and Alexis nimbly sidestepped and threw an arm out and caught Feodor around the throat and slung him around in front of him, holding him securely as Feodor squirmed and flailed his arms about, trying to break free.

  “Gregory!” Alexis called. “Come see your brothers!”

  Feodor gurgled, his face bright pink. Alexis relaxed his hold and patted his brother affectionately on top of the head, which infuriated Feodor all the more. The drawing room door opened, and Gregory came staggering out, his face a sickly gray, moist with sweat. His hair was moist, too, clinging to his skull like a wet, tawny cap. He stared at his brothers, blinking, the haunted eyes gradually filling with recognition.

  “Alex—Alexis. Fe—Feodor. You come to see me. You come to see your poor, unhappy brother. You are not the shadows, this I know. You are standing in my hall.”

  “See, Feodor,” Alexis said! “He is drunk, but he knows who we are. Are you all right, Gregory?”

  “Why are you strangling our brother Feodor?” Gregory asked.

  Alexis chuckled, releasing his brother. Feodor coughed and spluttered, a furious look in his eyes, but he made no further attempt to strike back.

  “Our little brother gets too big for his breeches,” Alexis explained amiably. “I have to discipline him, as when we are boys. Always he must be kept in line with a blow on the head.”

  “This is so,” Gregory agreed.

  Feodor glared at his siblings with burning resentment. Alexis punched him playfully on the shoulder.

  “We have come for your help, Gregory,” he said. “It is most urgent. We need your men, all of them.”

  “You need my men?” He spoke the words slowly, as though trying to determine what each meant.

  “The peasants are on the rampage again. Pugachev’s men. Early this afternoon a mob of them attack the Vasilchikov estate, twenty miles to the west. They butchered the men, raped and killed all the women, set fire to the house, yelling like demons. One of the manservants managed to steal a horse and rode to my place.”

  “Pugachev,” Gregory said.

  “The Imperial Army is nowhere in the vicinity. We’re going to ride after these butchers ourselves, exterminate them once and for all. We need your men to ride with us.”

  “Pugachev,” Gregory repeated. “Yes, I remember this name. He makes my Catherine very upset.”

  “He’s raving!” Feodor exclaimed. “His men won’t take orders from anyone except him! I told you we were wasting our—”

  “You wish another blow on the head!”

  “Look at him! He’s—”

  “Yes,” Gregory said, his eyes lighting up, with excitement. “Yes, it is the answer! I will take my men and ride after this peasant who makes all the trouble! I will capture him and take him to her in chains, and then my Catherine will be grateful—she will see—she will—”

  His voice broke, and he nodded, unable to contain his excitement. Standing in the shadows of the landing, looking down, I saw that wild gleam in his eyes as the obsession gripped him anew. Most of the pallor had left his ravaged face. Damp tawny locks were splayed across his brow. In his high gray leather boots, his soiled gray velvet breeches and the loosely fitting white lawn shirt damp with perspiration, Count Gregory Orlov was an utter ruin, all grandeur gone, and he bore very little resemblance to that magnificent, golden creature I had first seen in England.

  “Yes!” he cried. “This is what I will do! My Catherine will lavish me with honors again! New triumphal arches will be erected in my name! I will shine with glory!”

  Gregory turned and staggered back into the drawing room, and loud noises poured through the open door. A piece of furniture was knocked down, falling to the floor with a bang. Glass shattered. He cursed, an enraged roar. His boots stomped heavily as he stumbled about. Something metal clattered on the stone hearth, and he roared again. Alexis and Feodor exchanged looks, Alexis tolerant, not at all perturbed by his brother’s peculiar conduct, Feodor consumed with impatience. After a few moments, Gregory burst back into the hall with a black fur cloak slung around his shoulders, waving the sabre that had been hanging over the mantel. Feodor ducked. Alexis beamed with approval and pounded Gregory on the back.

  “All the time I know you will help us!” he declared.

  “Come!” Gregory cried. “We get my men! We ride after this monster who threatens my Catherine!”

  He whirled the sabre in the air. Feodor threw open the front door. The Orlov brothers charged out of the house.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Utter pandemonium prevailed during the next hour as horses were saddled, rifles distributed, equipment fetched, campfires
put out, cossacks yelling with demonic glee. Staggering; waving his sabre on high, Gregory Orlov was in the middle of things, shouting demented directions, urging his men to hurry, hurry. Calmly, first things first, I went to the kitchen and sliced beef and bread and ate it with a wedge of cheese and a glass of milk. I found Grushenka and insisted she eat, too, and afterwards we stood at the hall window upstairs, watching the frantic activity below.

  “They’re all leaving,” she said. “I don’t understand.”

  “There’s been another massacre, Grushenka. The Orlovs are going after the peasants who committed it.”

  “Those—those dreadful people. One of them comes to the village several months ago, tries to enlist the men, get them to join Pugachev’s band. The men of our village run him out, want no part of the trouble he brings.”

  “You know about Pugachev?” I asked.

  The girl nodded. “Everyone in these parts knows about Pugachev. Some say he is a saint. Others say he is a devil. He is going to free Russia of tyranny, he claims, and this he does by burning and killing, not—not just the aristocrats but our own people as well, the servants who work in the houses and any peasant who defies him or disagrees with his methods. He brings nightmares into our lives.”

  In the courtyard below Mitya and the other two grooms were leading the horses out. The horses neighed and reared, alarmed by the noise and confusion. A cossack leaped onto his steed, shouting lustily, tumbling to the cobbles as the horse bucked. Most of the men had been drinking vodka all day and were as drunk as Orlov, waving their sabres wildly. Several fired pistols into the air, and one began to fire at the chickens, who scattered about the yard in a frenzied panic. It was a crazy, disorganized pageant of frantic activity, but eventually all the cossacks were armed and mounted, some weaving perilously in the saddle, others clutching their horse’s necks for support, and Vladimir appeared to help Gregory mount, speaking to him in a low, inaudible voice.

  Both men glanced up toward the house, Gregory impatient, Vladimir intense. Vladimir said something else and Gregory muttered an indifferent reply and swung into his saddle with surprising agility. Vladimir nodded and stepped back, looking toward the house again. Feodor and Alexis walked their horses over to stand beside Gregory’s. Gregory shouted an order, waved his sabre in the air, and the procession charged toward the drive, hooves thundering on the cobbles. A moment later Vladimir stood alone in the deserted yard with its litter of broken glass and the blackened ruins of campfires. The thunder of hoofbeats could be heard in front, growing fainter and fainter as the sound receded, and finally a brooding silence prevailed once more, broken only by the cluck of chickens.

  “He—he left that Vladimir behind,” Grushenka said, worried.

  “Probably three or four others as well,” I told her, “but that still lessens the odds against our being caught. Don’t worry, Grushenka. It will be much easier now with Orlov and the cossacks gone.”

  “I’m growing nervous again,” she confessed. “I—I have this strange feeling something is going to happen.”

  “You’re just apprehensive. In only a few hours we’ll be in the sleigh, on our way to St. Petersburg. You go on downstairs now and—go on about your business as though nothing were afoot.”

  “Mitya—he said he would meet us outside the kitchen door at ten.”

  “And we’ll be there,” I said.

  Grushenka left me, and I gazed out at the courtyard for a few more minutes. Vladimir had disappeared. The chickens had stopped clucking and strutted about idly, pecking at the food scraps they found among the cobbles. The house was unnervingly still. I felt as though I were on a vast, deserted ship becalmed in the middle of a motionless sea. I was every bit as apprehensive as Grushenka had been, far more apprehensive than I cared to admit to myself. With Orlov gone, Vladimir would be keeping a much closer watch over me, that I was sure of. Instead of making our escape easier, Orlov’s departure with his brothers and the cossacks only made things worse. Vladimir would very likely station himself in the hall outside my bedroom door.

  Well, I told myself, you’ll simply have to deal with it. You’re not going to lose your courage now.

  Time seemed to hang suspended. Ten o’clock seemed an eternity away. Going back to my bedroom, I fetched the book and took it back down to the library and checked to make sure the rifle and powder horn and bags of ammunition were still behind the chair. The room was full of deep purple-black shadows now, the smell of old leather and dust stronger than ever. The house was so still, the silence so ominous. My nerves were on edge. I almost expected someone to leap out from the shadows and seize me. A board creaked, as though the deserted ship were settling on the still water. How was I going to endure this agony of waiting? With each passing minute my courage, my resolve seemed to grow weaker.

  I longed for a brandy, decided I didn’t dare have even one. I couldn’t afford to dull my senses. Leaving the library, I wandered restlessly about downstairs, not actually wringing my hands but showing every other symptom of taut nerves. I encountered no one. The servants were all occupied elsewhere, silent. My garnet velvet skirt rustled with the sound of whispers as I moved slowly about the empty corridors. Where was Vladimir? Had he come back inside? What had he said to Orlov? What had Orlov replied? Why had they both looked up at the house? I felt sure they had been talking about me. The house was cold. I shivered, scolding myself for this attack of nerves, and finally I went back upstairs and moved down the hall and looked out over the front.

  The sun was going down. The dark gray sky was streaked with golden orange banners, and the blinding white snow was burnished with orange light, as though the world were aflame. The light gradually faded, banners blurring to a misty pink, darkening to gray, the sky slowly turning purple-gray. How desolate the land looked, how bleak, the leafless, ice-encased trees like skeletal phantoms in the distance, frozen immobile by the cold. What a horrible, horrible country this was, seething with violence and unrest. As the last light disappeared, as the purple sky melted to black, I heard a wolf howling in the woods. It was a bloodcurdling sound, all the more chilling in the stillness.

  Three days and nights it would take us … perhaps more. Vulnerable, exposed in an open sleigh, in a country alive with starving wolves and bloodthirsty peasants who … who butchered and burned. There might well be a blizzard, snow turning to sleet, sleet turning the world into a silver-gray fury of blinding, battering chaos. What were our chances of safely reaching St. Petersburg? Slim indeed, I told myself, and then I frowned and straightened my shoulders and turned away from the window.

  All right, Marietta, you’ve had your little spell. Now, by God, you’re going to pull yourself together and show some spunk. You’ve been in far worse situations than this and you always came through. Stop it at once.

  A footman was lighting the cheap wax candles in the hall as I went back to my bedroom. He was the first human being I had seen in—I glanced at the huge clock near the staircase—in an hour and forty-five minutes. It had been that long since I sent Grushenka back downstairs, since Gregory and his brothers and the drunken, disorganized band of cossacks charged off to join Alexis’s and Feodor’s men to pursue the peasants. How much blood would be spilled during the next day or so? How many innocent men would die? What was it about this dreadful country that turned men into savages with a lust for blood?

  I went into my bedroom and closed the door. The tub had been taken away. The bedcovers had been turned back. Nerves still taut, I sat down in the chair near the fire and gazed at the flames and listened to the monotonous ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece. Where was Vladimir? He must be inside the house somewhere, but I hadn’t seen him. Was he, even now, stationed in the hall outside my bedroom, standing guard? I mustn’t think about that now. I must close my eyes and relax … relax. In less than a week, if I were fortunate, I would be on a ship on my way to America. I would see Em again and Randy and I would see those wide, sun-swept plains and the cottonwood trees and the endless blue
skies that turned to dark velvet at night and blazed with stars. How they had blazed that night that Jeremy took me into his arms and … He was there. He was smiling that crooked, teasing smile. I clung to him.

  I awoke with a start. Grushenka was shaking me. Her gray eyes were full of alarm. For an instant I was still in Texas, still in Jeremy’s arms, and he was telling me everything would be all right, and then the dream shattered and I saw that the fire had burned down and that the clock showed ten minutes after ten and I couldn’t believe that I had actually fallen asleep. Grushenka stepped back, clutching nervously at the dark sable cloak wrapped around her shoulders. I stood up and brushed the folds of my garnet velvet skirt, still rather dazed. Grushenka bit her lip.

  “I—I waited for you downstairs. I waited and waited and when you didn’t come I—”

  “I fell asleep, Grushenka. I was so tense and nervous I knew I had to relax, and—oh my God! Did anyone see you come up to my room?”

  Grushenka shook her head. “Everyone—all the servants, they—they’re in their rooms, terrified. Mathilda is on her knees, praying fervently. They are afraid Pugachev’s men will attack the house and burn it now that Count Orlov and his cossacks have gone.”

  “Nonsense,” I said. “There’s no way Pugachev’s men could know the house is unprotected.”

  “Pugachev has spies everywhere. He knows everything that happens, almost before it does happen. I—I’m frightened myself,” she confessed. “We must leave quickly.”

  I was already kneeling down, pulling the bag of coins out from under the bed. “Have you seen Vladimir?” I asked over my shoulder.