“You never told me about Janette Henderson.”
“So I lived, carefree, independent, one adventure right after the other, and then I had the poor judgment to go to the Colonies and the wretched luck to wind up in New Orleans and just happened to be passing through the old market and you just happened to be there at the same time and I saw you and that was it and I haven’t had a single moment’s peace since.”
“I didn’t ask you to fall in love with me. If memory serves, I did everything in my power to discourage you.”
“If only you’d been able to,” he said grumpily.
“You don’t mean that, Jeremy.”
“I’ve aged ten years since that day in New Orleans.”
“It doesn’t show,” I told him. “If anything, you’re even better looking. I love you in that black sheepskin coat and hat. You look wonderfully rugged and virile. That red scarf adds a nice touch, too.”
“Don’t humor me. I’m still upset.”
“I know, darling, but it looks like it’s going to start snowing any minute now and I think we’d better be on—what—what’s that noise?”
“What noise?”
“Behind us. It sounds like—”
Jeremy raised up and turned around and looked behind us and then he told me to hand him one of the rifles. His voice was very, very calm, frighteningly calm, and I turned around too and saw the four enormous wolves slinking toward us on the road behind, not fifty yards away. They moved stealthily, bodies low to the ground, their huge paws thumping softly on the hard-packed snow. That thumping was the noise I had heard.
“They—they often travel in packs,” I said in a tight voice. “The wolf I shot was prob—probably the leader.”
“Hand me the rifle, Marietta. Then pick up the reins and go. Not too fast.”
I gave him the rifle and placed the other two on the seat beside him, and Jeremy got up on his knees, leaning against the seat for support, resting one elbow on the back of the sleigh as he took careful aim. I picked up the reins and clicked them and we began to move, and although my heart was beating rapidly a hard tight core of calm inside kept me steady. The panic was there, too, a live thing inside, shrill and shrieking, but it was contained. Jeremy was depending on me and both our lives depended on our staying calm. I was not going to let him down.
I held the reins firmly, jiggling them, encouraging the horse to move at a steady trot. Not too fast. Not too fast. He had to be able to fire properly and he couldn’t afford to miss. I turned my head and looked back and saw that the wolves were no longer ambling behind, they were running now, pursuing us with swift, loose-limbed gaits. One was ahead of the others, gaining on us by the second, eyes glittering bright as it bared sharp fangs and began snarling. Jeremy fired. The lead wolf turned a somersault, spinning in air, scarlet spraying the snow, then hit the ground with a heavy thump.
I turned my attention back to the horse as Jeremy threw the rifle down and grabbed another, positioning himself carefully. Moments passed, and he didn’t fire. I glanced back to see that the remaining three wolves had paused to examine the bleeding gray corpse. They began to howl hideously and then deserted the limp body and raced after us again, moving even faster than before in a series of bounding leaps. The sleigh swayed, rocking, and I devoted all my attention to driving. Bloodcurdling howls split the air behind us, and the horse began to panic, racing faster and faster despite my efforts to control him. As the second shot exploded he broke into a mad run, tearing down the road, hoofs pounding, kicking up crusty splinters of snow.
“Slow down!” Jeremy shouted.
“I’m trying!”
“We’re going to turn over!”
The ice-encrusted trees seemed to fly past us on either side in a blur of shiny silver-gray and the road was like a huge pale pewter ribbon being ripped out from under us as the sleigh bounced and swayed and skidded wildly. I held the reins tightly, the thin leather curled around my fingers, cutting off circulation, and, half standing, I pulled with a steady motion, afraid to jerk on the reins, afraid the horse would rear. All of my efforts seemed to be futile and the horse sped along down the road and the wooden runners scraped noisily and sprayed snow.
“Jeremy! I—I can’t control him!”
“You must! I can’t aim properly at this speed!”
“The wolves—”
“They’re still coming!”
“Are they—”
“They’re twenty yards behind us!”
I redoubled my efforts, praying fervently, pulling firmly, steadily, fingers numb now, my arms burning with pain, my spinal cord feeling as though it might snap. I stumbled, crashing onto my knees on the floor of the sleigh, and I reared back and somehow managed to regain my seat and still hold on to the reins. Jeremy held the third rifle, trying to take aim, and the wolves howled, racing behind us. I closed my eyes and pulled even harder, and a spear seemed to pierce my back and my arms seemed to pull out of their sockets but the pain was unimportant, slowing the horse down was all that mattered.
“Pull, Marietta! Pull!”
“I’m pulling!”
The horse finally responded to the pressure of the bit in its mouth and slowed down and the sleigh stopped swaying and Jeremy was able to take aim. He pulled the trigger but there was no deafening explosion, only a loud click, for the rifle was the one I had fired earlier and there had been no time to reload it and both of us had forgotten that in the excitement. I didn’t panic but momentarily lost my senses and let go of the reins and grabbed the pistol at my side and thrust it up to Jeremy. He shouted at me and I tried to grab the reins but they sailed in the air and slashed the horse across the neck and he reared and the sleigh skidded noisily to the left, almost overturning, crashing into the mound of snow at the side of the road.
Jeremy stood up on shaky legs, gripping the pistol, and I saw the furious streak of gray lightning sail through the air, almost upon us, and Jeremy fired the pistol and fell out of the sleigh as the wolf slammed against his body. The wolf was still alive, howling in pain, thrashing, and Jeremy pulled his knife out and slashed and blood gushed and my hands were shaking violently as I grabbed the powder horn and the bag of shot. The last wolf was crouching low, snarling, preparing to spring, and the horse was neighing and trying desperately to break out of its harness as I seized one of the rifles and fumbled with it, trying to get it loaded.
Jeremy had shoved the dead wolf aside and was on his knees on the ice and gripping the bloody knife in his hand. The wolf crouched even lower, exposing horrible fangs, slobbering, eyes burning, and then it sprang into the air as I leaped to my feet and swung the loaded rifle around and pulled the trigger all in one motion, hitting the beast right between the eyes. It fell crashing to the ground and landed approximately two feet from where Jeremy was still kneeling. He stared at it and then turned to look at me standing in the sleigh with tendrils of smoke still curling from the barrel of the rifle. The horse had stopped thrashing about and stood making pathetic whinnying noises. Jeremy shook his head. His face was white. Mine must have been even whiter.
“Nice work,” he said shakily.
“I—I didn’t think I was going to get it loaded in time.”
He wiped the blade of his knife on the fur of the nearest wolf and climbed to his feet and then retrieved the pistol he had dropped when he tumbled out of the sleigh.
“Are—Jeremy, are you all right?”
“Probably bruised as hell. No injuries.”
“I’ve never been so frightened in—”
“Neither have I, love. I don’t mind admitting it.”
He thrust the pistol into his waistband and retrieved the hat which he had also lost in the fall. I noticed that his hands shook too as he pulled it back over his head. He sauntered over to stroke the horse and calm it down, murmuring soft, reassuring words into its ear, and I put the rifle down and had a moment of dizziness and stubbornly refused to faint. I climbed out of the sleigh, averting my eyes from the bloody corpses on
the road. I still felt lightheaded, and my knees threatened to buckle. As small tremors swept through me I bit my lower lip, determined not to give way to them, particularly as I had bragged only a short while ago about being so bloody brave and intrepid and not turning into jelly at the first sign of danger.
“Is—is the horse all right?” I asked.
“Still frightened. He’ll calm down in a few minutes.”
“Good,” I said.
And then the blackness swept over me all at once and I felt myself swaying and when I opened my eyes Jeremy was sitting on the snow and his arms were supporting me, holding me against his chest, and my legs were sprawled out, skirts all atangle. He looked concerned, then relieved when he saw my lashes fluttering. I rested my head on his shoulder for a moment as another wave of weakness washed over me. His left arm tightened around me. He stroked my hair with his right hand.
“I—”
“Don’t try to talk, love. Just rest for a moment.”
“I didn’t faint,” I murmured.
“No?”
“Just—I haven’t had enough to eat and I was weak and—I didn’t actually faint. My knees were shaky and—silly, helpless women faint and I’m—”
“You’re so blooming brave,” he said, “so blooming stubborn and scrappy. I almost fainted myself when I saw you keel over. I barely caught you in time, lost my balance, landed smack on my backside again. It’s taken quite a beating of late.”
“And it’s such a lovely backside—so flat and firm.”
“I’m glad you like it. At the moment it’s growing numb with cold. Do you think you can stand now?”
I nodded, extremely optimistic, and Jeremy climbed up and pulled me up and held me as my knees wobbled. He helped me back into the sleigh, then gave me a drink of water from one of the canteens, and I began to feel better. The color returned to my cheeks with a warm flush and my head cleared and I felt extremely foolish as he peered at me with tender concern. Foolish, yes, but wonderful as well, as I saw the love in those expressive blue eyes.
“I—I guess I’m not as tough as I thought I was,” I said.
“You’ll do until something better comes along,” he told me, “and the chances of that happening are slim indeed. I really think you ought to have a swallow of vodka, love.”
“No, thank you!”
Jeremy smiled and brushed a damp tendril of hair from my temple. “I’m going to give the horse the rest of the water in this canteen, feed it some more oats. We’ll rest for a bit before we get started again.”
He poured water into his palm and let the horse lap it up, and then, after more oats, presented it with a long orange carrot he’d pulled from one of the food bags. I asked him why he’d brought carrots and he told me that he’d stolen into one of the cook houses in camp with the two cloth bags and simply grabbed everything in sight: carrots, potatoes, apples, onions, cheese, sausage links, dried beef, bread, two chickens.
“Chickens?” I said.
“Cleaned and gutted and frozen solid, love. Still frozen—haven’t had a chance to thaw in this weather. I thought we might have an opportunity to cook them over a fire.”
“Next time,” I said, “steal coffee.”
“You’re getting grumpy again. Must be feeling better.”
“Much better. How’s your backside?”
“Flat and firm,” he said. “I have it on the best authority. We’d better get started, love, and we’d better get off this main road. There’s a back road that runs parallel to it half a mile or so to the west. I’m sure we have nothing to worry about, but there’s no sense taking chances.”
He was referring to the peasants. Pugachev would most certainly have sent a band of them after us.
“They—they’re behind us, aren’t they?”
“They undoubtedly left first thing this morning,” he said casually, “but we drove all night, made good time, have several hours’ head start. They’re not going to catch up with us, love.”
His voice was confident, his manner unperturbed, but I wondered if he wasn’t just trying to keep me from worrying. Before we started off he carefully reloaded all three rifles and the pistol, handing the letter to me, saying I might like to keep it at my side. A few moments later, snugly bundled under the blankets and fur rug, we set off again through the bleak gray afternoon. I was still sore from my exertions with the reins, still shaken from our encounter with the wolves, but I felt strangely serene nevertheless. After the wolves, anything else would seem mild, and with Jeremy at my side I felt I could easily face any danger.
I linked my arm through his, resting my head against his shoulder. It began to snow lightly.
“I—I should never have left you in London, Jeremy,” I said quietly. “I don’t know if—if I’ll ever be able to forgive myself for leaving you in order to—to go to Derek.”
“It was something you had to do, Marietta. That’s why I let you leave. As long as you thought you loved another man, things would never be right between us.”
“You were certain I’d come back?”
“Positive.”
“I was such a fool—such a fool.”
“You were merely confused, love.”
“I think I loved you from the very beginning,” I told him. “I just didn’t know it, and—and when I finally saw what was in my own heart and realized that you were—you were everything to me, I could hardly contain my joy. I kept urging Ogilvy to drive faster, faster so we could reach London that night, and that was when we had the accident.”
“The driver was killed, wasn’t he?”
I nodded. “And I would probably have died, too, if Orlov hadn’t come along when he did. He took me to the inn and fetched a doctor and—and he and Lucie took care of me. When I was finally well enough to go on to London you weren’t there, and—”
And as the snow floated down in soft, lazy flakes I told him how I came to be in Russia, told him everything that had happened, omitting only that night at Count Rostopchin’s when I had finally succumbed to Orlov. I told him about Lucie and Bryan, about Catherine and Potemkin and the bargain I had made with Orlov and the part I had played in Lucie’s elopement, and the snow was coming down much heavier when I finally reached the part about Orlov’s frenzy and his abducting me, bringing me to his country estate.
“He went completely out of his mind, Jeremy. He did nothing but sit in the drawing room, drinking, talking to himself, and then his brothers came and they all went charging off and—”
I told him about Mitya and Grushenka, and my voice began to shake as I told him about my shooting Vladimir on the stairs, about our flight through the woods and what had happened in the clearing. Jeremy was silent, sober, saying nothing for a long time, and then, in a very serious voice, he promised me that we would never be separated again. It was snowing hard now, coming down in fluffy sheets of whirling flakes. Another half an hour must have passed before Jeremy finally turned down the narrow side road that led through the woods. The road was rough and uneven, icy tree limbs hanging low. I was relieved when we reached the back road which, while not much wider, was considerably smoother.
Another hour went by, and with each minute the snow grew thicker, icier, the flakes stinging our cheeks now like tiny insect bites, and I began to remember stories of Russian blizzards and travelers trapped in them and freezing to death. Jeremy was worried, too, though he tried his beet not to show it. He gripped the reins, tense, leaning forward on the seat, his mouth tight. I shivered under the blankets. It had turned much colder. A strong wind had come up. My throat was tight as Jeremy urged the horse to plod on through what was fast turning into one of the dreaded blizzards I had heard about.
“We’ve got to find a place to stop,” he said grimly.
“I—I know.”
“Lots of hunters in these parts. There’s certain to be a hut or a shed or something. Keep your eyes open.”
Another thirty minutes passed, and the snow was so bad now the horse could barely move
, staggering along as the wind blew and the icy snow stung. Visibility was almost nil, the world a swirling chaos of spinning white, sleet mixing with the snow now, needle sharp. I peered through the pelting curtains, hardly able to see the trees, and I almost missed the hut set back fifty feet from the road. I pulled Jeremy’s arm and pointed. He squinted and nodded, looking vastly relieved as he tugged on the reins and turned up the pathway through the trees.
The hut was low and square and made of rough logs, with a sturdy roof and, surprisingly enough, thick glass windows. The logs were coated with ice, giving them a silvery brown sheen, and an enclosed shed was attached to the hut in back. We stopped in front as snow turned to sleet and pelted down in a battering fury. Jeremy leaped out and started unfastening the harness and ordered me to get inside at once. I grabbed the food bags, the pistol, and one of the canteens and, head lowered to avoid the treacherous sleet, hurried toward the door and threw it open, relieved to find it unlocked. I put everything down and ran back out to fetch more items from the sleigh, grabbing up blankets, a rifle and two more canteens, carrying them inside as Jeremy led the horse around the side of the hut.
The sleet was banging against the windows like hail. I found an old oil lamp on a wooden shelf nailed to the wall and lighted it with one of the matches I found in a box beside it. As the circle of light spread, I saw the crude stone fireplace with a large iron pot suspended over it, a pile of wood on the hearth. There was a cot, a wooden chair, an ancient wooden chest painted with stylized orange and blue birds and yellow tulips, now sadly faded, and a shaggy bearskin rug was spread out in front of the fireplace. The bear must have been enormous, I thought, judging from the size of the rug. By the time Jeremy came in with the rest of the things, I had a fire started in the fireplace, and I was examining the chest, delighted to find that it contained four wooden bowls and battered tin spoons and a tiny dish of salt.
Jeremy put the blankets and rifles down and bolted the door, looking thoroughly exhausted. The wind was howling. I was fearful the sleet would break the glass windows.
When Love Commands Page 54