Falling Stars

by Anita Mills

  “And then he goes back to Moscow?”

  “Not then. If the weather permits it, he continues to Tula, where he will say Mass.”

  Returning to the guest house, Bell found Katherine curled up in bed, her face turned away. “Buck up, Kate,” he told her, “the snow has stopped, and they will be clearing the road to Tula.”

  “I don’t want to go anywhere” was her muffled reply.

  “You’ve got to—or see me hanged.”

  “They won’t care anymore.”

  “A man like Alexei Volsky has his pride, I expect.” He leaned over her, touching her shoulder. “You’ve got to get well, Kate. In another week, we’ll have to travel.”

  “I cannot.”

  “The place will be overrun. They’ve got the metropolitan of Moscow coming. He’s seen you before, hasn’t he?”

  “Yes,” she answered dully. “He registered me as Ekaterina Ivanova. Lexy was going to have him christen the babe.”

  “I know.” Once again, he felt helpless. “It’s over, you know.” He dropped down to sit beside her and began rubbing her shoulders through the lawn undershift. “I named him John for your father, thinking perhaps you’d prefer that. But they wrote it as Jean, since we are supposed to be French.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “Yes, you do—you care very much. And I know that. But it’s over, and you’ve got to get well and go on.”

  “It’ll never be over—never,” she whispered fiercely. “He was all I had left in this world—all I had left in this world!”

  “You still have Harry. We’ve got to get you back to England, Kate.” His hand moved to smooth her wild, tangled hair. “He’ll let you cry all over him.”

  “I know. B-but I cannot wait to cry!” she sobbed.

  He lifted her, holding her close, letting her give vent to her grief. “It’s all right, Kate—it’s all right,” he repeated over and over. “Shhhh—you are going to make me cry with you.”

  Finally, he could stand it no longer, and he set her back from him. She rubbed at her eyes with the back of her hand. “I’m sorry. I know you m-must think m-me naught but a silly female, but—”

  “I think we are going to have to clean you up again.”

  She looked down at the blood on her undershift and nodded. It was as though she’d lost all dignity, all privacy for the most intimate of functions. “I’ll try—I can try.”

  “No. If you stand up unaided, you are like to faint. Besides, when we are out of here, I intend to forget all of this. I won’t even remember I saw you like this,” he promised.

  Backing off the bed, he went to find his own bag. Rummaging through it, he discovered the hated nightshirt. Carrying it back, he held it up for her to see. “I’m not a big man, Kate, so you won’t be completely lost in it.”

  “You are a lot bigger than I am.”

  “At five feet nine? How can you say it when you have seen Harry?” he quizzed her.

  “You have eight inches on me,” she reminded him. “And I’ve never heard it noted that you are small.”

  “Not small—just not big.”

  “And what will you do if I am in your nightshirt?”

  “I’ll sleep in my clothes.” He forced a grin. “Despite what you have always thought me, I am not entirely lost to propriety.”

  “Yes, you are—but it doesn’t matter,” she said wearily.

  He rinsed out the washbasin and tossed the water out the door, then refilled it from the kettle by the fire. Dropping a cloth and a chunk of homemade soap in it, he carried it back to her.

  “We’ll need to wash you first.”

  “I cannot let you do this for me.”

  The intimacy born of desperation had already passed, and he knew it. “All right. Let me help you to a chair before the fire, and you can take whatever time you need to wash yourself. While you are doing it, I can find something to put beneath you in the bed.”

  She smiled wanly. “In another life, you must surely have been a nurse.”

  “No, if I had another life, I must’ve been a rodent,” he countered wryly. “And now I am being punished for it.”

  “You have been terribly kind to me.”

  “I’m not kind, Kate. I just want to survive. I want to get back to England, that’s all.”

  “You could have left me.”

  “And gone where? In case you have not noted it, there is snow and ice everywhere.” He set the washbasin down and caught her beneath her arms as she slid off the bed. “God, but you are thin now that the water is gone,” he muttered. “I could almost carry you.”

  “Don’t.”

  “Don’t worry. I don’t intend to.” He pulled her undershift down to cover her legs. “By tomorrow, I expect you to do this yourself.”

  “Bell, I don’t want to do anything.”

  “I know—you want to die, but it won’t fadge just now. If you do, I shall be blamed for it. Come on.” He walked her to the chair, then brought the basin to her. “Do whatever you have to, and I won’t look.”

  “Everyone in England will know me for a fool.”

  “Does it matter?”

  “No,” she lied.

  “You’ll have Harry,” he reminded her. “And you can live quietly at Monk’s End.”

  “With Mama.”

  “It was you who wished to go home, Kate.”

  “But I thought—I thought I should have my child with me.”

  He swung around at that. “Please, Kate—don’t. I’m not a very kind fellow anyway, and I’ve done everything I can. What’s done is done, and it cannot be changed—no more than I can change what I am. I cannot take any more of this, I’m afraid.”

  “You could leave me here.”

  “God. Is that what you want? Or are you like every other female of my acquaintance?” he demanded angrily. “None of you tells the truth!”

  He went back to the bed and yanked the bloody, folded cloth from where she’d lain. Then he flung his nightshirt across the room at her. Carrying the soiled cloth, he headed for the door.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To get something for a pad! Take care of yourself while I am gone!”

  She felt utterly, totally miserable, thinking he felt her an ingrate. She wasn’t an ingrate at all, she wanted to cry after him. He just didn’t understand—she’d lost her child! Hurt turned to despair. She’d lost her husband, and now she’d lost her child. Couldn’t he see? She had no one.

  Outside, his temper cooled in the frigid air. He had no right to rip up at a sick woman, he told himself. And he had no right to resent what she could not help. She was weak, she was frail, and she needed him. Shivering, he went across to the chapter house to beg another cloth for her.

  When he returned, she was still sitting in the chair. But she had his wooly nightshirt buttoned up to her chin. And on the floor beside her, the water in the basin was pink. He walked to the table and picked up a rolled piece of the torn sheet.

  “I have already gotten one,” she said, reddening.

  “It looks decidedly better on you than me,” he declared, his eyes on the hated shirt. “But it will itch you to death.”

  “Actually, it is quite warm.”

  There was an awkwardness between them. “Are you feeling better?” he asked finally.

  “Yes.” She looked up at him, her dark eyes nearly overwhelming her pale face. “But you cannot ask me not to mourn.”

  “I’m not asking it. I’m asking you to get well.”

  “How—how did he look?” she managed to ask.

  He’d not seen the babe after the monks put him in the box, but he lied to her, “He looked fine, Kate.”

  “Did they wrap him warmly?”

  “Yes.”

  “And will they mark his grave?” Her chin quivered, but she did not cry. “Somehow that is terribly important to me.”

  “Are you quite sure you want that?”

  She did not want Alexei or Galena to have her son, not even in
death, but neither did she want her babe to lie there, a nameless child in a distant place.

  “Yes.”

  “I told you—he is listed in the register as Jean Chardonnay. I had to sign it.”

  “I know.”

  “Then we will have it marked that way.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I gave twenty rubles for prayers.”

  She nodded.

  “Come on, Kate—you are shivering. Let’s get you back into bed.”

  Because she was so weak, she managed to sleep for a time, leaving him to wander about the small room. The place was like a prison, he reflected gloomily, and it did not matter that Peter the Great had retreated there in some crisis of faith. He was stuck there, utterly, inexorably stuck there. And when he got out, when he got her back to England, there was going to be hell to pay—any way he cut the cards, there was going to be hell to pay. And no matter how much she thought otherwise, she was utterly unprepared for what was going to happen to her. He wasn’t even sure he could come about himself.

  The first two days after the loss of the child had been the worst. She ached, body and soul, and her breasts had to be bound to ease their pain. After that, she began to improve, eating and drinking everything Bell gave her. But after four days, he was restless and irritable.

  While it had stopped snowing, nothing showed any signs of thawing, and Yuri was speaking of seeking asylum there. To make matters worse, the monk named Basil did not think the roads could be cleared before the metropolitan came on the 26th. Barring some further complication, given the state of the roads, even the best driver could not get them the thousand or so miles to Warsaw in less than seven weeks. That would make it mid-April. They’d be damned fortunate to be in England before May.

  And Bell did not know if he could stand it unless Kate recovered completely. His newly discovered kindness was being tried by his less-admirable self. Finally, for want of anything else to do, he managed to acquire some pasteboard and scissors from the monks. He was amusing himself, he decided ruefully, like a grubby schoolboy.

  He sat at the table, utterly absorbed, his head bent low over his work. When she could stand it no longer, she rose from the bed to watch. He was carefully cutting squares.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Making cards.”

  “Cards?” she asked incredulously. “Game cards?”

  “Yes.” He looked up at her. “I’m trying to get them all the same size, so they can be shuffled.” He could see she was unimpressed. “While you may have been too ill to note it, a monastery is a dashed dull place for me, I can tell you.”

  “But they are all plain.”

  “Ah, Kate, you have no imagination. I expect to put the marks on them.”

  “Can you even draw?”

  “Indifferently. But does it matter?”

  She picked up one of the pieces, eyeing it critically. “Well, I expect I could do that for you.”

  “Do you know the suits, the sequences?”

  “I was born a Winstead,” she reminded him. “And, while you may not recall it, Harry and I beat you at Monk’s End once. But,” she added judiciously, “I think your mind was elsewhere.”

  “You never forgive, do you?”

  “Yes. I have come to realize she was a foolish woman.” She sat down opposite him, asking, “Do you have a pen and ink?”

  “In my box. I’ll get them for you.”

  When he came back, he set the inkpot before her, then drew out his penknife and sharpened the quill. “Try not to make extra blots,” he advised her. “We don’t want to be confused.”

  “No, of course not.” Taking the pen, she began making neat, rounded numbers on the corners of the cards. “You know, it would go much faster if we only put the suits next to the numbers. Otherwise, we shall be forever drawing hearts and spades.”

  “And clubs and diamonds—there are four suits,” he reminded her.

  “You know very well what I meant.”

  “I think you are on the mend, Kate,” he decided. “I begin to recognize your tongue.”

  “You have never brought out the best in it, you know,” she murmured, bending her head over a card.

  “At least I have heard it. If you had spoken half so much to an eligible parti, I daresay you might have taken. But everyone thought you tongue-tied, as I recall.”

  “No. The only ones who gave me twice-over were elderly or stupid. The rest all wanted to make sheep’s eyes at Claire.” She drew a heart beneath a bold Q. “It doesn’t look quite right, does it?”

  “What it needs is the queen.”

  “That I cannot do very well.” Nonetheless, she outlined a head with a crown on it, then added a wimple. “Now, if we can only tell her from the king,” she murmured wryly. “She looks quite medieval, I think.”

  “At this pace, you’ll not be done ere the snow thaws.”

  “But at least I shall be occupied.”

  “I’ll do half of them. Which do you want—diamonds, spades, or clubs? You’ve already started the hearts.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Spades then. Balance the good with the evil. I’ll take the clubs and diamonds myself.”

  It took nearly half an afternoon of cutting and drawing before the deck was done and neatly stacked by suit. He went to pour her some more of the melted snow, then carried it back to the table. “I think I am going to see if perhaps somewhere in this place there is a wine cellar. And if there is, I mean to offer money for something besides the damned vodka.”

  While he was gone, she attempted to shuffle the pasteboard cards, but the edges were not smooth enough. Finally, she turned them face away and sifted them back and forth. Satisfied, she stacked them again, and reached for the water he’d left her.

  Although she’d known him for more than half her life, she’d never imagined any kindness in him. He was Bellamy Townsend, Viscount Townsend, to be exact, and he was the object of a great deal of admiration and even more gossip. She sipped pensively, thinking how wrong everyone was about him, and most especially how wrong she herself had been. But who could have thought him capable of anything beyond himself? And yet she knew she owed him her life.

  “You aren’t blue-deviled again, are you?” he asked, shutting the door.

  “Actually, I was thinking about you,” she admitted.

  “Well, don’t. None of this does anything to my credit, you know. Besides, if you tell, no one will believe it.”

  “I know. But you are a surprise. I’d always thought you too self-centered to help anyone.”

  He sat down and pulled the cork from a bottle of wine with his teeth. It popped loudly. “I am,” he acknowledged, pouring some of the dark red liquid into a cup. “But I owed Harry.”

  “Still—”

  “And if you are going to start hanging on me like every other female of my acquaintance, I’m going to wish I’d left you in Moscow.”

  “I have not turned around quite that much,” she answered dryly. “I have merely discovered a modicum of decency in you.”

  “And that’s about all there is, I’m afraid.” He started to shuffle the cards.

  “I have already mixed them.”

  “Oh?” He eyed her for a moment, then cut them. “The first rule for a gamester is to trust no one, my dear.”

  “What are we playing?”

  “Well, as there are only two of us, it cannot be whist, so I expect it will have to be loo.”

  “I haven’t played it in ages.”

  “And I daresay I haven’t played it for longer than you, so we should be fairly even.” He pushed the ink pot and the quill closer to her. “Just keep count of the tricks,” he advised her.

  They played throughout the waning hours of the afternoon, until one of the monks brought bread and stew. Pushing the cards aside, Bell handed Kate a bowl and spoon. She did not protest, but began eating it.

  He sat back, his drink in his hand, watching her. She was too slender by half, too pa
le by more than that, and her hair was a fright, but there was something about her that drew him. Despite that certain waif-like quality, there was also a quietness he found he liked. She was utterly lacking in artifice, and she was, in all likelihood, the only truly honest female he knew. Rather than puffing herself up, she was far too hard on herself.

  He caught himself and stared reproachfully into his wine. He’d either had too much or he’d been too long without the solace of a woman, he supposed.

  “I know my hair needs combing,” she murmured.

  She’d known he watched her. “Actually, I was thinking you were almost as good company as your brother,” he lied.

  “Really? But he rarely loses,” she reminded him.

  He looked at the score of tricks and grinned. He’d won nearly two-thirds of them. “All right, then you are better.”

  “It’s a whisker, and I know it.”

  “No, when we are not running and you are not ill, you are a very pleasant female.”

  “I lose at cards, you mean.”

  His manner changed abruptly. “I don’t know if you ought to go back to England, Kate.”

  Stunned for a moment, she stared. “But why?” she asked finally. “And where else would I go?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I will not go back to Alexei and Galena, Bell—and there is no one else here. I hardly think Paul and Olga would want me, now that there is no child to dangle before Galena.”

  “No—no, of course not.”

  “And I cannot sue for divorce in Russia,” she argued. “Katherine Winstead against Alexei Volsky? Paul said they would put me in an asylum for the insane!”

  “You won’t be welcome in England. I’ve thought and thought—while you slept these last days, I thought of little else.”

  “I shall apply for a divorce from Alexei. Beyond that, I do not care.”

  “Yes, you do. Ask Diana—ask Longford’s former wife what it is like. She’s had to go abroad nearly for life.”

  “And Lady Holland is a Whig hostess, though she is divorced!”

  “But you aren’t Lady Holland, Kate. And she’s not received anywhere, either. Yes, the politicians flock to her table, but what about their wives?”