If I Had You

by Heather Hiestand

  Her hand moved like the head of a cobra. He felt the sting of her open palm almost before he saw her move.

  “Get out. You are not my brother!” she cried. “How dare you, a man, not want revenge!”

  “You have the look of madness in your eyes,” Ivan said, with sorrow in his heart. “May God have mercy on your soul.”

  Her eyes burned with no hint of tears in them. She was immersed in her revenge fantasy. Her life, Sergei’s, his, all of it meant nothing to her.

  As he left the flat and the building, he wondered if his parents had seen a similar level of vicious focus in his sister Catherine. He’d been too young, too self-involved to notice in those days. As much as he hated Ovolensky, he wouldn’t sacrifice his happy future with Alecia to revenge. No, but he still had to try to protect Vera from herself.

  He’d thought of contacting Sergei at the train station, but now he thought there was no point. He needed to find an external solution.

  * * *

  Alecia clutched her letter from Emmeline Plash as she stepped down from the omnibus in front of a plain brown brick house on Montagu Square. The wind battered the length of skirt that hung below her winter coat, turning her ankles to ice. A drop of what felt like ice slashed her nose as she followed the building numbers, looking for the Plash residence.

  A few houses in, she could see a faded sign announcing a girl’s finishing school, long closed. The building had been converted to a boardinghouse after the school’s headmistress died. Olga had told her more than she ever wanted to know about the Regency-era building when she’d stopped in at the Grand Russe, having two hours to spend between coming in from Bagshot and meeting Miss Plash. Apparently architecture was Olga’s passion. She’d stopped straightening the pastry table in the Coffee Room and happily talked for twenty minutes about the history of Montagu Square.

  Alecia, on the other hand, could still scarcely believe she was talking to a real life princess, albeit one who worked as a chambermaid now. Olga, however, was as unpretentious as possible, and if it weren’t for her background and reserved air, they might become friends, particularly after she married Ivan. Who knew? Would it be possible one day, especially since she might work for a time in the same building where Olga resided?

  She knocked on the door. It was opened only seconds later by a wizened man, half bent by great old age. She was still wiping icy water from her nose.

  “Yes?” he quavered.

  She dropped her hand to her side. “My name is Alecia Loudon. I have an appointment with Miss Plash.”

  “Oh yes.” The man smiled, showing a mouth with only a few teeth. “Pretty girl, what?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Come in then. My old bones can’t take the cold.”

  She noticed he wore two sweaters and had an egg stain on his tie. Poor old thing. No wedding ring. “Are you the porter here?”

  “No, no, I’m Bert Dadey. I own the place.” He tottered across the hall to a compact sitting room with a fireplace and an expensive Victrola.

  Her spirits lifted immediately. Olga hadn’t mentioned the record player. It might be worth living here, despite the dreary air, for a chance to play records on the machine. “I see.”

  He peered at her closely. “You’re a pretty girl, too. Friend of Miss Plash, are you?”

  “Thank you. I don’t know her very well, but we lived very near each other for a time.”

  “Pity about her mother. Lovely old dear, when she isn’t wandering.”

  “Yes, I like Mrs. Plash very much. That’s why I’m here, you see. I’m hoping to care for her.”

  “Very good, she needs a companion,” the man said.

  “Should I go up?” she asked, afraid he was going to settle in for a chat if she didn’t stick to business.

  “If you like. Is that the plan?” he quavered.

  “I think so.” She actually had no idea.

  “First door on the left off the second landing.”

  “Very good. Thank you.” She paused. “Has Mrs. Plash been wandering at all?”

  “No, dear, but I do hear her crying at tea time. About the time full dark sets in.”

  She frowned. Too much change for a confused elder. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “It’s good that I’m too deaf to hear it much, but some of the boarders have complained. They won’t be able to stay if Mrs. Plash continues to cause such a fuss.” The man shook his head. The loose flesh around his neck wobbled.

  “Thank you for sharing that with me.” She glanced at the Victrola one last time, then left the room and climbed the stairs. As she went up, the smell of cabbages and onions that was prevalent on the ground floor diminished. By the time she reached the Plash’s door, she could smell Emmeline’s distinctive perfume. Did she spray it on the mat in front of her door?

  Chapter Eighteen

  Alecia knocked on the Plashes’ door. The pause between her knock and the door being opened was considerably longer than the one down below.

  “Good afternoon, Miss Loudon.” Emmeline wore an ice-blue silk dress with a lace panel at the neckline. She didn’t smile.

  Alecia forced up the corners of her lips, feeling even dowdier than she perpetually did with Sybil Marvin. She hadn’t dared to wear her beautiful pink shoes in this damp weather, so she was dressed every bit as badly as usual. “It is a pleasure to see you again.”

  Emmeline gestured her in. “I understand the Marvins sacked you.”

  “They didn’t need a secretary,” Alecia said. “Due to reduced circumstances. I have my character here to show you. My position was an experiment for them.”

  “It must have been hard to lose your position so soon after you’d found it.” Emmeline sat on the sofa in the small sitting room. The room did not contrast well with the sitting room in the spacious hotel suite they’d been forced to vacate. There was only the sofa, a threadbare rug, and three small tables. A large, mostly empty bookcase filled the wall with no doors.

  “I would have been happy to stay at the Grand Russe,” Alecia admitted, removing her coat. “But I don’t think the Marvins will be there much longer either.”

  “No, I did hear there was some drama. Peter was here for tea yesterday.”

  Alecia noted the familiar term for Mr. Eyre. Was Miss Plash still seeing him? If he was paying her bills, Alecia might actually have work here. “How is your mother?”

  “It is a difficult situation. If I can’t calm her, we won’t be here much longer. Other residents are complaining.”

  Alecia nodded and sat next to Emmeline as there were no other options. At least she didn’t see any sign of dust on the surfaces or lurking in the corners. “Olga didn’t mention it, but Mr. Dadey did. He said your mother has been crying in the early evenings.”

  “Something about the dark frightens her.”

  “I’ve heard of that before with the elderly, a couple of times.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes. You hear about all kinds of troubles, growing up in a vicarage. People tell my grandfather a great deal over tea.”

  Emmeline looked down. “But do you have any ideas about how to fix her, Miss Loudon?”

  “No, but I’d like to help you keep her more comfortable. She’s a dear.”

  “I know she likes you,” Miss Plash said. Her lips tightened. “She has the strangest ideas about me.”

  “Were you close when you were younger?”

  “Not especially. She was one of those ladies with causes and clubs. Suffrage and all that.”

  “Not you?”

  “Not then. I went to finishing school in Switzerland, then was busy with debutante balls and the like. The profession of finding a good husband. But I wasn’t a very serious girl. Didn’t find that husband, though I was engaged twice. Then the war broke out when I was about twenty-three. Most of the boys I knew died. I ran out of time to be who I was meant to be.”

  She was younger than Alecia had thought, by a couple of years at least. “I’m sorry. I thoug
ht I would never marry myself.”

  Emmeline frowned. “What changed your mind?”

  She smiled. “Ivan Salter proposed.”

  Her eyes widened. “The night watchman?”

  “Yes, the very one.” Alecia allowed herself a moment of complete female satisfaction. She wouldn’t be a surplus female.

  “Goodness. Isn’t that marrying down?”

  She wanted to slap the woman. She locked her fingers together. “In Russia, he was gentry. Higher in class than me. I’m a respectable vicar’s granddaughter, but no earls in the distant family tree or anything like that.”

  Emmeline made a purring sound. “He’s a handsome devil. Very smoldering.”

  “Yes. I can’t deny it.”

  “When are you going to marry?”

  “I don’t know. Life is rather unsettled right now.”

  “So it will be awhile?”

  “I should think so. We need to save up some money.”

  Emmeline took a deep breath. “Peter seems to trust him. I assume he wasn’t mixed up in that drama from a few days ago?”

  “Which drama was that?”

  “Something about the Marvins, I believe.” Emmeline tilted her head.

  “He may have been, but he’s still employed.” If Miss Plash didn’t know the details, Alecia saw no reason to share them.

  “If I may be blunt, Miss Loudon, you are looking for a roost in London until you wed, am I correct?”

  “Not entirely. I do need to work.” Despite Ivan’s desire to support her.

  “I do not want my mother to become used to you, only to have you leave.”

  “There is no reason for me to cease working the moment I marry,” Alecia told her. “Ivan works long hours.”

  “I do need help, and Peter said he would pay.”

  Alecia knew her expression betrayed surprise for a moment, as most women would not want to admit to being kept, but she blanked her face quickly.

  Emmeline smiled. “It is complicated between us. My younger brother was his best friend.”

  The plot thickened. “Did he die in the war?”

  “At the very end.” She nodded and gestured toward a series of framed photographs on the mantelpiece. “I first noticed my mother’s forgetfulness a couple of years after that. She may have been hiding the truth before.”

  “Aging can be a slow process or a fast one. I’ve seen all kinds in Bagshot.”

  Emmeline pinched a crease into her sleeve. “You’ll have to share my mother’s room. Later, when you’ve wed, maybe the owner here will let you both move in.”

  “If he’s still alive.” Alecia snorted.

  “He’s feisty. I wouldn’t be surprised if he lives another decade. He has that hard-baked quality.”

  “I like him.”

  “And his Victrola.” Emmeline smiled. “I know about you and music. No wonder you fell in love with a night watchman.”

  She changed the subject away from Ivan. He was too precious to gossip about. “Have you always loved Mr. Eyre?”

  “No, I thought he was a child. I was in love with his older brother, Noel.”

  She shied away from that. “Did he die in the war?”

  “He might as well have. I suppose Peter and I came together out of grief.”

  “Were you engaged to Noel?”

  “I ought to have been. But I was so silly. He didn’t have a title, not that there was any reason for me to have been acquired by a man with a title myself.” Emmeline pulled out a handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes.

  Alecia waited for her to finish. “Who was your father?”

  “A man with money. He had invested in the hotel when it first opened some thirty or forty years ago, though he pulled out his stake around the turn of the century. It’s too bad, really.” Emmeline smiled. “But I think you can see why Peter will never desert us.”

  “Your family friendship leads back a generation,” Alecia summarized.

  “Correct. So there will be money to care for my mother, even when my own funds occasionally run dry. Peter can be ruthless and cruel, I don’t deny it, but his heart isn’t completely black.”

  Alecia still wanted to visit Ivan before it grew dark and she needed to return to Bagshot. “Then, I can help you?”

  “Yes. Do you want to move in tomorrow?” Emmeline didn’t look at her.

  “That will be fine. I have to return to Bagshot and gather my things.”

  Emmeline made a face. “I do hope you can improve your wardrobe. It hurts my eyes to see so much ugliness on an otherwise pretty girl.”

  “I hope to do exactly that, if I can stabilize my life.”

  “Very well.” Emmeline adopted a bored expression. “We shall see you tomorrow, then? I would take you to Mother now, but she’s napping.”

  Alecia hoped her new employer’s lack of interest in the proceedings masked her pleasure in the arrangement, rather than a true absence of feeling. “Does she often nap this time of day?”

  “Yes, after luncheon. And after dinner. She doesn’t sleep well at night. You will have a terror on your hands.”

  “What will you do?” Not that it was any of her business.

  Emmeline stared at her hands. “I don’t know. Take long walks, I suppose. I need to sort myself out before it is too late. I’ve given up on marriage, on children, but not on life. Some use must be made of me.”

  She knew there were plenty like Emmeline, just the wrong age a decade ago. They were a surplus population, these women whose young men had gone to war and not returned. She had to school herself to be careful, to be helpful herself, and not pity the woman, when she had the excitement of planning her own wedding.

  “Thank you for giving me the opportunity,” Alecia said. “I shall see you tomorrow.”

  Emmeline rose immediately. Alecia could see she’d already been dismissed in the other woman’s eyes. She suspected there had once been quite a lot of money in the Plash family, given Emmeline’s behavior. They clasped hands, as if they were men of business, then Alecia left.

  It was only as she went to find an omnibus that she wondered what the domestic situation at the boardinghouse was. Emmeline must have at least two bedrooms and the sitting room at her disposal. What about a kitchen? A bathroom? For sure, it wouldn’t be the Grand Russe.

  * * *

  “Alecia!” Ivan grinned when he saw his fiancée at the door of Boris’s flat and grabbed for her hand, pulling her in. Her worry about her new living arrangements dissolved when she saw his dear face. He wrapped his arms around her before she could respond, burying his face against her neck, between her coat and the edge of her hat.

  “I’m glad to see you too.”

  He lifted his face and kissed the tip of her nose. “I have only a couple of hours before I have to go to work.”

  “I know, and we have so much to discuss. How did the meeting with your sister go?”

  “Very badly. She is intent on her course. Or rather, she has no other option, now that they’ve involved themselves with the bomber.”

  She removed her hat and handed it to him. “Does she have any remorse?”

  He set it on a chair next to the door and helped her with her coat. “No, she wants revenge. I do not think she considers her position very deeply.” Ivan touched her cheek. “Even though she is older than me, she didn’t have the education I did. I even had a little time at university, studying philosophy.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “Yes. I spent a lot of time with Nikolay Mikhaylovsky’s work.”

  Finally, she stripped off her gloves. She flexed her frozen fingers. “Who is that?”

  “He was a social philosopher, interested in the interaction between the individual and the masses. He had interesting thoughts about leadership, about peasants.”

  “Tell me more about that while I take my shoes off. They need to dry.” She had nothing to wear closer than Bagshot.

  “We can put them in front of the fire.” He pointed to where a fi
re burned merrily in the parlor.

  “Perfect.”

  “Do you want to borrow my slippers?” he asked, glancing uncertainly at her feet.

  “Thank you, but my feet would drown in them.”

  “I could bring you some socks,” he offered.

  “After my stockings dry.” She smiled at him.

  As she bent to unbuckle her shoes, he said, “For instance, Mikhaylovsky wouldn’t say Peter Eyre is a great man, born to lead, but a regular man, put into a position by society, where he finds himself a leader. He doesn’t have to be outstanding to be where he is.”

  “Oh?” She had one shoe off and went to work on the other, slowly, with her stiff fingers.

  “Yes, he’s special because his staff makes him so, not because he intrinsically is.”

  “So that means the Grand Russe as a collective unit is more important than Peter Eyre.” She sounded Russian even to her own ears.

  He nodded. “I need to serve the organization, not just the man.”

  She picked up her shoes and followed him into the sitting room. “So you could also say that Ovolensky isn’t very important either?”

  “I’d have already said that,” he scoffed. “This is a personal feud that has grown too large. I have no interest in taking down the British government. Why would Vera help someone who wants to bring the Bolsheviks to power here?”

  She had no answer. “What are you going to do?”

  “I’ve been thinking hard about my options.” He took her hand and pulled her to the sofa in Boris’s parlor. “Your face is chilled. I’ll make you some tea and fetch you those socks.”

  He went into the kitchen while she placed her damp shoes in front of the fire. Hot water must have been ready because he was back quickly with a pot of tea and mugs.

  “That looks wonderful,” she said, watching steam rise from the pot.

  “Nothing better on a cold day.” He handed her the socks.

  She rubbed her hands over the cool wool. “Which university did you attend?”

  “I spent one year at the University of Moscow. It’s the oldest in Russia.”

  “What were you training to do?” She wiggled her toes, willing her stockings to dry.