Alexander left his chair at once and came to my side, gathering my hands into his. “What is it, my love? Are you not well?”
“It is just a bit hot today…” Though the summer was indeed warm, the great hall remained chilly, and yet how easily men were distracted by female illness.
“Do you need to lie down a bit?”
“I think rather that a walk in the garden would do me some good. Will you join me?” I raised my eyebrows.
Alexander gave a sly smile. “I see. Well, much as I’m enjoying this meal, I certainly cannot deny my wife-to-be.” He turned to my grandfather. “May we be excused, my good man?”
Afansy waved his hands diplomatically in the air. I supposed he had gotten as much from Alexander as he could over one meal. “Go, go.”
I made a show of struggling to rise from my chair as Alexander gathered his walking stick, before taking his offered hand. We strolled out of the great room, toward the front entranceway, past a freestanding grandfather clock that never kept good time and the low divans lining the walls, awaiting guests who no longer visited. As we passed the kitchen, my father made another cackling attempt at laughter and I cringed.
“I take it this need for fresh air is due more to mental rather than physical complaints?” Alexander asked.
I turned my head to ensure we were out of Afansy’s earshot and then blurted: “I’m sorry. I’m sorry my grandfather is behaving like a horse’s arse. I’m sorry you have to see my father as he is now. If only you had known our family when I was small. My father played the violin so beautifully. It would make your heart weep. And my grandfather was a sophisticated man of business. I looked up to him so.” I bit my lip.
Alexander pulled me close. “Think nothing of it. Why, wait until you meet my family. My little brother Lev is a charming devil but of no practical use to any woman, state, or organization. My father never met a kopek he could not somehow slip in his pocket and save into perpetuity. And my mother … well, you shall meet them all at our wedding so I suppose I shall save you that particular pleasure. My sister Olga will likely be to your taste, but I don’t know that she’ll stick around the rest of them for long.”
I gave a small laugh. “The wedding is still on then? We haven’t completely frightened you away?”
“Never,” Alexander declared. “Why, I am made of stronger mettle, my dear lady. You would need to turn into an eight-eyed monster before I might consider a change of plan, and even then I should find myself under your spell.”
“Perhaps if I threatened to take a bite out of you? Then you might reconsider?”
“A bite taken by the right person can be most delightful.”
I longed to know exactly what he meant. If only we weren’t confined to this empty old house. We were just in sight of the entrance, with its large windows that opened up to the gardens. “I think once we reach the end of the path we should keep walking. It is springtime, after all. We will be forgiven for taking advantage of the lovely weather, and I hear there is a carnival nearby.”
“A carnival! Have you a hankering to see a puppet show?”
“I wish to have my fortune told,” I said. “I wish to know how much longer I must suffer my family before the two of us might be married.”
Alexander tapped his walking stick lightly, but his voice was strained. “Don’t you remember, my Natalie? I can’t abide fortune-tellers.”
“I remember! You told us when we passed the fair last year. Did you receive a bad fortune from a roadside seer, my love?”
“I had my palm read by a vicious old woman. She said I would die.”
“That’s hardly a fortune. We shall all die.”
“She said I was fated to die at the hands of a tall, fair man. It was too specific for comfort. Never again.”
“Oh…” I could not summon a better response. But despite my lack of true faith in the practice of clairvoyance, I promised myself that in the future I would steer clear of tall, fair men.
Seven
MOSCOW
FEBRUARY 1831
“You know what they say about marriage, don’t you?”
I sighed, wondering if somehow my sister might grow distracted and I wouldn’t have to acknowledge her questions. They weren’t really questions anyway, merely her opinions in question form. I set down my needlework, gazing out at the gray snow blanketing the park across the street. Despite the howling wind and gloomy winter weather, I wished a handsome man might pass by on a white stallion to distract Ekaterina from her tiresome commentary.
“A man’s heaven and a woman’s hell,” Ekaterina said triumphantly.
Mother had been bent over an old set of linens she hoped to repurpose for my kitchen with the addition of embroidered violets and lilies. She raised her head grimly. “Language!”
“I have never heard this maxim.” I allowed a note of pomposity in my tone, even as my shoulders shivered from the chill in the room.
“There is much you haven’t heard of, little Natalya.” Ekaterina poked her needle through the hem of an everyday shift for my modest trousseau. “This is a wonderful occasion, of course. The wedding supper will be absolutely splendid. Just don’t expect much … afterward. I hear it said men take all manner of pleasure for themselves with not a thought for the bride.”
I turned to Mother with imploring eyes, but she only pressed her lips tighter, focusing on her sewing. Her hands were encased in the old mittens she wore about the house on especially cold days. She had encouraged the same of us to save money on fuel for the fires.
“Two of my friends are already married and so know something of the amorous relations between a man and a woman,” Ekaterina prattled on. I think she took glee in shocking Mother. “They tell me it’s a trial, at least for the woman.”
After sharing kisses with Alexander, I took a different view, and chose to believe the physical aspects of marriage could be enjoyed by wives. “Maybe they’re just bad at it.”
“It isn’t a matter of good or bad, but rather how matters stand. My friends both say they’re done with marital ‘bliss.’ They hope to make babies quickly, so they might be excused from their duties for a few months at least.”
I refused to wind up like Ekaterina’s friends. I wished for babies, but did not want to be defined solely by my relationship to them. “I don’t believe their experiences will mirror mine.”
“I suppose every woman thinks that before their wedding night when they have not yet had the experience of a man’s touch and—”
“That’s enough,” Mother cut in. “Mind your conversation or retire upstairs.”
Ekaterina smugly returned to her stitching. I had not been in a good mood before my sister regaled me with her friends’ opinions on marital relations, and now that she had been silenced I felt naught but emptiness. Alexander and I had hoped to be married as quickly as possible, but an outbreak of cholera meant strictly enforced quarantines kept Alexander confined to his family estate in the countryside, where he had been busy writing. The quarantines closed much of Moscow’s social life as well, sentencing me to remain in the sitting room with Mother and Ekaterina, re-reading Alexander’s letters, and yearning for a stolen kiss.
Meanwhile, our father still left every night for parts unknown—likely a tavern. On those rare occasions I saw him, he wandered our house, glassy-eyed, violently shaking his head, and mumbling to an invisible companion. My brothers were kept busy with their pursuits of professions; Dmitry in particular was so anxious over his new position at the Foreign Office that he snapped at anyone who so much as looked at him. Even Azya had lost her lively spirit and took to moping around the house, reading Alexander’s verse and sighing mysteriously.
During this forced extension of our engagement, Aunt Katya had presented me with a delicate silk nightgown as a wedding gift. She claimed the pale green shading would make my brown eyes appear hazel in the right lamplight. When I tried it on, I gasped. The green may have brought out the highlights in my eyes, but who would noti
ce? The neckline was so low my cleavage poured out of the gown and made my nipples visible through the thin material.
When Mother walked past my room and peeked inside, I expected a firm admonishment of some kind. She merely lifted her brows. “That suits. I believe you will please your husband.”
I wish she had ordered me to return the gown to the shop or made some confession that it hurt to lose her little girl. Instead, she continued past my room without further comment, as though her work with me was finally done. I had completed the transition from daughter to most valuable possession.
I vowed to put this life behind me. I did not have the sensibility at that time to understand precisely what I wanted from life or marriage, but I knew I was meant for something better. I could not shake the feeling that I needed to abandon my family to save myself. I could not wait to start my life anew.
* * *
You have no doubt heard tales of bad omens plaguing the wedding of Russia’s esteemed poet and his youthful bride. The ceremony took place at the Church of the Ascension, a grand, domed affair of oversized gilt icons and scarlet floor runners. A bride could not ask for a more beautiful setting, nor for a groom who looked happier than Alexander in his finest fawn-colored frock coat with Dutch ruffles. And yet … I cannot call the day a success. During the ceremony, in his nervous haste, Alexander dropped the rings, and the candle meant to represent our united lives flickered out before we even left the cathedral. I placed little stock in pagan superstitions, but Alexander turned ghostly white.
“It’s all right,” I whispered to him later, as we made our way inside the hall where our wedding supper and reception was held. “It means nothing.”
He shook his head and walked away. My heart dropped. Marriage meant facing adversity together and already my new husband had created distance between us.
But my soul soothed as he turned to beckon me to his side once more, and we headed toward an older couple hovering near the long oak table weighed down with appetizers and treats. A stout, older man smeared black caviar on bread while his raven-haired wife, hair streaked with gray, picked at fruited jelly candies in a crystal dish.
“My parents,” he murmured in my ear. “This will not go well.”
I had heard him speak of them enough times to appreciate how apt his descriptions had been. My new father-in-law did indeed look like a man who had given up on all but the pleasures of food and drink, and his mother, though clearly once a great beauty, had her pretty lips twisted into a scowl even as she popped candy in her mouth. “I want to meet them,” I said, to make him feel better.
Alexander stiffened. “I suppose we’ll need to get it over with. It’s not as though we can avoid them our entire lives.”
After a perfunctory introduction, I watched Alexander interact with his parents, the formal handshakes and awkward hugs. Alexander’s mother glared at her son and then gave me a tilted, bemused smile. “You’re lucky to have her,” she said, seemingly under her breath but loud enough that I could hear. “You always were a funny-looking little thing. Take care with this beauty or you’ll lose her.”
I drew in a quick breath, dreading the look of horror I would see on Alexander’s face. It seemed we had both suffered under the hands of a domineering mother.
“It is nothing more than how she has regarded me all my life,” he said, not bothering to lower his voice. “Pay no mind.”
His mother looked away.
I squeezed Alexander’s hand, but he only patted my arm unconvincingly. He had been wounded. It was my job to protect him and already I had failed.
Alexander may have pretended not to care what his mother said, but the next day, he woke with the sun and spent the morning and afternoon out with friends, drinking or gambling or what else I did not know. I had hoped to prove Ekaterina’s friends wrong about a woman’s capacity for passion in a marriage, yet we had been so exhausted after our wedding supper that our carnal union had been vigorous and quick. I had to bite my lip to keep silent during the first moments of pain. Once again, I felt I had failed him.
Now I was left to wander our new home alone.
Prior to our wedding, Alexander had rented a brick house in the Arbat District and through the windows I could hear street vendors and horses and hurried shoppers. The place still smelled freshly cleaned, like lemon polish, and I admired the feminine pattern of the flowered lilac wallpaper. Alexander had made an effort to please me. Even so, the emptiness of the rooms, the bareness of the walls and hardwood floors, and echoing tap, tap, tap from the heels of my slippers made me feel a stranger in this place and quite alone, despite the bustle outside. I missed the faded unicorn tapestries hanging in my family’s home and the mildew scent clinging to the worn upholstery of our furniture. God help me, I even missed Ekaterina.
I collapsed onto the floor in the middle of one of the unfamiliar rooms, empty save for a billiards table covered with a green canopy, overwhelmed and trying not to cry. I wanted to please Alexander, not only because this was my sacred duty, but because I wanted physical pleasure as well. I had always loved the way he looked at me and wondered what thoughts ran through his head, how he wanted to touch me. My imagination was not fully sufficient to fill the gaps. I wanted lingering caresses and kisses tracing their way down my body.
By the time Alexander came home that night, I had gathered myself once more. After a light supper, I changed at once into the revealing green nightgown.
“My angel.” When he joined me in bed, Alexander gently held my wrists over my head with one hand and explored the curves of my body under my delicate silk nightdress with the other. His whiskers tickled and I giggled.
Surprise flashed over his face. I had been stoic during his previous advances, but only because of nerves. Alexander buried his face in my stomach and then between my breasts, thinly covered underneath the gossamer gown. This tickled even more and I squealed in delight. He still had my wrists bound above my head with one hand and though he didn’t hurt me, the light of passion in his eyes excited me. I held his gaze, daring him to continue.
At last he released my wrists. I liked how it had felt, to have them stretched high over my head, and so I left them in that position, thrusting my hips up, offering myself to him. He moved down, his whiskers still tickling me but in such a pleasant way that a soft moan escaped me. He licked me gently as well, lapping between my thighs, tasting me. Waves of desire coursed through me, and all thoughts left me and I considered only the pleasures of the moment and a blissful passage to sleep.
A few hours later, in the silence of the night, I stirred. In the study of the adjoining room, a pen scratched thick paper. Disoriented, I thought it morning. I reached for my spectacles on the nightstand so that I might check the time, and accidentally knocked over a vase of flowers the maid had placed there the night before. I heard Alexander set his pen down and his bare feet trod back to our bedroom.
He stood at the doorway for a moment, gripping a candle holder aloft. In the flickering light, I made out the broad vertical stripes of a silk dressing gown he had acquired during his travels in the south. I tried to imagine him in the somber garments of a shopkeeper, but it was impossible to do. Such bland men would remain the purview of Ekaterina and her dull friends.
I started to remove my spectacles, but Alexander strode to our bed. “No, please. Leave them on.” My gown had fallen over one shoulder and I was conscious of the heaviness of my breasts so near to his chest. He made no move to straighten my gown, but reached for my hair, smoothed it back, and then gathered it into a severe bun, nothing like the current style with loose curls to frame the face.
I pulled him nearer, an echo of quivering pleasure from what had passed between us earlier still stirring.
“Wait.” He pressed gently on my arms to stop me.
My heart fell. “I thought you might wish … to find pleasure…”
He gathered one of my hands in both of his and kissed me softly on the palm. “Oh, I do wish it, angel, only I must wo
rk harder to earn the right.”
“You have earned the right. You are my husband.”
“That is not what I meant. I wish that you treat me as your servant made only for your pleasure.”
A thrill pitched my shoulders. “You wish to dress as a footman?”
Alexander laughed and kissed my hand again. “I like how you think. That is a fine notion, my Madonna. Consider this another time. For now, I wish you to remain frigid.”
“I have no desire to remain frigid. I wish to give you pleasure.”
“You will,” he said. “I want you to resist until you can no longer control yourself.”
The word “resist” made me frown. It called to mind a drunken prince in pursuit of serf girls. “If I wished to resist you, I would never have married you.”
He planted a kiss on my forehead, but it was not yet the kiss of a lover. “You are a dream. Let me explain one more time. I only ask that you not falsify your reactions. When I begin to make love to you, sit still as marble. Return the embrace only when you feel compelled, when you feel you cannot stand it any longer. I think you will find the sensual rewards grand.”
“I shall try,” I said uncertainly.
“Then I shall start. Remember, only once you cannot stand it any longer, only then abandon yourself to me.”
I tried to do as he commanded. I remained still when his lips moved over my neck and my shoulders. Though my body already responded to his caresses, I focused on a spot on the wall, trying to inhabit another persona as I had when performing in the tableau. I was a Madonna. A goddess. If this mere mortal wished to possess me, he would need to earn his prize. He moved down, cupping my breast with his hand and running his lips over its fullness. I wanted to throw my head back, drinking in the sensation. I wanted him to devour me, but I fought. I remained still. I let out a little sigh as though bored by the entire affair.
I knew he would not be deceived. My whole body had gone limp; my nipples were small and hard. My feigned indifference spurred him on and I felt his firmness against my thigh. His fingers moved to the softness between my legs, massaging me while I grew wetter and wetter. He concentrated on a small patch of skin, exquisitely sensitive to his touch, and I could not continue the charade any longer. I screamed and arched my back, moving my body to pull him into me. He removed my spectacles and tossed them aside while I shook my hair free and dove deeper into his embrace.
The Lost Season of Love and Snow Page 9