by Jane Feather
Sophie curtsied without comment. The empress’s statement did not invite anything but agreement.
“You must have a new wardrobe, of course,” Catherine was now saying with brisk decision. “I understood just now from Count Danilevski that your grandfather has drawn up marriage settlements and provided you with money for your clothes and other necessities. However”—she smiled with warm generosity—“your betrothal and wedding gowns shall be my gift, ma chère Sophia.”
Sophie managed to say the expected things at this most distinguishing largesse, indicating as it did the empress’s personal involvement in the affair. She began to feel that she was riding a floodtide. She could do nothing to alter the speed or direction of her progress, but could only wait until the wave spent itself upon some quiet shore. Then she would be able to take both stock and charge of her life again.
The feeling intensified over the next weeks. The intricacies of court etiquette at first bewildered then irritated her, but the Grand Mistress of the court, Countess Shuvalova, took her education in hand personally so that Sophie began to feel she could not make a move without the approval of that grande dame. Of Adam she saw almost nothing. He was occasionally present at some of the court functions, when he danced with her once or twice. But he treated her with unbending formality, and she was not to know that he saw her bewilderment, felt her irritation, and ached for her as she was prodded and patted into some semblance of the correct mold. At times, he wanted to stand up, shout his protest at what they were trying to do to this bold, brave, untamed Cossack woman; then he would catch a glint in her eyes, a stiffening of the lissom body, a muscular ripple, and he knew that they were not succeeding.
Sophie was submitting with apparent compliance to the transformation demanded of her, but in essence she was unchanged. At some point, when the bright illumination of her novelty had faded, she could be herself again; she would endure patiently until that time. Meanwhile, Prince Dmitriev paid her assiduous court, was always charming, courteous, and attentive to her every wish. Such a husband was not a dreadful prospect, she had to admit, given that choosing her own was not an available option. It was not an option any girl of family and fortune seemed to have, as she realized from her discussions with the maidens and young matrons of the court; if her eyes were frequently searching for the deep-set gray orbs and the tall, lean, aristocratic figure of Count Adam Danilevski, it was only because she found it comforting when he was in the same room. He had been her friend, after all, the only link with her past life.
At the end of June the betrothal took place between Sophia Alexeyevna Golitskova and General, Prince Paul Dmitriev. The czarina herself, in front of the entire court, slipped onto the fingers of the betrothed couple the rings blessed by the archbishop, and the dinner and ball that followed the ceremony went on until dawn. Sophie continued to ride the floodtide, anxious now for the wedding that would deliver her from her court apartments to the freedom of her own house. Once the wedding was over, and a short period of honeymoon, then she would ask her husband—husband, it was still a strange concept—she would ask Prince Dmitriev for permission to visit her grandfather before the winter set in and made traveling impossible. He would not deny her, she was sure. He showed her so much consideration, it was almost as if he cherished for her more than the conventional feelings a man had for a convenient bride.
Fixing all her thoughts on this plan, she did what was required of her, smiled whenever she was in company, spoke in platitudes, and waited for her soul’s imprisonment to come to an end.
Three weeks after the betrothal, Adam Danilevski, together with all of Petersburg society, was present in the cathedral of Kazan when the tall, slender figure, richly dressed in a ceremonial robe of heavy ivory brocade embroidered with silver rosebuds and edged with silver lace, became the wife of Prince Dmitriev. The rich, dark brown curls had been powdered and she wore the diamond tiara of the Dmitrievs. It was as if the young woman who rode Cossack horses astride, shot rabid wolves, and lost a too-hasty temper with lamentable frequency had disappeared off the face of the earth, Adam thought in confused regret, resentment, and a bone-deep sense of loss.
His eyes moved toward the groom. Prince Dmitriev, also dressed in rich ceremonial robes, allowed just the hint of satisfaction to dwell upon his face as Prince Potemkin held the traditional crowns over the couple’s heads. Adam felt a surge of revulsion. By what right would this callous soldier, this rigid disciplinarian who had buried three wives already, enjoy that fresh, lithe body in his bed, have that bright, inquisitive mind and lively spirit to partner him through the years? While he, Adam Danilevski, the widower of a deceiving slut, faced the empty years ahead in the absolute knowledge that never again would he trust a woman enough to share more than a brief burst of pleasurable, necessary release.
Sophie did not seem to inhabit her body, instead seemed to be watching herself from somewhere above as she performed the ritual movements, made the ritual responses. The heavy cloying scent of incense, the fickering candles in front of the icons, the voices raised in mystical chant, all added to the sense of unreality in this gilt-encrusted universe, where all was kneeling and genuflection and cryptic reverence.
The sense of unreality endured throughout the carriage ride to the Dmitriev palace, where the reception was to take place with all the lavish hospitality befitting a bridegroom of the stature and affluence of a prince who had just augmented his own fortune with his young bride’s vast inheritance.
The czarina smiled benignly on the couple presiding over the great banqueting table under a gilded canopy. She tapped her foot, beaming with satisfaction as the bride and groom opened the ball. Princess Dmitrievna was a credit to Her Imperial Majesty’s careful and benevolent planning. Her installation in the imperial circle meant the reinstatement of the Golitskovs, and Catherine could feel that if there had been any hint of injustice in that tragedy all those years ago, amends were now made.
At ten o’clock, the empress rose, still smiling, to announce that it was time to put the bride and groom to bed, a ceremony over which she intended to preside. It was a great honor, but Sophie was unaware of the distinction as she came back with a jolt to a sense of herself in her body. Her surroundings focused. Her husband’s pale blue eyes were resting on her face, and they contained a look she had not seen there before. The gleam of anticipatory complacence, the unmistakable look of a man about to consummate a long-held, long-planned vengeance, shocked her with the force of an electric current. It was the look of the wolf, prepared to spring. Her eyes darted around the room in sudden panic; the smiling faces, the flickering candle flames, the carved and gilded decorations of the ballroom seemed to run together in a haze. Then she encountered the steady gaze of Adam Danilevski. His face was graven, not a flicker of expression in his eyes, not a movement on that beautiful mouth. Blindly, thoughtlessly, she took a step toward him. He turned away from her and pushed his way through the chattering, laughing throng, out of the house.
“Come, ma chère Sophia.” The czarina’s hand touched her elbow. “Your bridegroom is most anxious.” This she said with a conspiratorial smile at the bridegroom, the smile of one who knew well the pleasures of the bedchamber.
Sophie found herself in the middle of a laughing throng, chattering gleefully like so many magpies as they escorted the bridal pair up to the nuptial apartments. At the door to his bedchamber, Prince Dmitriev withdrew to his dressing room to change his clothes in the company of his groomsmen. Sophie, with the empress, the Grand Mistress, and several young matrons of the court who had befriended her, found herself in an enormous chamber hung with emerald silk, lit with branched candelabra, and dominated by a carved four-poster bed with gold velvet curtains, a gold satin coverlet, and the Dmitriev shield surmounting the tester and embroidered on the pillows.
She had been shown weeks ago what would be her private apartments and had been bidden to choose their decorations, but this vast, echoing, opulent chamber had not been decorated with the tastes of
the bride in mind. This was the general’s bedchamber, and if anything was required to intimidate her, it was to be found in this room.
She was undressed, put into her nightgown, the czarina herself removing the tiara and unpinning the luxuriant powdered curls. Then the door was opened; the room filled with wedding guests of both sexes come to offer the bride their congratulation and blessing. All the while, Sophie knew herself to be the target of every gaze, of every whispered comment, be it lewd, bantering, compassionate, curious, or amused, as she stood in her nightgown beside the bed.
Thanks to Tanya Feodorovna, she knew in principle what to expect of the night, and in this respect was luckier than many a bride, although Tanya’s experiences had not been of a kind to reassure. The memory of a night in a posting house on the road to Kiev intruded with shocking vividness—a night when she had contemplated the experience she was about to…enjoy?…endure? On that night, with her lips still tingling from a kiss of passion, she had thought only of a glorious enjoyment. But now…
The covers were drawn back on the bed; amidst laughing applause and encouragement, Sophie put herself between the sheets. The image of the wolf intruded again, and with it the face of Adam Danilevski. Once before she had had the fantasy, when the two images became intertwined and she had not known why. Now she knew that it was not Adam who reminded her of the beast. She lay in the bed, staked out like a lamb to attract that wolf, and the surrounding faces blurred again.
There came the sound of commotion from the corridor outside; the door was flung wide to admit the bridegroom with his escort. His gaze rested for a second on the bed and its occupant; again that complacent smile flickered in his eyes. Then, with laughing good humor, he turned to answer the banter of the wedding guests, even as he encouraged them from the room.
They were alone. Paul Dmitriev closed the double doors and turned slowly to face the bed. The clock ticked loudly in a silence that felt to Sophie as if the world were holding its breath. Her husband untied the girdle of his robe, crossing over to the bed, the pale eyes coldly appraising.
“What a great disappointment it is that you do not have your mother’s looks,” he said. “It is hard to believe that you are her daughter.”
Chapter 6
The silence in the lofty dining room was oppressive—part of the heavy mantle of apprehension and gloom that cloaked the entire mansion. Sophie sat at her place at the massive, elaborately carved mahogany table, a footman behind her chair. There were three place settings, and behind each chair stood a powdered footman. The butler, a napkin draped over one arm, was poised at attention, ready at the door, his eyes darting anxiously from the table to the footmen to the clock, which showed the second hand approaching the hour of two o’clock.
Precisely at two o’clock, the sharp click of boots on the tiled floor of the hall was heard. Sophie’s stomach tightened involuntarily in the now-familiar reaction to the approach of her husband.
Prince Paul Dmitriev strode into the dining room. His gaze swept the room in close examination, and the butler trembled. However, it seemed that the prince found nothing out of order. He walked to his place at the head of the table.
“Good afternoon, Sophia.” He took the carved armchair pulled out for him by the footman, who settled a heavy, cream-colored linen napkin on the master’s lap.
“Good afternoon, Paul.”
Sophie sometimes thought she was losing the power of speech, she spoke to so few people these days, sweltering in the hot dimness of this city palace. All of St. Petersburg society had left for their summer palaces along the Gulf of Finland—all but the Dmitrievs. The prince had said he preferred to spend the summer in seclusion with his bride. The time he spent with her, however, was limited to the hour at the dinner table and the nightly visits he made to her bedchamber, where, with the conscientiousness he brought to all necessary activities, be they pleasurable or no, he set about the task of fathering his heir.
“I had understood that Count Danilevski would be joining us for dinner,” she said, taking a tiny sip of wine, praying he could not detect in her voice the great black wave of disappointment washing over her at the aide-de-camp’s absence.
“I imagine he was delayed,” Paul said indifferently. “There were some important regimental matters to be attended to this morning.”
“I see.” Silence fell again, broken only by the buzz of a fly, the soft-shoe whisper of a servant moving about the room, the tiny scrape of cutlery on china, the murmur of pouring wine.
Paul observed his young wife in covert satisfaction. The last two months had wrought some considerable transformation. No longer did she meet his eye with that bold, glowing gaze of fearless candor; no longer did she stride around the house with restless energy and vigor. No, she moved slowly, keeping in the shadows almost, her eyes lowered. She spoke in hesitant murmurs, then only to respond if he chose to make some remark to her, or to beg him for some small favor that in general he refused, surprising her just occasionally by granting it. It had not been as difficult as he had feared to achieve this docility, although it had taken longer than it had with his previous wives. But then they had been bred from a more conventional mold and were half-broken by the time they had come to him.
He had not been entirely successful with Anna Kyrilovna, of course, the prince mused, twirling the stem of his wineglass between his fingers. She had become quite impossible with her endless tears, her silent reproaches. In the end he had had to have her cloistered. Had she not been barren, of course, he might have been able to endure her.
He looked at Sophia Alexeyevna again. He did not think this one would suffer a nervous collapse, for all that she had lost her previous ebullience, the self-confidence of one secure in her place in the world. By the time society returned to the city in a week or two, he would feel confident in permitting her to attend court occasionally, to participate a little in the round of social visiting. His training was secure enough now to withstand exposure to the outside world.
The sound of voices from the hall shattered the brooding silence of the dining room. Sophie kept her eyes on her plate, even as her heart leaped in her breast, and her fingers trembled.
“My apologies, General.” Count Danilevski stood in the doorway. He saluted his general, then bowed to Sophie. “Princess, pray excuse my tardiness. I was obliged to wait for the arrival of a dispatch from Moscow.”
“Do not apologize, Count,” Sophie said, raising her eyes to look at him for the first time since he had come in. Her face was expressionless, her smile purely perfunctory. “Please join us.” She gestured to the third place.
Adam sat down. He knew the effort it was costing Sophie to maintain that cool indifference because he was paying the same price. But if Dmitriev were to catch the faintest inkling of the powerful current flowing between his wife and his aide-de-camp it would be catastrophic for Sophie.
She had lapsed into submissive silence again, while the general questioned his aide-de-camp about matters that the husband would not expect to interest his wife. But Adam was aware that the meek posture, the lowered eyes, the mute respect concealed a volcano of rage and rebellion. What it would take for that volcano to erupt, Adam did not know.
Sophie did not know, either. She only knew that protest, complaint, even tears would meet with cold reprisals. When Paul had told her in the second week of their marriage that he was sending Tanya Feodorovna to his estates in the country because she was not suitably trained as a lady’s maid, Sophie had exploded in outrage, violently protesting that he had no right to dispose of her serfs. He had demonstrated her powerlessness by showing her how it was possible for a husband to assume whatever rights he chose. Tanya Feodorovna had disappeared overnight, to be replaced by a dour, silent woman who watched her mistress with sharp little eyes, who listened with ears pricked, and who, Sophie knew, reported every detail of her mistress’s behavior to the prince.
She had wept with anger when her protests met only the blank wall of callous indifference,
and the prince had sent for the physician. They had forced laudanum down her throat for her “excitation of the nerves,” and for a week she had been kept in a state of semisedation. She had learned the lesson well, now playing the part her husband would have her play, while she waited. For the moment, in virtual imprisonment in this gloomy mansion in the deserted city, she had no redress. But at some point, this enforced seclusion would come to an end. When the court returned from the country her husband could not continue to keep her away from human contact. Until then, she would continue to draw her lifeblood from the times she was in Adam Danilevski’s presence.
Even when she dared not look at him, when not a word beyond the formalities passed between them, she was infused with his strength and spirit. It had been so from the first time he had entered this mansion to greet her as his general’s wife. One all-encompassing look had seemed to tell him every detail of the unforeseen ordeals that had left her fearful, disillusioned sometimes to the point of desperation as she searched for some indication that this present reality was only a temporary condition, that there was some possibility of escape, of relief, of change. The unexpectedness of her husband’s behavior, the complete switch in his personality, once he had her secure under his roof, had shattered her composure more effectively than the subtle cruelty itself.
What she did not know was that Adam, who could have prepared her, saw himself as culpable. As she thrashed blindly in the morass of bewilderment and frustration, seeking a reason why her husband should want as his wife a person other than the one she was, the count was consumed with compassion, with the overpowering need to help and support her. Whenever she was in his company, Sophie felt the unspoken power of this need, and drew from it the strength to hold on to herself, to conceal her rage under the required meek demeanor, to control the urge to rebel. For as long as her husband believed he had the upper hand and she knew he had not, then she was still whole. Somehow, she knew that Adam saw this, and was willing her to stay strong.