Silver Nights

by Jane Feather

  Prince Paul did not consider it necessary to include his aide-de-camp in the proscription on society requisite to this training of his wife. The colonel was simply a soldier, a senior member of Dmitriev’s regiment, whose duties involved his frequent visits to the Dmitriev palace. If the count happened to meet Princess Dmitrievna on one of these business calls, it was a matter of indifference to the general. There was nothing social in the visits, and even dining together as they were now doing was simply an occasion for the discussion of regimental matters. The princess was as excluded as if she had not been in the room. The prince did not know that as she sat, ignored in her silence, she was more vibrantly alive than ever. He did not know that the count was aware of her every move, however infinitesimal, was aware of every breath she took.

  The meal came to an end. Sophie, following old Russian custom, curtsied to her husband as the head of the family, thanking him for her dinner. It was yet another example of the protocol to which the general/prince was addicted. Every aspect of life in the Dmitriev household was regulated by protocol. Failure to adhere to the rules brought instant punishment, and rarely a day passed without screams shrilling from the courtyard at the back of the palace as a serf suffered beneath the cane or the knout. Sophie had learned to close her ears. She was powerless to intervene, as the servants all knew. The household ran without her supervision, in an atmosphere of dread and mistrust. It was an atmosphere that accompanied General, Prince Paul Dmitriev wherever he held sway.

  Now he nodded with the appearance of approval as his wife duly performed the ritual. Emboldened, although without much hope of success, Sophie asked if she might go for a ride that afternoon.

  The prince frowned but spoke with apparent solicitude. “I do not wish you to run any risks, my dear. It is far too hot, and I am afraid you will get the headache. No, you must rest quietly in the shade.”

  Sophie knew why she was not to run any risks. Her husband lived in the continual hope that she had conceived. Her failure to do so, so far, meant increased restrictions on her physical activities; implicit in these restraints lay the paradoxical message that should she become pregnant, much more freedom would be permitted. As if, Sophie thought bitterly, she had any control over the matter. Her husband was certainly doing his part, and if passive submission was all that was required of the female in these affairs, then his wife was doing hers.

  She was too accustomed to disappointment these days, and too adept at hiding her feelings from her husband to allow him the satisfaction of seeing so much as a revealing flicker enliven her bland expression. “I am sure you know best, Paul.” The tone was as neutral as her expression. “If you would excuse me…Count.” Another little curtsy in the vague direction of the count, and she left the dining room.

  As she brushed past him, Adam caught her scent, felt her vibrant warmth, and the urge to take hold of her stunned him with its power. But he was helpless—as helpless to ease her lot, except with his mute understanding and support, as he was to fulfill the need to hold her, to feel again those lips opening sweetly beneath his. She was another man’s wife, and he would not do to another, however much he despised that other, what had been done to him. Sometimes he thought that if he could avoid seeing her he would do so, but he knew that even though he could not help her practically, he had to know what was happening with her.

  Dmitriev caused her no crude physical injury, except insofar as the enforced inactivity, the confinement within the house would hurt such an active individual for whom the freedom of the Wild Lands had been necessary for happiness and the soul’s peace. No, the injuries were to the spirit, a subtle erosion of the person she had been, the fragmenting of her integrity so that she would cease to believe in herself. He had seen his general use similar tactics within the regiment when he identified a square peg. The nonconformist would be humiliated, derided, deprived of the things that gave meaning to himself and what he considered his place in the world. When he had lost those self-defining factors, had lost his self-respect, then he could be rounded to fit the hole in the general’s pegboard.

  Adam knew that he had to prevent that from happening to Sophie, and he sensed that she drew strength from his presence, for all that they barely exchanged two words most of the time; so he continued to expose himself to the torment of her company, to the abysmal frustrations of helplessness and deprivation. Once the court returned to St. Petersburg, Dmitriev would have to widen the bars somewhat. She would be expected to take her place in society, and her failure to appear would draw remark. If she could hold out until then, survive this diabolical honeymoon, matters would have to ease for her, and he could cease this self-martyrdom, request a mission outside St. Petersburg, return to the self hardened by disillusion, retreat into his carapace again, become whole again. So Adam told himself, struggling to believe it, as he watched her and tried to guess how close she was to breaking.

  “I will go to the barracks and see to this matter myself,” the prince was saying, unnoticing of his colonel’s preoccupation. “There has clearly been an error in the dispatch.” He marched into the hall, calling for his sword, hat, and cane. “Would you, Colonel, go through the copies of the dispatches sent to Moscow last month? You will find them in the bureau in my study. I must ensure that the error did not originate with us.”

  Adam wondered if he had heard aright. The general was going to leave him in the house with Sophia Alexeyevna. But then Dmitriev believed his colonel to be an embittered misogynist, in addition, of course, to being a loyal officer of the Imperial Guard whose only interest could be in regimental affairs; in short, one quite safe to be permitted under the same roof as a cowed wife. “As you command, sir.” He offered a smart salute, waiting until the general had left the house before turning toward the stairs leading to Dmitriev’s study on the second floor.

  The door to a small parlor stood open, inviting his questing eyes. She was standing at the window, looking out, her appearance as forlorn and despairing as that of a caged bird. He stepped into the parlor, unable to help himself.

  Sophie did not know how she knew it was Adam, but she had no need to turn to identify her companion. “I am dying,” she said dully. “Inch by inch, minute by minute—”

  “Do not talk such maudlin nonsense!” The lowness of his voice in no way detracted from the fierceness of his tone. He closed the door. “What would your grandfather say to hear you talk such defeatist rubbish?”

  “Then I shall kill him,” she said simply. “Only he has taken away my pistol.” Her shoulders sagged again. “I cannot abide knives; I never have been able to.”

  Adam covered the distance between them in two long strides. Catching her by the shoulders, he spun her to face him. To touch her after so many weeks of holding himself away from her with a restraint that clenched his muscles, knotted his belly, was like laying hands upon the Holy Grail. The pale oval of her face was upturned, no longer brown with health, the dark eyes seeming larger than ever in its wan thinness, but as he stared into them, a shadow of the former glow shimmered in their depths. Her lips parted. Was it in invitation or surprise?

  It was a question of supreme irrelevance, he found, as he kissed her, felt her shudder against him as she had done before, sensed the hunger that matched his own. And this time, augmenting the hunger, was a fierce desperation, a shared desperation. Then she was fighting against the arms that held her, the mouth that caressed her. He drew back and read the fear in her eyes.

  “No…no,” she gasped, pulling away from him, one hand pressed to her warmed, tingling lips, her eyes darting in panic around the room as if in search of a spy. “If we are discovered…”

  “Your husband would kill me,” Adam said with a calm that surprised him. “If I did not kill him first.” That look of abject terror upon her face filled him with an icy rage greater than any he had ever felt. “He has gone to the barracks, Sophie.”

  “Yes, but Maria…” Again her gaze swept the room, fell upon the closed door.

  “
Maria?” He frowned, taking her hands. They quivered, cold despite the warmth of the late September day.

  “When he sent away Tanya Feodorovna,” she explained, “Maria came in her stead. She is a spy.” It was a flat statement. “Everything I do or say is reported to Paul.” She took her hands out of his. “It is no secret. I am supposed to know of it. Paul repeats things to me at night, when…when he comes to my room.” She wrapped her arms around herself, facing him with a small, bleak smile. “He is a frequent visitor.”

  She was another man’s wife. His mind filled with the distasteful images conjured by her statement. Adam drew away, burned by the unpalatable truth that he was honor bound to respect. How a man chose to manage his wife was no one else’s concern. He was her lord, under God and the laws of the land, and he could make whatever dispositions he thought necessary or convenient. Yet, even as he recognized these truths, Adam could not accept their implications, not when applied to Sophia Alexeyevna.

  “I will see if I cannot contrive for you to ride Khan,” he said, moving swiftly to the door, his step agitated, rapid as if he could not get away from her fast enough. “I will do what I can.” Then he was gone.

  Sophie stood by the window. The imprint of his lips upon hers, of his arms around her, maintained the impact of reality. Yet, true reality was composed of other lips and arms. Not that her husband ever kissed her; the softness of caresses was no part of the reproductive act, although she assumed he was fulfilling some other need while he tried to father a child upon her body. The coupling certainly seemed to give him some strange pleasure, and it always brought that gleam of satisfaction to his pale eyes as he looked at her, lying beneath him, spread to receive the assault of his manhood. But somehow she felt that it was not herself he was seeing in her subjection. Curiously, this feeling made it easier to bear, made it easier to separate herself from her body until he left her, returning to his own chamber without a word or a touch.

  The contrast between a gray-eyed Polish count with a beautiful mouth that could give such exquisite pleasure, and the cold disdain, hard pale eyes, and thin lips of the man to whom she was wedded made the present even harder to endure. What could have been if fate had taken a different turn was as hopelessly unattainable as a return to the past, when a young woman had ridden the steppes without a care, secure and strong in her own world.

  Sophie turned to the door. She could at least visit Khan, even if she was not permitted to ride him. Her husband had not forbidden her to visit the stables. And in the company of Boris Mikhailov she could gain some comfort, although, after the removal of Tanya, they were both careful not to be seen in conclave.

  It was a week before Adam was able to fulfill his promise to arrange for Sophie to ride Khan. In the planning and execution of an elaborate deception, he found the pleasure of action overcoming the torments of his helplessness. It was not much he was doing for her, yet it would give her inordinate joy. He had to arrange for the absence of the prince, a stable yard deserted of all but Boris Mikhailov, and some way of getting a message to Sophie, explaining his plan.

  As it happened, fortune intervened to ease matters for him. A messenger arrived from Czarskoye Selo, the empress’s summer palace outside St. Petersburg, requesting information on the present disposition of the Preobrazhensky regiment. It took little persuasion from his colonel for the general to agree that he should answer the imperial summons in person. All Adam had to do was ensure that the general was obliged to stay at Czarskoye Selo overnight. Sophie could then ride before dawn, before the household was up and about, and be back in her chamber with no one except Boris any the wiser.

  Alerting Boris was a simple enough matter. The muzhik, as befitted his previous privileged position with the Golitskov family, was as literate as he was intelligent. He did not blink an eye when the count, riding into the Dmitriev stable yard one afternoon, slipped a folded piece of paper into his palm as he gave his horse into Boris’s charge.

  Adam strode into the mansion with the attitude of one on an important errand. He asked for the general, although he was well aware that Dmitriev was attending a brigade review. “Then, perhaps I might beg the favor of a word with Princess Dmitrievna,” he said, when informed of the prince’s absence. “She could convey my message to the prince. It is of some importance, as it relates to his journey tomorrow.”

  It was quite clear from the butler’s expression that he was uncertain how to respond. The princess did not receive visitors; it was an unspoken rule. Yet Count Danilevski was not an ordinary visitor. He was the prince’s aide-de-camp, frequently in the house, and frequently in her presence, although always in her husband’s company.

  “I am not sure where the princess is, Count,” he said hesitantly. “Perhaps I could convey your message to His Highness?”

  Adam had been afraid of this, knowing that he could not insist upon seeing Sophie if she was not there by chance. He was about to accept defeat and give his fictitious message to the butler when his quarry came into the hall.

  “Count Danilevski,” she said on just the right note of surprise and indifference. “My husband is not here, I am afraid.”

  “No, your butler was just telling me so. I have a message for him. Perhaps you would be good enough to convey it for me.” He held out his hand in polite greeting.

  Sophie curtsied, took his hand, felt the crumpled ball of paper against her palm. There was not so much as a flicker in her eyes as her fingers closed over the ball, her hand dropped to her side. “What is your message, Count?”

  “Why simply that the papers he wishes to take to Her Imperial Majesty tomorrow morning have had to be recopied. However, even if the clerks must work all night, they will be ready for him when he comes to the barracks in the morning.”

  A somewhat unnecessary message, Sophie thought, but it did not seem to strike the butler as such. He still stood sentinel in the hall. “Nikolai, you will ensure that His Highness receives the message,” she said with studied indifference. “Good day to you, Count.” A polite smile touched her lips before she turned, walking slowly toward the stairs.

  Adam remembered that long-legged stride, the way her skirts swished around her ankles, the crispness of her step, and he contemplated the slow death of General, Prince Paul Dmitriev.

  In the privacy of her chamber, Sophie uncrumpled the scrap of paper. Your husband will not return from Czarskoye Selo tomorrow. If you wish to ride, Khan will be saddled and waiting for you two hours before dawn on the following day. Ride to the north gate of the city. I will meet you outside the gate.

  How did he know Paul would not return the next evening, as was his declared intention? But that did not matter. Her heart lifted in her breast, the blood began to dance through her veins, bringing warmth and a resurgence of the quickness of life. She had not ridden Khan for two months. On the very few occasions she had been permitted to ride, it had been in her husband’s company, sidesaddle on a mild-mannered mare. Boris told her that he had been instructed to exercise the stallion regularly on a leading rein, and to give him the best of care. It was the muzhik’s somewhat caustic opinion that the prince knew a fine and valuable animal when he saw one, but hadn’t yet decided how best to capitalize on this unusual beast.

  But now she was going to ride Khan…ride like the wind through the night freshness, through the false dawn, see the sun rise…. And she was going to share this ecstasy with Adam Danilevski. To be raised from the despondent depths of hopeless acceptance to such dizzying heights filled her with a joy so powerful that she felt almost sick with it.

  Joy notwithstanding, she still kept her head, ripping the message into tiny shreds until it resembled confetti. When Maria came into the chamber to help her mistress dress for supper, the maid saw only the neutral expression to which she was accustomed, heard only the flat, resigned tones of a prisoner who has given up all hope of regaining her freedom.

  When the prince left her bed that night, he told her that he would depart at dawn and would return in the
evening. “You need not wait supper for me,” he said, retying the girdle of his robe. “If I am unable to leave Czarskoye Selo until late in the afternoon, I will not return before ten o’clock. But I will come to you when I have supped.”

  “I look forward to it,” Sophie heard herself whisper, insolently sardonic. She froze, praying he had not heard her.

  “I beg your pardon, Sophia?” her husband said, frowning.

  “I wish you a safe journey, Paul,” she said, closing her eyes, lest he should see the gleam she knew they contained.

  “You will remain within doors during my absence,” he told her crisply. “I do not wish to be anxious for your safety, my dear, and will only be easy in my mind knowing that you are protected by my people.” A thin smile touched his lips as he offered this considerate order for imprisonment. Protection meant surveillance, as Sophie well knew, but never did her husband acknowledge the true facts of her existence. Every restraint was presented as an indication of his care for her. He had to be the most caring and considerate husband in St. Petersburg, Sophie reflected ironically as the door closed on his departure. She was quite sure that that was how his constant watchfulness would be interpreted by others once he considered her sufficiently submissive to be permitted to venture forth into society.

  Gingerly, she got off the bed, going to the ewer for the cool water that would ease her soreness—the inevitable aftermath of these nightly rapes upon an unprepared and unaroused body. At least tomorrow night she would sleep alone, if Adam kept his promise, and then…She hugged herself with fierce joy as she looked upon the prospect of such a ride in the exclusive company of Adam Danilevski, away from all eyes.