Silver Nights

by Jane Feather

  When General, Prince Dmitriev arrived the following morning at Preobrazhenskoye, the regiment’s barracks, it was to be met with chaos. A fire had started in a wastepaper basket in one of the offices. It had been discovered before it had got out of hand, but there had to be an investigation, an examination to see which documents had been destroyed, an exhaustive search for the careless culprit. The general was obliged to set these matters in train before leaving for Czarskoye Selo. His aide-de-camp could have seen to these things himself, but as that aide-de-camp knew well, when it came to issues of discipline the general preferred to deal with them personally.

  The culprit would elude discovery, since no one would suspect Count Danilevski of firesetting, but the regiment trembled as the general set off some four hours later than he had intended, promising with customary cold ferocity that the one responsible would pass six times beneath the rods of a hundred of his comrades.

  Fervently trusting that a flayed back was not in his stars, Adam continued conducting the pointless investigation started by his general, and reckoned that Dmitriev could not reach his destination until mid-afternoon, even if he did not stop for dinner. His audience with Her Imperial Majesty would be of several hours’ duration, then he would have to eat. It would be well past nightfall before he could start for home. He would not bother; there would be no point in exhausting himself and his escort, when they could leave first thing in the morning, after a night’s rest. And by the time he returned, Princess Dmitrievna would be safely back in the house with just a little hope in her heart.

  Sophie barely closed her eyes all night. Terrified that every sound heralded the return of her husband, she tossed and turned amidst the fiery tangle of sheets until the clock struck three. All her Berkholzskoye clothes, which she had kept as reminders of the past, although they were hopelessly unfashionable and could not possibly be worn in St. Petersburg society, had been burned at her husband’s orders. But she had managed to preserve her riding habit from the grasping clutches of Maria. It was bundled at the back of the garderobe. Now she put it on, feeling as if she was putting on her own familiar self again as the divided skirt freed her stride.

  The house was silent, corridors dimly lit by occasional candles set in wall sconces. The night watchman would be dozing in the kitchen, Sophie knew. He made his rounds on the half hour, but hopefully he would not notice that the window in the dining room was not properly fastened. Her heart beat uncomfortably fast as she slipped down the stairs, into the dark dining room. The window opened with the smooth ease to be expected in Prince Dmitriev’s well-run household. She swung herself onto the sill, remembering with a stab of nostalgia that other window, on another flight, in another life…. That flight had brought her into the arms of Adam Danilevski.

  And this one…? Not a permissible train of thought. Sophie dropped to the soft earth of the flower bed, reaching up to pull the casement closed behind her. It lay snug against the frame and would pass casual scrutiny, although a touch of the finger would swing it open again. Keeping to the shadows, she hurried to the stable yard, which at first glance appeared deserted, as would be expected at that time of the night. Then the gigantic bulk of Boris Mikhailov emerged from the shadows, Khan stepping at his side.

  Sophie ran to her horse, whispering to him, before flinging her arms around the quietly smiling muzhik, hugging him tightly. “I will be back before sunrise.”

  “Have a care. He’s not had a saddle on him for two months,” was the only response from Boris, although the gruffness of his tone was belied by the softness in his eyes.

  “Do I not know it, Boris?” said Sophie bitterly. But now was not the time for bitterness, and she put it from her. Gently, she talked to Khan as she took the reins, lifting one foot into the stirrup. The great beast raised his head, snorting at the tug on the saddle, but when her voice continued in soft reassurance he became still. Nimbly, she sprang upward, landing lightly in the saddle. Khan quivered, then at the flick of the rein took off out of the yard as if feeling his freedom as vividly as did his mistress.

  The nighttime city streets were deserted, and there was no one to witness the exultant charging progress of a magnificent Cossack stallion and his long-haired rider. The guards at the north gate, in the absence of orders to halt anyone passing through, merely looked in sleepy surprise as Khan galloped by, so fast they could almost have imagined his passing.

  About a mile along the dusty, winding road stood a break of poplar trees. In their shadow, astride his own mount, was Adam Danilevski. Watching her coming toward him, he could feel the vitality emanating from the erect figure, her hair streaming in the wind. It was a vitality that he hadn’t seen since he’d delivered up his charge to the czarina, and its resurgence under his contriving brought him an immense satisfaction.

  “Is it not wonderful?” She drew rein beside him, the dark eyes glowing in the milky starlight, her crooked smile wide with pleasure. “I cannot thank you enough, Adam.”

  “You already have,” he said quietly.

  “How so?” Her head tilted to one side. The smile became more quizzical.

  “Just by your presence and your pleasure,” he heard himself say. “You see, I love you.” How slowly were the words of truth dragged from him. Yet he felt a great peace with this final acknowledgment of a fact that he had been trying to deny for longer than he could imagine. The force of his compassion, his overwhelming need to protect and arm her, they were drawn from the well of love, not remorse.

  A perceptible quiver shook the slender frame. Her smile faltered, her eyes darkened. “Do not say such a thing,” she said in stifled tones. “It can do no good for either of us, and can only increase unhappiness.”

  “It is the same for you, too?” Despite her plea, he could not help persisting.

  There was a long silence. Sophie looked out across the plain bathed in the false radiance of the Nordic night. She saw years stretching ahead of her, a barren eternity of imprisonment under a cold, vengeful tyranny. It was a lot shared by the majority of the empress’s twenty million subjects. What right had she to protest? She was not starved, tortured, beaten like many of those others. She was just shriveling away in the arid presence of the ungiving.

  “Yes, I love you,” Sophie said. Admitting the truth could not worsen the situation, and, indeed, she too discovered that the admission brought a measure of peace. “But what difference does it make?” She looked across at him, her eyes shadowed with the knowledge of futility. “Let us ride.” On the words, Khan sprang forward, out onto the plain.

  Adam followed, knowing that the purpose of this ride was not social. She would not wait for him, not yet at least. He was content to have it so. Had he not arranged this escape in order for her to do just what she was doing? And in the solitude of his own thoughts, he could savor a shared love, for all that it was an impossible one.

  It was half an hour before Sophie drew rein, slowing Khan to a trot, then to a walk. The hooves of Adam’s horse pounded the plain behind her; she turned to look over her shoulder as he came up beside her. “Do you think I could ride Khan from here to Austria?”

  Adam stared at her, as if trying to determine whether she was serious. He decided that she was more than half so. “No, of course you could not. Not unless you wish for rape and murder at the hands of brigands. Do not talk nonsense, Sophie.” The impatience in his voice was feigned, but he could not let her see his own frustrated grief at a wretchedness that could produce such a desperate suggestion.

  Sophie did not say that at least it would be a relatively quick end. She did not know how she could endure returning to the prison of her home after this heady taste of freedom, but without Adam’s prompting, she turned Khan back the way they had come. The subject of love was not touched upon again. The fact lay open between them, the impossibility of its fulfillment as inexorable as death.

  At the break of poplars, they halted. “I want to touch you,” Adam said softly, “but I dare not.”

  Sophie looked
at him in bleak acceptance. “No, I do not think I could bear it, either.”

  “Go!” he ordered, shockingly abrupt. “It will soon be sunrise.”

  She hesitated. “Adam…”

  “Go!”

  Without another word, Sophie left him beneath the poplars and galloped back toward the north gate of the city.

  The stars were fading as she clattered into the stable yard of the Dmitriev palace. In the middle of that yard, his cane beneath his arm, his back erect, pale blue eyes as polished as diamond chips, stood General, Prince Paul Dmitriev.

  Chapter 7

  There was a moment of complete terror, when Sophie felt the power of thought and movement gone from her. Then she saw Boris Mikhailov standing between two of the prince’s attendants. A bloodied weal slashed his cheek. She had seen such a mark many times in her days in this house. Prince Dmitriev used his cane indiscriminately. Fear for herself vanished as if it had never been. She must protect Boris and ensure that not a suspicion could fall upon Adam.

  Recognizing instinctively that her position way up atop her Cossack stallion would put her husband at a physical disadvantage, one which would increase the viciousness of his fury, she swung to the ground before reaching him, crossing the yard on foot, her eyes not once meeting those of Boris Mikhailov.

  “Who assisted you in this act of flagrant disobedience?” Her husband’s voice was hard, clipped, seemingly dispassionate yet somehow imbued with the same ferocity that caused the bravest soldier under his command to tremble.

  Sophie knew she must take his anger onto herself by a show of insolent bravado—a show that would negate all her efforts of the past weeks to convince him he had succeeded in driving the spirit of rebellion from her soul. An eyebrow lifted. “Why should you imagine I needed help, Paul? I have been able to saddle my own mount since I could first ride.” Her eyes flicked toward Boris, almost indifferently. “You have no reason to hold Boris Mikhailov responsible. Even had I wished for his assistance, I would not have known where to find him in the middle of the night, or how to do so without waking others.” She shrugged with seeming insouciance, continuing swiftly, “When you did not come to me last night, I realized that you had not returned home. I had thought to have my ride and be back in the house without anyone knowing that I had left it.”

  He stared at her with his cold eyes as if he would bore into her skull. She met the stare, armored against fear by the knowledge of those others dependent for their safety upon her ability to see this through. His head jerked toward the attendants, who stepped away from their prisoner. Dmitriev’s gaze flickered in disgust over his wife’s costume, missing not a speck of dust, not a tangled wisp of her hair.

  “Why was that habit not burned with your other clothes?”

  It seemed as if the question of Boris had been won by default. “Maria did not find it,” Sophie said deliberately, not averse to sacrificing the spy to Paul’s wrath, if by so doing she would further deflect that wrath from Boris.

  “Then she must be taught to look with greater care,” observed the prince in the same cold, dispassionate tone. “And this time you will learn, my dear wife, the lesson I had thought already taken.” That travesty of a smile touched the thin lips. “Let us go inside.” With a gesture of mock courtesy, he bowed slightly, gesturing toward the mansion before laying an apparently considerate, husbandly hand upon her arm.

  Sophie only just managed to control her jump of alarm and revulsion. His fingers curled over her forearm, gripping with bruising pressure as she and the prince strolled into the house with all the appearance of a couple in perfect accord.

  “First, you will show me how you left the house,” he said calmly when they had reached the hall.

  In normal circumstances, the household would only just be stirring, but Sophie was conscious of shadowy figures seemingly afraid to show themselves. Servants terrified that they would be implicated in the princess’s escape? She had lived in this household long enough to know what they feared. The butler, who had opened the door for them, now stood rigid, his face working.

  “I climbed through the dining room window,” Sophie said, as calmly as her husband. She felt the anger surge through the powerful frame so close to her at this added reminder of the hoydenish tendencies he had believed eradicated.

  He marched into the dining room, maintaining the painful grip on her arm. She showed him the window, still unlatched although drawn closed. “It seems that some members of my household have need to be taught their duties,” murmured the prince in the tone of voice that spelled torment for the watchman.

  Sophie swallowed. She could do nothing to help the man, could only be sorry that she had caused him suffering, even while she wondered what her own punishment would be.

  “After such an energetic night, my dear, I am sure you have need of your bed,” said her husband, in the silkily solicitous tone he always used when tightening the bars of her cage.

  Sophie fixed her gaze on a whorl embedded in the heavy damask wall hanging. She must not let him see how she feared the thought of a repetition of those dark days, drifting in a drugged trance. “I find I am a little fatigued,” she managed to say, hoping to deceive him. “I should welcome the opportunity for a few hours’ sleep.”

  “Then let us go upstairs, my dear Sophia.”

  In Sophie’s bedchamber, a quivering Maria stood beside the empty, tumbled bed. “I had no idea, lord,” she stammered. “Her Highness said nothing…”

  “Why should you imagine she would say anything, you fool!” snapped the prince, whose polite facade did not extend to serfs, errant or otherwise. “In future, you will sleep across the princess’s door.”

  “Yes, lord.” Maria bobbed curtsies as if she were on a marionette’s string.

  “Help Her Highness into bed, and remove that garment which you so signally failed to dispose of earlier,” the prince instructed acidly. “For your negligence, you shall have six lashes.”

  The serf’s complexion went gray as putty, but the sentence was lighter than she could have expected. Sophie avoided looking at her, while she waited to hear her own sentence pronounced in the form of a considerate summoning of the physician, but her husband merely offered an ironic bow.

  “I will leave you to your rest, my dear. I trust you will feel less fatigued at dinnertime.”

  So she was not to face the laudanum imprisonment again? If not that, what? After the departure of the tearful though mute Maria, Sophie lay in the darkened bedchamber. Would Adam know by now of the discovery of her escapade? Presumably the general’s surprisingly premature return would be known in Preobrazhenskoye, in which case Adam would be in a fever of anxiety.

  The morning dragged interminably. Sophie was unable to sleep, despite her largely sleepless night. She lay awash with trepidation, not daring to rise and show herself about the house in case Paul, choosing to interpret such restlessness as a sign of ill health, should act accordingly.

  It was just after noon when a timid knock at the door heralded the arrival of a young maidservant whom Sophie did not remember seeing before; not that that was unusual, since the army of serfs staffing the Dmitriev mansion was enormous, and constantly subject to change as serfs were moved, sold, or brought in for training from the country estates.

  “If you please, Princess, I’m here to help you dress for dinner.” The girl bobbed a curtsy.

  “Where is Maria?” Sophie sat up, pushing aside the bedcovers, unable to hide her relief at this end to bed rest.

  The girl turned away, burying her face in the armoire. “She’s in the servants’ quarters, Princess. She’ll be keeping to her bed for a day or two.”

  Sophie said nothing. She should have known better than to ask. Sentences in the Dmitriev household were always summarily executed. Except, she thought, for her own in this instance. That had not even been pronounced yet.

  Nor was the matter referred to throughout dinner, which was undertaken in customary formality and with the minimum of conversat
ion. Sophie forced herself to eat, to drink, to ask a polite question about her husband’s visit to Czarskoye Selo, even to listen to the answer. And all the while she felt as she had when waiting for the rabid wolf to show himself in the long grass, poised to spring for the jugular. Now, as then, she must be prepared for any eventuality, must keep her mind’s eye free of the images that would create the fear that would impede clear thinking and the smooth reactions on which her safety and that of others depended.

  The meal ended as always at precisely three o’clock. Punctiliously, Sophie performed the ritual of thanks, receiving a cool bow in return.

  “Why do you not visit the stables, my dear Sophia?” suggested the prince. “It is a most pleasant afternoon, and I expect you would enjoy being out of doors after your quiet morning.”

  The wolf had shown himself. She knew it with absolute certainty as she looked into her husband’s pale eyes, where swam a shark of complacent anticipation—anticipation of another’s pain.

  Was it Boris? No, she must not speculate; if she did so she would be unable to conceal her dread, and Paul would read it on her face. He must not have that satisfaction.

  “What a considerate suggestion, Paul,” she said, smiling blandly. “I would, indeed, enjoy a walk in the sunshine.”

  “I have certain matters to go through with Colonel, Count Danilevski in my study this afternoon. However, I will be escorting you to Countess Narishkina’s soirée this evening.” A smile flickered over his lips, but the smile in his eyes was far from pleasant. “The Narishkins returned to the city last week. I received their invitation yesterday and had thought it would be a pleasant surprise for you…a little social diversion.” The thin-lipped smile vanished. “I do trust it is not unwise of me to permit this diversion, Sophia. Her Imperial Majesty will be in residence again in the Winter Palace at the beginning of next week, I understand, so there will be other invitations during the winter season. It would be a great pity if your behavior necessitated your withdrawal from society.”