by Lucy Ellis
He didn’t buy me, she told herself. That’s the difference. He didn’t buy me.
Tara stood up. ‘Just one more word of advice, Maisy. Today? He invited me.’
Maisy spilled her champagne. She stared blankly as the liquid soaked into her expensive lap, darkening into a wide stain.
‘Oh, honey.’ It was Ivanka, instantly at her side, putting the glass to one side, sliding a maternal arm around her waist. ‘We need to fix you up. Can you walk?’
Maisy nodded, unable to speak because she needed all her concentration to keep herself together and take a step, and then another. She was grateful for Ivanka’s sturdy arm around her waist and her knowledge of the yacht. When they reached one of the staterooms Ivanka led her straight to the bathroom.
‘Take off the dress. We need to soak the stain.’
As Maisy hesitated Ivanka grinned at her. ‘You really are a sweetheart. I’ll fetch you a robe.’
Stripped, Maisy waited in her knickers, arms crossed over her bare breasts. She ventured out into the stateroom, feeling distinctly woozy. For a moment she couldn’t move because a man was standing in the doorway. He said something in a foreign language and Maisy made a sound, stumbling back into the bathroom and slamming shut the door. She leaned against it, terrified of what was going on. She didn’t know how long she waited, heart pounding, before there was a brief knock on the door.
‘Maisy, it’s Ivanka.’
Maisy slid away from the door. She wrapped the robe around herself gratefully. ‘There was a man in the doorway,’ she said shakily. ‘He saw me.’
Ivanka swore quietly. She squeezed Maisy’s hand. ‘You’re okay?’
‘I think I’m drunk.’
‘Yeah, I saw Baba Yaga casting her evil spell. Don’t believe anything she told you, Maisy. She’s had a hard time adjusting to life post-Ranaevsky.’
I can imagine, thought Maisy drearily. She was feeling distinctly light-headed. The room was beginning to spin.
‘I think I need to lie down,’ she revealed shakily.
‘Right.’
Ivanka got her to the bed, and the moment Maisy’s head touched the pillow the whole room started to lurch. She groaned. ‘Don’t leave me,’ she pleaded.
‘I’ve got your back, honey.’ The mattress sank a little as Ivanka perched beside her. ‘You don’t drink, I take it?’
‘No.’
‘Well, Tara Mills would drive anyone to it. You know …’ She stroked Maisy’s temple. ‘I think he picks them because they’re the last women in the world who’ll get under his skin. Which makes you a freaking miracle.’
Maisy suddenly wished she was a million miles from drunk. This woman knew the secrets of the universe, and this was her chance to make sense of them.
Ivanka smiled at her, as if sensing her unspoken need to know. ‘My husband Valery—you met him earlier,’ she prompted. ‘He and Alexei go right back to the orphanage.’
Orphanage? Maisy’s eyes snapped open. ‘Is this something to do with the brotherhood?’
‘Brotherhood? Oh, Tara strikes again. There is no brotherhood. It’s just the four boys—well, three now that Leo’s gone.’ Ivanka crossed herself reflexively.
Maisy’s tired brain did some quick turns. Orphanage in Russia. Four boys. Suddenly Alexei’s life opened up before her and darkness rushed in. The dreams. Last night. The way he was behaving today. Maybe it wasn’t about her. She thought she was the centre of his life because he was hers. But it wasn’t about her.
An orphanage?
He never talked about his family and she had never asked, afraid he would ask about hers. Now she wished she had—wished she had shown more courage.
‘I didn’t know,’ she said heavily.
Ivanka smiled, looking at her curiously. ‘He hasn’t told you? I’m not surprised. I didn’t get the entire story for a year—a full year, might I add—into my marriage. It took me a difficult pregnancy to get it out of Valery. And Alexei’s a whole different kettle of fish. Need-to-know basis.’
‘I need to know.’ Maisy tried to sit up, but Ivanka laid a gentle hand on her shoulder.
‘Lie still. You’ll only feel worse. Here’s the deal. The boys met up in an orphanage as kids. You can’t know what Russian orphanages are like, Maisy. It’s not like here or in England. It’s pretty primitive. The story goes Alexei broke them out and the boys lived independently on the city streets, sleeping in parks, cemeteries, anywhere they could. Basements of public buildings in the long winters.’
Maisy did sit up now. ‘But what about the authorities? Wasn’t anything done?’
‘No one cared, Maisy. Homeless children are everywhere in my country. Valery says if it wasn’t for Alexei they’d all be dead. He had that “survival of the fittest” instinct even at eight.’
‘Eight?’ Maisy framed the word, not quite believing it. ‘And no parents?’
‘Oh, Alexei had parents. I think that’s what made him as tough as he is. His father took off when he was very young, and his mother just came home one day and told him she was going on a little break for a few days and would be back for him. She never came.’
‘What happened to her?’ Maisy asked, aware she wasn’t going to like the answer.
‘Who knows? Probably a new man, a better opportunity. She’d have been finding it hard to ply her trade with a seven-year-old boy around her neck.’
‘Her trade?’
‘She was a prostitute.’
Maisy suddenly really didn’t want to be having this conversation with Ivanka. She didn’t know her. She knew Alexei would consider what she was doing a betrayal, but what choice did she have if he wouldn’t talk to her about any of this?
His mother had abandoned him. A seven-year-old. Instantly a much younger Alexei flashed into her mind—a little boy with innocent blue eyes and long lashes and a frail child’s body, trying to survive those Russian winters without anyone to protect him. It was that stark. And it suddenly made absolute sense that he would storm Lantern Square with a truckload of security. He was doing for Kostya what nobody had done for him.
‘How did they survive?’
‘Cunning, street smarts, not knowing anything else.’ Ivanka gave a little shrug, but Maisy could see how much it affected the other woman to talk about it. ‘Valery and Stiva ended up back in an institution, but then Alexei and Leo got lucky. The Kulikovs took them in. They made Leo their son.’
‘And Alexei?’
‘They had other children. It was decided Alexei was too far gone. He’d be a bad influence.’ Ivanka spoke matter-of-factly. ‘He was running a cigarette scam for a local crime boss by the time he was eleven, Maisy. I don’t blame Marfa Kulikov one bit. But she always opened up her home to the boys on holidays, gave them all a break from the relentlessness of their lives. Probably saved Alexei’s life. I know for a fact he still lights a candle for her on her saint’s day.’
Something hard and fast lodged in Maisy’s chest.
‘But Alexei’s always been the smart one. He knew he’d end up getting swept into some serious violence if he didn’t find something legit. That’s when he got the boys organised with the boats. He started up a boat-hire business when he was fifteen on Lake Ladoga. It gave all four of them their start. None of them have done too badly.’
‘I don’t know what to say,’ was all Maisy could murmur.
‘Just don’t tell Alexei I spilled. It would cause all sorts of problems between him and Valery. Leo’s death has hit them all hard, but Alexei hardest. They were the closest, those two. I always got the impression Alexei looked after Leo, but Leo gave Aloyshia the emotional support he needed and didn’t get elsewhere.’
Aloyshia. Maisy flinched at the casual affection in that name. Years. He had known these people for years. They were his blood and his bone, his family. These were the people he confided in.
He had told her nothing. But then, she hadn’t asked.
‘Now, before we both start crying, how is little Kostya? I’m dying t
o see him. Whenever we saw Anais and Leo he was never with them. I suspect he was at home with you.’
‘Yes, I looked after Kostya for two years.’ Maisy didn’t see the point of evading the truth.
‘Which is how you and Alexei met. You’re very young to have been raising a child. I got the impression Anais didn’t spend very much time at home.’
Maisy had no intention of defaming her friend, but Ivanka seemed to understand this and laid a warm hand on hers.
‘Leo chose a highly strung racehorse and wondered why she didn’t turn into a brood mare when he got her in the stable. They’re Valery’s words, not mine. I’m a brood mare, Maisy, and happy to be one. I’ve got two boys of my own—Nicky and Sasha—you’ll meet them tonight. You, on the other hand, seem more like a filly to me, which makes it hard to imagine how you manage a two-year-old boy. Actually, I don’t know how you manage the thirty-year-old one.’
‘I don’t. Not very well,’ Maisy confessed. She was finding Ivanka very easy to talk to.
‘Tell me how you and Alexei met.’
‘He attacked me in the Kulikovs’ kitchen.’
‘Okay—so far, so not Alexei.’ Ivanka laughed. ‘Do tell, Maisy.’
So Maisy started at the beginning, picking her way through the rubble of the past few weeks, explaining about Anais and looking after Kostya, and the outrageous way Alexei had stormed into the house.
‘That’s Alexei—never does things by halves,’ was all Ivanka said.
Maisy edited out herself in a towel, him throwing her up against the door, and moved on to coming to Ravello. ‘And then I fell in love with him,’ she said simply. It was the first time she had said it aloud, and the fact that it wasn’t to Alexei, that it could never be to Alexei, opened the floodgates.
She cried. For herself, but mainly for the little boy who had been abandoned by his mother and left to fend for himself. Ivanka stroked her head throughout, until a strange sort of peace invaded Maisy’s body. And with it the nausea rose. She just made it to the bathroom in time.
And that was where Alexei found her.
‘She’s drunk.’
Alexei sounded incredulous, and in the old days—the days before today—Maisy would have laughed. But she was too busy being gloriously ill into a mercifully pristine toilet bowl.
Ivanka said something in Russian. Something that silenced Alexei. And in the silence Maisy slid onto her bottom, shutting her eyes against the suddenly clear certainty that she had disgraced herself.
The problem with nausea was that now it had passed she felt a reprieve—enough to realise how appalling her situation was. She awkwardly got to her feet, flushing the toilet and refusing to look at Alexei as she struggled to the sink, filling a glass with cold water and rinsing out her mouth. The mirror wasn’t kind: she looked white, her fancy hairstyle beginning to come apart. The robe gaped open and she sashed it tightly, her eyes going anxiously to his.
Alexei’s whole body told the story of how angry he was with her. His arms just hung at his sides, and he was tense and frozen to the spot.
Ivanka was gone. Wise woman, thought Maisy, drawing her arms about her waist. She needed a hug, and Alexei wasn’t going to provide it.
It was hard to feel sorry for him when he was towering over her, all two hundred pounds of Russian machismo, judging her.
‘Are you all right?’
He was very angry, she recognized. His accent was so thick she had to concentrate to understand him.
She nodded. ‘Ivanka helped me. She’s very kind.’
Alexei said something under his breath.
‘How much did you drink?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You don’t drink.’ He sounded almost helpless.
Maisy met his eyes in the mirror. ‘I didn’t do a lot of things until today,’ she muttered, leaning into the sink.
‘Where’s your dress? Why are you undressed?’ He framed the question roughly.
‘I spilt champagne on it. Ivanka took it to soak.’ She took a shuddery breath. ‘I think a man was here and saw me. When I didn’t have any clothes on.’
‘I heard about it.’ The last scrap of colour left Maisy’s face. He made a European gesture with his hands. ‘Don’t look like that,’ he said urgently. ‘I’ve taken care of it.’
‘What do you mean?’ she whispered.
‘Everyone’s gone. I’ve emptied the boat.’
‘Oh.’ Oh.
Alexei shifted on his feet. He wasn’t angry with her, Maisy registered. Something else was going on.
He had emptied the boat. Because of her. Was he taking care of her?
‘Did he speak to you? Touch you?’
Maisy shook her head. ‘I shut myself in here. I didn’t leave the door open even a crack.’
His expression altered. He took a step towards her. Why isn’t he holding me? her nerves were shrieking.
‘I don’t regret that,’ he said in a driven undertone. ‘I refuse to regret London, but I’m sorry if I made you feel manhandled.’
Manhandled? Maisy wrapped her arms around her waist again, knowing someone had to hold her. ‘It didn’t feel that way,’ she answered honestly, wondering why they were back to talking about London again, and then another wave of nausea crashed over her and with a moan she zeroed in on the toilet bowl.
‘Go away,’ she got out, before she began retching on an empty stomach. She felt Alexei’s hands on her shoulders, hovering. ‘The glamour of being your mistress,’ she mumbled, wiping her wet mouth with the back of her hand and not caring. She slumped on the floor, head and shoulders down. She didn’t want to see anything like disgust on his face.
To her astonishment, Alexei hunkered down beside her, his face close to hers, his eyes haunted, his features stark in the pallor of his strained face. In a moment of blinding clarity Maisy realised he had looked this way all day, only it was worse now. He was suffering, and all she had done all day was worry about herself, her feelings, her misery.
And now she knew his.
‘It’s all right,’ she said, smoothing her hand over his jaw instinctively. ‘I’m here.’
But it wasn’t the right thing to say. He flinched, then covered it by offering her his hand. When she didn’t take it he scooped her up as if she were a little doll. Maisy didn’t even bother to fight him. She was feeling all sorts of empty. He might as well carry her shell wherever he wanted to put it.
‘You’re not well. You need to lie down.’ It was not an instruction or even a declaration. He was just speaking aloud. He wasn’t having conversations with her any more. He hadn’t been all day. His brief fracture in the bathroom had healed over. There was no sign he even cared about her any more.
‘I want to get off this boat,’ she said in a low voice. ‘I want to go home.’
He laid her on the bed, speared a hand through his hair, looking out of the window at the smooth blue water. It was late afternoon—that lazy, warm time in early summer. He didn’t even see it. He felt cold. He’d felt cold all day. Sixtieth-parallel-cold—the kind of chill you only got in a St Petersburg winter.
Seventeenth of May. He always spent this day on this boat, surrounded by people. Well, the people had gone, and there was only Maisy, looking so pale and wounded, and struggling with him over inanities. She didn’t have a clue. He’d dragged her around all day but he hadn’t actually absorbed anything she had said or done or asked of him.
But he wasn’t going to forget how he’d felt when one of his male guests, the son of shipping magnate Aristotle Kouris, had made the mistake of telling Stiva that ‘Ranaevsky’s mistress’ was cavorting naked in one of the staterooms. The fear had torn through him. If Valery hadn’t been there he would have killed Kouris. But first he’d had to get to Maisy. Valery had called a halt to proceedings and he had bulleted down here, to find Maisy in bed all right, but not being attacked, being comforted by Ivanka, who had given him an old-fashioned look he didn’t want to analyse right now.
And
she was drunk and sick and vulnerable. And ashamed. He felt her shame like a palpable thing. It was about all that he was feeling.
He had to tell her, he realised. He had to say something. At least it might give both of them a reprieve.
‘Maisy, I’m a bit toxic at the moment. You need to give me a wide berth. Can you do that?’
She had dragged her legs off the bed, the robe had come open, and she was struggling to make herself decent. In a far off part of his brain the rueful thought occurred that despite everything she was still shy about her body, still modest … And without warning it all played out in his head. London. He had been thinking about it all afternoon.
London.
She had never invited him in. He had invaded her privacy, overridden her modesty and taken her. Snatched and grabbed and manhandled her. Just like every man who had come trudging through that one-room apartment, hitched up his mother’s dress and done his business. Then left money on the kitchen table. Money for her drink and her clothes and her drug habit. If it hadn’t been for the neighbours he would have starved.
Maisy moistened her dry lips. ‘For how long do you want me to keep away from you?’
‘Just today. Give me the rest of today.’ His voice was deep and black and lost.
She bent her head. There was nothing more to say.
Except an image of a small boy with brilliant blue eyes seared her mind’s eye and she lifted her head.
‘No,’ she said.
Maisy stood up, her eyes never leaving his.
‘No,’ she repeated.
He actually looked panicked. Cool, oh-so-sure-of-himself Alexei Ranaevsky looked panicked. She stepped towards him and he backed up as if she was armed and dangerous. Maisy stopped.
‘Ivanka told me about the orphanage.’
Something flickered behind those magnetic eyes, then closed down and Maisy found herself looking into obsidian. She swallowed, watching Alexei’s familiar features harden with every passing second, his cheekbones more pronounced, his Tartar heritage never more obvious as his eyes narrowed on her.