by Katy Moran
Saying nothing, he walked out, stepping past her, leaving her alone, and Tatyana pulled up the hood of her cloak, wishing that she had never come to this place: she had underestimated him, or overestimated the strength of any fraternal affection – risking her own reputation in this place all for nothing. The large salon was now thick with the sickly scent of opium smoke, and Tatyana felt as though the walls and the ceiling were sliding closer to her. She was almost at the door when long, strong fingers closed about her upper arm in a bruising grip, with such sudden speed that she couldn’t breathe. She dared not turn around, prolonging the moment of exposure.
‘What in the name of Christ are you doing here?’ It was Sasha himself, leaning so close that his breath was warm against her neck. A stunning combination of relief and fury shot through her, as well as a living terror at the prospect of her machinations being revealed to him. How maliciously he would smile if he knew what she was doing. And how dared he address her so? ‘Don’t look around,’ he went on, ‘just keep walking.’ He loosened his grip on her arm but placed one hand on the small of her back, his fingers spread wide. Outside in the street, he handed her up into the carriage, Jacques staring directly ahead with leaden stoicism.
Without asking, Sasha climbed up on to the box beside him, as though he had any kind of right over her, and she sat in impotent fury on the velvet upholstered cushions, remembering how Lake Ilmen had shone like a mirror on the day she had fallen in love with Sasha Volkonsky for the first time at her father’s estate, when as a fifteen-year-old orphan he had been forbidden to go on the wolf hunt for speaking out of turn to her papa, his own godfather and guardian. Herself corralled indoors on a wooden chaise spread with wolfskins, there had been nothing for Tatyana to do but ply her needle, drawing crimson thread through white linen; in less than a month, she would be married. She’d thought of Count Orlov touching the rose-patterned nightgown with his thick, bristled fingers and had swallowed a surge of nausea, tossing her embroidery to one side, unable to continue with it a moment longer, as if every stitch brought her closer to the marriage she so dreaded. Running to the window, she’d gazed with painful longing at the dark green canopy of the forest and the silver vastness of the great lake, only to see that Sasha was now swimming in the mirror-bright water. He lay on his back, zigzagging like a long-legged water beetle. Tatyana had imagined the silken feel of that water on his naked skin, and what it would be like to look up and see nothing but the sky and the forest. She could have watched him for hours – water streaming down the golden brown skin of his back, the dark reddish golden brown of his hair. Hitching up the long woollen skirts of her sarafan, she’d climbed out of the window, taking great gasps of the fresh air as though she were parched and it was water. One of the chickens pecked the grass just an arm’s length away.
‘What are you doing, Tanyushka?’
Tatyana had looked up, flushing, to see Sasha himself silhouetted against the sun, and she scrambled to her feet, facing him. He’d thrown on his shirt and breeches but his hair was wet and dark, so much so that she could not see the bronze in it; it sent runnels of lake-water down his sun-browned neck. He was a cousin of Pushkin; in summer, his skin darkened quickly.
‘Nothing.’
Sasha shrugged. ‘You climb out of windows for nothing?’
Tatyana had closed her eyes, sensing the warmth of his presence, his closeness. What would it be like when Count Orlov mounted her like a farmyard beast? She succumbed to a wave of stark terror. ‘Sasha, never mind the window, I want to climb out of my life.’
He smiled. She’d never been able to resist that. ‘Come swimming with me. All of the servants are arguing with Orlov’s coachman in the yard – no one will see.’
Standing right there in front of her, he’d untied the ribbon at the neck of her sarafan, slipping the long robe over her shoulders, right to the ground, and Tatyana had known even then that for the rest of her life she would never forget walking to the water’s edge with him, clad only in her shift, their fingers outstretched towards each other yet barely touching.
But when the kalasha drew up outside the Orlov mansion on Nevsky Prospekt, Sasha didn’t look at her at all. He just waited in domineering silence for Jacques to hand her down, and walked up the steps beside her, saying nothing until they had passed the gathered servants without seeing any of them, up the wide staircase and into the morning-parlour, even though there was no sun, and not all of the candles had been lit.
‘What in the name of God were you thinking?’ Sasha demanded, closing the door behind him with an imperious snap. ‘Believe me, you’re lucky at this moment that you did refuse my offer – if you were promised to me, you’d sorely regret this adventure by now.’
She had always known how to defuse his temper. ‘Sasha—’ She didn’t reach to touch him, but the air between them grew hot; he had never been able to resist that certain expression, that look, and indeed now he did not, but leaned into her angry kiss, letting her fingers tangle in the curls of his hair. Why had he not spoken to Papa, that summer when they were both fifteen? Why had he not begged for three or four years to prove his worth as a man? Instead she had endured marriage to Orlov, and all that had come with it.
‘I honestly fail,’ Sasha replied, stepping away, ‘to see how you can go on for much longer without entirely destroying yourself, Tatyana.’
She knew it was too late now, for both of them. It had been too late for twenty-five years. One was no longer the idealistic girl who could simply love him.
‘Oh, why don’t you go and play dice?’ she asked. ‘I’m sure you’ll find someone young and foolish enough that you haven’t ruined yet.’
Sasha turned and left without another word, and Tatyana sat down on the chaise, very straight, not moving even long after he had gone. One had standards. One had pride, if nothing else.
32
Hester sat side-saddle on one of the blossoming cherry tree’s spreading branches, leaning back against the trunk like a child playing hide-and-seek, a grown married woman of nearly twenty-five. From her vantage point in one of the walkways leading off Rotten Row, the crowd in Hyde Park was noticeably thinner than it would have been at five o’clock in the afternoon in March, at the height of the Season. Hester could only pray that Dorothea Lieven’s affair with Lord Vansittart had kept her in London. She’d waited here all the previous day, inadvertently witnessing an entire range of secret assignations, some of which were between people she had played piquet or conversed with at one of the many balls and salons endured as Crow’s wife during the Little Season the previous November. There was no sign of Dorothea in her usual haunt. There was nothing to do but wait – it was hardly as if she could seek admission to the Lievens’ house in Berkeley Square. Her belly twisted with hunger, but the single warm currant bun she’d clutched in her hands outside the pie-shop near Piccadilly in the hour after dawn was now long gone. She’d entered Hyde Park as soon as the watchmen opened the gates at seven o’clock in the morning and had concealed herself there ever since, quite unable to take the risk of being moved on as an unwanted presence, or – worse – actually recognised. At last, a slight, dark-haired figure clad in an ermine-trimmed pelisse emerged from Rotten Row on to the walkway where primroses blanketed the moss-covered roots of the cherry trees. Flakes of blossom littered the path like snowfall and, hardly daring to breathe, Hester swung one leg over the branch and dropped quietly to the ground.
‘Dorothea!’ Her own voice sounded odd, strangely ragged. It had been so long since she’d exchanged more than a few necessary words with a street vendor or with the hackney-carriage drivers who snatched the penny fare from her hands in contemptuous silence. Absorbed in her own thoughts, Dorothea didn’t look up from the drift of blossom at her feet until Hester whispered her name again, in increasing frustrated desperation.
Looking up, Dorothea stared with mingled terror and affront at being so addressed by a lone black woman in a grass-stained velvet gown and muddy worsted cloak. She stood
completely still, her lips slightly parted as understanding dawned, and Hester realised that Dorothea really was profoundly shocked, horrified even, as if she’d crawled from the earth at her feet clad in a grave-shroud. ‘Hester! My God, what are you doing? I thought you’d fled the country, or worse.’
‘Not without Crow.’ She didn’t trust Dorothea enough to even mention Morwenna and Catlin, and where they had gone. ‘Where is he, Dorothea – what happened to him after he was arrested?’
‘He’s not dead,’ Dorothea said swiftly, and hot tears slipped down Hester’s cheeks because Crow was still in the world, somewhere, with his permanently untidy hair, and his elusive smile that was so devastating when it appeared, and his habit of kissing her behind the ear before he led her in to dinner, so that she would spend the entire evening in anticipation of being alone with him. Taking one long, steadying breath, Hester put her hands up to her face, wiping away the tears. Convulsively, Dorothea grasped Hester’s dirty hands in her own.
‘Where is he?’ Hester forced herself to sound steady and reasonable. ‘If you know where he is, please tell me, I beg you.’
‘He’s gone to Russia. Castlereagh sent him to retrieve an heir for your throne, Nadezhda Kurakina – Princess Sophia’s bastard daughter with our tsar. She’s been an open secret in Petersburg for years, but even in Russia scarcely anyone knows who her mother was.’
‘Princess Sophia?’ Hester repeated, astonishment seeping through the sheer relief at knowing Crow was alive, even if he was hundreds of miles away and lost to her in a strange country. ‘But even if that’s true, the child would be illegitimate.’
Dorothea shook her head. ‘Trust me, there are ways around the girl’s birth which will appease both the Church and the general population – not least the element of desperation. Castlereagh has turned your country into a powder keg ready to explode at any moment. You need an heir to the throne – at this point, even the Church understands the necessity. And so Crow was sent to Russia to bring the girl home.’
Hester closed her eyes in relief. ‘Well, if anyone is likely to manage that, it’s my husband.’
‘Listen, we have so little time – Vansittart is due to meet me here at any moment, and God only knows you mustn’t be seen. You don’t understand,’ Dorothea said, fixing Hester with the unwavering attention of her steady, intelligent brown eyes. ‘Castlereagh sent Crow to Russia, but he doesn’t want him to succeed. Castlereagh expects Crow to fail, and has indeed taken measures to ensure that he does.’
‘What measures?’ Hester’s mouth was dry with terror. ‘Dorothea, what on earth are you talking about?’
‘Please just listen,’ Dorothea went on urgently. ‘You know as well as I that Crow was a folk hero even before Newlyn, and not just in Cornwall or even the south-west. He freed Wellington from captivity. He fought at Salisbury. Can you imagine how the common people feel about him now? Castlereagh knows quite well that if your husband returns to Britain alive, he’s powerful enough to become a threat to Castlereagh’s own position. All that rubbish about your peasants calling him the King of Cornwall is just that, rubbish – complete fustian. But there’s a very real chance Lord Lamorna might be elected to the Cabinet. Even with his reputation, he could easily be recast as a far more popular prime minister than Castlereagh ever was, even as a stabilising influence precisely because of his popularity among the general population. Possibly even with you as his wife.’
Hester stared at her, too humiliated and enraged to speak. Dorothea had articulated the quiet, persistent doubt that dogged the long watches of her own sleepless nights for so long. We should never have married. I am a burden to him, and I should never have subjected myself to this. There was no point in reminding Dorothea that she had married Crow only to save her life and her honour – long ago, it seemed. She had never wanted to live among these people.
‘Don’t look like that,’ Dorothea went on swiftly. ‘You’re an intelligent woman, Hester. You must know that this is the reason Crow no longer corresponds with Wellington – the duke was furious with him over your marriage.’
‘Let us concentrate,’ Hester said, mustering all her self-control, ‘on the task at hand.’
‘Very well,’ Dorothea said. ‘It was thought not safe to execute your husband – the public feeling would be too strong; it’s too dangerous a ploy, even for Castlereagh. Crow is to die quietly in Russia, Hester – he and this heir together.’
Hester’s head swam. Dorothea listened and whispered everywhere: she had the ear of every great man, from the Duke of Wellington to Tsar Alexander of Russia. Hester might loathe her at this moment with every fibre of her being, but she was telling the truth about the danger Crow stood in. ‘But who could even do it?’ Hester demanded. ‘You must know that assassinating my husband would be no easy matter, and nor would it be the first time that such a thing has been attempted.’
Dorothea glanced down the walkway back towards Rotten Row, as if impatient to move on. ‘I’m afraid both my husband and I heard the same thing, from an all-too-reliable source. As you know, Emily Stewart becomes very talkative after several glasses of claret. And Castlereagh discusses everything with his wife, for all that she is afraid of him. Emily knows, Hester. This is incontrovertible.’
‘I’m going to Russia,’ Hester heard herself say; it took a moment to swallow enough of her anger that she could even speak. Castlereagh had been a guest in their home and had ordered Crow’s death; on Castlereagh’s word, Hester’s own servants had been slaughtered like hoggets. On his word again, Crow’s death had been engineered with cowardly attention to detail. Dorothea, too, had accepted the hospitality of Crow’s ancient name and house and yet had made no effort to save his life, content to watch this bloody game play out as if it had been laid on for her entertainment. Hester looked at her, shaking with anger and disgust. ‘I suppose I should count myself grateful that you told me.’
‘I know you’re angry,’ Dorothea said calmly. ‘But you must understand that neither my husband or I could be seen to intervene in this affair without giving the impression we were acting for Russia. I place my own national interest at risk even by having this conversation with you – were it not for our friendship, and the high regard in which I hold you, I’d say nothing. If Crow had showed an interest in allying himself – and Cornwall – with Russia, perhaps matters would stand differently and my husband would have acted to save your husband’s life at an earlier point, and you would now be with your daughter.’
Hester let out a long, shuddering breath and turned to walk away.
‘Wait,’ Dorothea said with such a steel-edged tone that Hester stopped where she stood, still listening. ‘I haven’t told you everything you need to know, Hester. Your husband is half French. Obviously he has good reason to despise the current regime in France, but consider how much his loathing and distrust of England has now grown. Some might say there was a possibility it might match his hatred of France, and of Napoleon. I can’t be certain of this, but I’ve heard there is a risk the French might attempt to persuade Lord Lamorna to act as a double agent, this time in their own interests. After all, it wouldn’t be the first time he’s been involved in such ambiguity, would it?’
Hester froze. Of course. Dorothea Lieven knew and controlled everything, like a spider at the centre of a web. Naturally, she also knew that during the French Occupation, Crow had acted for Wellington as a double agent, liaising directly with Napoleon’s ex-wife, Joséphine Bonaparte.
Hester forced a tone of light dismissal into her voice. ‘My husband is not an easily persuadable man – you know him well enough to realise that.’
‘No,’ Dorothea said, ‘but he loves his brother very much, does he not? And he’s also an extremely dangerous man, and viewed as such by French and English alike, much as both sides will use him if they can. Make no mistake, the French high command know enough of Crow to be certain that if they have Kitto in their power, they’ll lure Lord Lamorna to his complete destruction whether he does
as they wish or not. If they don’t assassinate him themselves, associating with the French will ensure the British people come to loathe Crow as much as Castlereagh does himself. It’ll be enough for the English to publicly crucify him without risk of stirring up unrest – and that’s if Castlereagh’s assassin doesn’t reach him first. However one looks at it, your husband has walked into a trap, Hester.’
There was nothing else to be done or said. Hester inclined her head in the slightest of curtseys and walked away through the fallen cherry blossom, praying that she would be able to reach the Port of London alone and unprotected as she left Dorothea to wait for her lover.
33
A fortnight – no, more – had slipped past in a blur of grassland and pine-scented forest since the moment Nadezhda had so unceremoniously given up her secret, and still neither made a single further mention of the fact she was not Ilya Rumyantsev. Each day was nothing but flying mane in one’s face and aching limbs, and waiting for another ambush that never came. They might even yet succeed, and deliver all four hundred horses to the commissariat, except that Nadezhda shook and ached with lingering fever, and she dared not look at the deep graze ploughed below her ribcage by the musket-ball at Yarkaya Polyana. Now, as the sun sank above the plains half a day’s ride from the town of Chudovo, she sat astride the golden Turkoman mare, the herd-mother, watching wild peonies bleed streaks of crimson across the grasslands. Bees and insects hovered above the grass and a hawk circled, keening into the wind. Just a few yards away, the River Kerest snaked with green, reed-edged persistence through gathering dusk, and the horses were restless as they gathered at the riverside; sunlight glimmered off haunches and the mares patrolling the outer reaches of the herd tossed their manes below a cloud of lazy flies, all because Captain Helford had ridden out on patrol. What if he did not come back?