The Jewel of St. Petersburg

  She sat quietly by his bedside and listened to his mother cry. Countess Chernova, a delicate woman wearing too many ropes of pearls, was seated in a gilt chair on the opposite side of the bed, sobbing into a tiny lace handkerchief that struck Valentina as inadequate for the job. She could find no sympathy in her heart for the mother of the man who had sworn to kill Jens. She had come here for the sake of her own parents, and it was the last time she would play the role of fiancée. She refused to touch him. His right hand lay on the quilt, but she would rather chop it off than pick it up. This was the offending hand that had gripped the dueling pistol with such relish. His parents had announced their intention of whisking him away as soon as he was strong enough to travel to their dacha on the Black Sea, where the weather was warmer and the healing would be faster.

  “Valentina,” Stepan Chernov whispered, “come with me.”

  He tried to smile but it was beyond the strength of his drugged muscles. He had lost a large amount of blood from a stomach wound and had hung all night on the edge of survival, but this morning he had rallied and was making improvement. That was what his father, Count Chernov, had told her. Rallied. Improvement. She had shut her ears.

  “I can’t come with you.” She spoke clearly, so that there would be no mistake in his foggy brain. “My sister is ill, so I can’t leave Petersburg.” She offered one crumb of comfort to the ghost-white face on the pillows. “When you return, we will talk again,” she said, and rose to her feet. “I might even play the piano for you.” She couldn’t quite hide the faint trace of a smile.

  Thirty

  JENS HAD BAD DREAMS. IN THE DARK HOURS WHEN LIFE is stretched in some indefinable way, so that reality becomes flexible and consciousness is elusive, the wolves came. He knew he was in Fedorin’s house and that wild animals did not roam the carpeted stairs and bedrooms in the heart of Petersburg, and yet they came nevertheless. At first he could just smell them, the same feral stink that existed in the house where the woman lay in bed with her dead children.

  But when he tried to sit up to drive them away, they leapt on his chest with a snarl and sank their fangs into his flesh. He felt their tongues, hot and smooth, lapping the blood from his heart. Again and again he told himself it was a bad dream, but how could it be? He could see their red eyes. He could smell their oily breath. With an effort he punched one in the jaw and heard it grunt. That would teach it to stay away. He lay back, satisfied.

  IT WAS DAYLIGHT WHEN HE WOKE, THE KIND OF DAYLIGHT that is so white and hard it pushes between the eyelids and prizes them open. It took a moment for Jens’s battered brain to recognize where he was or to work out why the hell he was flat on his back in a strange bed, but everything slotted into place the moment he saw her. Waiting for him to come back to her.

  Valentina was seated on a chair beside the bed, a small and delicate figure between its heavily padded arms, her dark gaze fixed on him. Something about the stillness of her made him think she had been there a long time. When she saw he was awake her eyes widened with a lift of her long eyelashes, and it made the damaged flesh of his chest tighten with pleasure. Her mouth curved into a slow smile that warmed the blood in his veins.

  “How do you feel?” she asked in a gentle voice.

  Still she didn’t move. He wanted to touch her. “Like there’s an elephant stamping on my chest.”

  Her smile grew. “Don’t let Dr. Fedorin hear that. Elephants aren’t allowed upstairs.”

  When he laughed, the muscles behind his ribs seemed to explode. He started to cough, blood seeping from his mouth, and she watched him with a rigid unreadable expression, her cheeks stiff and pale. When he finished, she used a red washcloth to wipe his lips.

  “Don’t talk,” she ordered. “Don’t laugh either.”

  He lay struggling for breath, fighting off the damn elephant, and let his eyes feast on her. She was wearing a warm green-and-russet-colored dress, like a forest nymph that had crept into his room by mistake. It had a high neck with twelve tiny perfect pearl buttons at the front. Her hair looked as if she’d been out in the wind, but maybe she’d just been running her hands through it. That thought, the idea of her doing so in distress, was like a cold finger placed at the base of his throat.

  “Are you in much pain? Don’t speak. Just nod or shake your head.”

  He shook his head. Their eyes held tight to each other.

  “Good,” she said.

  “Kiss me,” he whispered.

  “Go to sleep.”

  “Kiss me.”

  He pushed his hand to the edge of the bed, but she did not move forward to take it.

  “Keep still,” she ordered. “You mustn’t tear anything inside.”

  “Kiss me or I shall leap from this bed and chase you around the room.

  “You don’t deserve a kiss.” Her face was solemn and her eyes fierce. “You almost got yourself killed.”

  With a wrench he sat up and seized her wrist, pulling her out of her chair toward the bed.

  “Don’t!” she shouted at him. “You’ll do more damage and tear the stitches.”

  He drew her close and kissed her. Her lips were soft and yielding but her dark eyes remained open, furious with him.

  “Valentina,” he whispered, “I won’t let him have you.”

  She gave a sharp shudder and nestled her head into the curve of his neck as though trying to burrow into him. “I was always yours. From the first moment I saw you. Now lie down.”

  He let her ease him back onto the pillows and wipe the trickle of blood from his chin with her cloth, but he did not release his hold on her. She sat on the bed close beside him, and for the first time he noticed a bruise the color of port wine on her cheek. He touched it with his fingertips. Touched her hair. Touched her ear and undid two of the pearl buttons.

  “What have you been doing to yourself?” he asked.

  “You mean this?” She fingered the bruise. “I slipped on ice.”

  But he knew her too well. He recalled the wolves. “Come here.”

  She leaned over him and allowed him to kiss it. The fragrance of her skin stirred something deep within him. Only then did she give him a wide teasing smile that spread to her eyes and drove away the dark shadows that haunted them. She planted a light effortless kiss on his lips before she sat up again.

  “Jens, if you keep looking at me like that ...”

  “Like what?”

  “As though you are about to eat me.”

  “I do believe you would taste good.”

  “If you don’t stop it I shall lose my professional nurse’s control and leap between the sheets with you.”

  He flicked back a corner of the quilt. “Come and ravish me.”

  For a second he saw her gaze on his face and he knew she saw more than he wanted her to, but his defenses were weak as a blasted kitten’s. Gently she tucked the quilt around him.

  “I shall entertain you,” she smiled, “with music.”

  “What?” He could feel his head floating off up to the ceiling somewhere. “Are you going to whistle?”

  “Wait and see.”

  She moved away from the bed. His eyes remained fixed on the spot where she had been sitting, where her small bottom had impressed itself, a perfectly round indentation. He rested his hand in it. It felt warm. From across the room music drifted to him, wrapping itself around the jagged chunk of pain embedded in his chest and blunting its edges. He looked up and saw her. His wood nymph was standing at the foot of the bed playing a violin, her slender arm sweeping up and down in such an exquisite curve he couldn’t take his eyes off it.

  “Sleep,” she murmured. “Sleep, my love.”

  Reluctantly he closed his eyes and immediately found himself floating in warm balmy air, high above the reach of the wolves. She played like an angel.

  AFTER THE FIRST FEW DAYS JENS SENT HER BACK TO THE hospital. Valentina wasn’t pleased.

  “I don’t need to be fussed over,” he said with ill humor. “Go back to work and
let me rest. When you’re here I can’t ...”

  “Ssh, my grumpy Viking.”

  She had placed a finger on his lips to seal the words inside because she knew they were lies. She understood, but she didn’t like it. He was sending her away because he couldn’t bear her to lose her position at St. Isabella’s. Her absence from Medsestra Gordanskaya’s instruction classes would not be tolerated, and they both knew it.

  So by day Valentina wore the starched uniform of a nurse, and each evening she returned to Dr. Fedorin’s house. She would burst into the guest bedroom and fling herself on Jens as if she were drowning. All day she’d been struggling in a sea of faces with no air to breathe, not until she entered this room and saw his green eyes waiting for her. They fixed on hers as though he too had not existed until this moment.

  “Miss me?” She kissed his mouth, tasted his lips.

  “No,” he laughed. “I slept all day in peace and quiet, and then little Anna came and read to me. The doctor’s cook made chicken soup for me.”

  Valentina gave him a frown. “You’re turning into one of those fat lazy autocrats who has women dancing attendance on him all day. I shall bring an ostrich feather to fan you with next time.”

  “I can’t think of anything better.”

  “I can,” she said with a teasing smile.

  Instantly his head lifted from the pillows, and she had to slip off the bed to avoid being caught.

  “You’re sick,” she told him.

  “And you’re my medicine. I need you.”

  He said it with a grin, but the look in his eyes stopped her heart. He meant it. Every word of it. Something dislodged inside her, a cold fear that had been there ever since that day in his office when he had declared he would rather fight the duel than run to safety with her. Slowly she turned to the bed, lay down on the quilt beside him, inhaling his warm musky scent, and held him so tight he groaned with pain.

  THE CRACKED DOOR OPENED NO MORE THAN A SLIT. “Oh, it’s you again.”

  The greeting could have been warmer; Valentina hadn’t traipsed all the way down here in the snow just for one of Varenka’s smiles.

  “Yes, it’s me.”

  The door opened farther and she followed the woman into the room. It was looking better, cleaner and brighter. The fire muttered like an old man in the corner and there was the aroma of hot food in a pot on the table. Varenka was wearing a bright headscarf.

  “So you got the job?” Valentina commented.

  “Da.”

  “I’m glad.”

  She waited for a smile. Even a thank-you. Valentina had kept her promise and recommended Varenka for the cleaning position at Madame Angelique’s fashion house, but it seemed Varenka wasn’t good at common courtesy.

  “What’s she here for?”

  The question came from the bed. Ivan was stretched out on it, naked to the waist, his trouser buttons undone, and Valentina was embarrassed to realize the timing of her visit wasn’t good.

  “Good evening, dobriy vecher, Ivan,” she said, her cheeks flushing.

  At the hospital she was used to seeing men in states of undress, even fully naked when necessary, but this was different. There was an aggression in the ripple of his muscles as he clasped his hands behind his head, something so male in the dense mat of black hair on his chest and in the small bright eyes that glared at her with dislike.

  “It’s you I’ve come to see,” she said.

  He swung his feet to the floor but remained seated on the edge of the bed, elbows on his knees, without bothering about his trouser buttons. She could see more black hair curling in the gap down there.

  “What about?” he demanded.

  “I’m looking for someone. I thought you might know him.”

  He stared at her, interested. “What’s his name?”

  “Viktor Arkin.”

  “Never heard of him.”

  But there was a hesitation, so slight it was barely there. That split second that it takes a mind to decide to lie. She studied him in silence, but he didn’t break it. Varenka did.

  “Would you like some soup?” she asked awkwardly.

  “What about you, Varenka? Do you know someone called Arkin?”

  “Nyet.”

  “You’re a bad liar.”

  “Leave her alone,” Ivan snapped as he stood up, fists clenched, and the room immediately felt smaller.

  “I’ll pay you for the information,” she offered.

  “Your sort think money is the answer to everything, don’t you?” he snarled. “You think you can buy us as easily as you did when we were serfs and you were our owners. You treated us worse than your dogs.” He took a step closer, head jutting forward. “But let me tell you, little rich bitch, things have changed. I won’t take your dirty money.”

  “You took it when it suited you.”

  “Don’t provoke him,” Varenka muttered under her breath.

  But Valentina was angry. She wasn’t one of the factory bosses who abused their workers, or one of the wealthy landowners who ill-treated their peasants. She had helped these people, scrubbed their filthy floor and cleaned out their bloody bucket. Who was this man? Rich bitch, he had called her. Rich bitch.

  She stepped right up to him and slapped his flat-nosed face, a determined blow that rocked his head back on its bull neck. But instead of knocking her to the floor, he laughed, his breath sour in her face.

  “You’ve got guts,” he admitted, “but you’ve got no brains. If you had any, you’d take all that you value in this world and leave Russia like your tail was on fire.”

  “Russia is my country as much as yours. I won’t let you steal it from me.”

  “Wait till the revolution—”

  “Shut up about your revolution! It won’t happen. You people are all talk and no action.”

  “You call the apprentices’ march no action?”

  They were shouting at each other, face to face, the air hot between them, but the mention of the apprentices silenced Valentina. She turned away.

  “Tell Viktor Arkin from me,” she said coldly, “that I won’t give up until I’ve found him. Tell him that.”

  Varenka nervously touched her hand. Her pale eyes were worried, but she gave a crisp little nod. Ivan grunted. That was all.

  Valentina headed for the door, but before she reached it she swung around and tossed a small bag of coins onto the table. They chinked together as they landed, and the sound drew both Ivan and Varenka’s gaze.

  “I want you,” Valentina said, “to buy me a gun.”

  A SUDDEN SHIFT IN THE WIND BROUGHT A FUNNEL OF warm air from the south and rain fell, drenching her. The city shed its feathery frosting of snow and icicles and instead gleamed harshly in the light of the streetlamps, the roads a glossy black once more, the roof edges hard as flint. Jens was sitting in bed propped upright against an avalanche of white pillows when she arrived, a distinct improvement on lying flat on his back. He held a towel in one hand, a hairbrush in the other. His smile of welcome warmed her wet skin.

  “Come here,” he said.

  She curled up at his side on the quilt and let him dry her, slowly and calmly, no rush, no effort, and the tension flowed from her aching limbs until her muscles grew soft and her cramped brain let go.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “I’ve been thinking. About the duel.”

  They’d barely mentioned it. Until now neither had been willing to venture into what both knew was dangerous territory. It was like black ice, invisible until your feet shoot from under you and you find yourself flat on your back in the dirt. A silence wedged itself between them, but Jens brushed it aside and told her, “The duel is over and done with, my Valentina. Think about our future, not our past.”

  “Why did he shoot you? Why not just shoot the Hussars?”

  She heard him sigh, scarcely audible, but the sorrow in it was solid and unrelenting, something that had set hard inside him.

  “They regard us all as the oppresso
rs,” he said. “Chernov leads soldiers against strikers, and I lead a tunneling project in which workmen labor twelve hours a day, sometimes even fourteen when we are behind schedule. And what are they paid for that? Less than you would spend on tea and cakes with Katya. Of course they hate us. They have every right to.”

  “I don’t agree.”

  “Of course you don’t, my love.” He ran the hairbrush through a lock of her hair, lifting it, stroking it and letting it float down onto the palm of his hand. “Let us both be thankful the man was a poor shot.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that too.”

  He leaned back against the pillows. “And what conclusion did you come to? That revolutions won’t get anywhere until they learn to shoot straight?”

  “No. But he was the same man who shot at us in the sleigh the night of the ball at Anichkov Palace.”

  “What?”

  “It’s true, Jens. I saw it clearly.”

  She felt his intake of breath and a wince of pain as he did so, but his hand continued to stroke her hair in a steady rhythm.

  “Twice he shot at me,” Jens muttered. “Twice he didn’t kill me.”

  “I know who he is.”

  “Who?”

  “Viktor Arkin. He was my father’s chauffeur. He was the one who hid the grenades in the garage.”

  “For which I was briefly arrested, I remind you.”

  “Yes.”

  “So.” He breathed carefully. “So this Arkin is determined to do harm. To you and to me.”

  “I stabbed him.”

  “You did what?”

  “With one of Dr. Fedorin’s scalpels. But it wasn’t deep enough, so he ran away.”

  “Oh, Valentina!”

  He drew her into his arms, her head on his shoulder, and tucked his quilt around her as though he could hold her safe. She could feel a quiver in his jaw where it lay against her forehead, words struggling to escape.