***
On the walk back, he asked her about her childhood. Inga told him about how Yehvah had taken her in as a young child.
“The work can be difficult,” she said, “but I have a much better life than I would have had on the street.”
“What happened to your parents?”
She hesitated. “I’m not entirely sure.”
Sensing she did not want to talk it, he did not press her.
As they neared the palace, Inga stopped beside the stables and bent to finger some colorful wildflowers that had sprung up near the door.
“The first flowers of spring.”
He crouched down beside her to look at them.
“Natalya would have loved these. She always waited for the first wildflowers to show.”
“Who’s Natalya?”
“She’s my best friend. Another maid.”
“Which one?”
Inga shook her head. “You haven’t met her. We grew up here under Yehvah’s care. Natalya recently married and moved to a Boyar estate to live with her husband.”
“Do you miss her?”
She nodded. “Terribly, at times. But she’s happy.”
He smiled at her. They both straightened and walked toward the kitchens again.
“What about you, my lord? Where did your family go after you left Moscow?”
“France, for a while. Eventually, back to England where my mother’s family is. I was raised in the English countryside.”
“And what is the English countryside like?” They'd reached the kitchens. She turned to ask the question thirty feet from the door.
“It’s beautiful. It’s . . . warmer than here. Less bleak, I think.”
Inga nodded. “Yes, Russia can be a bleak place in winter, but it can be beautiful as well. Especially in the spring, when the warmth and the green return. Have you seen Siberia?”
He arched an eyebrow, surprised at the sudden change of subject. “I came down from the north to get here, through Siberia.”
“And did you not think it beautiful?”
He stared at her, wondering if she spoke from experience.
“Have you been to Siberia, Inga?”
She studied her feet, looking abashed. “No, I have never left Moscow. I have heard stories and seen drawings.”
He thought about how to answer her question. “Yes. Siberia is beautiful in its way. It’s a raw, barbaric beauty. I suppose it is beauty, for that.”
“Everything has its own kind of beauty, my lord Taras, if one knows how to look.”
“I . . . drew some pictures. Would you like to see them sometime?”
“Inga!” Yehvah’s voice cracked Inga’s name out like a whip. She stood in the doorway to the kitchen, her eyes narrowed to thin slits. Inga jumped. “Why are you dallying? Supper is waiting for those herbs.”
“Yes, Yehvah.” Inga gave Taras an apologetic look and hurried toward Yehvah, disappearing through the door to the kitchens. Yehvah gazed at Taras with worried eyes before giving him a scant curtsy and disappearing herself.
Taras turned, surveying his surroundings and thinking about what Inga had said about Russian beauty.