The Ice King (15 page)

Tanya drank a little of the wine and looked at Vladimir over the rim of the glass. He smiled reassuringly at her, his eyes very kind and understanding, and said, "And about the gossip– well there's always some of it when anything unusual happens. People haven't anything else to talk about but other people's business. No sense in upsetting yourself about it."

“But it's so unfair to him," Tanya said, her eyes filling with tears. "He must have suffered so much from it in the past, and now I've caused a whole lot more . . .”

Vladimir absentmindedly served himself some more of the excellent food and replied,
"You
haven't caused it – he's done that himself! He chose to dance with you a trifle too often, and no one made him follow you tonight. He knows what he's doing, more or less.”

Boris joined them and said quietly, "He's jarred his side
again. I gave him a hand down to his carriage, and now he's gone home. Nothing to worry about. I've made his apologies to Prince Dmitriev." He smiled at Tanya, who was still looking troubled.

“There you are!" said Vladimir cheerfully, giving Tanya's hand an encouraging pat. "Now, put a brave face on it, m'dear. Don't let the gossips see anything.”

Tanya nodded and set about eating her supper. It all tasted like sawdust, but she got it down somehow, and drank her wine, and smiled and talked to Vladimir and Boris, and the pretty blonde Princess whom Boris conjured up from somewhere. Then she went back to the ballroom and danced and smiled for something like eternity until it was time to go home.

As soon as the carriage began to move away, Countess Maria exclaimed, "Oh, Tanya! I'm so dreadfully sorry! It wasn't until I saw you go out with Sergei Mikhailovich that I realised that I hadn't told you! I didn't know what to do! Oh, my poor dear! What happened?"

“Nothing," replied Tanya, by now in
a
state of frozen calm. "Prince Nikolai arrived and took me back to the ballroom. That's all.”

Countess Maria looked at her doubtfully, but it was too dark to see her face and she sounded very tense, so she wisely left the subject alone and talked to her husband about something else instead.

Tanya retained her self-control all the way home, upstairs to her room, during the time it took Natasha to help her out of her gown and say "Goodnight", and through all her preparations for bed. She knelt before her icon and said the Lord's Prayer, and then put her hands over her face and cried as if her heart was broken.

After a while she stopped crying and stumbled to her feet, washed her face again, put out the candles and got into bed. "What am I going to do?" she thought. "There's nothing Odd phrases she had heard came into her mind. "As long as you don't mistake flirting for anything else." "He knows what he's doing, more or less." "They call him the Ice King." "I'm no better than Sergei Mikhailovich.”

She recalled the visit to the Opera, when Boris had flirted with her, and the frown on Prince Nikolai's face . . . it must have been directed at her, for allowing Boris too much liberty, and then she heard herself saying, "But I've never been kissed, you see, and I didn't want him to be the first," moving towards Nikolai as she said it.

“He must have taken it for an invitation!" she thought. "He must think I'm
fast!”

For all her inexperience, she had read widely enough to know there was a difference between love and lust, and that a man was likely to respond to an open invitation from a woman without necessarily having any particular feeling for her. She blushed scarlet in the darkness at the realisation that she might unwittingly have given Prince Nikolai a totally misleading impression of herself.

She tried to tell herself that his opinion of her could hardly matter when in four weeks' time she would be leaving St. Petersburg for ever, and he would never see her again. But that made her feel even more miserable, for she had not counted up the amount of time left to her before, and it came as a shock to find how short it was. But still, surely for a mere four weeks she could manage to be a little cool towards him, a little less impulsive . . . She gave a despondent sniff and wiped her eyes with a corner of the sheet, then turned over and wept hopelessly into her pillow.

After a wretched night, she went down to breakfast looking pale and hollow-eyed, and Countess Maria asked anxiously if she thought she might have taken Marisha's cold. Tanya said she believed not, and after a moment's reflection, Maria caught her husband's eye in such a manner that he finished eating rather hurriedly, excused himself and went down to his study, where he puzzled the servants by sending a footman to fetch him more toast and a pot of coffee. Irina had already gone to her lessons, Marisha had remained in her room nursing her cold, and Fedor was from home, staying with friends at Gatchina, so Countess Maria and Tanya were left alone.

“Now tell me what happened," Maria said kindly but firmly, "and don't say 'nothing' again, for it looks to me as if you have been crying, and you're not the sort to do that for nothing.”

Tanya told her the story of her adventure the previous evening in a plain, straightforward fashion up to the point when Prince Sergei ran away and Prince Nikolai returned to her as she waited by the winter garden door, and then she stopped.

There was a momentary pause, and then Countess Maria said, "And then?”

Tanya looked down at her hands, which were clasped together on the edge of the table, and said in a low, hurried voice "Then he asked if I was hurt, and I said no, and somehow or other – I can't remember how – I said I'd never been kissed and I didn't want Prince Sergei to be the first, and then he kissed me, and apologised, and we walked back along the gallery."

“He did
what?"
Countess Maria interrupted.

“Kissed me," Tanya replied faintly.

“
Nikolai?
Good heavens!" Countess Maria was flabbergasted, but after a second or two she said, "Then what?"

“As we walked along the gallery, he showed me a portrait of his wife. She was very beautiful."

“Beauty isn't everything," Countess Maria said significantly. "Go on."

“I think he felt ill, then, because he'd jarred himself hitting Prince Sergei, and he asked me to go back to the ballroom by myself, so I did, and told Vladimir Sergeivich that Nikolai was unwell, and he sent Boris to help him, and . . . and that's all, really."

“I blame myself!" Maria said. "I should have warned you about Sergei Mikhailovich, and then you'd have been on your guard, and it wouldn't have happened. But Nikolai, of all people! Did you mind very much, Tanya?"

“No," Tanya replied, her eyes still firmly fixed on her interlaced fingers, then she suddenly looked Maria straight in the face and went on, "But he must have thought I was inviting him to do it, and
I
do mind that, very much!"

“I really don't know what to say," Maria sounded thoroughly puzzled. "It's so unlike Nikolai . . . Perhaps I should speak to him about it?"

“Oh, please, no!" Tanya cried. "Please don't say anything! It's not important! I'm sure it won't happen again, and in any case I'll soon be gone, and it won't matter then."

“Well, if you're sure . . ." the Countess began, but before she could say anything more Nikita entered, followed by Pyotr, who was carrying an armful of very beautiful hothouse flowers.

“Pyotr Efremovich, Prince Volkhov's man, is here, Maria Nikolaevna," Nikita said, sounding distinctly put out. "He has these flowers, and he says he's been instructed to deliver them himself.”

He cast what was meant to be a severely setting-down glare at Pyotr, who stared straight back at him with a slightly vacant look on his round face; the perfect picture of a bovine, stubborn serf with his heels dug in. Nikita turned away, defeated, and a cheerful grin flitted across Pyotr's face, and then he carefully sorted out his burden, which turned out to be four bouquets. With suitable gravity, he gave one of crimson and pink carnations to Countess Maria, and one of white roses to Tanya. The other two were round posies of various flowers and colours, and these, he said, putting them on the table, were intended for the younger ladies. He then bowed to Maria and Tanya in turn and went out. Nikita scooped up the two posies and hastened after him with an indignant cluck.

“I can only conclude that Nikolai has taken leave of his senses," Countess Maria remarked, sniffing delicately at the perfume of her flowers. "What do you think, my dear?”

Tanya had found a note among her flowers, and she picked it out and held it up silently, her eyes very large and serious.

“Oh, of course!" Maria nodded understandingly. "Send to all, and no one knows which! That's a very old trick!”

Tanya unsealed the note and read it to herself. It was quite short and said;

“My dear Tanya Ivanovna,

“You said that I am not at all like him, and I pray that you really think so, but I hardly dare hope that you may forgive me.

“Yours to command,

"N."

Maria was still waiting expectantly, but Tanya only said, "It's an apology.”

Later, in her own room, she read it again, not knowing quite what to make of it. At least it appeared to mean that Prince Nikolai blamed himself for what had happened, and didn't seem to think that she had invited him to kiss her, and that was
a
comfort. She put the note away in her pretty glove-box with the pink mouse, and wondered what she should do when she next encountered the Prince.

TANYA went with Countess Maria to pay a series of calls later that day, but they returned quite early, for they were to dine out that evening. When they entered the house, Maria went to see if Marisha showed any signs of recovering from her cold in time for her Coming-out ball, which was to take place on Friday, in three days' time, and Tanya went to the sitting-room, rang for tea, and stood at the window sipping it and looking out into the early darkness at the snowflakes drifting down to carpet the lamplit street below.

A carriage drew up outside, and presently Nikita ushered in Boris, who made his bow, enquired after Marisha, accepted an offer of tea, seated himself at Tanya's invitation, and after a few preliminary remarks of a generally social nature, said hesitantly, "Tanya Ivanovna, may I ask your advice?"

“If you think it would be of any value," Tanya replied.

Boris scratched the end of his nose with his thumbnail, tugged the lobe of his ear, then set down his glass on the table at his elbow and began fairly confidently. "Let me put a hypothetical case. Say that a man— a gentleman — engages in a little light flirtation with a lady — nothing serious, you understand — just an amusement. And then he discovers that one of his friends — a fine man, someone he very much admires and likes, a man who has always been particularly kind and helpful to him . . ." He floundered to a halt, having lost the thread of his sentence.

“He discovers that his admirable friend . . ." Tanya prompted helpfully.

“Yes." Boris was about to begin again when he changed his mind and said in a serious and straightforward way, "Look here, Tanya Ivanovna. I think I may be getting in the way of someone else, so do you mind if I stop flirting with you?"

“Not at all," Tanya replied. "I've enjoyed it, and you've been most kind, but I must admit that I think it may have worried Marisha a little." She wondered to whom precisely he had referred, and wished she dare ask him. He had two close friends, and it could have been either.

“But she knows I . . ." Boris began, then stopped and looked thoughtful. "Perhaps she doesn't!"

“Have you ever actually told her?"

“No," Boris admitted. "I thought it wouldn't be proper until she's Out, but I thought — well, it's understood .. . Maybe I'd better!”

He had to leave a few minutes after, having just called in on his way home from the Palace, but Tanya saw him again a short time later when she went with Count Alexei and Countess Maria to dine with their friends the Tutaevs, it being Count Tutaev's name-day.

Vladimir was also there, and while the guests were standing or sitting about and talking before dinner in their host's fine double-cube drawing-room he wandered over to Tanya and said quietly, "How are you this evening?"

“Recovered now, thank you," she replied, smiling up at him. "You were very kind and helpful last night. I don't know what I should have done without you.”

He looked at her in his usual rather expressionless fashion and smoothed his moustache with one finger. "Nothing at all," he muttered briefly. "Do anything I can to help.”

There was a slightly embarrassed pause, and Tanya wondered if Boris had been referring to Vladimir earlier that evening, and then the Colonel's face broke into a more lively expression which was almost a smile and he said, "I've something to tell you! The Regiment's going to be on parade! The week after next! Will you come and watch?"

“I'd like to very much," Tanya replied with enthusiasm, having heard a great deal in her life about military parades, but never having had the opportunity to see one. "Where will it be?"

“Either in Palace Square or on the Field of Mars by the Summer Garden. The Emperor reviews a few regiments every now and again, and we're to be in the next batch. Two weeks today."