The Jewel of St Petersburg (53 page)

It was a summer of walks, of arms brushing together, as his wound healed. The easy casual strength of him constantly astonishing her when he lifted her over streams or encircled her waist with his arm as she bent forward to pluck a ladybird from the surface of an ornamental pond. It was a summer of ice creams and dragonflies, of exploring the city, seeing it with new eyes because they were seeing it for the first time together.

She took him to concerts of Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky at the Alexandrinsky Theatre with its tall Corinthian columns, and he took her to Nikolaievsky Station to show her the wonders of the construction of its roof span and to explain in detail the workings of the shuddering steam engines. But she looked instead at the texture of his skin, at the dappled green of his eyes. Listened to the passion in his voice as he spoke, instead of to the labored breathing of the locomotives.

There was the day they sat with their feet dangling in the river, the scent of mown grass heavy in the air and a squall of mist over the water, as he explained plans for the dredging of Neva Bay to improve the water flow in and out of the city. Sharing an apple, bite for bite.

There was the day they took Katya to the forest, where a deer fed from her hand, and then to St. Isaac’s Cathedral, where Katya cried because it was so beautiful.

There was the day he kissed her on the steps of the Hermitage.

There was the day she and her mother stood at a window, watching Jens in the garden with Katya. He was straightening a spoke on the wheel of her chair, and she rested a hand on his shoulder as he crouched. And her mother saying in her ear, “Do you realize how much your sister loves him?”

And just as the tail end of summer dipped into autumn she sat with Jens in an open carriage under the velvet darkness of a night sky, counting the stars, and she told him she was pregnant.

W
ILL YOU MARRY ME?” JENS ASKED.

Valentina’s heartbeat echoed in her ears. He took her hand and pressed it to his lips, turned it over and kissed its wrist. The moonlight sculpted his face into cold marble, but his eyes were burning with life.

“Will you do me the honor of marrying me, Valentina Ivanova?”

“Yes.”

“Tomorrow?”

She laughed. Joy tight and unyielding in her throat. “As soon as you like.”

“Now.”

She closed her eyes. When she opened them again, he was still there. Still owning her hand.

“Jens, I swore to Katya that I would never leave her.”

“Then she can come and live with us. My land deals with Davidov have done far better than I expected, so I shall buy us a splendid new house. With room for your sister as well.”

He said it so effortlessly. As if it were such a small thing.

“Thank you, my love.”

He held her face between his hands. “I love you,” he murmured, and softly touched her lips with his own.

“I won’t break,” she laughed.

He drew her to him on the carriage seat and held her so close she could barely breathe. “I will speak to your father tomorrow.”

“He won’t like it.”

“He shall have to get used to it.” His hand found her stomach and started to caress its still-flat outline.

“A boy,” she whispered. “An engineer to build a new Petersburg.”

“A girl,” he smiled. “I want a girl.”

“With my hair and your eyes.”

“And your talent for music. A girl who will fly high with courage and ambition. A girl with an agile mind. Like her mother.”

A fretful wind tugged a strand of her hair across her face, and she shivered.

“You’re cold,” he said.

“No. Excited.”

He sat up and wrapped her in the warm rug, tucking it under her knees and around her neck. “I shall drive you home at once. You mustn’t catch a chill.”

“Jens, I am not ill! I am pregnant.”

He smiled at her, a look so tender in the silvery moonlight that her heart forgot to beat. But then he snapped the reins at the horse with a determined crack, and as he did so, she saw a pulse flicker at his throat. She would have reached out to touch it had her arms not been pinned under the rug.

“Jens, it is my father’s birthday tomorrow. He has booked seats at the theater for the family and dinner at A’lours afterward.” The words tasted like soap on her tongue. “Please let him have tomorrow. Ask him the day after.”

He whirled around to look at her. “God, give me strength! Haven’t I waited for you long enough?”

“No,” she smiled at him.

“One day. No longer.”

T
HE FOLLOWING DAY A FAINT DRIZZLE BROUGHT TO AN end the stifling heat that had been gripping the city by the throat. The theater was a dazzling blaze of lights when the Ivanov family took their position in their box on the first tier, with its gilded scrollwork and plush velvet chairs. Below them in the auditorium the swell of voices rose. The elite of St. Petersburg society flashed their jewels and their gold medals at each other, competing with the glittering chandeliers for preeminence. The smiles were fixed, held in place beneath magnificent diamond tiaras that dragged many of their owners into such ferocious debt that it set grubby moneylenders rubbing their hands in anticipation. But to be seen at the opera in anything less would risk ostracism and scorn.

Valentina hated it, but the music helped. It always did. Once the lights dimmed and the opera
The Legend of Tsar Saltan
took flight, Rimski-Korsakov’s dramatic arias gave Valentina something to hold on to. She closed her eyes and let the notes come alive within her. She breathed more freely, picturing the room in Jens’s apartment. A reindeer rug soft as a kitten’s paw in front of the log stove. The touch of its fur on her naked back and Jens’s lips moving against the warm skin of her stomach, murmuring to the infant growing inside her.

“Valentina, my dear girl, how exquisite you look tonight. You outshine the chandeliers.”

Her eyes flashed open. “Captain Chernov!”

His scarlet figure was seated right beside her. With a ripple of shock she realized that it was intermission and the others, including Katya in her chair, had withdrawn to the small anteroom to drink wine, eat caviar, and greet guests who had hurried in to pay their respects. He had not changed. All that pain and suffering, yet he had not changed. Just the teeth a little sharper, the eyes a little angrier.

“You didn’t reply to my letters, Valentina.”

“I am pleased to see you well again, Captain. I didn’t know you were back in Petersburg.”

“I wrote to tell you I would be here.”

She had read none of them.

“I did write once,” she said. “To inform you that the engagement was at an end.”

He laughed, a quick bark of sound, and bared more of his teeth at her. He seized her white-gloved hand from her lap and trapped it between his own. “You young ladies like to tease.”

“No.” She tried to remove her hand, but he gripped it hard.

Slowly, never taking his eyes from her, he raised her hand and pressed the back of it against his lips. Even through the fine leather she could feel the individual bristles of his mustache.

“Let me go.”

They were leaning toward each other, almost like lovers, their faces so close she could see a pink scar on his jaw that hadn’t been there before. She lifted her other hand and grasped two of his fingers, prepared to snap them off if he didn’t release her. Below in the theater, patrons were beginning to resume their seats and the hum of voices grew louder. Something made her look, a sense that she couldn’t explain, but suddenly she knew beyond doubt that Jens was here. At the far side of the auditorium she saw him, his hair wind-blown, as though he had rushed in from the street to see her. And now, he was seeing her. With one of her hands at the lips of this captain of Hussars, the other clutching two of his fingers, her face flushed and close to Chernov’s. She moaned and leapt to her feet, at last breaking his grip on her.

“Jens!” she called, indifferent to the surprised looks from below. But he had gone. “Damn you, Stepan,” she said fiercely and ran from the box.

S
HE FOUND HIM IN THE BAR, SMOKING A CIGARETTE AND leaning against a marble column, indifferent to the crowd jostling around him.

“Jens, I didn’t know you were here.”

“Obviously.”

“Captain Chernov was just saying hello.”

“A friendly hello, it seemed.”

“No”—she rested her fingers on the sleeve of his jacket, trying to find him—“it wasn’t what it looked like. Jens, please, don’t—”

A shout came from outside. A man in a cape and top hat that glistened with raindrops stood in the doorway.

“The prime minister has been shot!” He bellowed the words again and again. “The prime minister has been shot!”

There was a collective gasp in the bar. Jens wrapped an arm around Valentina’s waist and barged a path through the throng of drinkers to the man’s side.

“What happened?”

“Bozhe moi,
my God, he was at the theater in Kiev tonight. One of those murderous revolutionaries drew a gun. He shot Stolypin in the chest. No bulletproof vest.” Tears were running down the man’s face.

“Is he dead? Tell me, man,” Jens demanded.

“They say he’s dying.”

“Stolypin dying. God help Russia!”

“Bistro!”
The man yelled into the smoke-filled room. “Get out of here.
Bistro!
Quick! They say that the revolutionaries are coming to every theater tonight. In Kiev. In Moscow. To massacre us even here in Petersb—”

He didn’t finish. The crowd lunged, panic wrenching them from their stupor, as they dropped their glasses and fled.

V
ALENTINA HAD NEVER SEEN PANIC BEFORE. NOT LIKE this. Screams and shouts, feet pounding and voices falling apart. On the pavement outside the theater, slick with rain, hats were trampled underfoot as the crowd grew desperate. Elbows pushed and barged as people rushed to their carriages, calling for the coachmen, indifferent to the shouts of police in heavy cloaks who appeared from nowhere. Valentina was buffeted by an officer as she ran, wide-eyed with dismay.

“Jens, it can’t be true, can it?”

They were scouring the curbs for her family, but umbrellas hid heads from view, and top hats all looked alike in the darkness.