Lady in the Briars Page 10

  So Rebecca went to afternoon teas and balls and musicales and the theatre. Prince Nikolai and John were often in attendance at the same parties, and both sought her out. However, she had no opportunity to speak privately with John, and she noticed that he generally left early, in search, she presumed, of less respectable entertainment.

  The day came when he was to take her driving. Spring had at last invaded St Petersburg. The air was balmy, trees were greening, and fur coats and hats, if not yet laid away in camphor, were at least not in evidence.

  John brought a bunch of violets, as if he had guessed she would wear her new lilac pelisse. She pinned the sweet-scented flowers to her bodice and happily allowed him to hand her up into the carriage he had hired.

  The groom jumped up to his perch behind. As they drove off, John explained the finer points of driving a troika as opposed to a pair or four-in-hand. Rebecca was not very interested, but she enjoyed listening to his voice as he demonstrated his newly acquired expertise. Dextrously he wove his way through the bustling traffic on the Nevski Prospekt, dashed across the bridges, past the colonnades of the Kazan Cathedral, to the great square in front of the Winter Palace.

  John grinned at Rebecca’s gasp of amazement.

  “Spectacular, ain’t it?”

  She had thought herself inured to the splendour of the mansions of the nobility, but the Tsar’s Winter Palace dwarfed all the others. It seemed to stretch forever across the far side of the square, an endless vista of blue-green stucco, white pillars, rows of windows, with statues decorating the roof balustrade.

  “I have never seen anything like it,” she said lamely.

  “Over a thousand rooms, or thereabouts. I wish I could show you the inside too. Perhaps Kolya can smuggle you in.”

  “Do you think so? I shall ask him.”

  He frowned. “I did not know you were well enough acquainted to make such a request. I warned you that he is a rake, did I not?”

  “He has never been anything but perfectly proper to me, I promise you. I like him.” Rebecca tactfully changed the subject. “What is that building over there?”

  “With the golden spire? That is the Admiralty. And the golden dome is the Cathedral of St Isaac. It is still under construction, I collect. These Russians have a liking for gold, from the braid on their uniforms to the roofs of their buildings. The cathedral in the Peter-Paul Fortress is gold-roofed too. Would you care to see it? It is on an island in the Neva River, facing the palace; we might walk along the embankment since the weather is so clement.”

  It was the opportunity Rebecca had been awaiting. She eagerly agreed.

  He drove closer to the river, then left the troika in the groom’s care. There were several people strolling along the granite embankment, alone, in couples, or small groups. John and Rebecca walked a short way, then stopped to gaze at the turbulent stream, racing down to the Gulf of Finland with chunks of ice and the melted snows of a Russian winter.

  Rebecca shivered, reminded of the Lincolnshire river, little more than a brook compared to this mighty torrent, from which John had pulled her. She was sure he must remember too, but he was by far too gentlemanly to mention the incident.

  “Are you cold?” he asked. “This sunshine is deceptive.”

  “No.” The monosyllable hid a sudden rush of affection for him. He was not merely gentlemanly, he was kind. He was everything a man should be except, perhaps, responsible. Rebecca longed to ask about his work for the embassy, but she could not think how. After all, it was none of her business. “Is that the fortress,” she asked, pointing across the Neva at another gold-spired building.

  “Yes, that is it. You must have heard the noon gun? It is fired from there. The place is used as a gaol for prisoners of state.”

  “Prisoners of state?”

  “Traitors, spies, those whose views differ from the Tsar’s.”

  “I do not like it.” She shivered again. “No, I am not cold, truly, but that place is sinister—it makes me shudder. Pray let us walk farther.”

  “Of course, you fanciful creature.” He took her kid-gloved hand and tucked it under his arm, warming it against his side as they went on. “There is something I want to tell you, Rebecca.”

  She looked up at him eagerly, “Oh yes, what is it?”

  He hesitated, as if searching for words, and flushed slightly. “Perhaps you have wondered why I spend my time...why I live as if I had never left London?”

  “You do not owe me any explanation. Because you confided in me once, you must not think I should ever presume to expect...”

  “I want to explain. I do not want you to think ill of me. You see, I am collecting information for Andrew. Only Lord Cathcart knows that I am not the dissolute wastrel I appear to be.”

  “I guessed,” she said softly, casting a frightened glance at the prison on its island, so close, so threatening. “When you pretended not to understand.”

  “That was Andrew’s notion, of course. Famous, is it not? They talk quite freely in Russian in my presence. My own idea seems to be working quite well, too.”

  She smiled at the deprecating tone that could not hide his pride. “What is that?”

  “I told several of the fellows that…Dash it, I ought not to tell you.”

  “Pray go on, John. You cannot leave me in suspense.”

  “Well then, I made it plain that I will not gamble when I’m...uh, that is, when I have been drinking. So if I refuse to play cards they assume that I am inebriated, and they do not mind their tongues as they would if I were sober. Which I am, of course,” he added hastily. “Or nearly, at least.”

  “You will be careful, will you not?” she begged, half shocked and half amused. “I know that when gentlemen have been drinking, they do not always act or speak as they mean to when sober.”

  “I am not so easily befuddled, but I am careful, and you must be too. Never say a word about this, even to Teresa, though she knows. There are ears everywhere in this suspicious country.” He paused while an innocent-looking couple passed them. “By the way, how did you come to be acquainted with Count Solovyov?”

  “I was introduced to him at the embassy ball.” She wrinkled her nose. “I do not much care for him, but one cannot cut everyone one does not care for. At least, I think one should be able to but Teresa says it would not be comme il faut to refuse when he asks for a dance. Fortunately he is more interested in Teresa than in me.”

  “Good. She will know how to handle him.”

  “Why, John? Is he dangerous? But I have seen you talking with him several times, and even playing cards.”

  “It is as difficult for a gentleman as for a lady to cut an unwanted acquaintance without unpleasant consequences. More so, in fact.”

  “I daresay he would challenge you to a duel? Yes, of course he would. The Russians are so horridly bloodthirsty. Pray talk to him whenever he chooses!”

  Not until she was back home, changing for dinner, did Rebecca realize that John had not answered her question about Solovyov. Not in words, anyway. His very unwillingness to do so made her resolve to be especially cautious when Count Boris Ivanovich was about.

  She remembered the grim bulk of the Peter-Paul fortress and shuddered again. Its golden spire, shimmering in the sunshine, had pierced the sky like a brandished sword.

  Chapter 11

  Waltzing with Prince Nikolai made Rebecca feel daring. It was odd, she mused as he spun her round the floor, how different it was from the safe, protected feeling she knew in John’s arms. Oh dear, that was a shockingly intimate way of putting it! Her face growing warm, she amended her thoughts hastily—when she danced with John.

  “Penny for your thoughts, Miss Nuthall,” offered the prince teasingly. “Is fine English idiom, nyet?”

  “Indeed, sir, you have an excellent command of English.”

  “Nu, enough of this ‘sir’! My imya-otchestvo is Nikolai Mikhailovich.”

  “Alas, I cannot return the compliment. People would stare if you c
alled me Rebecca.”

  “No, in English is nothing between formality of surname and familiarity of Christian name. What was your father’s name?”

  “Ian,” she said dubiously. “It is a Scottish name.”

  “Ah, those Scots, what fighters! I remember at Waterloo—magnificent. But Ian is not very different from our Ivan.” At that moment the dance ended. The prince’s bow to his partner was a model of formal elegance. “Permit me to procure refreshment for you, Rebecca Ivanovna.”

  “How pleased Grand’mère would be to hear me named in Russian style!” Rebecca curtsied, laughing with delight. “Thank you, Nikolai Mikhailovich.”

  As he escorted her into the supper room, the prince repeated his offer of a penny for her thoughts. She had had time to think of an answer by now, and she told him how impressive she had found the Winter Palace.

  He looked at her shrewdly, as if he guessed she was prevaricating, but forebore to press her. “Is superb, is it not?” he responded. “Tsar Nikolai decreed that all buildings in St Petersburg except churches must be odin sazhen—six or seven feet—lower.”

  Despite her words to John, she was not quite bold enough to ask Nikolai Mikhailovich outright if he could show her the interior. “John says the rooms are splendid, too, and beautifully decorated,” she ventured to hint.

  He laughed, reading her mind. “Am sorry, but cannot introduce you into Winter Palace. However, I will ask my mother to do so. To Princess Volkova, all things are possible. Are other sights in St Petersburg that I can show you. You have surely strolled in Summer Garden, but I can take you inside summer palace of Tsar Peter. Perhaps you have seen Senate Square?”

  “No, I do not believe so.”

  “Then I take you. Now, may I offer lemonade or Champagne, Rebecca Ivanovna?”

  “Lemonade, if you please, Nikolai Mikhailovich.”

  As the prince turned away to call a waiter, John spoke softly in Rebecca’s ear, startling her. “Nikolai Mikhailovich? I do not like to hear you so intimate with a rake.” His voice was severe and he was frowning.

  Rebecca was annoyed. “Even if I called him Kolya, it is not your business to reprimand me.”

  “I beg your pardon, Miss Nuthall,” he said stiffly. “I presumed upon our slight relationship to offer a word of advice, not of reprimand. Pray excuse me.”

  He strode away. She saw him speak briefly to their hostess and depart from the ball, leaving her miserable.

  * * * *

  It was several days before she saw him again, and the occasion was not propitious. She was standing with the prince in Senate Square, admiring the huge bronze statue of Peter the Great on a rearing horse, trampling a serpent beneath its hooves. Nikolai Mikhailovich had told her how Tsar Peter’s obsession with building a city on the swamp by the Neva had led to the deaths of thousands of serfs brought in to construct it.

  With a passion altogether Russian, he was explaining his views on the emancipation of the serfs when John drove up and hailed them. He was scowling, and Rebecca felt a tremor of fear.

  “Excuse us a moment, Kolya,” he said with icy politeness. “I want a word with Miss Nuthall.” He drew her aside.

  She went willingly, realising that her fear was not for herself but that he and the prince might come to blows. She did not understand why John should be so antagonistic towards his friend.

  “What is it, John?” she asked, smiling at him hopefully.

  He made a visible effort to relax. “I have just received an invitation to the Tsar’s midsummer fête at Peterhof. Teresa tells me you are going. Will you allow me to escort you, Rebecca?”

  “Oh drat!” Her face fell. “Prince Nikolai asked me on the way here, and I had no good reason to refuse. Oh John, I had much rather go with you.”

  “Perhaps we can make up a party,” he said with attempted lightness. “Do you mind if I join you now?”

  She was quick with a warm assurance that that would be delightful. They went to look at Prince Lobanov-Rostovsky’s new palace with its fierce stone lions standing guard, but conversation was stilted and even Kolya seemed subdued.

  Rebecca hated to feel she had come between good friends. John had shown signs of being overprotective before, such as his efforts to shield her from Cousin Adelaide’s sharp tongue. Having rescued her from the river’s greedy grasp, he seemed to feel some sort of responsibility for her, but to quarrel with Kolya because of her was nonsensical. The prince was all that was gentlemanly towards her; if his manner was sometimes more impetuous or sentimental than an Englishman would consider proper, he was, after all, not English.

  She regretted the breach, but whatever his differences with the prince John seemed to have forgiven her. He spent that evening quietly at home with the Graylins and gave every appearance of enjoying himself.

  Evenings at home were few and far between. The days and weeks passed swiftly, the nights grew shorter, and in no time Rebecca woke to the morning of the Tsar’s fête.

  Though John had said no more about it, she hoped that he would go with them. When they boarded the boat without him, she scanned the low, marshy banks of the Gulf of Finland as if she expected to see him riding there. When they reached Peterhof, the gilded statues posed about the cascade and channel leading down to the gulf from the palace reminded her of his comment on the Russian love of gold decoration. Though the hundreds of fountains sparkled more brightly in the sun than the jewels of the throngs of Russian gentry, she scarcely saw them. She was searching the crowds for his face.

  He did not come. Kolya was amusing, the yellow-and-white palace was charming, the grounds were delightfully laid out in woods and groves and grottoes. Rebecca smiled and admired and chatted but her mind was elsewhere.

  The day was endless. Near midnight the sun set at last, but there was no true night at midsummer and the thousands of lanterns hanging from the trees and bushes glowed dimly useless in the dusk. The Russians, accustomed to their White Nights, pursued amusement with unabated vigour. Rebecca wilted.

  “I shall take you home now,” the prince suggested. “It is not proper to leave before His Majesty has retired, but if I care not for his policies why should I care for his protocol?”

  Andrew decided that he and Teresa ought to observe the rules and stay. Teresa was in two minds as to whether to entrust Rebecca to Prince Nikolai, but she was pale with fatigue and quite willing to go. The prince borrowed a calèche and driver from a fellow-officer and soon they were on their way back to the city.

  Rebecca slept most of the way, rousing only briefly when the rising sun shone on her face. It was still the small hours of the morning when they reached the Graylins’ house. The prince knocked on the door, then handed her down from the carriage as it opened.

  Behind the drowsy Russian servant, John appeared in the hallway. “So you are back at last!”

  “Fête continues. Rebecca Ivanovna was burnt to the socket so I brought her home,” the prince explained, obviously pleased with his English idiom.

  “I expected to see you there, John.”

  “The stupidest accident! I shall tell you tomorrow when you are rested.”

  Rebecca obeyed the implied suggestion and retired wearily to her chamber. If the gentlemen meant to fight there was nothing she could do about it. What incomprehensible creatures men were!

  Below-stairs the incomprehensible creatures eyed each other warily.

  “I should like to know why you take such a prodigious interest in my little cousin,” John demanded.

  Kolya shrugged. “At first, simply because she is pretty; then, because is your cousin; and now because I like her. She has a simple soul. She is natural, not hiding troubled depths like our capricious Russian women.”

  “Much you know about her. Besides, she is not my cousin, merely a distant connexion. My cousin Teresa employs her as governess.”

  “So she told me.”

  “She told you? Devil take it, what a well-plucked ‘un she has turned out to be!”

  “If it
were not for that, I might even have married her and settled down,” said Kolya seriously. “However, I am not in position to anger my father by marrying English governess. Ah John, I believe my soul is English! I prefer your women, your language, your constitution.”

  Always rendered acutely uncomfortable by the Russian propensity for discussing their souls at the slightest provocation, John went to pour them each a glass of brandy. So Kolya had considered marrying Rebecca—for her, a splendid catch indeed. Then why was he so glad that Kolya had rejected the notion?

  It must be because, despite Rebecca’s Russian grandmother, she was thoroughly English and he could not imagine her living happily anywhere but in England.

  Satisfied with this explanation, John handed Kolya his brandy. He was a good fellow after all.

  ‘You, too, are very interested in welfare of Rebecca Ivanovna,” said the prince enquiringly.

  “I do not want to see her hurt. She is my cousin, after all,” John reminded him.

  Kolya’s knowing look was lost on John, who was unaware of contradicting himself. “Of course. I mean no hurt, but perhaps you fear she will fall in love with me?”

  “Nothing of the sort! It is just that you may raise her expectations.”

  “And she will set her cap at rich Russian prince?”

  “Rebecca has by far too much delicacy of mind to do anything so vulgar. I wonder that you like her if you think her capable of it.”

  Kolya laughed. “I roast you, my friend. Let us be serious. I wish to invite Rebecca Ivanovna to visit my father’s dacha. Is pleasant in summer to take picnic and seek mushrooms in woods. Was my intention to ask Sir Andrew and Lady Graylin, but perhaps you think better I invite large party?”

  “Much better. I shall be delighted to go. You know, Kolya, you speak devilish good English, but you always forget ‘the’ and ‘a’.”

  “Is on purpose, of course,” said the prince, grinning. “Must do something to distinguish self from proper English gentleman.”

  Laughing, the friends walked home arm in arm through the bright June morning.