“I did. And does her question mean that she doesn’t like him?”
“It means that he is deliberately setting out to turn her head. I’m sorry, Mother, it’s not on.”
“What’s not on?”
Alexandra glared at her. She was well aware that her seventy-four-year-old mother’s brain was as sharp as a new pin, and that she would find herself on the defensive if she wasn’t careful. “Any idea of marriage between Alexei and Priscilla. Don’t tell me he hasn’t got that in mind. Quite apart from the relationship angle, he’s old enough virtually to be her grandfather, they come from different backgrounds and cultures, and he’s a monster!”
“Oh, really, Alix.”
“Listen to me, Mother. He’s a Russian, right?”
“Wrong. Both his father and mother were English. Alexei has not a drop of Russian blood in his veins.”
“You have to concede that he was brought up as a Russian. And a prince. Right?”
“I will accept that,” Anna said.
“Well, we have lots of evidence of his ideas on things. Wife steps out of line, in his eyes, and she is condemned on flimsy evidence and out she goes.”
“I think there was more to the divorce than you really understand. Or,” Anna added, equally well aware that Alexandra numbered quite a few Jews amongst her friends in Boston, “than I am prepared to discuss.”
Alexandra ignored the diversion. “Russian husbands beat their wives, right? If you think I am going to sacrifice Priscilla to some wife-beating monster...”
“I wish you wouldn’t keep using that word, Alix. To my knowledge, Alexei has never raised his hand to any woman in his life. Least of all his wife. He is too much of a gentleman.”
“You mean you would go along with the idea?” Alexandra was aghast.
“I think it might work out very well. Colin and Anna are really fond of Priscilla. She would be just what they need as a stepmother.”
“For God’s sake, she’s only old enough to be their sister!”
“Quite. That means she’ll be able to look at life with their eyes.”
“I think you’re crazy. And immoral. Well...” Alexandra flushed.
“Say it,” Anna requested. “Everyone knows I am immoral, do they not? Or is not amoral the word?”
“He’s her uncle, for God’s sake!”
“Her stepuncle,” Anna corrected. “Those things do not matter as much in Russia as they do in Boston. It is the blood that matters. Alexei married the wrong blood, first time around. Now he has the opportunity to correct that mistake.”
“Well, Mother, I am sorry to disagree with you so strongly. I want you to understand that there is no way I will ever agree to a marriage between Priscilla and Alexei. So, in all the circumstances, I think we will leave as soon as the necessary shipping passages can be arranged.”
“I do wish you would reconsider,” Anna said, mildly. “I do not intend to do that,” Alexandra said.
Little flecks of snow flicked away from the horses’ hooves as Alexei and Priscilla cantered up the slope above Bolugayen House. The snow was hard-packed still, although as March entered its second half, the temperature at noon was beginning to edge above freezing, and the grey skies were beginning to break and allow the sun to peep through, from time to time.
“Would you believe,” Alexei asked, “that in another six weeks this will all be exposed earth, and a month after that, nothing but green for as far as the eye can see?”
“I wish I could be here then,” Priscilla said.
Alexei guided them towards a little copse, set in a dip, and private to the world. As always when he rode his estate, he was accompanied by two grooms, but they kept a discreet distance, and now they remained on the far side of the rise, where they could neither see nor be seen from the copse — but from where they could still prevent their master from being interrupted. Today the children had been left behind. “But your mother will not let you,” Alexei remarked.
“She says we go, so we go. She’s all excited. She has tickets on this new liner, the greatest ship in the world.”
“The Titanic. I have read of her. Won’t your Uncle Charles be annoyed that you are sailing in a ship belonging to another line?”
“I guess. But that won’t stop Mom.”
Alexei drew rein, and dismounted, then held up his hands for her. “We are stopping for a purpose?” she asked.
“Just to stretch our legs.”
She grinned, and allowed herself to be lifted from the side-saddle. Her boots crunched on the snow as the skirts of her habit settled about her ankles. “You know what I like about Russia, Uncle Alexei? It’s the way you don’t use foolish words to cover what you want to say. In Boston, no one ever refers to a lady’s legs.”
“I think you mean the Boston society to which you belong,” Alexei suggested. “Not to the city as a whole. But surely it is sometimes necessary to do that? Speak of legs, I mean. How would they put it?”
“Well...limbs, I guess.”
He tethered their horses and walked beneath the trees. “This is one of my favourite places on the estate.”
“Romantic, huh?”
“Why, yes, it is romantic.” He turned to face her. “I would like you to tell me, with absolute honesty, what you think of Bolugayen.”
“Why, it’s just out of this world, Uncle Alexei.” She hesitated.
“Go on. I asked for absolute honesty.”
“It’s out of this world,” she said again. “If your name happens to be Bolugayevski, even if removed a couple of times.”
“You don’t think my people are happy?”
“Oh, sure, they give the impression of being happy. Maybe they are. But...as you just said, they’re your people, not their own.”
“Hm. Do all American girls of your tender years think as deeply as you do?”
“Not many American girls have ever seen a place like Bolugayen, Uncle Alexei. I guess most of them have no idea places like this exist. And when they do read of it, they automatically reject it. This kind of master/servant business isn’t really our idea of what life should be about.”
“Does it offend you?”
“In the abstract, maybe it does. In the concrete, like I said, I’m a Bolugayevska. Even if a couple of times removed.”
He took her hat from her head, and her breathing quickened. “I should be the happiest man on earth if you were to remove those couple of times.” The bodice of her habit was rising and falling even more quickly. “Does that idea offend you?” he asked.
“Gosh! That’s kind of sudden, Uncle Alexei.”
“Is it? You’re a very intelligent girl, Priscilla. You know what’s going on about you.”
“Yes, but...well, I knew you found me attractive. But you never, well...”
“It would not have been polite, to attempt to take advantage of you while you are a guest in my house. I would not have raised the matter now had you not been about to leave.”
“You realise I can’t stay. Not if Mom says we’re going.” Priscilla gave a quick frown. “You haven’t spoken to her?”
“No. I understand that I am going about this quite the wrong way. But it is necessary. I mean, I must know whether you could consider the possibility, before I take it any further.”
“What exactly are you asking me, Uncle Alexei?”
He smiled. “First of all, I would ask you to drop the ‘uncle’. But what I am really asking you is to marry me. I know there are many objections to a marriage between us. Or there could be, if one sought them out. I am folly-seven years old, you are seventeen.”
“That’s not important,” she said, perhaps without meaning to, for colour flared in her cheeks.
“That you should hold such an opinion pleases me greatly,” he said. “I am also a representative of everything you say you and your friends instinctively reject, thus I am asking you to reject them, or at least their point of view, as you will have to if you become the Princess Bolugayevska.”
“The Princess Bolugayevska,” she muttered, then smiled. “You are a rogue, Uncle Alexei. Oops, Alexei. You are twisting my head right off my shoulders.”
“Is there not a saying that all is fair in love and war?”
“I guess that’s true.” She hadn’t said no. He could hardly believe it. She was standing there, gazing at him, waiting... “Do you think we could do something,” she suggested. “My feet are freezing.”
“Have you ever been kissed?”
“Well of course I have.” She gave that unforgettable arch of her eyebrows. “Does that rule me out?” He took her in his arms and kissed her mouth, felt her body against him, wanted to hug her and hug her and hug her. Had ever a man known such happiness, he wondered. She moved her face back to catch her breath. “Mom will never allow it.”
“Do you wish it, Priscilla?” His hands drifted gently up and down her back.
“Oh, gee,” she said. “I don’t know. I...do you love me, Alexei? Or just, well...”
“If I did. not wish to possess your body, Priscilla, I could not love you in any other way. But I do love you. I think you are everything I have ever dreamed of.” He kissed her again. “And I have been dreaming a very long time. I understand that you can hardly love me. But if it might be possible that you would grow to do so...”
She kissed him herself. “It’s all academic. Mom will never agree.”
Had she said yes or not? He could not be sure. But she had definitely not said no. On the other hand, she was absolutely right in her judgement. “I am afraid the idea simply cannot be entertained, Alexei,” Alexandra said. Alexei looked at Anna; Priscilla was not present. “I have already explained this to my mother,” Alexandra said.
“I will make your daughter a good husband. And she will make a brilliant Princess Bolugayevska,” Alexei said, keeping his emotions carefully under control. “I realise that there is a considerable difference in our ages, but she does not seem to find this a difficulty.”
“May I take your points in order?” Alexandra asked. “I am sure you will make Priscilla a good husband, according to your understanding of what makes a good husband. That is someone who requires absolute obedience, not to mention subservience, from his wife. That is slavery. I am sure Priscilla will make a brilliant princess, but I do not happen to believe in people being princes and princesses, at the expense of others. And however much you may have dazzled her, Priscilla also does not believe in that order of things, deep down. And lastly, as you say, you are old enough to be her father with a good deal to spare. I would say, looking at you, Alexei, that you are in very good health and only just past the prime of life. But in twenty years time you will be an old man, and Priscilla will just have reached her prime. I cannot condemn my daughter to living the second half of her life tied to a corpse.”
Alexei stared at her with his mouth open; he had never been spoken to like that in his life before. Then he looked at Anna again. “I should remind you,” Alexandra went on, “that as Priscilla is only seventeen, she can undertake no marriage without my consent. I am sure you are gentleman enough not to attempt to force yourself upon her, but I think it would be best if we were to leave Bolugayen tomorrow morning. We can stay in an hotel in Sevastopol until our ship is ready to sail.” Now at last she looked at her mother. “I am sorry, Mother. But I should prefer not to discuss this matter further.”
Alexei sat in his study long after the servants had gone to bed, dismissing Gleb when the old butler would have stayed up with him. Never had he been subject to such mixed emotions.
From birth he had accepted that, as the half-brother to the heir to Bolugayen, his life would be lived in a minor key: the army, and hopefully a general command at the end of it. That limited ambition had been shattered by the family’s disgrace following Patricia’s arrest for treason, and he had resigned himself to being nothing more than an estate manager. Then had come Peter’s death in Port Arthur, and his unforeseen elevation to Prince Bolugayevski, with all the privileges that went with the rank restored. Since then he had lived an extraordinary life. Yet always in the background there had lurked the knowledge that he was compromised, through his marriage to a Jew.
He had been desperately in love with Sonia. He suspected he still was. One of the reasons he had cast her out so completely was that he did not know how he would react were she ever to walk through his front door. But it had had to be done, whether she was truly guilty or not, because only the family mattered. He was at one with Aunt Anna on that. However unintentionally, Sonia had compromised the family even more deeply than through her racial background. She had had to be repudiated, and be seen to be repudiated. That done, he had been encouraged to believe that he was again climbing the highlands of royal approval. All he needed was the domestic bliss and social solidity to accompany it. And he had found it, miraculously. It had never occurred to him that a cousin of his would not jump for joy at the thought of her daughter becoming Princess Bolugayevska. There was not a mother in the world could resist such an offer, surely. Save for Alexandra Robbins.
And now...easy to say there were many other beautiful and desirable young women, Russian young women, just waiting to be invited to rule Bolugayen beside him. That it was merely a matter of putting Priscilla out of his mind. But he did not want to do that. She filled his mind more than any woman had done since he had first seen Sonia Cohen, freezing and frostbitten, huddling in his cellar, seeking sanctuary. And with Priscilla there would be no shadow lurking in the background. But it was not to be. Not to...he raised his head as the study door opened, because there she was.
She wore a robe over her nightdress, and was silhouetted against the electric light that still burned in the hall. She stood still for several seconds, then came into the room, softly closing the door behind her. “I wanted to say how sorry I am.”
And how much I wish to be your wife, she thought. She dared not analyse her emotions, because images of the power he possessed, and would transmit to her, together with the enormous wealth that would be hers as Princess of Bolugayen, kept intruding on his attractiveness as a man, which far transcended his mere good looks and perfect bearing. He was so gentle, so very nice, so very much everything she had ever dreamed of in a man.
But those were not things a Boston schoolgirl could say to a Russian prince.
He got up, went round the desk, and she was in his arms. She kissed him with a desperate urgency, and he responded, while his hands roamed over the shoulders and back, down to her buttocks, hardly protected by the thin material, round in front to caress her surprisingly large breasts, even less protected, nipples hard darts of flesh against his hands. She gave a little shiver, and he released her. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me.”
“It came over me too,” she said, and scooped the skirt of her nightgown and robe from around her ankles, lifted them to her thighs. “If you were to take me, now,” she said, “Mom couldn’t do anything about it.”
He could not stop himself looking down. Had even Sonia ever had more perfectly shaped legs, so white they all but glowed in the light. And above... “You are too much of a gentleman to attempt to take advantage of my daughter,” Alexandra had said.
“That would be to do you a great wrong,” he told her.
She bit her lip, and let the skirts fall again. “Now you think I’m common.”
“I think you are the most wonderful woman in the world.” He held her shoulders. “Will you marry me?”
“I can’t.”
“Because you are seventeen, and your mother will not give you permission. When is your birthday?”
“6 June.”
“Well, then, on 6 June 1915, your mother will not be able to stop you marrying whoever you chose. Am I not right?”
“Three years,” she muttered.
“Three years and three months, actually. I know, a very long time when one is seventeen. I am not asking you to wait for me, Priscilla. I am saying that I will wait for you, for those three years and
three months. If you do not come to me then, I shall look elsewhere for my wife. Until then, I shall hope.”
“Oh, I’ll be here,” she said. “Do please wait.”
Chapter Five - The Bride
“There is a gentleman to see you, ma’am.” Antonina hovered in the doorway of Sonia’s drawing room. She was a tall, somewhat raw-boned young woman, who was still finding the position of lady’s maid to a divorced princess both exciting and embarrassing. Sonia took the card, and felt a sudden quickening of her heartbeat. But obviously this had to happen. In the couple of months since she had left Alexei she had kept a very low profile. She had bought this small house in a quiet suburb of St Petersburg and considered herself fortunate that Nathalie had not sought her out.
“I will receive Captain Korsakov,” she said, and stood up.
Korsakov stood in the doorway and bowed; it was snowing outside and although he had given his cap and cloak to Antonina and carefully wiped his boots, he looked, and smelt, damp. “Your Highness.”
“I am no longer entitled to that form of address, Captain.”
“And it is my fault.” He came across the room, and took her hands to kiss each in turn. “I am devastated.”
“There were other factors involved.” Sonia gazed at him as he straightened. “Or do you know of them also?”
“I only know that I am innocent, save of adoring you. As you are innocent, of me. And yet, I am the cause of all this catastrophe.”
“I would not blame yourself,” Sonia said. “Will you sit down? Champagne?” He sat down, but raised his eyebrows. “Old habits die hard,” she explained with a wry smile. “My husband was good enough to make me a wealthy woman.” She rang the bell.
“That is good news.” He waited for Antonina to serve and raised his glass. “I am so pleased that things have worked out.”
“I was not aware that things have actually worked out,” Sonia remarked. “But I am an optimist.”
“You do not mind my calling?”
“Of course not. It is good to see you again.” She finished her champagne. “Was there something you wished to say to me?”
The Red Tide Page 11
