The Sparrow in Hiding

by J. Kathleen Cheney

  Kolya fell in step next to her as Irina walked briskly down the path through the neatly trimmed hedges, gravel crunching under her slippers. She glanced down and saw her shadow walking alone, Kolya’s missing as always. A breeze sent a chill across her half-bared shoulders.

  Devil take it! She’d left her shawl behind. Well she certainly wasn’t going to go back and get it now.

  “Who is she?” she asked Kolya instead, more snap in her tone than should be there.

  “She didn’t give me her name,” he said, one dark brow arching upward. “She insisted on speaking to Illarion alone, and when she was done, he asked me to escort her to the aviary to meet with Evgeny Petrovich.”

  Irina licked her dry lips and walked on toward the Big House. “I wonder if she’s his wife. Or his intended wife.”

  Kolya chuckled. “You are taken with him. Are you jealous?”

  Her cheeks felt warm again. Irina paused on the pathway to give him her best baleful glare. It wasn’t much of a glare, though, and Kolya never took her snits seriously. “I . . .”

  Kolya crossed his arms over his chest, playing the unsuitable part of the stern elder brother.

  “I don’t think any woman would compare to her,” she managed. The woman with Evgeny had the kind of beauty that turned heads in ballrooms, the kind that made men fall madly in love with her on first sight. Irina had a form of placid loveliness, but she knew better than to consider herself beautiful.

  “You must be jealous, darling Irinka,” Kolya said, “or you would have noticed that the two of them have the same hair. If Evgeny were not tanned from working in the sun, he might have that same ivory skin. I wonder instead if she’s his cousin . . . or a sister.”

  That hadn’t occurred to her. Irina clutched that explanation to her bosom as if it were air to breathe, the tight grip about her heart easing.

  Devil take it!

  Kolya was right. She’d only been here a week, and she was smitten with the Sparrow.

  Honestly, does any man deserve to be that handsome?

  Had Evgeny’s brothers all been as handsome as he was? Five brothers—no, there would have been six altogether—like that would surely have caused a terrible stir in St. Petersburg had they ever appeared at a ball. Irina stood there on the steps, smiling foolishly at the mental image of Evgeny Vorobyov wearing an embroidered tailcoat and fine breeches with slippers and silk stockings.

  But it was more than his pretty face. The mystery he posed enticed Irina almost as much as those sculpted lips. He spoke like a gentleman. He acted like one. He seemed kind and temperate as well, qualities far more important to her than wealth or social stature. She lifted her chin and regarded Kolya. “We don’t even know who he is.”

  “He’s a worker here,” Kolya told her. “But of course, that makes him beneath your notice, so I must have imagined your partiality.”

  She glared at him. Kolya knew she didn’t care about such things. Then again, hadn’t she been telling herself that Evgeny was a gentleman, that he must be of their social class? That made her a hypocrite. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I am curious. I asked Varvara to see what the women in the village said of him.”

  “They say he has a curse on him,” Kolya confided, casting a quick glance back at the aviary, “because of his eyes. He’s not permitted to enter the church.” Varvara had told her that already, so Irina merely nodded. Kolya set a hand under her elbow and began drawing her into the Big House. “Ilari promised not to reveal his identity, so he won’t tell me who this Evgeny actually is. Has he told you anything?”

  Irina stepped over the threshold, glad to be out of the brisk breeze. “Illarion?”

  Kolya pointed her upstairs in the direction of his office. “No, silly one, Evgeny. Has he told you anything about himself?”

  Irina lifted her skirt in one hand and headed up the stairs. How should she answer that? Would it be betraying a confidence? She mulled that over while Kolya unlocked the office door and then followed him inside. Kolya sat at his desk, drew out a sheet of stationary, lifted his pen, and gazed up at her expectantly.

  “He had four brothers who died at Borodino,” she began.

  

  Evgeny watched Lizaveta pace the small open floor of the aviary, her pale skirts swishing across the stone floor. His eyes always told him the nature of others, and Lizaveta was, to his cursed eyes, stone. Her delicate features fooled most people, but he knew better. She was stronger than anyone he’d ever met.

  “The child was a girl,” she told him. “Grigori is heartbroken and won’t even look at the baby, so my nursemaid is caring for her.”

  Despite her youthful appearance, at twenty-five Lizaveta had already borne five healthy children of her own. She had that glow in her skin again that made Evgeny suspect another niece or nephew would be born at Christmastide, although he would never say that aloud. “Will you bear him my condolences?”

  Unshed tears glinted in Lizaveta’s eyes. “I don’t think he’ll listen, Evgeny. He’s despondent. He won’t leave his apartments or allow anyone in. He thinks Father’s wife is responsible, somehow, for Nadya’s death. Not that I blame him for believing that. He has ample cause.”

  Evgeny sighed. His eldest brother had not been the same since the curse. Much of that came from the daily stress of living with their father’s demands and expectations and dwelling under the same roof as the woman who had cursed him. The one thing that had made Grigori’s situation bearable was his wife Nadya, who’d waited faithfully for Grigori all the years of the curse. Now she had died giving birth to their first child. “What can I do?”

  “Perhaps if you wrote to him,” Lizaveta said, “and told him you forgive him. Let him know you are safe here. I promise I will destroy it afterward. Father won’t see it.”

  Evgeny stared down at his single hand, calloused now and covered with myriad inadvertent scratches from birds’ talons. He had dirt under his nails from working in one of the planters that morning. He was fortunate his right hand was the one he still had, more skilled than his missing left. Even so, he had hoped that his left arm could be restored. Lizaveta had been searching for a way to remove the remainder of the curse. His father had ended any chance of that, dooming him to this life of compensation and frustration.

  When Grigori had learned of their father’s intentions to have Evgeny’s arm cut away, he chose not to warn Evgeny. Grigori had said a dozen times he regretted that decision. And two years ago, Grigori had come to Evgeny and warned him of their father’s new plan, allowing him to escape before their father could do worse.

  For Evgeny the two years since that escape had simply been about survival. He wasn’t the sort of man who would put a period to his existence, even in protest. He was determined to endure, no matter how low he had to stoop. In his time in St. Petersburg he’d gone days without food, took work not fit for the lowest peasant, and learned to sleep in doorways and wrap his feet and hand in rags. When Illarion had stumbled over him last winter, Evgeny was shocked the man had recognized him. But Illarion gave him a place and work, asking no more than a single favor in return. Evgeny knew he was fortunate in his friends, if not all of his family.

  He sighed again. “Very well, I’ll write to Grigori. Can you wait?”

  Lizaveta nodded quickly. He led her back to the small apartment he called home now, the chamber next to the aviary’s workroom. She gave him an anguished look when she saw his narrow bed and single lamp, but sat dutifully as if she knew that pointing out the impoverishment of his current situation would be redundant. She had no idea about the months he’d spent on the streets, and he intended for her never to find out. This was vastly better. The bedding was clean, the aviary’s furnace kept this room warm in the winter, and his clothes weren’t crawling with lice and fleas.

  He sat down at his small table and took out a sheet of brown paper to compose a note to Grigori. A weight atop the paper held it in place while he wrote. His words of forgiveness weren’t eloquent, but Grigor
i preferred bluntness anyway, so Evgeny concentrated on getting the words on paper. He set the pen back in the well and then blew on the page to dry the ink.

  “It smells of herbs in here,” Lizaveta said softly while they waited.

  “Rosemary and thyme,” he told her. “It helps keep the bugs away. There’s an old grandmother in the village who mixes an infusion for me.”

  “How clever,” Lizaveta said dully. Tears spilled down her cheeks again.

  The curse had left him with unnatural eyes and unable to cry. He hadn’t cried when his father had his arm cut off. He hadn’t cried when he’d learned of his brothers’ deaths. There were simply no more tears in him. “Don’t cry, dearest,” he told her. “It makes me jealous.”

  That brought forth a laugh, at least. Lizaveta dug a lace-edged handkerchief out of her small handbag and wiped her cheeks. “Oh, Evgeny, I wish I could do more for you.”

  He folded up the paper and handed it to her. “You sacrificed more than any of us could ever have asked. Don’t worry for me. I am at peace here. I am safe, so long as Father doesn’t learn where I am.”

  “As long as she doesn’t.” Lizaveta tucked the letter into her bag, rose, and laid one hand against his cheek. “I must hurry. If I don’t reach St. Petersburg tonight, it will raise questions.”

  He escorted her toward the front of the aviary. “How far did you walk?”

  “From the village,” she said. “And don’t think to walk me back. They believe I came to see Illarion Razumov, not you.”

  So he let her leave the aviary on her own, trusting that she could find her way. He didn’t doubt it. She was the toughest of all of them.

  Chapter 3

  * * *

  IRINA DIDN’T SEE Evgeny again that day, but when she went to her room to change for dinner, she found her shawl draped over the foot of her bed. He must have brought it up to the Big House. She didn’t see him for days after that either, as if the man was avoiding her. She wouldn’t blame him if he was. She’d asked a number of personal questions that she’d had no business asking.

  At the base of the laurel tree, Irina tucked her feet up and wrapped her arms about her knees. Her gown of blue muslin had twigs and leaves on the hem, and Varvara would natter at her about it later, but for now Irina would do as she wished. She needed to have some simpler gowns made up if she stayed here, especially for the winter. She had little warm enough for winter in the country. But she’d made up her mind. She was staying behind here when Father and Illarion returned to St. Petersburg in fall.

  She told her mother that, and the tree’s leaves rattled in response. Irina knew her mother was pleased, even if she couldn’t make out the words. A leaf drifted down, brushing her cheek on its path to the ground.

  Now if only she could stiffen her backbone and convince her father.

  The sharp-clipped noise of a pheasant calling sounded nearby in the woods. Irina slowly reached for her sketchbook. The farm kept only geese and ducks and chickens—no pheasants—so she hadn’t yet had the chance to sketch one. Perhaps she would be lucky, and a male might wander into her view. She would have to stay very still, though, not to frighten the timid creature. But when the calling bird came into view on the pathway, it wasn’t what she expected.

  Instead, Evgeny Vorobyov stepped softly along the path, the call coming from his own lips. He hadn’t seen her, his eyes on the shadows beneath the trees. Irina stared at him in fascination. She’d followed with the hunt enough times to recognize the call of the pheasant, but she’d never before heard it imitated so well.

  And then Irina saw that a pheasant hen followed in his footsteps, not at all skittish, as if it didn’t fear the human before it.

  Eventually Evgeny’s dark eyes swept in her direction. She saw a flare of surprise cross his features. He hadn’t expected to find her out here. She was usually sketching in the aviary this time of day. He straightened and bowed his head to her where she sat. “Irina Alexeievna. I apologize for interrupting your privacy.”

  She felt at a disadvantage, painfully aware of those stray leaves on her skirts now. “Evgeny Petrovich, are you calling the pheasants? I have never heard anyone mimic one so well.” She glanced down at the hen now pecking placidly at his feet. “How did you learn that?”

  “Patience,” he said. “Practice.”

  It wasn’t much of an answer, uninviting of continued conversation. Irina plucked a leaf from her skirt, uncertain how to proceed.

  “I saw that you’d drawn most of the birds in the aviary,” he volunteered, “and I thought you might wish to try a pheasant. So I came to find a pair, although as you see, I haven’t located a male yet.”

  He was gathering birds for her to draw? Irina pointed at the brown bird near his feet. “Is she following you? I thought pheasants were wary of humans.”

  Evgeny smiled ruefully. “Not of me.”

  “Can you do other calls,” she asked. “Other than the pheasant?”

  He shrugged then, sheepishly. “Yes, many birds. One of my few talents.”

  She almost asked if the hunters took him out with them to lure birds . . . but surely they didn’t. They wouldn’t know of this ability of his. Instead she uncovered the basket Cook had packed for her, took out a roll, and peered at the bird. “What does it eat?”

  “Just about anything. Are you trying to make a friend?”

  That is what I’m doing, isn’t it? Irina tore a corner off the roll and crumbled that part on the ground. The pheasant’s sharp eyes caught the motion and it cautiously stepped closer to inspect the crumbs. Irina glanced up at Evgeny, who still stood in the pathway, watching her with disturbed eyes. “Would you care to join me? Cook always packs enough for three.”

  Evgeny stared down at her, his brows drawn together. “What would your father say?”

  “My father does not concern himself with my day-to-day affairs,” she said ruefully. Father’s growing lassitude over the last few years left him unwilling to speak even with the servants. He spent most of his days alone in his study and refused to be drawn out, even by his son and daughter. He was pining for their mother, Irina suspected.

  So while her father probably would object to her inviting a farm worker to share her meal, particularly a man, he would never hear of this. Save for the pheasant, she was alone here with Evgeny Vorobyov, a situation that would never have occurred in St. Petersburg, where every move was watched by gossips. She had already been alone with him several times in the aviary, whether she had seen him there or not.

  If he posed any threat to her safety, she believed she would sense that. She had feared Sergei from the very start, but she didn’t react that way to Evgeny. Besides, Illarion trusted the man enough to give him charge over the aviary. And while Kolya was making inquiries through friends back in St. Petersburg, he hadn’t heard anything bad about Evgeny yet.

  Irina wanted him to be a good man.

  

  Evgeny knew he’d stood there too long. The silence echoed in his ears. But his experience with women of gentle birth was severely lacking. He’d learned what was expected of a child, but his adult years had been stolen from him by the curse. Even so. . . .

  He gazed down at the pheasant happily pecking up crumbs of bread. I am like that. I should enjoy the crumbs of this woman’s company while I can. “I would appreciate that, Irina Alexeievna.”

  He managed to sit down on the blanket’s edge without falling over to one side like a lout.

  Irina smiled and began unpacking the treats the cook had prepared, napkins filled with tarts, cheese, rolls, and pierogies. “Was that your sister who came to visit you last week?”

  Evgeny eyed the food on those napkins. She hadn’t lied about the cook packing enough for three. “Yes, although I would prefer that you not tell anyone. If her name is heard hereabouts, my father might come hunting me.”

  Irina drew up her knees and wrapped her arms about them. “Hunting you? Why?”

  Well, he had already told her about his a
rm. “My eyes.”

  She caught her lower lip in her teeth, a gesture he found terribly appealing. “I don’t understand.”

  “My father had my arm cut off because everyone could see the evidence that I’d been cursed. He thought it would still the whispers, but the gossip continued.”

  “Because of your eyes?”

  “Yes,” he said. “They were blue before, as everyone knew. So when a couple of years passed and people still whispered about my curse, Father decided to have my eyes put out.”

  Irina laid one hand over her mouth, her eyes filling with tears.

  “In truth, I believe the idea came from my stepmother,” he admitted.

  Irina wiped her cheek with the side of her hand. “Is she the one who cursed you?”

  Evgeny was impressed with how quickly she’d reached that conclusion. “Yes.”

  “He had your arm amputated to protect her, didn’t he?” The horror on her features was plain to see. “And he would have blinded you as well? His own son?”

  That was the sum of it. Evgeny licked his lips. “Yes. Fortunately, my brother heard of his new plan and warned me. I was watched all the time, but Grigori helped me escape. My father put out that I was killed by wolves in the forest, so even though I’m gone and no longer able to stir gossip, my very existence threatens to expose him as a liar.”

  “Or her,” Irina corrected.

  “Yes.” His stepmother, Sidonie, was the source of the ills in his life, but he didn’t know if he could ever forgive his father for putting that woman ahead of his children. And while Grigori had honestly believed Evgeny might live a more normal life after his arm was amputated, that consideration never figured in their father’s calculations. He’d done it solely to protect his wife, the source of the curse, to keep her from being labeled a witch and imprisoned.

  “What . . .” Irina paused, as if uncertain. She moved the small plate with the meat pies nearer to him, hinting that he should take one. “You needn’t answer,” she said softly, “but how did her curse affect your arm? You haven’t said.”