She wore her one good gown of dark green muslin, and she had arranged her hair in curls on top of her head, threading a matching green ribbon through it. Unusual colour glowed in her cheeks.
The carriage which Sacha sent for her must have been hired, for he would hardly have been extravagant enough to buy one for the duration of his stay in England. And yet it was of the finest style and fashion, and the liveried servant who handed her inside was obviously a trusted member of Sacha’s entourage, for he addressed her politely and respectfully in French.
Caroline was seized with a mixture of excited anticipation and misgiving as they stopped outside London’s most exclusive hotel. Her misgiving increased when she realised that Sacha had rented an entire suite, and that a table had been laid for two in its private dining-room.
Sacha came forward to meet her, his eyes appraising her.
‘Do I—?’ she stammered. ‘I mean—my gown isn’t suitable, is it? I should have known...’
‘Don’t conform to the conventions, Caroline,’ he said quietly. ‘There is no need for that between us. Whatever you wore would please me very much. Come and sit down.’
A waiter set a dish upon the table, served them and withdrew. Suddenly Caroline felt completely at ease, no longer overawed by her surroundings. They talked desultorily through the meal, but their silences were not the uncomfortable kind between two people who could think of nothing to say. A mental bond seemed to have formed between them, even though they were virtual strangers to one another.
‘Would you,’ Sacha demanded unexpectedly, breaking one of those silences, ‘consider going to Russia?’
‘No.’
‘That sounds very final.’ He smiled crookedly. ‘I was not making you a dishonourable proposition, if that is what you thought. But you teach French and Italian, and my son will soon be needing a governess. I’m offering you that position.’
Caroline shook her head. ‘I’m sorry. For one thing, I don’t know Russian’
‘That doesn’t matter. In Russia the nobility and the educated classes converse mainly in French, and most of them know English too. Well?’
‘The answer is still no,’ Caroline said quietly.
‘Why not?’
Because, she thought, I could not possibly keep up the pretence that the Countess Antonov was simply my father’s housekeeper. The situation would become hopelessly complicated. Once you knew that I am the illegitimate daughter of the woman you believe to have been your mother, how would you regard me then?
Aloud, she said, ‘This is a ridiculous discussion, Sacha. You do not know me, and I don’t know you. This morning, when we first met, I gained the impression that you resented me because—because your mother had shared so much of her life with me, when she had abandoned you.’
‘You’re sparring, Caroline. Of course I resented you,’ he admitted frankly. ‘But that was this morning, and you know very well that things have changed between us. Now, I want you to come to St Petersburg as my son’s governess.’
‘No. If your son really needs an English governess, then you must look elsewhere. I am not equipped to do anything but give French and Italian lessons.’
‘My son needs more than a governess. Michael is only four, and he needs a mother figure. I don’t want him to grow up as I did, without the love of a mother, and yet I cannot bring myself to marry again, even for his sake. Women have the power to make a man too vulnerable.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ Caroline said softly. ‘About Michael and—about the scars left by the past. The Countess never foresaw that. She thought you would have transferred your attachment to your nurse, a woman called Anna Barovska.’
‘Yes.’ His eyes darkened with memory. ‘But my father disapproved of my affection for a mere peasant woman. He sold her to a stranger, and I never saw her again.’
‘Oh, dear God—’ Caroline whispered involuntarily.
‘It shocks you, of course, that people could be bought and sold like animals,’ he said, misunderstanding her reaction. .‘I’m afraid I was too young to see matters in those terms. All I knew was that I was being forcibly wrested from my beloved Anna’s arms, that I was screaming with the pain of yet another loss, and that she was crying until she had no tears left to cry. Then her new owner dragged her away, and my father said it was time I became a man, and stopped clinging to the apron-strings of some female. I was seven years old.’
Caroline’s eyes filled with tears, not only for Sacha but also for Anna Barovska, his natural mother. She stretched out a hand across the table and laid it on his. His fingers curled around her own in a painful grip.
‘Don’t go home tonight, Caroline,’ he said hoarsely.
‘I—I must—’
Their glances looked for a long moment. The silence between them was no longer companionable, but charged with dangerous intensity.
‘Yes, I suppose you must,’ Sacha said at last, and sighed. ‘It was a very improper suggestion, and while I don’t apologise for it, I do understand that you have to consider your reputation. Come, I had better take you home.’
Neither of them spoke as the carriage conveyed them to Caroline’s lodgings. He helped her down, holding her hands in his.
‘Goodbye, Caroline Kearley. I don’t suppose we will meet again.’
‘No.’
He drew her roughly into his arms and sought her mouth, and again that violent intensity of passion leapt into life between them, leaving her limp when he freed her.
‘I wish,’ the words burst from her lips, ‘I wish I had stayed...’
He reached for her once more, but horror at the shamelessness of what she had said made her push him aside and she ran up the stairs without looking back at him, and closed the bolted door firmly behind her.
She had half-hoped and half-feared that he would contact her once more before he returned to Russia, but she heard nothing from him.
His memory did not fade in the weeks which passed. Summer had slipped into autumn, and Caroline’s fortunes were steadily declining. The worst had, indeed, come to the worst; she had lost so many pupils that she had been forced to apply for work at an Academy where, as she had feared, she was mercilessly exploited. Her hours were long and her wages paltry.
Even the neighbourhood in which she had her lodgings, she thought dispiritedly one evening as she was walking home, had degenerated rapidly. The air was filled with the smell of decaying vegetables from the street stalls, the sulphurous odour of the gas-lamps, and the combined scents of humanity. A chestnut seller had set up his brazier on a street corner; ill-clad, wretched men and women were wending their way to the gin-palaces to spend their day’s earnings on brief oblivion. As Caroline picked her way home through them she was very conscious of her own wages for the week’s work which she had tucked inside the bodice of her gown for safe-keeping. She had to be constantly on her guard against pickpockets.
A tall man suddenly stepped out into her path from a dark doorway, and for one heart-stopping moment she thought he was Sacha. But it was merely a half-drunk wretch who leered at her and tried to follow her home.
She succeeded in shaking him off by ducking into a crowded alley, and took a roundabout way home. But because he had, momentarily, reminded her by his height of Sacha, she felt more than usually desolate when she reached her lodgings.
Sacha was so much on her mind that she couldn’t, at first, believe in the reality of the letter which she found waiting for her. She had to read it several times.
‘Dearest Caroline,’ Sacha had written, ‘the memory of you is like a ghost that won’t go away. I am asking you again to come to St Petersburg, but this time as my wife-to-be and not my son’s governess. I have decided that I would rather be vulnerable than live without you. I reject any refusal in advance, and am sending you a banker’s draft to pay your passage.’
She refolded the letter and began to walk about the room, picking up objects and setting them down again without being conscious of what she was doing.
And if she rejected Sacha, what then? There would be no other man in her life, for no one else could measure up to him. Her future would be one of loneliness, lovelessness and ever increasing poverty.
She spent a sleepless night, and in the morning she had made her decision. Instead of leaving for the Academy she made her way to the offices of a well-known steamship company.
‘St Petersburg?’ the clerk behind the counter answered her query. ‘Well, Miss, you’ve left it too late to travel by the most direct route, which would be across the Baltic to Helsingfors in Finland, and then on to St Petersburg. But the Baltic is a dangerous sea at this time of the year, and you would have to travel through the Bosporus instead, to Odessa on the Black Sea, and then overland by train to St Petersburg. Unless, of course, you chose to wait until Spring, when the Baltic would be free of ice.’
The thought of waiting five months, now that she had made her decision, was unbearable. The longing for Sacha was too immediate. ‘I’ll travel through the Bosporus.’
‘Very well. Miss. But you’d be well advised to leave as soon as possible, for I believe that in the depths of winter there is a problem of heavy snowfalls on the railway lines, and you might well find yourself cut off between Odessa and St Petersburg.’
She completed her arrangements, and went home to write to Sacha, accepting his proposal and telling him that she would be travelling on board the 5.5. Oriole.
Without any regrets, she informed the principal of the Academy that she would not be working there any longer. She packed the few things she treasured, gave away what was left, and took the train to join the 5.5. Oriole.
The ship was of the latest design, and her cabin comfortably furnished. Caroline soon made friends with a young Russian couple, Boris and Olga Dmitri. Both spoke excellent French and they were obviously well-off, for not only were they travelling first class but they were just returning from a tour of Europe.
‘And what takes you to Russia, Mademoiselle?’ Olga Dmitri enquired.
Flushed with happiness, she confessed that she was to be married to Count Antonov. The Dmitris exchanged glances.
‘An excellent marriage,’ Boris commented. ‘The Count has great wealth and status.’
‘I care nothing for wealth and status,’ Caroline shrugged.
The Dmitris laughed. ‘My dear, don’t express such sentiments in Russia! There, wealth and status count for everything.’
Caroline was silent, sobered by the thought that Sacha’s wealth and status were founded on deception. Then she shrugged the thought away. She was probably the only person left alive who knew that Sacha was a changeling, and no one would ever learn the truth from her.
‘When I am married and settled,’ she told the Dmitris, ‘you must visit us in St Petersburg.’
Again, husband and wife exchanged glances. ‘I am afraid,’ Olga said gently, ‘that would not be possible.’
‘Why not? You said that your home was in St Petersburg. Surely you don’t have any quarrel with Count Antonov?’
‘My dear, there is much you do not understand about Russia,’ Boris explained. ‘There is a subtle but rigid class system in our country, and each caste knows where it belongs and adheres to its place. We would not be accepted in the Antonov circle.’
‘No, I don’t understand,’ Caroline frowned. ‘You are educated, well-spoken and respectable. Why should I not invite you to visit me after my marriage?’
‘Because it wouldn’t do. It is something you will learn to accept.’
‘No, I shall not accept it,’ she said rebelliously. ‘I shall choose my friends as I wish.’
The Dmitris changed the subject, but it was something which Caroline could not dismiss from her mind. It was one small flaw in her happiness. She knew that the serfs had been given their freedom years ago, and were no longer bought and sold like chattels, and had imagined that things in general must have changed greatly since the ’forties, when her mother had lived in Russia.
When the ship anchored at last at Odessa she forgot her misgivings. A monumental stairway led up from the quays and the harbour to where the town itself was perched high on a terrace of the steppes. It seemed a cosmopolitan seaport, with handsome houses built in the Italian style. And then, as Caroline stepped ashore, she forgot her surroundings for there was Sacha, waiting for her.
She stood staring at him, unable to speak or move. He had been an impressive figure in London but here, on his home ground, he was quite magnificent. He wore an officer’s uniform, of which the tunic was frogged with gold and trimmed at the neck, the wrists and the hem with blue Siberian fox. Clinging trousers sheathed his legs, and ended in close-fitting top-boots.
He took several long strides towards her, and then she was in his arms, his mouth covering hers.
‘Darling Caroline,’ he murmured afterwards, cupping her face in his hands. ‘I was so afraid you might have changed your mind at the last moment!’
‘What would you have done if I had?’ She laughed shakily.
‘Taken the next ship to England, kidnapped you and brought you here by force.’ He moved his fingertips gently across her cheek. ‘I think we had better be married as soon as convention allows.’
‘Yes,’ she agreed unsteadily, conscious of the explosive chemistry between them.
He took her arm. ‘Come, the train is waiting. I’ve reserved a suite for us, but I’m afraid we won’t be quite alone. I had to select a chaperon from among my relations, and I thought my Aunt Maria would be the best choice. Her mind is inclined to wander, but she is a kindly soul. Besides,’ he added with a grin, ‘she is much given to napping, and is also hard of hearing, which should give us some privacy.’
Caroline felt a little disconcerted. Somehow she had always thought of Sacha as being surrounded only by his small son and his household staff. It had never occurred to her that he would have a retinue of relatives with whom she would have to contend.
They had reached the railway station, and he was escorting her to the reserved suite. She was overawed by the opulence of it. The travelling compartment contained a great deal of burnished brass and polished woodwork, besides deep-cushioned seats and a small wood-stove which Sacha explained was heating water for a samovar so that tea could be brewed. Leading from this compartment was another, containing a brass bed hung with velvet and silk tassels. A crimson carpet covered the floor of the entire suite.
An old lady had been reclining on the bed. She sat up as they entered, and blinked short-sightedly at them.
‘Aunt Maria,’ Sacha told her, ‘this is Miss Caroline Kearley, my fiancée.’
The old lady reached for a pair of pince-nez through which she regarded Caroline. ‘Very, very pretty,’ she murmured, and turned to Sacha. ‘But I’ve met her before, haven’t I?’
‘No, Aunt Maria,’ he said patiently.
‘No, of course not. How silly of me. I believe it must have been someone else, a long time ago ... Now who is it she puts me in mind of...?’
Caroline’s blood seemed to have frozen in her veins. ‘Apart from your father's colouring, my dear,’ her mother had often told her, ‘you’ re the image of myself when I was a girl.’
And she had never given that fact a thought when she’d accepted Sacha’s proposal. What a fool she had been to imagine that she would be safe from exposure in Russia!
Caroline waited numbly for Aunt Maria to remember that she looked exactly like another English girl who had also travelled to Russia, over thirty years ago, to marry a Count Antonov. And then Sacha would know immediately that she was Euphemia’s illegitimate daughter.
CHAPTER
<
br /> TWO
Caroline tried to convey a nonchalant air, and began to untie the ribbons of her bonnet as though she had nothing more serious on her mind. But she was praying wordlessly for a miracle, for anything to save her from being exposed.
‘Oh, what glorious hair!’ she heard Aunt Maria exclaim. ‘So unusual, so striking! No, I could never have met anyone remotely like your enchanting fiancée, Alexander Nikolaievich! She is utterly unique!’
The old woman moved forward, embracing Caroline. ‘Welcome to Russia, my child.’
Caroline relaxed slowly. She felt as if she had been pulled from the very brink of an abyss, and for the first time in her life she gave thanks for her red hair. Its glowing colour had effectively diverted Aunt Maria’s attention from the strong resemblance to Euphemia, and the old woman’s wandering mind would, she hoped, not return to it.
‘She will take St Petersburg by storm,’ Aunt Maria prophesied as they settled down in the travelling compartment. ‘And Grigori—Alexander, I fear you may have trouble with Grigori!’
Sacha’s face seemed to alter. There were grim hollows beneath the high cheekbones and his eyes, for all their warm colour, looked cold as polished stones.
‘I shall deal with Grigori if the need arises,’ he said quietly, ominously.
Caroline frowned. ‘Sacha, who is Grigori? And why should there be trouble with him?’
He gave her a somewhat strained smile. ‘Grigori is my cousin, Caroline. Aunt Maria merely meant that he is susceptible to beautiful women, and that he may embarrass you by falling in love with you.’
But instinct told her there was more to it than that. She didn’t pursue the matter, but asked, ‘Is he your Aunt Maria’s son?’
The old woman was not as deaf as Sacha had claimed, for she had heard the question, and gave a disconcerting snort of laughter. ‘My son! Bless you, child, I never married. With my two brothers as examples, I learnt very early in life how men could behave, and I decided that a husband was not for me.’
Count Antonov's Heir Page 2
