Sacha looked at her with rueful amusement. ‘Not the most tactful thing to say to a bride-to-be, my dear aunt!’ She patted his arm fondly. ‘You’re different, Alexander. The cruel and corrupt streak in the Antonov blood mercifully passed you by.’
With an intensity of feeling, Caroline studied him. He could be a hard man, she was sure, and capable of ruthlessness when necessary. And cruel if he had to be, but never in a corrupt way. His parents might have been peasants, but they had bequeathed to him qualities far more admirable than those the blue-blooded Antonovs boasted. Those high cheekbones of his suggested Tartar blood in his background, and she had read that the Tartars were brave and indomitable—
‘I wish,’ Sacha said softly, ‘that you would not look at me like that, Caroline, in Aunt Maria’s inhibiting presence.’
She blushed, and laughed. ‘Let us talk about something safe. Tell me about your family, and something of your way of life. I am almost totally ignorant.’
‘Very well. We have a house in Sergeievskaya Street, on the left bank of the river Neva in St Petersburg ’
‘We, Sacha?’ Caroline interrupted. ‘Does that mean all the Antonov relatives?’
He nodded. ‘Apart from Aunt Maria, there are my father’s younger brother, Uncle Viktor, and his wife Aunt Natalia. Grigori is their son. He is a few years younger than myself. Then there is my own small son, Michael, of course, and the household staff.’
‘Why do all your relatives live with you?’ Caroline asked, more than a little daunted at the thought of becoming mistress of a houseful of Antonovs.
Sacha shrugged. ‘Aunt Maria, being a spinster, has to be provided for, and I am the head of the family. And Uncle Viktor lost all his money in the gambling saloons, so what could I do but take them all in? It was my duty.’
‘I see,’ Caroline said faintly.
The countryside was passing in a white blur, blanketed by the first snows of the winter. In her comfortable corner, Aunt Maria had fallen into a doze. Sacha took immediate advantage of that fact, and pulled Caroline into his arms.
His mouth moved over her closed eyelids, down the line of her cheek to the hollow of her throat. She shivered, spellbound by a painful and unfamiliar ecstasy.
‘Sacha,’ she whispered, ‘I know I shouldn’t ask this, but I cannot help myself. Was it like this with—with your first wife?’
‘It was never like this with anyone,’ he answered gravely. ‘My first marriage was one of convenience, the dynastic linking of two important families.’
Again she felt a stab of disquiet. Dynastic marriages were something completely outside her experience, and sounded so medieval. She drew away from him, but he cupped her face in his hands.
‘Dearest Caroline, we must not waste Aunt Maria’s little naps. Society in Russia is very strict. We will not be allowed time alone together until we are married.’
She made no resistance when he drew her back into his arms, but after a while she said seriously, ‘Sacha, you must tell me something about your way of life. I am afraid of meeting all your relatives and friends, and perhaps doing or saying the wrong things. Why, for instance, are you wearing this splendid uniform?’
‘Because I am an officer of the Guards, attached to the Czar’s personal bodyguard. It is a position of privilege handed down to all Antonov heirs. My military duties take up only a small part of my life. For the rest, I do as everyone else in my position does.’
‘And what is that, Sacha? I know so little of life in Russia.’
A shadow slipped into his eyes. ‘My mother didn’t tell you a great deal about my country, it would seem.’
Caroline laid a hand on his arm. ‘It was a painful subject to her.’
He shrugged. ‘Well, in the winter we live in St Petersburg, and during the summer we retire to our country estate, Ivaskara.’
‘The Countess Euphemia did tell me something of Ivaskara,’ Caroline said. ‘I know that there are forests, where wild boar are hunted—’
Aunt Maria jerked awake suddenly, and plunged into the conversation at a tangent. ‘Euphemia hated Ivaskara. Poor girl, I remember her as being frail, without much colour, and with a perpetual look of fear about her. Not that I saw much of her; my mother was still frantically trying to marry me off, and dragging me from one house party to another.’
Caroline, who had stiffened at first, relaxed again. It was obvious that Aunt Maria’s conscious memories of Euphemia were of the Countess as she had become after years of bitterly unhappy marriage. No wonder the old woman hadn’t been able to remember who it was whom Caroline resembled. The happy, excited, attractive Euphemia arriving in Russia to be married must have been swiftly transformed into a frightened and careworn woman.
Aunt Maria had sunk back against the cushions again and was chuckling to herself, muttering, ‘Thought I would take the Karlov heir, they did. Oh, I led them a merry dance for years!’ She was obviously absorbed in the memories of her own youth.
‘You were telling me about Ivaskara,’ Caroline reminded Sacha.
‘Yes. We spend the summers there, and in the autumn we return to St Petersburg. It is all rather a performance, not unlike a military manoeuvre. First of all the steward leaves with a skeleton staff to prepare the house for our arrival. They take with them carts laden with produce from Ivaskara—sides of cured bacon, boars’ hams, home-brewed liqueurs, honey ... Then they are followed by the other servants, and later by the family in their coaches. When the snow and ice have melted the following spring, the exodus is reversed, and we leave St Petersburg once more for Ivaskara.’
‘Isn’t that a great deal of trouble, uprooting yourselves like that twice a year?’
‘It is the custom,’ Sacha answered simply. ‘It is how people of our class live. The lesser landowners, whose social ranks are not sufficient for them to command houses or even apartments in St Petersburg for the winter, are forced to remain all year long at their country estates.’
‘Poor, underprivileged creatures,’ Caroline said lightly, but she felt disturbed. The Dmitris had warned her of the rigid caste system in the country, and she was still finding it difficult to understand.
‘Yes, they are considered underprivileged,’ Sacha agreed. ‘They are excluded from the Court functions which take place in St Petersburg during the winter—’
His voice was cut off by the sudden, jerky halting of the train. Caroline was thrown against him by the force with which the driver had applied the brakes. Aunt Maria cried out in alarm, and simultaneously the air became filled with the sound of excited shouting, both from inside and outside the train.
Caroline ran to the window, while Sacha hurried out of the compartment to enquire what had happened. Several passengers had alighted and were walking along the track, their boots sinking into the snow, calling out to one another and gesticulating. Some distance away thick smoke was curling into the air, but it was difficult to see why the train should have stopped because of a fire which could not conceivably threaten its route in any way.
Sacha returned to the compartment, looking grim. ‘A peasant woman has thrown herself on the track in the path of the approaching train. The driver was unable to stop in time.’
Caroline stared at him in horror. ‘Why—why did she?—’
‘It seems she could not bear to have her cottage and her belongings set on fire.’
Caroline glanced out of the window, to where the smoke was now hanging in an evil black cloud, and then fixed her eyes upon Sacha’s face. ‘Are you telling me that that fire was started deliberately?’
He nodded. ‘There have been isolated outbreaks of plague in various places, Caroline. As a precaution, many landowners are ordering all the cottages and the belongings of their peasants to be burned. Even their clothes and their paper money have to be sacrificed.’
‘I still don’t understand ’
‘If infection is to break out, it will break out first in the peasant villages, because of the way in which these people live. And the lan
downers feel that they have to protect themselves. They are in daily contact with the peasants who work in their houses and on their estates.’ When she stared at him in an appalled, stunned silence, he added gently, ‘The peasants will be compensated, Caroline. And they will be housed in tents until new cottages can be built for them.’
‘Tents,’ she echoed, finding her voice. ‘In winter? Tell me, Sacha—the landowner who ordered that burning out there—is he among those underprivileged creatures who cannot dance the winter away in St Petersburg? He is, isn’t he?’
‘Caroline.’ Ignoring Aunt Maria’s presence, he drew her into his arms. ‘This is Russia, my love. You will have to learn to come to terms with many such things.’
‘No.’ She shook her head blindly. ‘How could I come to terms with such—such obscenities? A landowner—an underprivileged landowner—has the power to destroy the homes and the possessions of his peasants merely as a precaution against plague spreading to his household. If that is what an underprivileged landowner can do, Sacha, then the mind reels at the power of someone who is truly privileged!’
‘If you love me,’ he said quietly, his hands gripping her shoulders, ‘then you will have to live with these things. There is no other way, Caroline.’
She looked at him, and contemplated life without him, and knew that she had no choice at all.
‘You will never have cause to reproach me for my own treatment of peasants,’ Sacha went on, ‘but I cannot control what others do.’
‘No.’
The train had started again, the remains of the poor, grief-crazed peasant woman presumably having been removed. But Caroline couldn’t rid her mind of what she had learnt, and it lay like a dark shadow across her happiness. What had driven the woman to choose death in such a violent and shocking manner? The loss of her home and all its associations, and the contemplation of spending most of the cruel winter in a tent? Or had it been because her few treasured, irreplaceable possessions had been consigned to the flames, all her mementoes and souvenirs of loved ones destroyed? Or—had the burning of her home and belongings been the last, unacceptable brutality in a lifetime of oppression and degradation?
The drama had roused Aunt Maria to full wakefulness and she didn’t slip into any of her little naps again, so that there were no further moments of intimacy between Caroline and Sacha.
When the train finally arrived in St Petersburg, Caroline’s gaze searched the crowd which had alighted from it for the familiar figures of Boris and Olga Dmitri. In defiance of everything she had learnt, Caroline wanted to introduce them to Sacha, and secure an invitation for them to her wedding. But it was impossible to pick them out from the crowd, and then Sacha was urging her towards a carriage which had been waiting to collect them from the station.
Caroline drew in her breath at her first sight of St Petersburg. The brief wintry day was closing in soft rose and gold glory, bathing the snow-covered landscape in colour. Sacha pointed out to her the Cathedrals of St Isaac and Kazan with their magnificent domes and spires, and the imposing equestrian statue of Peter the Great.
‘This is Sergeievskaya Street,’ Sacha said as the carriage turned into a wide avenue lined with trees, their branches dripping garlands of snow. Caroline could see the dark blue waters of the Neva, deserted of shipping now that winter had set in.
She had been told that Sergeievskaya Street was the exclusive preserve of the aristocracy, and she was still admiring the houses when their carriage drew up outside a residence built of grey stone. Wrought-iron gates were opened for them by a man dressed in a long caftan, and the carriage swept up the drive.
Sacha helped first Aunt Maria, and then Caroline from the carriage. The wide front door was flung open by a liveried servant, and Caroline had a swift, dazed impression of green marble pillars supporting the moulded ceiling, of thick carpets and exquisite French furniture before Sacha took her arm and said, ‘Come and meet the rest of the family.’
Making it seem like a nervous gesture, Caroline carefully pushed her bonnet to the back of her head so that attention would immediately be drawn to her unusual colouring, and away from her resemblance to her mother.
A servant had opened the door to the drawing-room for them, and three people were seated inside, giving Caroline the fleeting impression of a set tableau. She relaxed when she saw that, whatever reactions they might be registering at sight of her, recognition was not one of them. Moments after she had entered the room with Sacha and Aunt Maria, two of them rose to their feet. One was a middle-aged man of immense proportions with thinning grey hair and tiny blue eyes sunk within folds of fat. The other man was young, perhaps twenty-five or twenty-six, of medium height and build and with such spectacular good looks that Caroline found herself staring at him, wide-eyed.
Sacha ignored both the men and drew Caroline to where the third member of the tableau was still seated. She was a thin woman of middle age, with a pale complexion and eyes which didn’t look directly at one, but from under her eyelids, giving a secretive impression.
‘Aunt Natalia,’ Sacha addressed her, ‘allow me to present my fiancée, Miss Caroline Kearley.’
Aunt Natalia didn’t rise to her feet and embrace Caroline, as Aunt Maria had so warmly done. Instead, she extended a thin white hand and said formally, ‘Welcome to Russia, Miss Kearley.’
Caroline had taken the proffered hand, but sensing that something more was expected of her, she dropped a curtsey. ‘I—I’m happy to meet you, madame.’
Aunt Natalia inclined her head. Sacha took Caroline’s arm, and turned to the fat middle-aged man. ‘Uncle Viktor, Miss Caroline Kearley.’
He clicked his heels together with surprising agility for someone of his size, and kissed the hand she had extended to him. ‘I can only endorse my wife’s welcome, Miss Kearley.’
How unnervingly formal they were, she thought, daunted. Did they perhaps resent Sacha’s choice of bride? If Russian society was so strictly pigeon-holed into strata of class, they could hardly approve of a girl about whose background almost nothing was known, except that it was not a noble or aristocratic one.
Then Caroline found herself being presented to the good-looking young man. This was Grigori, as she had guessed. He, too, kissed her hand, but held it in his afterwards instead of releasing it.
‘Welcome indeed, Miss Kearley,’ he said softly. There was no formality in his voice. It was warm and friendly, and his eyes, deep-blue and wide-set, studied her with admiration. But it was not the bold, lecherous admiration which she would have expected after what had been said about him by Sacha and Aunt Maria, and Caroline found herself smiling at him, taking delight—in a purely dispassionate way—in his godlike good looks, his fair hair and perfectly formed features.
Sacha’s voice sounded in her ears, seeming unnecessarily harsh. ‘You will want to be shown to your room, Caroline. In the morning you will meet my son, Michael. His nurse does not like him to be over-excited shortly before his bed-time. Aunt Natalia, would you ring for someone to show Caroline upstairs?’
Surprisingly, Aunt Natalia said, ‘I shall take her myself.’ When she rose to her feet Caroline saw that she was tall and rather angular. It was difficult to believe that two people of so few physical attractions as Aunt Natalia and Uncle Viktor could have produced a son like Grigori.
Aunt Natalia led the way, and Caroline followed her up the winding staircase to a beautifully proportioned room dominated by a four-poster bed with silk hangings. Caroline’s luggage had already been carried upstairs, and someone had unpacked her things.
‘Dinner will be served at six,’ Aunt Natalia informed Caroline. ‘I shall send my maid, Lydia, up to attend you and help you choose your gown.’
‘Oh dear,’ Caroline said nervously. ‘I’m not used to being attended by a maid, and besides, I have only one good gown.’
Aunt Natalia smiled for the first time, and Caroline decided that what appeared to be a secretive quality about her was in reality shyness. ‘That will soon be remed
ied. Tomorrow we shall send for a seamstress and suitable fabrics, and Alexander will engage a personal maid for you. But for tonight, would you not like Lydia to come and dress your hair? She is very good at formal styles.’
Caroline made a rueful face. ‘My one good gown does not really merit a formal coiffure.’
Aunt Natalia nodded. ‘Very well. Since we are spending a quiet evening, without guests, we will not concern ourselves too much with your hair or your gown.’
A strange, unreal feeling settled upon Caroline when she was alone in the room. Her other existence in that shabby London suburb seemed like a distant dream, and she was still trying to absorb the many contrasts she had glimpsed in this foreign land which she intended to embrace as her own...
A small ormolu clock above the fireplace struck the half-hour, and she started. She would have to prepare for dinner if she was not to disgrace herself by being late.
One minute before six o’clock Caroline was descending the stairs, dressed in the green muslin gown which she had worn for that memorable dinner with Sacha in a London hotel. She heard footsteps behind her and turned her head. It was Uncle Viktor, looking large and imposing in clothes which seemed surprisingly formal for a family dinner.
He glanced at her appraisingly. ‘You look very well, Miss Kearley.’
‘But not nearly grand enough,’ she returned nervously.
‘Never mind. Alexander will not allow you to be seen in public until you have been groomed to take your place in Russian society. By his orders, no guests have been invited tonight.’
Caroline bit her lip. What did that mean? That Sacha was ashamed of her as she appeared at the moment? Or—had it been a cruel, deliberate barb, intended to hurt her? She glanced at Uncle Viktor, but his expression was bland.
The others were coming down the stairs, all of them dressed with extreme formality, so that Caroline became more than ever conscious of her unpretentious gown. Then she found Sacha’s warm gaze upon her, and his eyes told her that the green muslin gown reminded him only of that night when she had dined with him in the London hotel.
Count Antonov's Heir Page 3
