‘Why, Caroline? To seduce you, of course.’ Almost matter-of-factly he carried the hamper through into the adjoining room, and took from it bottles of champagne, a dish of caviare, hothouse fruit and crusty bread. Caroline watched with a feeling of unreality as he drew the curtains across the window and lit branches of candles.
‘It was all to have been quite romantic,’ he explained, his voice gentle. But the gentleness was deceptive, she now knew. ‘A sumptuous supper, candlelight, the warmth of the fire, the headiness of the champagne ... The rude awakening could have waited until the morning. A pity you had to spoil it by stumbling on my little deception, Caroline.’
She moistened her lips. ‘You never had any intention of helping me to leave Russia, had you?’
He shrugged. ‘Of course not. That would have defeated my object.’
‘And what is your object, Grigori? If you imagine that these tactics of yours would persuade me to marry you, you are very much mistaken!’
He flung himself down on the bed and lay with his hands locked behind his head, watching her. ‘I should have liked to marry you, you know. Oh, how exquisite that would have been! To have abused you as my father abuses my mother, to watch the fear growing in your eyes as you looked at me ... And to have my cousin witnessing it all, every day of his life...’
‘You’re mad,’ Caroline whispered. But it was not true, of course. He was an Antonov, with all of the Antonovs’ inbred cruelty. She had been a fool to lose sight of that fact.
He ignored the accusation. ‘But no, you wouldn’t marry me, and I had to accept that fact. But I decided instead to seduce you. I meant to do that, you know, before I’d even laid eyes on you.’
‘Why, Grigori?’
‘Because I thought of you as my cousin’s fiancée at the time. The situation is even more poignant now that you are not his fiancée after all. He has a guilty love for you, one which he tries to deny, but it is there, very strong and possessive. Think how he will suffer, Caroline, when he knows that I have ravaged you, and ill-used you, and humiliated you to the point of degradation.’
She shuddered at the contemplative pleasure in his voice. ‘Why do you want to make him suffer? Why be prepared to go to such lengths?’
‘You know,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘when we were boys I could never fight him, for he was bigger and stronger than I. So I had to learn to strike at him in more oblique ways. I flatter myself that I have brought the matter to a fine art. I intend to strike at him through you this time, Caroline.’
He had risen from the bed as he spoke, and was moving towards her. Caroline backed away. ‘I shall ring for the servants—’ she began.
Grigori smiled. ‘They will not come. Irina will make sure of that. She has always favoured me, you see. Over the years I have persuaded her to share my hatred of Alexander. I can make her do almost anything.’ Caroline felt the wall against her back, and knew that she was trapped. Grigori’s eyes were glinting at her in anticipation. ‘Please do struggle, my dear,’ he begged. ‘As violently as you please. I want you to bear bruises when my cousin next sees you—’
'You are the one who will bear bruises!’
Sacha stood framed in the doorway which separated the bedchamber from the sitting-room. Grigori had forgotten to lock the door into the sitting-room, and neither of them had heard Sacha entering. ‘Caroline,’ he said curtly, ‘get out of here. Wait for me outside in the carriage.’ When she did not move immediately he gave her a push towards the door. ‘Get out!’
In a half-faint of reaction and shock she stumbled from the room and from the house. There was no sign of Irina or the servants. Ironically, the housekeeper had done Grigori’s work too well. She hadn’t even been aware that Sacha had arrived on the estate, and had been unable to give warning.
Outside the coachman helped Caroline into the carriage, and she waited tensely for what seemed an immeasurable time. At last the front door was flung open and Sacha staggered out, bearing a motionless figure in his arms. A weeping Irina followed them.
Caroline struggled from the carriage. ‘You’ve killed him!’ she cried wildly.
‘I wish I had.’ In the half-dark the hollows in Sacha’s cheeks seemed accentuated and primitive, proclaiming his Tartar ancestry. He shrugged Irina aside, and deposited Grigori without ceremony inside the carriage. He was unconscious; both eyes were swollen and there was blood on his cheek.
Sacha issued a curt order to the coachman, and took his seat beside Caroline, facing the prone Grigori.
‘How—how did you know where we were?’ she asked unsteadily as the carriage began to move away.
‘Grigori took my late wife to Ivaskara one winter and seduced her. He also tried to lure Katya there. By using Ivaskara he defiles my home too, you see, and my servants are the first to know of my humiliation. I should have warned you never to go there with him.’
Caroline was shaken. ‘Perhaps—perhaps he feared that you had warned me, for he pretended that he was taking me to stay with friends of his ... Sacha, why does he hate you so bitterly?’
‘Because I am Count Antonov, and he is not, and never will be.’
There was a grotesque kind of irony in the situation. For the first time, Caroline remembered about Anna Barovska. She was about to tell Sacha of her meeting with the woman he remembered as his nurse when Grigori began to regain consciousness. He sat up, his eyes glittering in their surrounding swollen and bruised flesh, and touched the cut on his cheek.
‘You’ll pay for this with your life,’ he told Sacha with quiet, deadly malevolence. ‘I shall not rest until I’ve made you pay!’
CHAPTER
EIGHT
Grigori’s inimical threat had caused Caroline to shiver, but Sacha remained unmoved.
‘It would indeed be a new departure for you,’ he told Grigori with grim contempt, ‘to have the courage to strike at me, instead of through someone weaker than yourself.’ Then he dismissed Grigori, and addressed Caroline.
‘My cousin gambled on the fact that I would wish to protect your reputation, come what may. He thought I would once again be forced to gloss over what had happened. And he counted, wrongly, on my family pride. It was that same pride, Caroline, which stayed me from telling you of his corrupt nature.’
But there had been many insinuations about it which she ought to have recognised. Aunt Maria saying, ‘Your fiancée is beautiful, Alexander. I fear you will have trouble with Grigori...’ And Sacha himself telling her with violence, ‘I would see Grigori dead before I would allow any relationship between the two of you!’
Sacha went on, ‘I’m afraid, Caroline, that your disappearance from St Petersburg at the same time as Grigori’s did not escape notice, and tongues have been wagging. Our return to the city without delay, and my cousin’s black eyes will, I am confident, tell their own story. He will become a laughing-stock, and you will receive sympathy rather than censure.’
Grigori’s voice shook with impotent rage. ‘You think—yourself—very clever, cousin. Oh, my revenge will be sweet...’
Of course his threats were melodramatic, Caroline realised now. He could never do Sacha any physical harm. But remembering the vindictive pleasure, the cold callousness with which he had described his plans herself, she experienced a ripple of fear. Through whom would he strike at Sacha next? Who else was vulnerable?
Anna Barovska, Caroline realised suddenly. Grigori must not learn that there was an emotional bond between Sacha and the old woman. Even without dreaming that she was really Sacha’s mother, and believing her only to have been his old nurse, Grigori would show her no mercy. And Anna would be helpless against his kind of cruelty.
Looking back now, she could see that Grigori must have been warped at an early age by his obsessive hatred and envy towards Sacha. It had become the sole motivation for everything he did. He professed contempt for the aristocracy, not from any genuine convictions but because in his eyes the aristocracy represented Sacha. He admired the Nihilists and sympathised with t
hem because they sought to destroy those who had power and privilege, like Sacha.
And the ironical joke was that if Euphemia, Countess Antonov, had not replaced her dead son with a peasant changeling, Grigori would today have been the legitimate heir to that position of power and privilege which he craved to the point of a destructive obsession.
Grigori must have realised the hollowness of his threats against Sacha’s life, for he had obviously been casting about in his mind for other, indirect means of striking at his cousin.
‘My father,’ he said, ‘will not be pleased when he sees what you have done to me, and all for the sake of your mother’s bastard—’
‘Careful,’ Sacha warned with quiet menace. ‘Be very careful...’
Grigori shrugged, and then winced with pain. ‘You know how my father reacts when he is angry,’ he went on. ‘Someone has to suffer, and that usually means my mother.’
Sacha turned to Caroline, his face carved in austere lines. ‘Now you know the whole truth about my charming family. For Aunt Natalia’s sake, I swallow as much as I can. I submit to emotional blackmail.’
Caroline said nothing. For the first time, she was looking beyond her own tormenting dilemma. If Sacha had not been brought up as the heir to the late Count Antonov, then Uncle Viktor would have succeeded his brother to the title. And if ever Caroline were to blurt out the truth in a moment of misery and despair, then not only would Sacha forfeit the position which he had been brought up to occupy, but Uncle Viktor would be declared to be the rightful Count Antonov. Uncle Viktor, who would then be able to extend his cruelty to embrace not only his wife, but also the countless servants and peasants who would be at his mercy.
So she would have to endure—and go on enduring for the rest of her life—the situation as it existed. There could be no escape.
At midnight, the carriage stopped at a small wayside inn for the horses to be changed, and Sacha ordered refreshments to be served in the parlour. When they had eaten, he addressed Grigori calmly.
‘You will break your journey here.’
‘What? Are you mad?’
‘You will stay here until your appearance has returned to normal. I am submitting to emotional blackmail once again, for your mother’s sake, but in a way which will afford me some satisfaction too.’
‘You can’t leave me here!’ Grigori cried vehemently. ‘In this godforsaken place—Besides, I have no money—’
‘I shall pay your lodgings in advance, and send a carriage for you in one week’s time. If you don’t wish to appear a complete fool you had better invent some reason to explain your absence from St Petersburg. I shall cobble together some story to explain away Caroline’s disappearance from St Petersburg at the same time as your own.’
As the carriage left the courtyard of the inn, with Grigori running after it impotently through the snow, Caroline thought that he had received his full share of humiliation that night.
But Sacha’s mood was not one of triumph. ‘For Aunt Natalia’s sake, Caroline,’ he said sombrely, ‘please do not talk of what has happened. It is quite true that Uncle Viktor uses her as a whipping-boy when he is displeased. I had been angry enough to overlook that fact. When I blacked Grigori’s eyes I forgot that my uncle is inordinately proud of the son he has moulded in the best Antonov traditions.’
‘You have not inherited the Antonov nature,’ Caroline was emboldened to point out.
‘No.’ His mouth twisted. ‘It is a fact which caused my father much grief. He used to taunt me about what he called my milksop British blood. To tell the truth, he always favoured Grigori above me, and if there had been any way in which he could have done so, he would have made my cousin his heir. At one time, when we were boys, Grigori actually believed that my father would perform a miracle and re-arrange the succession, so that he would be the future Count Antonov. When he found that he was mistaken, he hated me even more bitterly.’
Caroline decided that the time had come to tell Sacha about Anna Barovska. Carefully, she edited the details of their meeting.
‘Her mind wanders a little, and she confused me with—with our mother. But I am convinced that the woman is your old nurse, Sacha. I have asked Irina to make her comfortable until you send for her. I did not tell you about her before, as I did not wish Grigori to know of the link between you.’
Sacha understood at once. ‘Thank you! How Grigori would delight in tormenting poor Anna if he knew what she meant to me! I confess, I had given my old nurse up for dead these many years past. How she must have suffered! I shall return to Ivaskara immediately after I have delivered you safely in St Petersburg.’
He turned his head, and gave Caroline a long, unsmiling look. ‘That brings me to something else. You did not leave with Grigori against your will. You intended to run away. Could you really be cruel enough, Caroline, to lose yourself in some place where I would never find you again?’
‘It would be—for the best,’ she said painfully.
‘No.’ His voice was harsh.
‘Sacha, things cannot go on as they are. When you and Katya marry—’
Deliberately, he chose to misunderstand. ‘You feel that you would be in the way, I suppose, if you lived with us. And I can understand why you do not wish to go on living under the same roof with Grigori. What would be preferable would be your own establishment in St Petersburg. But eyebrows would be raised at that...’
He was silent for a moment, and when he spoke again his voice was toneless. ‘I shall find a suitable husband for you.’
She did not protest at that, for she knew that he would never be able to bring himself to do such a thing. With his mind he might acknowledge that she ought to marry someone else, but his jealous, possessive heart which obstinately refused to accept her as a sister, would prevent him from ever allowing her to belong to someone else.
Wearily, Caroline closed the subject by pretending to fall asleep, and a little later pretence became reality.
She awakened when morning sunlight washed into the carriage, to find her head cradled on Sacha’s shoulder and his arm supporting her. She moved her head, and stared into his eyes. She had caught him unawares so that grief and longing were momentarily nakedly exposed to her gaze. Then he looked away, and removed his arm from about her shoulder.
‘We are about to enter St Petersburg,’ he said curtly.
Caroline stared out of the window, at the city which she had never expected to set eyes upon again. The great bronze dome of the St Isaak Cathedral glinted in the' sunlight and the spires of the Peter and Paul fortress and the Admiralty dominated the skyline. These sights had become as familiar to Caroline as any London landmark.
But there was something different about St Petersburg this morning. No elegantly-furred figures were skating on the frozen Neva; no servants in the leather overcoats of the peasant class were hurrying to haggle for provisions in the markets. Even the beggars seemed to have gone to ground somewhere. The streets were empty apart from their own carriage, and the houses were shuttered and barred.
Sacha was frowning, his expression as puzzled as Caroline’s. As the coachman turned the corner into Sergeievskaya Street, the first sign of life met their eyes. A group of Cossacks was riding towards the carriage, their rifles at half-cock. At their challenge the coachman reined in the horses.
Sacha had recognised one of the Cossacks. He leant out of the window, and called, ‘Vassili Sosnovsky! What is afoot?’
Sosnovsky dismounted, and approached the carriage door, but he was still carrying his rifle, and there was no smile of recognition on his face.
‘Do you have any means of identification?’ he demanded.
‘Don’t be absurd!’ Sacha snapped. ‘You know very well who I am. What is going on?’
‘A state of emergency has been declared in St Petersburg,’ Sosnovsky said, ‘and unless you can furnish formal means of identification I shall, under the powers vested in me, be forced to arrest you.’
Sacha stared at his brother-o
fficer for a moment, and then fumbled in his coat pocket. Sosnovsky studied the identification papers cursorily before returning them.
‘I regret that that was necessary,’ he told Sacha, his manner more relaxed. ‘You have been away from St Petersburg, of course, so you have not heard the news. An attempt was made to assassinate the Czar early this morning.’
‘Good lord!’ Sacha exclaimed. ‘Some madman, surely—’
‘No. He was sane enough. The man was a Nihilist, and the attempt was premeditated. His Imperial Majesty was crossing the Palace Square when the would-be assassin stepped towards him and fired four shots. Mercifully, his aim was poor. The people in the square overpowered him, and he tried to swallow a pill and so cheat the firing squad. But it was knocked from his hand, and he was arrested.’
Sosnovsky added grimly, ‘We have been too soft with the Nihilists. Things will change after this. There is to be a purge. You had better see your sister safely home, Count Antonov, and then report to your commanding officer. The Czar needs all his loyal bodyguards at this time.’
Sacha thanked him, and the coachman continued the journey. A pall of silence hung over St Petersburg, as if the city were holding its breath. Inside the carriage, too, Sacha and Caroline were silent, absorbed in their own thoughts.
When they reached the Antonov residence they found its occupants in a state of suppressed excitement. Briefly Sacha explained that Caroline, overcome by sudden homesickness, had appealed to Grigori to help her leave the country. He had taken her to Ivaskara, as Sacha had guessed, and left her there while he went to enquire about obtaining a passage for her.
‘When he returns and finds her gone,’ Sacha ended with a grim smile, ‘he’ll no doubt decide that it would be prudent to wait a while before he comes home to St Petersburg to face me.’
In different circumstances Uncle Viktor, if not the aunts, would probably have questioned Sacha’s explanation. But Aunt Natalia accepted it with a look of relief, and Uncle Viktor merely said, ‘Grigori will kick himself for being absent from St Petersburg and missing the excitement. Some officers are talking of dragging the assassin from the fortress, and stringing him up on a lamp-post.’
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