The Tsarina's Legacy

by Jennifer Laam

  Reb folded his arms in front of his chest, appraising her.

  “I am going to do this. I am going to help you.”

  “Let’s pretend I believe you. Let’s say Dmitry and my sister are right.” He gestured to Anya. “But I am not going to apologize. Can you deal with that?”

  “At one point an apology might have been worthwhile,” Anya said, resting a steadying hand on Reb’s shoulder. “But it has come too far for that now. This sentencing must be opposed completely. Nothing but complete absolution will do now. No apologies.”

  “But it might save him from prison,” Veronica said.

  “I’m willing to make some statement saying we have the right to worship as we see fit, blah, blah, blah. The Soviets wouldn’t let us worship. I get that. I have no issue with the flock per se. Dmitry seems to get something out of the services. But their leaders spread hate.”

  “Unchristian hate,” Veronica offered.

  “Perhaps,” Reb said. “But the church is infested. I won’t apologize for ridiculing that. And when the flock goes along with what the leaders say? To hell with them.”

  “I see,” Veronica said. “I think we can work with the statement you want to make.”

  “Work it as you will,” he said. “Just beware.” Reb took a step forward, eyes flashing. “I caught you on TV the other night. You were avoiding the reporters but I saw your two men.”

  That had made it onto television? “They’re not my men.”

  “Dmitry can take care of himself. He gets that from his imperialist ancestor. But what about your other man? The tall one that came poking about pretending to be a Romanov pig. Can he take care of himself?”

  “I think so.” Take care of himself? What the hell does that mean?

  “Aha!” Reb said. “That is the one. You were in love with him; at least Dmitry thinks so. Do you love him still?”

  Anya raised her delicate black eyebrows, looking much like her brother now, and watched for Veronica’s answer.

  “I … maybe…” Veronica stumbled over the words. “It was a while ago.”

  “Not that it matters. But perhaps you do understand love. That will help.” Reb stepped forward. “This is what I want you to do. Dmitry had an idea. I think it is a good one. We are organizing a boycott of Russian vodka in bars across Europe and even one or two in your country, from what I understand. This will be a coordinated protest starting with your press conference. A show of solidarity against the anti–gay propaganda law. But understand that our government will not be pleased.” He clapped his hands and his cat darted under a chair. “They might arrest you. That is what they do. That is the risk you will take.”

  Anya held her phone up a little higher. Veronica suspected she was about to record her. “Will you do it? You’ll support this protest for our new Russia?”

  Veronica hesitated, her heart loudly thumping in her chest. She didn’t even know what was happening inside to hold her back; only some deep and as yet unspoken fear blocked her words. And then the tattoo of the eight-pointed star, the hoarse voice of the man at the hotel came back to her: You are on our side after all, little brown one. Now Reb was asking if Michael could handle himself.

  But when she realized Reb was still looking at her, she said: “I’ll do it.”

  Reb scowled. He didn’t believe her. He saw that she was scared. And she was. Of course she was. She might be forced to stay in the country under some pretense or another and then who knew what would happen to her. But that didn’t mean she wouldn’t do it. She only needed to figure out how to convince Reb she meant what she said.

  Thirteen

  ST. PETERSBURG

  APRIL 1791

  “Are you certain this can’t wait even another day?” Anton frowned and gave the wig another pummeling with the brush. “You’re still not recovered.”

  “On the contrary, I have never felt better.” After the frenzy of the last several days of preparations for the ball, Grisha’s body was worn to exhaustion, but his mind still raced.

  “I’m sure the empress won’t mind if you delay your visit.” Anton’s gaze wandered to Grisha’s desk, where possible designs for the theater stage Grisha planned to erect in a back room were scattered about, alongside discarded drafts of letters he intended for Catherine but lacked the focus to complete. “And perhaps the ball could wait as well.”

  “I have no desire left in this world but to see the empress and tell her I love her. It is why God has called me here. It is my purpose on this earth.”

  The music had stopped. Why had it stopped? Grisha strode toward the bedroom door and stuck his head out in the hall. His musicians were shuffling through their sheets. “Marriage of Figaro,” he said, clapping his hands. “You’ve put me in the mood for Herr Mozart. Surely you have it on hand.”

  Grisha turned back to the mirror, frantically humming the opening notes of the overture. He affixed the medallion of Catherine to his coat, near his heart, and then stepped back to evaluate the effect. Though he would never admit it to Anton, the ashen pallor of his face worried him and he was having trouble focusing his good eye.

  He imagined Zubov whispering to Grand Duke Paul: surely Grisha’s mind was impaired by his illness and his judgment suspect. And then the fuss the tsarevich would make in front of his mother. He had seen enough of Paul’s bitterness, his harshness with his soldiers, and his rudeness to Catherine. He was more than a troublesome fool. He was dangerous.

  And then there was the matter of Praskovia. He felt poorly about what had happened, but not so poorly that he was willing to throw away Catherine’s heart as penance. “Have you learned the whereabouts of my guest from the other night?”

  Anton lowered his head, cheeks flushed pink. “She has left the city.”

  “Without as much as another word to me?”

  “Apparently.”

  Grisha leaned against his bureau, hoping Anton wouldn’t notice he couldn’t stand of his own volition. The boy might get cheeky and tell Catherine something was wrong. So be it. If need be he would fight them both, but he was getting to Catherine one way or another.

  Anton took another tack, his voice wheedling and tender as he stepped on a footstool and placed the wig on Grisha’s head. “You’ve been rushing around occupied with plans for the ball. Everything is proceeding marvelously! What will another day or so matter?”

  Grisha’s head felt as though it were ready to implode. “What is it you fear then, little man? You think I see too many ghosts? That the horseman will chase me through the streets?”

  “Perhaps another few days’ rest will do you good.”

  “Do you imagine you are somehow in charge because I’ve been lenient?”

  Anton winced. “I thought nothing of the sort, Your Highness.”

  The music restarted, quick and vibrant. Perspiration collected underneath the wig, making his hair sticky. As soon as he was out of Anton’s sight, he would rid himself of the damn nuisance. Except he couldn’t imagine how he would make it to the door, let alone into his carriage, for the ground kept undulating like waves of a great sea beneath his feet. He tried to hum along to the music but had to stop abruptly when his breath caught in his throat and a fit of coughing wracked his chest. He imagined Catherine fretting over his condition and Zubov stroking that damn chattering monkey while mentally calculating how many weeks Grisha had left in him.

  “The empress will send you right back here. And she’ll blame your folly on me.”

  Grisha chuckled. “Ah! So you’re afraid of the woman now, are you? At last we get to the true heart of the problem. I assure you all blame will lie squarely at my own feet, as always.”

  Anton stepped lightly off of the cushioned footstool and straightened his new waistcoat over his chest. Grisha smiled at him fondly. This is what it would have been like to have a son. What an amazing child he and Catherine would have had, an heir or heiress to the empire eminently more worthy than Paul. How wonderful it would be to see the reflection of his own featur
es mingled with Catherine’s in a boy’s face, Grisha’s auburn hair and Catherine’s blue eyes.

  “The empress adores you.” Anton paused in a dramatic fashion that refocused Grisha’s wandering thoughts. “Even if Zubov fights with you. At least let me come with you. I’ll see to the horses and driver myself.”

  “Fine.” Grisha tried to sound grumpy about it, but in truth he was grateful for Anton’s presence. He might give Grisha exactly the amount of vigor he needed to face Catherine and speak his mind plainly, with no further games between them.

  * * *

  “You’ve heard the news then! My agents abroad inform me England has backed down.” Catherine stood at the door of her study, twirling her fan. “It seems the people of that land are not willing to send their men to war over the faraway Black Sea. And the leaders must cave to the will of their people. Perhaps there is something to be said for a democratic form of government after all.”

  “This is wonderful, matushka,” he murmured.

  “And Prussia will back down now as well, the cowardly toads.”

  “I knew they would not dare cross you.”

  “You were right not to pursue a policy of war. This will teach me to pay more attention when you speak.” She tapped Grisha lightly on the shoulder with the enameled base of her fan and he tried to smile, but even such a light touch smarted in his feverish state.

  “I did not ask to see you merely to collect accolades.” He tried to say more, but his throat felt rough and he bent over in a spasm of coughing, chest seizing at the effort. When he worked his way upright again, he saw Catherine’s brows had pinched and she’d paled underneath her rouge.

  She swept him immediately into her study, past the sniveling guard with the Hapsburg chin. “You should be under a doctor’s care.”

  Grisha wasn’t above playing on her sympathy. He missed her mothering. It made him feel worthy of love. He allowed his composure to crumple as he lowered himself into a bow. She guided him to an oversized settee, so different from the fragile and uncomfortable chairs normally reserved for her guests, and he let his limbs sprawl. “I am sorry if my appearance frightens you, matushka.” He had abandoned his wig. He withdrew a linen from the pocket of his jacket and patted the perspiration from his brow. “Only I needed to see you.”

  “You look a fright. Why can’t you rest and be at peace?” Her tone was scolding yet still throaty and desirable. “Now I hear you run yourself ragged over this masquerade. These are the golden years when you should relax.”

  “One could say the same of you, wife.”

  “You forget that I was born in a Germanic land. Work is my enjoyment.”

  “I may not share your Teutonic heritage, but it is the same for me. You know that.”

  She continued twirling her fan, shifting it from one small hand to the other. He thought no other woman who walked this earth had ever managed to look so regal and sensual at once. He doubted even Elizabeth of England, with her red hair and clever little face, had achieved a majestic aura as perfect as Catherine’s. “The recurrence of this illness will be the death of you.”

  “I have inhabited this earth over fifty years. When the time comes, I intend to accept God’s will without complaint.”

  Catherine tapped her slippered foot on the floor. She had always found God an unwelcome competitor for his affection. “How can you be so casual? Your life may be a small thing to you, Prince, but it is not so in my eyes. Do I not need you?”

  “It gives me great pleasure, wife,” he told her, “to learn you still care. I thought your affections had dimmed.”

  “Both of our affections dimmed,” she shot back. “Yet I manage to care for myself and not let this world slip from my hands. Why won’t you go to a doctor?”

  “I went to a doctor with a damaged eye.” Grisha lowered his head, hiding his dead eye from her view. “And you see how well that turned out.”

  “Be grateful your affliction never impeded your work. And you still have so much more work ahead of you in your New Russia. You must finish the peace negotiations.”

  He shook his head, at a loss for how to explain that it didn’t seem worth it to visit a doctor and yet at the same time he was not ready to stop clinging to life. “After your little friend Zubov came to see me I grew worried.”

  That stopped her in her tracks. “I did not know he had come to see you.”

  “He has grown close to Paul.”

  The light of affection that had glistened in Catherine’s eyes a moment before went out. Catherine rose to her feet, her calm face hovering above him. “Let me worry about Paul.”

  “They sent Praskovia to spy on me.”

  “That silly girl is no spy.” Catherine pressed her hand to Grisha’s forehead, summoning memories of her hands on him in moments of passion. “But they shouldn’t have sent her. She has worn you ragged, I suppose. Is she to blame for your state? Look at me.”

  The need to obey her wishes overpowered the humiliation of his dead eye and bloated body. He looked into her face, gazing with the adoration that in truth had always been part pretense. And yet there had always been genuine affection as well, even after the passion had mostly died. A whisper of it always remained. He saw the brightness still in her eyes and the traces of wrinkles, in spite of all her luxuriant creams, marring the symmetry of her face but adding character to it as well.

  “I love you, wife,” he said simply. “I have always loved you and I always will. I only wanted you to know, to hear me say it plainly. I am composing a letter to you to express my feelings but could not wait until the words had been perfected.”

  She leaned into him and pressed her lips against his. Even in his lowest moments, Grisha had never rejected pleasure. He had always thought pleasure God’s means of counteracting the miseries faced every day.

  But Catherine’s kiss did not inspire passion, only affectionate nostalgia.

  “You tell me you love me, and yet I feel you are a stranger to me,” she said, pulling away. “How could we have let ourselves come to this? Weren’t we meant for more?”

  “We agreed our ambitions were best kept separate,” he said quietly.

  “Couldn’t we determine a way we could tolerate one another? Why do you make my life such a trial?”

  “I wish to make your life a joy every day.”

  “Then why will you not become friends with Platon Alexandrovich? It has worked so well for us in the past, the families we created together, and the contentment.”

  “I don’t begrudge you the other men. Truly. I have always thought no one could replace me. But I miss the intimacy between us.”

  “I have thought the same, husband. I thought I could handle other women as long as I still held a special place in your heart. But the women were so young and beautiful. Praskovia might be one and twenty if she is a day. How could I compete?”

  “You have always held the only true affection in my heart.” He extended his hand tentatively but could not quite bring himself to caress her.

  “We should never have come to this place. We should only have relied on one another as every other man and wife.”

  “I may be like other men, but you are unlike any other woman who has walked this earth. And I have loved you since the moment I saw you.”

  Grisha took her wrists in his hands and drew her close, pulling her on top of him in the settee. She softened at once in his arms and he felt her tiny heartbeat fierce against his chest. He pressed his lips to hers, parted them gently, and kissed her as ardently as when they were first together, after she had convinced him to return and pursue a life with her. When he had been willing to forsake everything else if only he could feel her tremble in his arms and know she belonged to him as he belonged to her.

  Tears stained the powder on her cheeks as she pulled away. “Tell me you are not here for my patronage. Tell me you are here only for me.”

  Grisha still held her wrists tightly in his hands. It would have been so easy to deny that one had anything
to do with the other. Where was his shrewdness? His impulse for self-protection? Candor had always been of the utmost importance to him, and in this moment he hesitated.

  As quickly as she had come into his arms, she withdrew, freeing herself from his grip and straightening her long gown. He felt the chill in the air. The pasha was in the room. Perhaps he had been there all along. But he could not see him. There was only Catherine.

  “I love you,” he told her. “I have always loved you.”

  “Is it truly the only reason you make love to me now?”

  Grisha felt as though he were being suffocated and he wished she would open all of the windows, let the cool air in, anything to calm him and allow him to breathe freely once more.

  The words slipped. “Now that Zubov has agreed, will you allow me this last wish for the mosque? I’ve heard nothing further of it. When will construction commence?”

  Sighing, she rose and took a seat behind her desk, still in close proximity to the settee, but it might as well have been on the opposite end of the empire. “Can you no longer speak of love without requesting a token to cement your own glory?”

  “This is no mere token. It is for the good of our empire. It does not diminish my feelings for you.”

  “And what of Poland? Of your ambitions there?” She began to finger a carnelian rabbit, one of the trinkets on her desk. “Do you wish to be king of that land?”

  Grisha reached into his pocket, but he had forgotten to bring his jewels, or even a bit of radish or turnip. He gnawed on his thumbnail. “What has Platon Alexandrovich told you?”

  “He fears your ambitions have grown twisted and you truly believe you share power with me. I have eyes and ears. I know you wish to make your power known in Poland.”

  Though it seemed less and less likely of late, Catherine might leave this earth before he did. All he wanted was a safe haven should Paul ascend to the throne. But he didn’t dare explain his reasons, to articulate even the possibility of her death. “Only in your name, matushka.”

  “Aren’t you happy with your New Russia? Must you encroach into my domain as well?”