She was not the Princess... Oh, God, oh, God... She had to tell Ruslan.
She felt her legs buckle. She was down on one knee. Ryabkin had his hand in her hair, hurting her, pulling her head back, his knife to her neck, reality overpowering her at the last. This wasn’t part of the dream. She was going to die here. There would be no waking up. There was so much Ruslan would never know. Perhaps it was better this way. He would be safe. The secret would never be exposed.
‘You should have died a long time ago,’ Ryabkin’s voice rasped at her ear. The world spun. Her last thought was that she’d been meant to die that night in June. She’d come back so that now she could. Perhaps it was true, one couldn’t escape their destiny. She would never be Queen. She’d never been meant to be Queen. She would regret not seeing Ruslan again, not being able to tell him, to claim what might have been. The blade was cold at her throat. It would all be over soon. Very soon. She just had to be brave one last time. A lone tear slid down her cheek. Most of all she regretted she wouldn’t get to tell Ruslan she was sorry.
* * *
Ruslan paced at the burial site, checking his watch while the gravediggers buried the bodies once and for all. Dasha should have been back by now. He was beginning to worry. The crowd was starting to thin, the excitement having settled. Serebrov was talking with a man in a dark coat. Ryabkin was... Where was Ryabkin? Ruslan quartered the area with his gaze, studying each remaining group for sight of the Count. His blood started to chill. Ryabkin wasn’t there. Dasha hadn’t come back. One didn’t need to be a genius to connect the possibilities. Ruslan turned towards the palace drive and began to run.
Each step closer validated his fears. There were boot prints in the muddied drive, the debris at the entrance had been roughly shoved aside, some of it too heavy for Dasha to have lifted on her own. She’d been followed. Ruslan reached for his knife and stepped into the hall, his eyes going up the staircase.
Horror met him. Ryabkin held a knife to Dasha’s throat, her head drawn back and exposed, her eyes shut tight, a single tear on her cheek. Oh, his dear girl, brave to the last! He fought back a wave of impotence. What could he do from here? A knife-throw of his own would never reach Ryabkin at this distance. Ruslan threw his voice instead, a loud, booming demand as he kept moving towards the stairs. ‘Let her go, Ryabkin! You do not want royal blood on your hands.’
Ruslan was rewarded. Dasha’s eyes flew open and it was enough to distract the Count, to force him to give his attention elsewhere. ‘Stay where you are, Pisarev! She’ll be gone long before you reach her.’
Ruslan ignored him, taking the steps two at a time, wanting to get as close as he could before Ryabkin found his wits. Ruslan assessed his options. He could peg a target at fifty feet. He only needed twenty here. However, conditions were not optimal. There was only a small space at the Count’s right shoulder that remained exposed. It would be a risky throw. He could easily hit Dasha instead. Words might be a better weapon of choice.
‘What is it that you want, Ryabkin? Dasha wants what you want. She’s not your enemy. She wants to abolish the marriage laws, wants to move Kuban into the nineteenth century.’ He had no real expectation of reasoning with Ryabkin. A man who would kill an innocent woman was beyond logic. But he could keep the man talking, keep the man distracted.
‘I have worked hard for this country. I will not stand by and let her take it from me. Kuban is mine to rule.’
Ruslan shifted imperceptibly, flexing his hand around the hilt of his knife, his eyes concentrating on that damnably small spot on Ryabkin’s shoulder. It was the only target he had. He would have to throw soon. Dasha was gasping now, the blade against her throat starting to draw blood where Ryabkin had broken skin. Ryabkin would pay for that. No man laid hands on his woman. But Ruslan knew better than to throw mad.
‘After I kill her, I am coming for you, Pisarev. I can’t leave any witnesses, especially when they’re angry lovers.’
‘Why don’t you come for me now?’ Ruslan prompted. He was not surprised by Ryabkin’s response. All Ryabkin really wanted was power. The Rebels had needed a leader and Ryabkin had given them one: charismatic, handsome, outspoken, willing to advocate for change. Ryabkin had sold his soul to the revolution, seeing himself as the next King. He cared nothing for the concepts of democracy and republic. The mob was nothing to him but a tool to be used. Then Dasha had come back and stood in his way.
‘Ruslan!’ Dasha cried out in panicked anguish. The knife pricked her skin, deeper this time. While they argued, she was bleeding, hurting.
Ryabkin’s hand flexed, readjusting his position. The small gesture was the signal that galvanised Ruslan. It had to be now or it would be too late. He had failed his father once, he would not fail Dasha. He took a long look at Dasha, signalling her with his eyes. Then, he stopped thinking, stopped analysing, drew a deep breath and threw. ‘Dasha, duck!’
She seized the moment without question. The loudness of Ruslan’s command distracted Ryabkin. His hold loosened for an infinitesimal moment. Dasha took advantage, wrestling away Ryabkin as Ruslan’s knife struck the Count’s shoulder. The Count went down, falling to his knees against the pain of the blade. Mad with agony, he grabbed for Dasha as she scrambled, her skirts tangling her feet. He had her beneath him, the gaping landing nearing as they struggled, the floor creaking dangerously beneath them. Ryabkin had his hands at her throat, choking her, blood oozing from his shoulder.
Then Ruslan was there, pulling Ryabkin from her, but not in time. The floor gave way, the weight of three bodies too much for its ruined state. She screamed as she fell, a body falling past her. A hand reached for her, catching her wrist at the last. ‘Dasha, hold on!’
Ruslan! She looked up. ‘I can’t!’ She hadn’t anything strength left. Even now, so close to rescue, she felt her hand slip in his grip. But Ruslan had strength for both of them.
‘I have you. Give me your other hand, Dasha.’ His voice was tight but steady. ‘You can do it.’ From somewhere she found the strength. Then Ruslan was pulling her up, dragging her close against him, carrying her down the stairs, away from the tragedy. He set her down at the foot the stairs, cradling her against him. She’d never felt so loved, so cherished, as she did in those moments. ‘I thought I’d lost you, I thought I was too late, Dasha,’ Ruslan murmured, giving way to his own emotions now at the last when it was safe.
‘Don’t call me that.’ She looked up at Ruslan, her saviour, her anchor. The man who loved her. She had to tell him. It was what she’d come here to find out and he deserved to know. She drew a deep breath, touching his face, wanting to remember him like this. Then the memories began to overwhelm her and she began to shake. All of it was real: the loss, the love. There would be more loss. Amid the flood of memory, that one thought emerged. She was about to lose him now for good, in a way far different than she’d contrived to lose him this morning or even in Marseilles when they’d chosen separation. He was in love with someone she wasn’t, someone she could never be. She was an imposter. ‘Ruslan, I am not the Princess. I’m not Dasha.’
All she now knew to be true rushed out in halting sentences.
‘Dasha is dead, consumed by the fire. She was the second woman on the landing. I tried to protect her.’ She swallowed hard. ‘I couldn’t save her. I couldn’t save my Princess.’
She waited for him to despise her. He’d risked everything for a fraud and lost. This time it would be over for good.
Chapter Twenty-Four
‘How could you?’
This was where the hate would start. How could she? How could she fail in the most important task she ever had? How could she leave the Princess to die while she lived? How could she forget all that? She’d expected the words, but not the tone. There should have been angry disbelief. He should have dumped her from his lap in disgust, should have risen and separated himself from her. There should have been a look of horror, of disgus
t on his face.
There was none. Ruslan’s tone was gentle. ‘How could you? How could you be expected to face down armed men, to hold back a fire, all on your own? And you nearly did it anyhow.’ His touch was unyielding. His voice was quiet as he spoke. ‘We can’t always save the ones we love. When my father was arrested on charges of slander against the Tsar, I tried everything to save him, used every influence I had. When he took his own life, I thought it was my fault. I’d failed him. I should have been able to save him.’ His hand stroked her hair. ‘I know what it feels like to fail someone you love. But he made his choices and I have to accept them. You did everything you could, you have to believe that, and you have to forgive yourself or it eats at you,’ he sighed and she felt his breath against her hair. She knew without doubt this was not something he spoke of lightly or often.
‘Ruslan, I am sorry about this morning. I was wrong to accuse you. You’ve been nothing but good. I let fear get the better of me.’
‘I must confess, Ryabkin was not entirely wrong. When I first considered coming back to Kuban and helping you, I saw a chance for myself, a chance to come back and redeem my family. But those were poor motives. The night at Lord Hampton’s, when the assassin came for you, it all became too real.’ His arms tightened about her. ‘I think that’s when I recognised I loved you and that you were far more to me than a chess piece on a board.’
‘You loved the Princess, Ruslan.’
‘No, I loved you with your grand heart that chose the runt of the litter at Nikolay’s stable, that gave herself tirelessly to an unappreciative country because it was the right thing to do. It doesn’t matter to me what your name is. I know who you are. You are the woman I love. If you need a name, I will give you my own, if you’ll have me.’
He was not giving her up. The revelation was so stunning it took her breath away. Instead of dumping her to the ground, he was kissing her, his hands smoothing back her hair from her face, his lips taking hers in something akin to joy. ‘Oh, my dear, brave girl, you’ve been through hell,’ he whispered against her mouth. ‘You are safe now, I will see to it. You are mine, whoever you are.’
‘I am Elizaveta Semenova,’ she said softly, letting the awe of having a name take her. For the first time in months she knew who she was.
Ruslan smiled. ‘Elizaveta. A queen’s name. It suits you.’
‘Ruslan, I am not a queen. I was never meant to be Queen.’ She searched his face, looking for direction. She knew what she wanted him to say. That they would run away and put all this behind them.
‘Elizaveta, you have declared yourself the Princess and you have been validated by the contents of that awful grave. Your claim has been accepted and proven true most publicly. Serebrov is already planning your coronation while the political climate is positive.’ Ruslan spelled it out for her. ‘For all intents and purposes, you are the Princess.’
‘I am...I was,’ she corrected, ‘a lady-in-waiting to the Princess.’ The reality of Ruslan’s words was beginning to dawn on her in full. Even with the truth, would she never escape this responsibility?
‘I think you were more than that, if you were willing to die for Dasha,’ Ruslan prompted with gentle insight.
‘She was my best friend,’ Elizaveta said, squeezing back tears. Perhaps some day it wouldn’t hurt so badly to remember. ‘I came to court when I was fifteen. It had been arranged by my aunt, my guardian, before she died. I was to be a ward of the Tsar’s. He thought I’d suit his daughter as a companion. We were of the same age and we became fast friends, almost immediately.’ She looked up at Ruslan and smiled. She held up her wrist, showing off her scar. ‘We did these the first summer I came, as a sign of our friendship. That explains, too, the candles in Marseilles. My parents were already dead, you see. That’s why I wanted to light a candle for them.’
‘And Dasha was like a sister to you?’ he prompted, perhaps sensing she needed to talk and now was the time to do it, not later. A little of her sadness dissipated in the memories—there were so many of them, of happier times. Maybe later, she would take those memories out, one by one, and walk through them. For now, she wanted to tell Ruslan the truth about that last night. ‘That night, we were lucky. We’d hidden and we’d been overlooked, but the fire was driving us out of our refuge. Dasha wanted to go out the window, but I wanted to try for the servants’ stairs. The window was too high from the ground—even if we’d been undetected we wouldn’t have escaped sprained ankles, or worse. We nearly made it, but...’ Her voice trailed off. ‘You know the rest. Dasha was behind me, but she turned back when the soldier attacked, only she couldn’t go back, the flames had made returning to the room impossible. She panicked, she lost her bearings. She fled into the flames anyway and I couldn’t stop her.’ She didn’t want to remember Dasha like that, her beautiful hair on fire, her screams.
‘People said we looked alike.’ Elizaveta turned to a happier topic. ‘It’s often said that when two people spend a lot of time together, they come to mirror the other’s gestures, their way of speaking, their way of thinking.’ She was grateful for Ruslan’s steady grip on her hand. ‘But I’m not the Princess, even if I do look like her and act like her. I’m not her. I’m not the woman the Loyalists want to put on the throne. I am not a Tukhachevsken. I don’t want to be Queen.’ But Ruslan was right. How did she stop being what people thought she was? Panic threatened again.
‘Are you sure?’ Ruslan seemed startled by the sentiment. ‘Elizaveta, this is not to be undertaken lightly. To not accept the crown is to turn down the chance to do great good. You will be a young queen. God willing, you will sit on the throne for many years. You will affect two generations of governing with your decisions. That is no small thing to weigh in the balance.’
‘I want a life with you.’ But she had no idea how to get it. She gripped the lapels of his coat. ‘What do we do now, Ruslan?’ she whispered against his chest. It couldn’t be hopeless, not after she’d come this far, not after she’d found the man she loved. ‘Find me, find us a way out.’
* * *
There was always a way out. One simply had to be brave enough to take it. This was supposed to be his speciality and yet he had no answer for her. Not yet. Ruslan was silent for a long while, holding Elizaveta against him, letting his mind quiet after the events of the morning. He closed his eyes and focused his formidable brain, remembering his John Locke. A plan began to form. This would be his greatest escape yet and it would be accomplished in plain sight with an entire nation watching.
‘Can you be strong just a while longer?’ he asked. So much had been asked of this brave woman and yet the asking was not over.
She smiled. ‘Yes, what do you have in mind?’
‘A coronation.’ They needed that. Serebrov would not rest until there was a crown on a Tukhachevsken head. He and Elizaveta would not rest until the country had peace. They wouldn’t be able to live with themselves otherwise, knowing they could have prevented a civil war.
But Elizaveta doubted. ‘I don’t want to be Queen. I want a way out. I want a life with you, away from all of this.’
Those words made his blood sing. ‘Be patient and trust me,’ Ruslan murmured. Trusting was somewhat new ground for them. They had not trusted one another completely until now and it had nearly broken them. This time it had to be different if their love stood a chance of making it out of Kuban.
She nodded. ‘I trust you, Ruslan Pisarev, with my heart, my life, my for ever.’
He stood and raised her to her feet. With words like that ringing in his ears, it was hard to be patient. He would marry her today and leave Kuban behind if they could get away with it. But their consciences wouldn’t allow it. ‘Then come with me. It’s time for step one. I walk out of here with you in my arms.’
He lifted her into his arms and carried her from the palace. To those who remained at the travesty of a grave at the end of the drive he looked like Sir
Ruslan of legend, a folk hero come to life, his fair Ludmila in his arms. It was a potent image and the story of the Princess’s rescue from the hands of Ryabkin spread with the speed of wildfire throughout the capital, a fairy tale come to life, just as Ruslan intended.
* * *
It was too bad happy-ever-after couldn’t simply follow as it did in the stories. Behind the scenes of the fairy tale Ruslan had created, there was work to do. He’d had a week to set his plan in motion. Serebrov wanted a coronation and Ruslan would give him one. He worked tirelessly, sending letter after letter, answering response after response, working with the council to assure a smooth succession.
The sooner it could happen the better. It would put paid to any more questioning and it would give the country the stability it was looking for—a stability the council had not been able to provide on their own. With a princess on the throne, stability would have a face. The Loyalists would have their Tukhachevsken, their link to the past. The Rebels and Moderates would have their new political agenda of modernisation, although, Ruslan smiled to himself as he worked, it might not be as they imagined. But it would work and in the end they would be far happier. But first, the kingdom had a queen to crown and tradition to preserve.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Elizaveta entered the council chambers to the pop of champagne corks and the polite applause of the council members, her velvet and white fox–fur ceremonial robes draped on her shoulders, the crown of Kuban atop her head, the silver and sapphire cross that signified her right to divine rule about her neck. She was the Queen in truth, for the moment at least.
On a good day, this was what it would feel like to be Queen: adored, applauded. She felt regal in the coronation robes and the crown on her head was a temptation indeed. The ceremony had been official but small, conducted by the Archbishop of Kuban in a chapel on the grounds of the Tsar’s city palace, with only her council in attendance. Serebrov was planning a formal public coronation at Christmas to coincide with her father’s for the sake of historic symbolism. Serebrov’s ceremony would never come to pass, not if today went well.
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