Silver Nights (22 page)

“How fortunate the movement of a sleigh does not have the same effect upon you as that of a carriage,” he observed with a lazy grin. “One day we must try making love across a galloping horse.” He was quite unable to help a chuckle, despite his own fulfilled lassitude. “If the simple motion of a sleigh can assist one to such heaven, think what—”

A yell from Boris, the violent cracking of a whip, the sudden surge forward of the sleigh brought an end to this interesting speculation.

“Hell and the devil!” Adam pulled away from her, grabbing his britches, yanking them up his body. He flung open the door of the sleigh, leaning out precariously, despite the rollicking speed of the cumbersome vehicle. Across the white plain, galloping toward the sleigh on fast mountain horses, came a group of riders.

“Can't outrun them!” Boris shouted, cracking the whip again. “I'll try to make for those trees.”

“Is it brigands?” Sophie, fumbling desperately with her undergarment, which was hopelessly tangled in the folds of satin, cambric, and fur, gasped out the question, her face pink with her exertions. “Holy Mother! What an invitation to rape I must present.”

Adam stared at her in amazement. “If we can't beat them off, that's exactly what will happen, before they trample us to death,” he said vigorously.

Sophie looked up. “They're only brigands. Of course we'll beat them off. Do you have a pistol for me?”

This was the woman who shot rabid wolves, Adam remembered with a jolt. Chivalrous concerns were out of place. “Here.” He handed her a flintlock pistol. “If we can reach the shelter of the woods before they come up with us, we might stand a chance. Can you prime that?”

The look she gave him told him he shouldn't have asked the question. “Ammunition and the other pistols are in that pack. Get them organized so we may reload swiftly.” On that crisp instruction, he left her in the sleigh, swinging himself out and up onto the second horse. Their pursuers were gaining, but the woods were a great deal closer.

“We've plenty of ammunition. Sophia Alexeyevna is preparing it,” he told Boris briefly. “There are three of us and four of them. Reasonable odds.”

Boris grunted his assent, expertly swinging the sleigh into the cover of the first line of trees. As the conveyance slowed, Sophie sprang down, running to the rear.

“Sophie, what the devil are you doing?” bellowed Adam.

“Releasing Khan,” she yelled. “They'll do anything to get their hands on him.”

“That goddamned horse!” exploded Adam. “Does she never think of anything else?”

Boris chuckled. “Not often, Count. Although I've noticed her attention's been a bit divided just recently.”

Adam shook his head in wonderment. What sort of people were these products of the Wild Lands? Neither the muzhik nor the woman exhibited the slightest fear. Instead, they made jokes. Sophie had swung herself onto the stallion's back. “The ammunition and pistols are laid ready for you on the bench.” Then, before he could absorb the implication of her words, she had galloped into the trees.

“Best get inside, Count.” Boris released the horses from the traces.

“Sophie—”

“She'll be all right—”

A pistol shot cracking almost in range brought an end to
further discussion. The two men dived into the sleigh, where four pistols lay ready for them and ammunition was organized for easy reloading. Two pistols were missing. What was she intending to do with them? But at least she was out of immediate danger. If her need to save her horse meant she had saved herself, then he was not going to complain. On that comforting thought Adam settled into the corner of the sleigh, pistol cocked, and aimed through the crack of the door. Boris took up a similar position on the other side.

The brigands, riding low over their horses, made elusive targets as they charged ferociously at the sleigh. Adam's first shot whistled past harmlessly as its intended recipient swung beneath the belly of his horse. Instead of being three to four, Sophie's defection left them two to four, and one of them was obliged to reload.

Then a shot rang out; one of the brigands clutched his shoulder, falling forward over the neck of his mount. Adam, on the point of squeezing the trigger, looked in disbelief at Boris. The muzhik was stolidly reloading. “Someone out there is on our side,” Adam said slowly, turning back to the aperture and taking aim.

“Sophia Alexeyevna,” Boris confirmed calmly.

The unexpectedness of their comrade's injury from a shot that seemed to come from nowhere had thrown the other three brigands into some confusion. Adam's next shot fell true, and there were now only two men upright outside.

“We'd best get them all,” Adam said grimly. “We can't afford to leave even one able-bodied.”

A shot smacked against the mica window, shattering it, before burying itself in the floor of the sleigh. “Too close!” muttered Boris. Then suddenly a wild Cossack yell rang out, and Khan leaped into the clearing. Both attackers swung around to face this apparition. Boris's pistol blazed, and one man toppled to the ground. The other dragged a wicked curving blade from his belt and slashed at the rearing Khan.

Adam aimed but was unable to shoot for fear of hitting Sophie. His heart in his throat, he watched as the stallion sidestepped out of the line of fire with extraordinary delicacy
for such a mighty beast. The blade sliced again through the air. Adam fired in the same instant, and the brigand slipped sideways to crumple on the ground.

Clutching her arm, Sophie sat astride Khan, looking down in some disbelief at the blood welling between her fingers. “How did that happen?” she asked in a dazed tone, as Adam pounded up to her.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! Of all the foolhardy…! What did you think you were doing?”

“Creating a diversion,” Sophie said in a faint voice. “It worked, did it not?”

“Oh, yes, it worked—”

“Watch her, Count!” Boris Mikhailov interrupted him sharply. “Can't stand the sight of blood. Never could.”

“What!” Adam was momentarily speechless, staring up at Sophie, who, without warning, swayed and slumped sideways, tumbling inert from Khan's back.

Adam managed to catch her, then stood looking down at the unconscious figure in his arms. She swooned at the sight of blood, became hideously sick in a closed wheeled carriage, rode like a Cossack, shot with the accuracy of a skilled sniper, withstood the full force of Paul Dmitriev's tortuous, devious plotting to break her…Oh, it was unfathomable.

He carried her back to the sleigh; the sable eyelashes fluttered and her eyes opened as he laid her down on the bench. “I do beg your pardon,” Sophie said. “I have the strangest weaknesses.” She turned her head away as he pushed up the sleeve of the pelisse. “It isn't even as if it were dreadfully painful.”

“It is only a flesh wound,” he said after a silent, thorough examination. “You may count yourself lucky. Boris, pass me the bandages and the salve, please?”

“I would never make a soldier.” Sophie attempted to joke as Adam began to bind up the wound with the medical supplies he had ensured would form part of the provisioning for the journey.

“I would just like to have you under my command for a
week,” he declared furiously. “I would teach you a few things about soldiering that you would never forget.”

“You are angry,” Sophie said in surprise. “Why ever should you be so? I was simply playing my part.”

“When I command a military operation,” Adam said with studied calm, “I do not tolerate independent flights. In particular those that are not communicated to me beforehand.”

The color had returned to Sophie's cheeks. “I do beg your pardon,” she said in dulcet tones. “But I had not realized we were engaged in a military operation, or that you were in command. I had thought we were all fighting off brigands. You must make these things clearer in future.”

There was a moment's stunned silence. Then Adam began to laugh in rich enjoyment, exclaiming as he had once before, “Oh, Sophia Alexeyevna, what
am
I going to do with you?”

The dark eyes glowed up at him. “Oh, come now, Colonel, Count Danilevski, you do not in general suffer from a failure of imagination.”

It was an icy gray afternoon at the end of December when the reed-thatched roofs of the village of Berkholzskoye appeared across the frozen steppe.

Sophie, who had been glued to the window since they left Kiev, jumped as if the sight were unexpected. Tears filled her eyes, and she kept her gaze averted from Adam in sudden embarrassment at this unstoppable flood of emotion.

Adam was not deceived. Reaching over, he took her jaw between long fingers, turning her face toward him. Tears made tracks down her cheeks, and she sniffed pathetically. “I did not think I would ever see Berkholzskoye again.”

He smudged a tear with the flat of his thumb. “You do not want to show such a wan countenance to your grandfather, sweet.”

“If he is still alive.” Finally, she was able to voice the fear that had haunted her for weeks. “I cannot understand why he never wrote—”

“The fact that you did not receive any letters did not mean that he did not write them,” Adam said quietly, watching her face.

For a moment she looked blank, then understanding dawned. Tears dried instantly, in their place the fierce anger that he knew well and now welcomed. “Paul kept them from me. That is what you mean, is it not?”

He nodded. “I do not know it for a fact, but it does not seem unlikely.”

“I wish I had been able to kill him!” She flung herself
against the back of the bench with a furious thump. “I would not mind my own death if it brought about his!”

“There are times when you do talk the most extravagant nonsense, Sophia Alexeyevna,” Adam observed coolly. He was rewarded by an indignant flash from the dark eyes, then a reluctant gleam of humor.

“And when I do I can always be certain you will pull me up,” she said, chuckling, turning back to the window in growing impatience. “Oh, I wish I could ride Khan. We would be home in twenty minutes. This is so slow!” She was clenching and unclenching her hands, twisting them in impossible knots, her feet drumming unmelodiously upon the floor.

Sitting back in the corner, Adam smilingly watched her through half-closed eyes. A two-day halt in Novgorod, the first sizable city after leaving St. Petersburg, had provided her with clothes and other basic necessities, so that, despite the privations of the journey, she no longer had the appearance of a homeless gypsy. But they were all dirty, fatigued with travel, and had almost forgotten what it was like to be properly warm or how it would feel to be without the furs they had worn day and night for a month, to have a bath, to sleep in a proper bed in a warm room, with no need for anything more than a nightshirt…. It was a heady prospect. His lips curved in pleasurable anticipation. An entire night of privacy with Sophia Alexeyevna in his arms, naked…

The image of Prince Golitskov rose before him. Just what was the irascible old man going to make of this tangle?

“You may leave the explanations to me.” Sophie spoke softly, and he realized that at some point in his reverie she had diverted her attention to him.

“How did you know what I was thinking?”

“It was not difficult.” She smiled. “
Grandpère
will make no difficulties for us. It is not in his nature.”

“I must go to Mogilev,” he said slowly. “The empress gave me leave to visit my family. There would be no satisfactory explanation for my failure to do so.”

“But not for a while,” Sophie said. “There will be no couriers between here and the capital until the spring. Paul will not know of my survival until then, and the empress will not look for you in St. Petersburg before March.”

It was quite possible, Adam thought with a seeping joy. In snowbound exile, locked in love, they could, for a short, yet infinitely precious time, share lives, keeping a secret that need never leave the boundaries of Berkholzskoye, and building the memories that would inform and enrich all that came later for both of them. He smiled. “You are right. We will take a few weeks to ourselves.”

“An idyll in the Wild Lands.” Her eyes sparkled. “Berkholzskoye is a magical place in winter. I will show you all its magic, Adam.”

“Embodied in you, my Sophie, there is enough magic for one man's lifetime,” he said softly.

A delicate pink touched her cheekbones. “What a lovely thing to say to someone.”

“It is but the truth.”

The moment hung between them, intense and promise-filled. They had been given a gift; if the gift should prove only to have been a loan, then they would make good use of it for as long as they had it.

The sleigh swished down the long, poplar-lined avenue to the circular sweep in front of the house. Sophie, with impetuous lack of caution, flung herself from the vehicle while it was still moving, catching the hem of her gown on a loose splinter of wood in the door.

“Damnation!” She yanked roughly at the material, rending it heedlessly, before running to the closed front door. The whole house seemed sealed and shuttered on this gray afternoon; an air of desolation hung in the blind windows. She banged with the great brass knocker without pause until Adam came up behind her.

“For pity's sake, Sophie! You will wake the dead.” He laid a hand over hers, stilling it. “Give them a chance to answer.”

“But suppose they do not.” She looked up at him, her
face deathly pale beneath the dark crown of her hair. “I do not think there is anyone here.” She raised the knocker again.

“Don't be foolish.” He grasped her hand, holding it prisoner within his own. “Give them a chance.”

The steady gaze, the firm voice, the calm good sense served to ground her. She took a deep breath, and the sound of bolts rasped in the stillness. Sophie whirled back to the door, her hand still gripped in Adam's.

“What ever is it?” The door swung open. Anna, pale and anxious, her rheumy eyes gazing fearfully, stood in the doorway. When she saw who it was, she grasped the door frame with one hand, crossing herself automatically with the other. “Oh, my goodness me. Is it you, Sophia Alexeyevna? Is it you? Oh my goodness, my heart!” She flapped her hand in front of her face.

“No ghost from the Wild Lands, Anna,” Sophie said, her own equilibrium restored under Anna's disarray. She hugged the woman fiercely. “See, I am flesh and blood.” She stepped past the housekeeper into the familiar square hall, warmed by a porcelain stove and a great fire in the stone hearth. “Where is
Grandpère
?”

“In his library,” Anna fluttered. “Oh, Boris Mikhailov. Is it you?” She held out her hand to the muzhik who came swiftly toward her. “After Tanya Feodorovna told us—”

“Tanya!” Sophie swung around to face the old woman. “Tanya! Here?”

“Yes, bless you, Princess. Been here a month and more. Walked, she did, all the way from Kaluga. The stories she told. The prince hasn't been the same since.”

But Sophie was off, running down the corridor to the rear of the house. “
Grandpère!
” Flinging open the library door, she catapulted into the firelit, lamplit, book-lined room.

Prince Golitskov started up from his chair by the fire, the calfbound book upon his lap falling to the floor. “Sophie!” Like Anna, he stared as if at a spectre from the steppes.

Adam, with a muttered exclamation, pushed past Sophie. He had not been able to prevent her impetuous rush, although the dangers of shocking the old man in this way had been at
the forefront of his mind. “It is Sophia Alexeyevna, Prince,” he affirmed rapidly, crossing the room in three long strides. “Safe and well. Sit down again.” Gently, he eased the trembling, suddenly frail figure back into his chair.

“Oh,
Grandpère
, I did not mean to frighten you.” Sophie ran across the room, dropping to her knees in front of him, looking anxiously up at him. She took his hands, chafing them. “Oh, you are so cold. Is it because I shocked you?”

The old prince took a deep, shuddering breath, then sat back in his chair. “Let me look at you,
petite
. I was coming to St. Petersburg myself, once the snows melted.” He touched her hair wonderingly. “You did not answer my letters—”

“I did not receive them,” she broke in swiftly. “And after he sent Tanya Feodorovna away…Oh, is she really here?”

“Yes, she is here.” Anger burned in the faded eyes, and some of the fragility seemed to leave him. “An amazing journey she made. But she comes of determined stock. She came back to tell me of your…” A shadow passed across his face. “Of your husband. You have left him?”

Sophie lifted his hand, rubbing the knuckles across her cheek. “It is a little more complicated than that.” She looked up at Adam, who still stood quietly beside the fire, watching the reunion.

Golitskov turned to look at him also. “So,” he said, a smile enlivening the sunken countenance. “Having taken her away, you decided to return her, Count.”

“You could say that.” Adam smiled back. “It has been an arduous journey, and I know Sophie will wish to tell you of it herself. I will leave you.” He bowed to the prince, then, very deliberately, bent to kiss the corner of Sophie's mouth. “I shall see if I can charm a bath out of your housekeeper.” His eyebrows quirked. “You could do with one yourself.”

The door closed quietly on his departure. “So that's the way the land lies,” murmured the old prince, stroking his chin.

“Yes,
Grandpère
, that is the way the land lies,” Sophie confirmed. “Without Adam I would have died…died in spirit many months ago, and in body but a short while since.”
She stood up to unbutton her pelisse, not needed in this warm room, then began to tell her tale, leaving nothing out from the moment of her first meeting with Paul Dmitriev.

At story's end, there was silence in the room, save for the hiss and crackle of the fire, the sudden rattling of the casement under the wind blasting off the steppe. Then the prince spoke. “So, Sophia Alexeyevna, what do you intend doing now?”

Sophie looked into the fire. It was right that her grandfather had not assumed charge of the matter, had asked her what plans she had made, instead of describing his own. She was her own woman, and her problems belonged only to her…and to Adam, she amended. “I had thought no further than reaching here,” she now said. “My husband will assume that I am dead. I must decide whether to leave him in that assumption or inform him of the truth.”

“He will discover it for himself soon enough, Sophie. We may live in relative isolation, but it is not complete. When the snows melt, travelers will come and go in usual fashion.”

She nodded. “But there is no need to concern ourselves until February. We may stay here with our secret until then.” Her eyes met her grandfather's. He knew to what secret she was referring, and he knew she was asking permission, for all that there had been no question mark in her voice.

“I stand much in Adam Danilevski's debt,” he said. “I do not know how much wisdom there is in your indulging yourselves with a happiness that can only be ephemeral. But that is a decision you must make for yourselves.”

“Should one not grasp happiness when it is offered?” she asked, taking his hand, playing with the gnarled fingers with great concentration. “I have learned since I left here that there is little enough of it, and a great deal of its reverse.”

“You and Adam are welcome to live here as man and wife for as long as you choose.” The old prince touched her face. “I wondered if I would ever see you again.”

“And I you.” Her eyes were misty as she kissed his hand. “Boris Mikhailov will be anxious to see you. Shall I send him to you?”

“No, I think I will find him myself.” Golitskov pulled himself out of his chair. “Where is my stick? No…no, I do not think I have need of it.” He pushed the heavy staff away. “I find that I am not as old as I have been feeling lately.” He walked to the door with no more than his customary stiffness. “Go you to Tanya Feodorovna,
ma petite
. The count is quite right. You are in sore need of a bath.” He chuckled. “Your father and Sophia Ivanova always occupied the apartments in the west wing when they were at Berkholzskoye. They seemed to find them quite satisfactory. I am sure you will also.”

Sophie stood in the library for a minute after her grandfather had left, absorbing the familiarity of home; a surge of elation, the most wonderful lightness of heart suffused her. She was back where she belonged, once more in charge of her life with the gates of heaven standing open before her.

She danced from the library, running for the stairs, calling for Tanya Feodorovna at the top of her voice.

“Goodness me, Sophia Alexeyevna, just look at you. What a sight!” Tanya bustled out of Sophie's bedchamber at the insistent repetition of her name. Her face was wreathed in smiles and tears were in her eyes as she hugged the tall figure of her erstwhile nursling. “Gracious, but how thin you have grown!”

“Oh, do not scold, Tanya.” Sophie kissed her, laughing and crying together. “I must have a bath, and you and Anna must prepare the apartments in the west wing. I am not going to sleep in my old room.”

“Ah…” Tanya nodded sagely. “Well, Anna has put the count in the blue room.”

“Oh, then I will go and see him. Will you have his things moved as soon as may be?” She pranced down the corridor, throwing open a door onto a blue-painted bedchamber. Adam lay in a large porcelain hip bath in front of a roaring fire. He turned his head as she came in, regarding his energetic visitor with sleepy lethargy and a degree of trepidation. “Do not be unrestful, Sophie. I have not enjoyed myself so much in a very long time.”

Sophie pouted in mock annoyance. “That is not at all flattering.” Dropping to her knees beside the bath, she kissed him. “I think we had some most enjoyable times.” Her hand, wickedly knowing, slipped beneath the water. “You
are
sleepy, aren't you?” she said with a frown. “Ah…now that is much better.”