To Dream of Snow (36 page)

He made love to her in many ways throughout their night together, the imminence of his departure in the morning giving intensity to this brief time they had together. Once when she was resting her head on his flat stomach after pleasuring him he stroked her hair with great gentleness.

‘Is it so impossible for you to speak of love to me?' he asked quietly, his voice heavy with regret. ‘Not once in this whole night, not even at the height of passion when you abandoned your whole self to me. Yet I know the reason why. It has kept us apart in the past and it will ever be the same in the future. I fear, my beautiful Marguerite, that you'll never come to the truth of the painting I did for you.'

But she slept and did not hear him.

Cherishingly, he drew her up into the circle of his arms and kissed her closed eyelids. After a little while she stirred to smile sleepily at him and he made love to her again, for it was almost time to leave her.

He was dressed and about to wake her when she next opened her eyes. She sat up immediately, sweeping her hair back from her face. ‘Is it time for you to go?'

‘Yes. As you know, it's an early sailing and I've left my departure to the last minute. But there's something I have to tell you before I go.'

His serious expression alarmed her. She swung her feet to the floor and reached for a robe to slip on. ‘What is it?'

‘Your Englishman will soon be back in St Petersburg. He is presently in Moscow. I heard of his forthcoming return yesterday evening just before I came here. According to my source, the Empress has summoned him for his advice concerning the roof garden at the new Winter Palace.'

‘You knew and yet you didn't say!'

It was an exclamation of surprise and not a reproach, which in his sensitivity on the matter he supposed it to be.

‘No doubt he will be calling on you. So there'll be plenty of opportunities ahead for both of you to make up for lost time.'

‘Jan!' She was deeply hurt that after such a night as they had shared he should speak so cuttingly, not knowing that it came from his utter despair.

‘Farewell, Marguerite.' He left the room and went across the hall.

‘Wait!' she cried, intending to stop him, but she slipped on the hem of her untied robe and fell to one knee as the outer door closed after him.

On her feet again, she ran to the window and struggled to open it, but the catch was stiff and would not move. Helplessly she stood with her palms pressed against the glass and watched with overwhelming sadness as he strode away down the street without a backward glance. He had spoken as if he never expected to see her again.

By the time she had dressed and run almost all the way to the wharf the ship flying the flag of the Netherlands was already on its way down the river. She suddenly realized that as she stood alone in the sparkling morning mist that was drifting off the water the scene was exactly as Jan had captured in his painting. Yet he had never intended it to be the scene of farewell that it had just become. She knew its true meaning now and it was all too late.

A
ny plans for escape that Marguerite might have settled upon would have had no chance of being carried out as the Empress became difficult to please as never before. She found herself summoned to the imperial presence several times a day over some change of mind as to detail of trimming or colour.

Then, just as the Neva was beginning to draw in a veil of ice over its surface, Tom arrived from Moscow. By sheer chance Marguerite, who had just left Elisabeth yet again, saw him before he sighted her. He was advancing towards the Palace even as she was leaving it. She stood and waited, knowing this meeting was inevitable and preparing herself for it. Then she was gripped by anxiety, seeing that he was wearing a black cravat, which was a sign of mourning. Perhaps he had lost a parent, she wondered desperately, or maybe someone else close to him. But with a dreadful inner conviction she knew it must be Sarah.

When he looked up and saw her waiting for him a serious smile touched his lips. ‘My dear Marguerite,' he said in greeting.

‘Not Sarah, Tom!' she implored in a last faint hope.

He nodded. ‘I'm sorry to have to tell you I lost her at the end of last February.'

‘How did it happen? An accident?'

His voice was quiet, heavy with sadness. ‘No. She caught a severe chill on an exceptionally cold day while playing snowballs with our nephews and nieces. There was no saving her.' Then he saw how the tears were filling Marguerite's eyes. ‘I know what a shock this must be to you as it was for all who knew her. I have a letter for you from her at my accommodation, which she wrote shortly before she died. Although at the time neither she nor I knew that I should be returning to Russia she was convinced that one day I would be able to deliver it to you.'

‘Sarah was the kindest and gentlest person I've ever met,' she answered in deep distress, her voice choked. ‘There was so much goodness in her.'

‘Indeed there was,' he acknowledged and paused before he spoke again. ‘You have suffered bereavement too. When I asked after you I was told that Count Dashiski had died. My condolences.'

There was a flat note in his expression of sympathy, which did not surprise her, for she knew he had hated Konstantin from the moment she had told him that they were to marry. Automatically, she inclined her head in acknowledgement.

‘I'm to see the Empress this morning,' he continued, glancing at his fob watch. ‘It's to discuss the planting of the glassed-in roof garden on the new Winter Palace. May I see you afterwards? I could bring Sarah's letter to you. Where do you live now?'

With her thoughts full of Sarah, she told him. In the past she would have been wary of his company, but his drawn face showed that he was devastated by his bereavement. Moreover, she longed to read that last letter from Sarah, and he would have called on her with it sooner or later.

‘You may be all day at the Empress's beck and call,' she warned, ‘but after some shopping I shall be at home for the rest of the day.'

‘I'll come as soon as I can.'

It was early evening when he arrived, looking extremely harassed.

‘I couldn't get away before now,' he declared exasperatedly. ‘I was to and fro between the old Winter Palace and the new. When I gave the Empress a full report on what I had in mind after seeing the finished layout of the roof garden she was not satisfied. She kept sending me back to see if her own idea for a patch here and there would be suitable for certain of her favourite flowers, which I had already incorporated. I could have told her without those futile trips. It was all a waste of time!'

Marguerite was pouring him a glass of cognac. ‘Sit down and calm down,' she advised sagely. ‘Tell me, has your original design for the flower beds and bushes been followed?'

‘There have been some changes, probably on some whim of the Empress. She doesn't seem to know her own mind at the moment.' He took the cognac gratefully. ‘I needed this.'

‘Did you see much of the new Winter Palace's interior?'

‘Only from the flights of some very fine staircases to the roof garden, but that was viewpoint enough for me to see from the paintings on the ceilings to all the gilded plasterwork that it is a palace to outshine any other.'

‘It is almost finished, I believe. Then all those hundreds of rooms will have to be furnished, many more there than in the old palace, which I've heard is to be demolished. I suppose there will be plenty of celebrations when the Empress finally takes up residence.'

‘If she lives to do that.'

Marguerite looked at him sharply. ‘What do you mean?'

‘The change in her since I saw her last is almost beyond belief. All those pointless orders that I followed today did not come from a logical mind. I pity this country in her hands.'

‘I know she is leaving all government matters to her ministers, but there is nothing new in that. I've been told many times that they have always carried the burden for her. She slurs her speech, but that is because she is still drinking excessively. Sometimes when I visit her with designs she has a glass in her hand and is too incoherent for me to understand what she is saying.'

‘A terrible woman!' he exploded, remembering what else he had heard of her that day.

Marguerite smiled slightly. ‘It's fortunate for you that I'm the only one present to hear you say that. Even as a foreigner you could still get imprisonment.'

He looked across at her ruefully. ‘I didn't mean to come here and pour out my grievances.'

‘I'd like to hear more about Sarah if you don't find it too harrowing to speak of her. I have missed her letters so much.'

‘I know she did write to you. Maybe not as often as she would have wished, but she had a full-time task. She was like another mother to the children, teaching them and playing with them, and then comforting them in their bereavement when their mother died in childbirth. She was so assiduous in carrying out her responsibilities that it was not generally realized that her strength was running out like sand in an hourglass.' He passed a hand across his eyes and his voice caught in his throat. ‘Had I been home more I'm sure that I would have seen what was happening.'

Marguerite was silent. She could picture how Sarah, excited by his homecoming, would hide all her troubles and difficulties from him just as she had done when they had lived here in St Petersburg.

‘If she had taken care when she first felt ill, maybe all would have been well,' he continued quietly, ‘but there was the new baby to care for and she gave no thought to herself.'

‘Yes, she always would consider others first.'

They both sat in silence for a few moments before he spoke again. ‘When a diplomatic communication came from the Empress requiring my services again, it took a little time for me to finish the work in hand, but I don't intend to stay in Russia for more than six or seven months this time.' He did not add that originally he had intended to remain permanently, but circumstances had changed through her widowhood and he foresaw a far better outcome.

‘I suppose you'll have orders waiting for your return?' she was saying.

‘Yes, plenty. But I had already decided, even before I received that imperial demand, that the time had come to keep my promise to you that I would return. I had already secured a passage on the first neutral ship that I could take to get here.'

Too late she realized that she had given him the opening to voice what she did not want to hear. ‘Don't speak of that now, Tom, or ever again.'

‘Forgive me.' He was truly apologetic in his blunder. He had not intended to say what he had done, but seeing her sympathetic face and being in her sensuous presence again he had been momentarily overwhelmed. Yet his loss of Sarah had been like losing half of himself, making him realize how deeply he had loved her. For the present time her demise overshadowed him as it did this lovely woman, who had been her loyal friend and whom he desired so much. He was determined this time not to rush anything between them, but to build up her trust in him until she would be ready to leave for England with him as his wife.

‘Who is helping now to look after the children that Sarah loved so much?' she was asking.

He had recovered himself. ‘My mother. She is well organized with nursemaids and governesses. The children are fond of her, but it is Sarah whom they loved.'

‘As did we all,' Marguerite said sadly, closing her eyes briefly on the pain of loss.

He stood up to leave and took Sarah's letter from his pocket. ‘I'll go now,' he said as he handed it to her. ‘I'm sure you'll wish to read this on your own.'

Thankful when the door had closed behind him, Marguerite sat down to break the seal of the letter and read the shaky handwriting. Sarah had written from her bed and, although she had known she was dying, her concern was not for herself, but for those whom she would be leaving. It was a very short letter and, judging by the shaky handwriting, it had been difficult for her to find the strength to hold a pen. It opened with an affectionate greeting and was followed by a single poignant paragraph.

Her signature was indecipherable amid a splatter of ink as if the pen had dropped from her hand in her exhaustion.

Marguerite, deeply distressed, sat for a long time pressing the letter flat against her breasts with both hands.

By now it had become clear to everyone that the Empress was failing fast. There would be no move to Moscow this Christmas. Although Elisabeth barely had the strength to move about, she had not lost her taste for vodka or handsome men, or her love of beautiful clothes. Her ladies had to dress her in a new gown sometimes four or five times a day.

Peter rubbed his hands in joyful anticipation. His chance to reign in the country he hated was coming at last and he took a savage delight in constantly taunting Catherine as to how his mistress would supplant her.

‘She'll make a better empress for me than you! It was a great mistake that the old harridan made when she had you brought all the way from Pomerania to marry me! If she had seen my Elisabeth first you would never have been considered. So it's high time I gave thought to putting the matter to rights in the future.'

Over past months with control growing lax under Elisabeth's weakening grip, Catherine had been visiting her son at Oranienbaum. Paul was now eight years old and he had soon lost his shyness of his mother as she came often, bringing little gifts and staying to play with him.