"Which would you prefer first?"
"The necklace. The pearls tend to get caught in the lace if I don't remove it first." She offered a winsome smile, then frowned a little. "Be careful with the clasp--it's not very secure."
"I remember," said Saint-Germain, working the temperamental clasp with expert fingers. "There." He took the pearl necklace and handed it to her. "A very handsome piece."
"Yes, so I think, too." She weighed the necklace in her hand before setting it in a small box on her dressing-table. "I've worn it too often, I think. This next year I must have some new jewelry or I will look paltry."
"An impossibility, Ksiezna," said Saint-Germain.
"Gallant as ever." Zozia stretched artistically, making sure Saint-Germain saw the curve of her breasts and the creaminess of her skin. "Now the lacing, if you would?"
Saint-Germain obliged her, taking care not to damage the heavy satin of her dress as he did. He then loosened the skirt and helped her to get out of the dress. "It is a beautiful dress; the wheat-color becomes you."
"Salomea and Feodosia only finished it two weeks ago. They are working on another for Epiphany; something in red, so the Russians will approve, although the Poles are going to disapprove its luxury. My seamstresses keep telling me the low light bothers their eyes and they have trouble setting stitches." She made a little sigh of exasperation. "That's servants for you, Russian, Polish, or any other."
"The light is low at this time of year," Saint-Germain said, "and sewing is exacting."
"You don't want me to look like a merchant's wife, do you?" she asked, a martial light in her eyes.
"No, Ksiezna, I do not," he assured her. "But I do not think it quite reasonable to expect your seamstress and maid to blind themselves on your behalf. I should think you would not want that, either."
"You've taken servants' sides before," said Zozia, as if calling another of his failings to mind. "You see them differently than I do."
"Very likely," he agreed. "Do you want me to unfasten your petticoats?"
"Oh, I can manage, thank you," she said. "I want you to help me unfasten my corset, and then I want you to remind me of what I have missed." She ran the tip of her tongue along her lips, watching him through her eyelashes as she did. "I have to clean my face, too."
As she unhooked her petticoats and stepped out of them, he went to turn back the coverlet spread over her bed. "How many quilts do you use?"
"Four. The nights are horridly cold." She removed the bolster-farthingale and set it on top of her petticoats on the dressing-stand.
"I hope you have not been too uncomfortable," he said, determined not to be drawn into an argument with Zozia.
She sniffed in disapproval. "Who hasn't been uncomfortable in this miserable place? I'm ready to have you unfasten my corset now." Again she turned her back and waited for him to untie the looped
knot that held the corset. "You and I can still turn this night to advantage," she said as he set to work.
He could sense the calculation in her smile and the artifice in her seductiveness; much as he was unnerved by the comparison, he felt himself longing for Ludmilla, and that realization made him careful. He undid the lacing on her stays and took a step back. "Your servants are sure to talk, Ksiezna, whatever we do or do not do."
"Good. Good. Let them clatter like crows." She pulled off her corset and sat down on the small, low-backed stool in front of her dressing table. "I've been thinking," she began as she reached for his hands and carried them to her breasts. "I'm almost certain Arpad is not coming back. No one has found him, despite good efforts. There hasn't been a whisper of him anywhere. And no demand for ransom has come."
"A discouraging sign," Saint-Germain agreed, disengaging his hands. "But you may learn something more in spring, when the ships bring mail again."
Ignoring his last remark, she continued, "I have to assume that if he is still alive, he isn't going to return, or the man I have hired to locate him would have found some trace of him." She reached out to him once more. "Yet I have been thinking: here you have been accepted as Arpad. Only you and my brother and a few others know who you are--or rather, who you are
not
--and why you are here." She caught her lower lip in her teeth in a calculatedly seductive smile. "So long as I remain childless and my husband is missing, I will be my brother's pawn. But if I had a son, who is to deny that he is Arpad's child?"
Saint-Germain took a step back. "Ksiezna, you have not considered what you--"
"Oh, but I have," she said with strong intent in her eyes. "I have had little else to consider for the last two months, and I have hit upon a solution. If I remain childless, and Arpad is not found, then I am at best a pawn for my brother to use to his own ends." Her eyes were lambent with anger. "But if I could have an heir, a son, then I am free of Benedykt. I intend to have that heir, Grofok. You can do so much more for me than you have done."
"Ksiezna, you know my position: I took an oath to Augustus that I would do nothing to compromise you, and I renew that oath to you now," Saint-Germain told her. "I would not have been allowed to make this journey had I not so vowed. You have no reason to doubt me; I have nothing to gain by exposing our imposture, and a great deal to lose."
"All very noble," she said, clearly displeased at his response. "You also vowed to obey me, as I recall."
"Not where your brother is concerned, or the honor of your office," he reminded her.
"It's all nonsense." She rose from her low-backed stool. "You are here to serve
me.
You will do as I tell you."
"I am here to serve Augustus and the Polish Crown; this has been complicated by the rise of Stanislas in Augustus' place, but my responsibilities are clear, and I will do all that I can to see you remain uncompromised in your work and your position." He could read the ire in her face, and strove to recall her to their shared duty. "You and I are sworn to this endeavor, and if I fail to do what is expected of me, I stand to lose more than my good name."
"Whatever that name may be," she said. "You at least have anonymity to protect you. I have my name and my position to consider."
"Precisely," he said at once. "You risk your name and your position by planning such a desperate solution."
"Only if it is recognized as such. Who is to say that having been here with my husband that I have not borne my husband's child?" She reached out and snagged the skirt of his coat. "Grofok, you are a sensible man. Anyone can see that. And you can see what's to be gained by our cooperating on this plan."
"Ksiezna, I am in no position to accommodate you, and well you know it. It would bring disgrace upon you and upon me." He kept the sting out of his words, but there was something in his dark eyes that engaged her attention. "If you have a child here, and in a year or two, Arpad returns, what then, or is proven to have died well before he
could have fathered that child? You would be more completely at the mercy of your brother than you are now, and your husband would have to disown you." He tugged his coat free of her grasp. "Whether Stanislas or Augustus is on the throne of Poland, neither would tolerate such an embarrassment in his embassy as you could provide. Think, Zozia. You risk your safety and the safety of any child you might have."
"Arpad is gone! No one is going to find him, not now!" Zozia insisted, her face darkening in anger. "He has been gone so long, and no word has reached me or anyone else of his whereabouts. Why should I continue to wait?"
"Any letter may have to come a long way, and in winter, it may be many months before it can make its way here." He looked at her, trying to offer her kindness as well as his thoughts. "You are in a very difficult position, and it would be beyond unwise to do anything that could endanger the work you do here."
She reached for her powder-pot and hurled it at him, the powder leaving fronds and curls across her room before spattering him thoroughly and dropping onto the carpet. "How can you speak to me in that way? To
me?"
"You and I have oaths to uphold, Ksiezna," he said gently. "If we compromise them, we do more harm than we know."
Her laughter was angry and harsh. "You look at me, and you can say that? You, who've come to my bed to pleasure me. You deny me this, when it is the only thing I truly want? What are you then, a eunuch?"
"I wish only to be of help, Ksiezna, to Poland and to you; you know your brother would not countenance any child you might have through me," he said, refusing to be goaded into an open argument, or to having to defend his true nature.
"Well, you're not helpful, not at all," she informed him grandly. "And since you are not, you may leave me. I will send you word when your return will be welcome." She reached for her wrapper and drew it around her. "If you change your mind, send me word. Otherwise, our communication is at an end."
"Ksiezna," he said, making a leg in the French manner, then
leaving her, paying little attention to the disapproving smirk Antek offered as he shrugged Saint-Germain into his cloak, offered him his hat, and sent him out into the steadily falling snow.
Text of a letter from Evdoxia Sergeievna Urusova in Sankt Piterburkh to her brother, Nikita Sergeivich Urusov in Moscow, carried by private courier and delivered six weeks after it was written.
To the excellent Boyar Nikita Sergeivich Urusov presently in Moscow, the greetings of his sister in Sankt Piterburkh on this, the day following Christmas in the European year of 1704.
My joy, my brother Nikita,
You would be appalled to see how Christmas has been celebrated thus far in this city. I cannot begin to tell you what has taken place without shuddering. The Foreign Quarter has had services of its own, not just for the Roman Church, but for the so-called Protestants who are among the Europeans, and the confusion is truly astonishing. I wish I could impart to you the full degree of confusion that has been brought about by the Czar's insistence that the Europeans be allowed to observe the Nativity in the manners they see fit. No wonder God has visited a blizzard upon us. I am astonished that He has not done more to chastise us for indulging all manner of irreligious practices. Our cousins were as distressed as I have been to see how lax the clergy is here, permitting services for Christmas not in the Orthodox traditions. Our cousin Nikolai has told me that I would be wise not to complain, for fear of offending the Czar, so I have said little, but I am not going to constrain myself with you. I can hold my tongue no longer, and since our father made sure I could read and write, I will express my misgivings to you.
We have been caught in deepening snows so that the streets are becoming impassable, and now the wind is rising, which will not only bring higher drifts to the streets, it will keep everyone indoors for days. Those who venture out risk dying of cold. Ships in the harbor are cracked and broken by the ice. The roads beyond the Island of Hares vanish into banks of snow. I will hand this to our courier when
I am finished, but he may not be able to leave until the weather clears and some effort has been made to allow horses and sleighs to move without fear of being trapped in drifts as high as houses. There has already been warnings that the work-gangs that have been cutting trees some distance away may be stranded, and as they have little food, so we will have little wood until this series of storms passes. I hope none of us starve or freeze during that time.
It has been a quiet day so far, and not because of the weather, but because no one is willing to venture out. A dinner that was to be held at the Hessian Residence has been postponed since there is no certainty that most of the guests could get there safely, or once arrived, could return to their various houses afterward without risking being caught in the snow. The Poles have opened their house to the Czar's officers seeking to play cards or drink, but few have accepted the invitation. Already we have had reports that two work-gangs assigned to shore up the embankments have lost men to cold, and we must expect more will die in the same way before the thaw comes. I hope the Czar has arranged to have replacement work-gangs sent as soon as it is possible to bring them here.
Alexander Menshikov, the Czar's close friend for whom our cousin is a scribe and keeper of records, remains here, carrying out the Czar's orders and overseeing the city in his stead. Marfa Skavronskaya, the Czar's preferred companion, has pledged to offer a banquet for Sankt Piterburkh's foreigners for the Feast of the Epiphany, if the weather clears enough, which many of us believe is yet another sign of the Czar's catering to the West. The Europeans are granted so many more privileges than we Russians that I begin to fear that there will be clashes between them and us in the coming year. Why should Piotyr insist that we dress as the Europeans do, keep the calendar, and tolerate their religious errors? It is bad enough that we Russians must remain here as long as the Czar wishes, but that no such constraints are imposed upon the Europeans only creates rancor and resentment among us.
Doubtless it will be spring by the time you receive this, and much of what I have said will have changed here. That is to be expected in
this place, for the Czar demands it, and no one can gainsay him. He continues to require work to go on no matter what the conditions, so work-gangs are laboring on the interiors of buildings they framed in late summer, so that by the time the ice melts, the buildings will be ready to occupy and more can be built. We have been told that another five hundred buildings are to be completed and occupied by the end of next summer. The Foreign Quarter is to be doubled in size during the summer.
To that end, I ask you, of your kindness, to send me a pair of tutors. Most of the Russian children here are supposed to be taught to read, write, do figures, know geography, and whatever other topics the Czar decrees must be studied. If I can join with the tutors to start a school, there will be benefits for you as well as for me and our cousins. The Czar's woman, Marfa, is encouraging all families to have good teachers for their children in Piotyr's name. If we can establish the first school, our fortune here will be made.