“Aunt Genia!” I exclaimed and ran across the room to embrace her. “What a pleasant surprise!”
She let me kiss her dry, papery cheek. “Good to see you too, Sasha. What is it you’re telling me — Nikolashka went and lost what little mind God blessed him with?”
It was shocking to hear my aunt to refer to the prince by his nickname, like a gossiping peasant. Refreshing, too. Before I even took my hat and gloves off, I told her about Wong Jun, my own almost-arrest, and Jack’s interference. Oh, it was such a relief to pour my heart out to a sympathetic soul. She listened, not moving, until her tea went cold and Anastasia recovered enough of her wits to bring in supper and to inquire whether Eugenia was planning to stay with us or to go back to her St. Petersburg apartment.
“I’ll stay there,” Eugenia said. “No need for me to crowd you here.”
“It’s no trouble,” I said quickly. “There is a spare bedroom, it is not much, but it is tidy and I’m sure it will suffice until your apartment is ready.”
“Thank you, niece,” Eugenia said. “I won’t be in the city for long — just a few days, to have some business taken care of. I’ll make sure to look into your friend’s whereabouts.” She wrote down Wong Jun’s name in her notepad with her small, exacting letters.
Over supper, we talked about things at home. Eugenia complained the horses were getting expensive to feed since oats had grown poorly this year and prices were now sky-high. She spoke about buying some mechanical plows, since coal and peat seemed in less demand than oats. “And the machines are certainly better tempered. The horses are such fiends — give them one finger, they’ll take your whole arm. I kept them for your riding, but now that you’re gone… ”
“I’ll be back,” I said quickly.
“You don’t say.” Eugenia waited for Anastasia to clean the table and then excuse herself and go gossip with Natalia Sergeevna before asking more. “You think you’ll come back to Trubetskoye, with your Englishman and all?”
“It’s not like that.” And before I had a chance to worry that Eugenia would think me insane and talk myself out of telling her, I told her how Jack dropped out of the sky and then chased his hat by leaping a hundred yards in one step. “There’s something about him, only I don’t know what and how it is even possible.”
“Stranger things have been known to happen,” Eugenia said. “We better turn in — you have classes tomorrow, and I will be going to the ministry offices first thing. They always make you wait forever, so I need my rest.”
When I was in my bed, drifting to sleep, there was a creak of the floorboards and weight on the edge of my bed. My aunt’s hand rested on my brow, just as when I was small and ill. A sense of deep calm and belief that everything would turn all right filled me. “You came because of my letter, didn’t you?” I murmured, comforted like a child.
“Of course,” she answered. “Not that I don’t have business of my own, but know one thing, Sasha: all you have to do is ask, and I will be there.”
I sighed, happy, and fell asleep before her dry cool hand left my forehead. I had not slept that well since arriving in St. Petersburg.
I woke up more hopeful than I had felt in weeks. Eugenia’s mere presence seemed enough to instill a sense of rightness in the world, as if nothing bad was possible when she was nearby. She ate breakfast with me and then departed toward the Palace Bridge the same time as Olga and I left for our classes. I almost skipped on my way; I had not realized how heavily the latest events weighed on my mind until the burden had lifted. Even Professor Ipatiev could not affect me with his explanation of the female reproductive system and rather excessive insistence that ovaries were nothing more than defective and listless testes. I caught Dasha’s attention, and we rolled our eyes at each other as our only recourse. I did hope, however, I would not have to draw the reproductive system at the next exam.
In philosophy, I took my usual seat. To my surprise, Jack came in earlier than was his habit, and took a seat next to me, the one usually occupied by Dasha. When Dasha came in, she smiled and moved down the aisle, leaving me in unasked-for tête-à-tête with Jack Bartram.
“Listen,” he said. “I’ve been thinking.”
“So have I,” I whispered back. “Shh, class is starting.”
“Promise you’ll stay after class and talk to me.”
“Very well.”
He didn’t move away when the lecture started, and I found I had trouble concentrating on chained men in the cave and the shadows that they somehow mistook for real people when Jack was sitting next to me.
The lecture was finally over, and I could’ve cursed my friends — Dasha and Olga, and Elena and Larisa all ran ahead, leaving me facing Jack with no excuse to escape the situation. Even our classmates who could be counted on to follow us around and make rude jokes when they were least welcome left the auditorium. I sighed and faced Jack, even though it was the last thing I was interested in doing at the time. He smiled and motioned that we should step outside.
“I know I was harsh the last time we spoke,” he said, and matched his long stride to mine. “I just… I wish I knew the right thing to do.”
“Sometimes it is hard to decide,” I said. “But you can start by not lying to me.”
“I’m fond of you,” he said. “Really, quite so.” His voice was steady, and his hat concealed his expression as well as ever. “I don’t want to lie to you, but I see no choice sometimes.”
“I appreciate the sentiment,” I said, blushing rather hopelessly. “But if you want me to return your interest, your sincerity would be most effective.”
As much as I resented such manipulation, I had to sternly remind myself that it seemed to be the only way to find out what was going on. I had tried straightforward sincerity before, so I felt I was morally in the clear.
Jack nodded a few times, thoughtful. “You were right about me,” he said. “I am here on orders of my government, and I am gathering information of… sensitive nature.”
I held my breath not quite believing he was finally supplying some answers. “And the Crane Club?”
He hung his head. “I cannot talk about that. Please believe me, if it were not for necessity… I had no choice.”
“There’s always a choice,” I responded. “You could’ve refused.”
“I face severe punishment should I disobey my orders,” he said. “More severe than most others.”
“What have you got against the Chinese?”
“Nothing,” he said. “There was some interest in the models they were building, but it is secondary, and served mostly as a diversion. That is why I, a criminal, was trusted with it — it is not important in itself, but only as a symbolic gesture.”
Although I did not wish to, I had to lean on his hand. My head spun. I had assumed Chiang Tse and the rest were victims of continuing British hostility. The emperor’s preference for all things and causes English coupled with his brother’s fear of foreigners had made matters worse. I assumed they were arrested and pursued to please the British, and that Jack and his compatriots were here to direct and to supervise. It had not occurred to me that all this was a deliberate setup, a distraction engineered by the English. The unavoidable conclusion stared me in the face, and it had the mean pinprick gaze of Dame Nightingale.