The lieutenant had no alternative but to relinquish his partner. Jens stepped in and swept Valentina away.
STARS?” VALENTINA QUERIED. ”Yes. Orion’s Belt. The Great Bear. The North Star.”
There was a pause.
“That’s it?” she asked.
“You want more? There’s the Giant’s Hammer and Astralis Gigantis… I could go on. Awesome sights, all of them.”
“What makes you think I’m interested in stars?”
He flashed her a teasing smile, aware of her gaze on him, one eyebrow raised in a delicate arch. “I wanted to ask you something. How else was I to hack a path through that forest of uniforms around you?”
She gave him a mock frown. “Tell me what it is you want to ask.”
He became serious. “Why were you angry with me? At the concert, I mean. Scowling at me as though I had the devil on my shoulder.”
She threw her head back in a laugh that was so relaxed and natural in this unnatural world of jewels and corsets and crimped curls that it took him totally by surprise. It was a wonderful sound. Rich and infectious. He spun her in a quick turn across the floor. This close he could see that her eyes were not just brown but gold and brown, as if whoever painted them had dipped the brush in the wrong color pot. His gaze drifted to the creamy smoothness of her throat.
“It was nothing,” she smiled. “I was just being a silly schoolgirl.”
“And now?”
“Now I’m not angry with you any more. Nor am I a schoolgirl anymore.”
“So what are you? One of this season’s debutantes, here at court to find a husb-?”
“I’m here because my parents ordered me to be here.”
“Ah.”
He could feel the sudden heat of her anger, though she hid all trace of it from her face, but her fingers in his betrayed her. He let her dance in peace, no more questions. She seemed to float deep within the music as he guided her away from the throng of swaying couples toward the ballroom door, and as soon as she saw it within reach he heard her take a deep breath. Felt her small ribs expand under his hand on her back and he had a sense of a creature scenting freedom.
“Would you care for me to show you the Astralis Gigantis?” he asked with a straight face. “A star that not many people have ever seen before, I believe.”
“I would be fascinated.”
He liked the hint of mockery in her voice.
She turned quickly to walk through the double doors to the refreshment room beyond, and as she did so he smelled the fragrance of her hair. The beautiful dark waves he’d seen at the school were pinned up in an elaborate coiffure high on the back of her head, emphasizing her high cheekbones and long neck. As she walked in front of him, a small slight figure in her white silk gown nipped in to her tiny waist, he experienced a strong impulse to extract the large pearl hair comb in her coiffure and release the thick coils. As though it would release her. He felt an urge to set free whatever it was she was holding in so tight.
He steered her to one of the tall windows that stretched from floor to ceiling, draped with golden velvet and decorated with silk flowers. Valentina leaned toward it as though the night outside held something she wanted.
“Which one is this Astralis Gigantis of yours?” she asked softly.
“It’s up there somewhere, I promise you, just waiting to be found.”
“I hope so. I like to think there are more to discover.”
“There is always more to discover, Valentina.”
She made no comment but swayed to the distant music, her reflection insubstantial among the shadows outside.
“May I have something to drink?” she asked.
So he fought his way to the refreshment room, but by the time he returned with a glass of lime cordial in one hand and a stiff brandy in the other, it was too late. The uniforms had gathered around her. Like bees. He could hear their hungry buzz. He pushed his way through them to where a tall fair-haired captain of the Hussar Guards in a scarlet uniform was holding her dance card between his fingers, talking heatedly. Jens took one look at Valentina’s face and placed the drinks on a table, plucked the dance card out of the captain’s fingers, tore it in two, and returned it in the man’s hand with a curt bow.
“Excuse us,” he said, and tucked Valentina’s hand under his arm. “We have a star to inspect.”
As they walked out of the room, he felt her shaking. For one appalling moment he thought she was crying, but then he glanced at her face and saw the laughter.
Ten
A SLEIGH RIDE. VALENTINA GASPED, THE AIR WAS SO COLD. The wind tugged at her beaver fur hood and her hands were tucked firmly inside the fur muff on her lap. She liked the cold. It scraped away the stink of cigars from her skin. The Viking had bundled the rug around her, so that only the tip of her nose and her chin gleamed pale in the stretch of moonlight.
The sleigh was fast over the snow, its greased metal runners singing like music, the horse’s hooves barely audible. The Viking drove the open sleigh with relish. It should have made her nervous but didn’t. Her mother would faint with horror if she found out. Valentina shouldn’t be here at all, she knew that, but in her opinion she shouldn’t be at the ball either. The sleigh flew through the streets of St. Petersburg, along the granite Embankment, past the bridge where the towers of the Fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul loomed. Mist lay like a winter coat on the river, blurring the reflected lamplight into greasy smears.
He didn’t talk. That suited her. She closed her eyes, listening to the hum of the runners. He was taking her away from the city lights so that they could look at the stars. A smile rose to her chilled lips. No one had ever shown her the stars before.
THAT’S ODYSSEUS. HE WAS A GREAT WARRIOR WHOM THE gods couldn’t bear to let die, so they flung him up into the heavens where they could wrestle with him whenever they grew bored.”
Valentina pointed to another cluster of stars. There were thousands of them, sharp pinpricks of light in the thick black arc of the sky. “What are they? They’re beautiful. They seem so close.”
“They’re Zeus’s handmaidens. Each one was an earthling girl when the all-powerful god fell in love with them. He stole them. Raised them up to be his eternal handmaidens. It’s said they all have flowing brown locks and deep brown eyes.”
She suddenly realized he’d stopped looking at the night sky and was staring directly at her. “You’d better watch out,” he said. “You’re just his type.”
She laughed. “I wouldn’t mind being up there, looking down on all the puny efforts of the tiny creatures on earth. It would be a relief. To be free from all”-she waved her fur muff in the vague direction of the city-“this.”
He raised his head and sat up. They had been leaning back in the sleigh as they gazed at the stars.
“Is it so bad?” he asked softly.
She thought about it. About bombs in the hands of revolutionaries. Two government ministers had been murdered by them: Sipyagin at the Mariinsky Palace, and Vyacheslav Plehve had one tossed into his carriage. Even Alexander II, the tsar’s grandfather, was killed by one. The magnificent Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood was built on the spot beside the Griboedov Canal where the fatal explosion took place. She thought about her father’s face when he said, You did this to her, and about the lifetime of dress fittings and tea parties her mother would condemn her to. About the woman with the shiny scar stamped on her skull. About Katya.
“No,” she lied, “it’s not so bad.”
“You play the piano like an angel. Isn’t that worth staying down here for?”
“I’d persuade Zeus to let me play it in the heavens too.”
“Ah yes. Join in with the music of the spheres. He’d be a fool not to let you.”