Half the clothes were gone—hers and a few of his. “If she was running away, why would she take some of my clothes?” It didn’t make sense, so she couldn’t have really left him. She’d just gone to do the laundry.
“Maybe he was deserting and needed something other than his uniform.”
That thought was particularly bitter. Nadia knew how hard it was to get clothing out here. Would she really rob him of trousers and tunic so her former fiancé could blend in with the masses? “I thought you said he was tall.”
Dalek finished with the fire. “Taller than you. But he could wear boots or puttees if the trousers were too short.”
She’d left their cooking supplies, their dishes, their bag of potatoes. They didn’t have much else other than the bed, the table, and the stove. Filip hesitated before looking through her leather case. What he might not find there would confirm his fears. He shifted through the meager contents—letters from Veronika, a newspaper clipping about the founding of Czechoslovakia, sketched out maps, and some Kolchak rubles.
It wasn’t there. And that made everything clear. “The annulment paper is gone. She must have taken it with her.” It wasn’t true anymore, but she’d taken it and left him. Would it have been any different if he hadn’t held back the truth about Kral’s intentions in Piryatin? He should have told her as soon as he’d heard. Or kept it a secret forever. It shouldn’t have mattered. They were in love now—or he was. And she had said she was too.
He sat on the bed. His shoulder ached worse than it had in days, and grief and hurt pulled at him with the weight of a train engine. He thought back to that night when he’d told her. Those minutes when she’d faced away from him. That must have been when she’d made her decision. She’d told Petrov no. Then she’d found out Filip had deceived her, and she’d changed her mind. The rest of the night had been playacting so Filip wouldn’t suspect a thing until she was gone.
He buried his face in his hand as pain of the betrayal closed in around him. Never before had he felt such agony. “I thought she was happy with me.”
Chapter Thirty-One
It was dark when Nadia woke. The wind howled outside, and the men snored nearby. How many days had passed? Six? Seven? Time had become murky after day four when she’d come down with a fever. She shifted on the cold dirt floor. The pain—sharp and achy and internal—wasn’t quite so bad when she moved her legs now. She tried to sit, and unlike the day before, her head didn’t spin. She glanced at the men, wanting to see their location, not their faces. Usually one of them slept in front of the door, but tonight the exit was clear, her dizziness lessened, and the pain from her injuries was no longer crippling.
She’d borrowed Filip’s trousers the morning she’d been abducted. She grabbed them again. Blood stained the fabric, but she pulled them on under her skirts and petticoat. She needed all the layers she could get.
The smoky hut was dim, lit only by dying embers from the large clay oven. It reeked of vodka and unwashed bodies. Thinking of those unwashed bodies almost made her cry. But she couldn’t think about what the men had done to her now. She had to escape.
She stood and held perfectly still. Any moment, one of the bandits sleeping on the long wooden benches would wake and see her. He’d grab her again and—no, she wasn’t going to think about that. The men were brutal and uncivilized and far stronger than she, but they were drunk and would probably sleep until sunrise.
They’d never given her a blanket, so she couldn’t take one with her. It would have been covered in soot and fleas anyway. It might take days to reach the nearest train station, and winter still gripped the steppe, but she wouldn’t stay. Death in the snow was preferable to captivity with beasts like these men.
She wished she’d paid better attention to directions that day they’d taken her, but she’d been dizzy and terrified. She thought they’d gone south, so she would flee north. If she found the train tracks, she could follow them to a depot. Czechoslovaks manned most of the stations, and they’d send word to Filip.
He would still love her, wouldn’t he? She glanced at the bandit nearest her and crept past him. It hadn’t been her fault. She’d fought until they knocked her unconscious that first day, fought them again the day after and the day after. It wasn’t her fault they had no decency or honor. But knowing she’d done nothing wrong didn’t keep her from feeling dirty and spoiled—ruined.
Was that how God saw her now? Ruined? She had prayed so hard for relief, for rescue, for a chance to escape. God hadn’t seemed to hear her, not until tonight. Her mother’s words drifted on a memory.