With an agility belying her age, Mrs. Varjensky waddled down the creaky steps and disappeared into the dimness. Svetlana counted
the steps with hesitation as the pain in her leg throbbed. She’d danced
Embarrassed at her loss of composure, she stiffened and pulled away. “Thank you.”
“All in a day’s work. Women are always falling for me. I’m quite charming that way.” Wynn grinned to reveal a full show of white teeth.
Svetlana hesitated, considering the meaning of this Englishman’s strangely phrased words. “You are funny again.”
He winced. “Only to myself it seems. Again.”
“You are easily amused.”
“And you are not.”
“Nothing is amusing in Russia. Not anymore.” She limped down the remaining steps, hating the sudden weakness in her trained body. His hand never left the small of her back. By the time she reached the floor, a sheen of sweat dotted her brow and fires of pain danced up her leg. How would she ever perform on stage again if a flight of stairs defeated her?
She pulled away from the doctor’s touch and straightened herself. “Say nothing. They are wary of strangers.”
His brow furrowed. “Who are they?”
With the unavoidable at hand, Svetlana guided him through another door and into the cellar proper stuffed to the brim with Russian émigrés. It was a small space no bigger than her family’s dining room back in their Petrograd home, the Blue Palace. A narrow path wound through the maze of blankets and luggage spread across the cold stone floor. Clothes cleaned as best they could from the two wash buckets were strung over rope anchored from wall to wall. Children dressed in the worn peasant clothing of the countryside huddled close to their mothers and fathers, their Russian dialects spread as wide as the plains to the Altai Mountains. The Reds had covered much ground in displacing their people.
Conversations hushed and questioning glances followed as she guided Wynn through the confusion to the back rows where crass voices melted into elegant French, the language of Russia’s upper class. Here blankets had been hung as dividers for privileged privacy. Narrow windows cut high in the back wall beckoned in a timid light that barely scratched the peasant rows. The blanket wall in the back corner rustled and out rushed her mother and sister with identical expressions of concern.
“Svetka! Here you are at last. What has happened to take so long?” Her mother stumbled to a halt at the sight of Wynn, as he’d so informally introduced himself back at the hospital. “Who is this man?”
While her mother spoke in their customary French, Svetlana kept to English for the courtesy of their guest. “Allow me to present Doctor MacCallan of the English hospital here in Paris.” Drawing her shawl close to hide the exerted beating of her heart from the painful walk, she gestured to her mother. “My mother, Ana Dalsky, and my sister, Marina.”
Mama’s mouth twisted in her way of displeasure. “Her Serenity the Princess Ana Andreevna Dalsky.” She held out her hand to be kissed as if they were standing once more in St. George’s Hall in the Winter Palace.
“Mama! We cannot be so blatant about our titles in this unfamiliar place,” Svetlana said in French. It was rude to cut their guest so obviously from the conversation, but it was safer to trust no one, hunted as they were simply for being nobility. The old life was gone and clinging to it—as desperately as she wanted to—was a death sentence, in soul and body. Mama could never make things easier when it went against her will.
“This man is of little consequence and absorbed in a war little to do with our situation. I will not lessen myself, nor should you.” Mama waggled her waiting fingers, once glittering with rings but now bare, the rings having been sold for scraps of food on their escape.
With only the slightest show of surprise, Wynn bent over Mama’s fingers as any gentleman of standing was required. “A pleasure, Your Serenity.”
Other nobles of ranking—counts, barons, and countesses—peeked around the corners of their blanket walls. Scowls creasing their wane faces, they whispered to one another as Mama smiled in triumph. Once upon a time a visiting physician was nothing to draw jealousy, but here, to host a visitor of any kind was an occasion harkening back to the privileges they all once possessed and grappled to grasp once again.
“Won’t you come in?” With a change back to English, Mama swept into their chamber that was little more than three dividing blankets and a stone wall.