“I’ll see Mrs. Varjensky settled first. She needs to rest.” Smiling in that English manner of politeness, he retraced their steps, seeming not the least bit affected by the stares and scowls.
Mama rounded on Svetlana as soon as she hobbled into their cordoned-off space. “Have you taken complete leave of your senses? That man does not belong here.”
Svetlana kept her voice low. “Then why did you receive him so happily?”
“I may have lost my home, my clothes, and my jewels, but I have not forgotten the simple manners of receiving a visitor no matter how unexpected or unwelcome he is. Good breeding would not allow me to. Good breeding should have taught you not to go to such a hospital and drag back the help.”
Marina helped Svetlana to a bundle of scratchy blankets serving as their shared sleeping pallet. “Mama, Svetka was injured. She had no choice but to go.” A younger version of their mother with dark blond hair and a petite frame that was quickly filling out with her fourteen years, Marina was always the one to seek peace.
“She had a choice not to bring him here. He’ll report us. We’ll be cast out and then where will we go?” Clutching the gold cross dangling from her neck, Mama draped herself across the pallet and turned her face away with a soft sob.
Ignoring the theatrics, Marina knelt next to Svetlana and took her hands. New callouses had developed on her tender palms from carrying in buckets of water each morning. A task once suited to a servant, but Marina never complained.
“Are you all right?”
Svetlana stretched out her leg, flexing and curling her toes. One by one the cramps eased from the tightened muscles. “Yes. He pulled the piece from my knee and bandaged it before dressing Mrs. Varjensky’s hand.”
“Do you think we’re in trouble for staying here? Will he tell the authorities who we are? I tire of running.”
Svetlana smoothed the hair from her sister’s thinning face. Their once impeccably tailored clothes were fitting a bit looser these days. She tried to keep her family fed as best she could, but food was scarce all over Paris. Not to mention shelter. Pain cut into her leg, scuttling guilt across her conscience. If her family were safe enough in this refuge cellar, she never would have gone off last night, and none of the transpiring events would have happened. That insistent man could have stayed at his hospital sharpening scalpels and not be here intruding on their peace of mind.
None of this could she tell Mama or Marina and so she summed a serene smile. “There is nothing to worry yourself about,
“I wish Papa and Nicky were here.”
“They will join us soon enough or send for us when they’ve defeated the revolutionaries. In the meantime we will make ourselves
as discrete as possible.” Svetlana stretched out her other leg, easing the strain from having to put all her weight on one
side. She had not been in this amount of pain since she twisted her ankle on a difficult
“The Reds will not find us here. Not this far from Russia, will they?” Fear quaked in Marina’s eyes. Terror of the Reds was a fear they had never known until a year ago when the revolutions began. They had come to live with the anxiety ever since. God willing, the White Army would win back the throne for the tsar and they could all return home.
“Papa and Nicky will not allow them. You’ll see.”
“Hello? May I come in?” Wynn stood on the other side of the blanket serving as their door.
Like a spring, Mama bounced up from her prostrate position dry eyed and pink cheeked. She scooted to the edge of the pallet and arranged her skirts into regal folds before clasping her hands in her lap. “Enter.”
Wynn took a single, polite step into the chamber, but it was enough to take up all remaining space. He was tall, taller than Papa, who was considered the tallest of the tsar’s guards, and could easily brush the ceiling if he were to push to his toes. A thick, broad chest that foretold of well-shaped muscles beneath his clothes. Unlike most lanky physicians she’d seen before. His hair that had appeared a dark blond in the morning light now shone light brown; the long locks on top were parted to the side and cut much shorter around his ears.