The Lost Souls of Angelkov (42 page)

When he reaches to unloosen the rich weave of thick braids at the back of her neck, she stops him.

She had risen from the settee and taken his hand. She moved with sure-footed elegance in spite of all the vodka she’d consumed. He felt slow, suddenly clumsy, as he followed her. She’d led him to one of the bedrooms and stood before him, looking up into his face, and he knew she wanted him to kiss her.

He cautiously put his arms around her, ready to remove them if she showed even the slightest change of heart. But she didn’t. She raised her face, and he pressed his mouth against hers.

Antonina has only known Lilya’s one kiss, and Konstantin’s. She has never been kissed the way Grisha kisses her. It’s the kiss of a man sure of himself, and sure of his desire, but there is no urgency. As they continue to kiss, his mouth growing more insistent, he puts his hand against the small of her back, half lifting her against him.

Then he sets her down. “Are you certain?” he whispers.

It’s when she nods that he reaches up to loosen her hair, and “No,” she murmurs, covering his hands with hers. “Leave my hair. Please.”

He knows he shouldn’t be doing this. Can he blame the vodka? Has it affected her, made her susceptible? He didn’t plan this, although he has thought about—imagined—having her. He’s had many, many women over his lifetime; having a woman has never been difficult for Grisha. For some he has felt genuine fondness, while others simply fulfilled a physical need. He’s always been honest with them: he promises nothing, telling them he’s not a man made for marriage. Some of the witty ones, the ones who made him laugh, meant more than the ones who were only pretty.

But none of them ever created this disquiet in him; none of them made him confused about his feelings. Since he was fifteen years old, Grisha has taught himself not to fall into anything that could be tenderness, or sympathy. Those emotions could lead to memories that brought back the guilt. Grisha knows that carrying guilt is like having a solid, heavy load strapped onto your chest, a load that is almost impossible
to put down. It’s difficult to get what you want with a load in your way; it obstructs your view and cripples your stride. Guilt doesn’t allow a person to do the things that are necessary in order to live a life where you work towards what you want.

He knows exactly who he is, and what he’s done. He sees himself in a hard, unforgiving light. He’s a man who will do what has to be done to further himself.

He takes his hands from her hair and cups them around her face. “I will try not to touch your nose, madam,” he says, smiling, and she returns the smile with one of her own. It is somehow lazy. No, languorous.

Something within him jumps. He hasn’t ever seen this smile.

“But you must call me Tosya,” she says softly. “At such a moment, you must call me Tosya.” She puts his fingers on the buttons of her bloodied bodice.

When she awakens, the room is dark except for one guttering candle, and Antonina feels ill. Her stomach churns, empty but for the vodka, and her head throbs.

She stares at the low wooden ceiling, feeling the heat of Grisha beside her. She turns her head and studies his profile. The bedclothes cover him to his waist. She looks at his bare chest as it rises and falls and wants to put her hand on it.

She has just seen a boy she thought was her son. Then she had read his written words and held his
talmochka
. She is a mother, a wife—and a hypocrite. That Konstantin would continue to take Tania while married to her had disgusted her; she saw him as weak and immoral. And now … She closes her eyes. How has she allowed this to happen?

She crosses herself, praying silently for forgiveness.

Grisha stirs, turning towards her, and she holds her breath. And in spite of her barely finished prayer, she wants him to reach for her again, to feel his hot skin against hers, to put her fingers on his body and trace the play of his ribs, the hollow of his clavicle and the jut of his hip. It shouldn’t have happened. But how will she deny to herself how he moved her?

She falls asleep again, but is awakened by Grisha shifting. It’s not yet morning, although the room is lightening, the air a soft grey. He’s on one elbow, looking down at her, and without allowing herself to think, she puts her arms around his neck and pulls him onto her, arching against him, feeling him ready for her. His desire fills her with more of her own.

Konstantin never desired her. He did what he had to do to produce his heir.

Grisha leans down and kisses her nipple, pulling it into his mouth, and Antonina gasps. His hair falls over his cheek and she brushes it away, cupping the back of his head with her hand, loving the way his dark lashes shadow his cheeks. When he lifts his head to look at her, she puts her mouth on his and he kisses her back, and then in one swift movement he’s inside her. He turns her so that they’re on their sides, facing each other. He gently manoeuvres her leg up and over his hip, and moves slowly, without the rush of the night before.

“I want you, Grisha,” she says, and he says, “Call me Tima. Please. Call me Tima.”

Such is Antonina’s desire that she doesn’t stop to wonder. “Tima,” she breathes, putting her mouth to his ear, touching its rim with the tip of her tongue.

When they awaken, a thin sun is streaming through the window. Antonina doesn’t know if Grisha woke her or she woke him, but they’re looking at each other in that pale sunlight. He opens his mouth to speak, but the full weight of what she’s done comes upon Antonina. She sits up, turning from him. Although she had no shame through the night, now she wraps the coverlet around her as she picks up her clothes from the floor. They’re damp and cold. She leaves the room without speaking to or looking at Grisha. She goes into the lavatory, where she dresses hurriedly. Then she allows herself to glance in the mirror.

Her nose is swollen and there are darkening bruises under her eyes. There is also a slightly reddened patch where Grisha’s chin rubbed against her jaw. Her hair, although still mainly caught in its pins and combs, is snarled and tangled.

More than the sickness in her stomach is the terrible remorse for what she’s just done.

She returns to the sitting room and is putting on her cape when Grisha emerges from the bedroom, looking down as he buckles his leather belt over his white tunic. His hair is tousled. His cheeks, beneath the dark overnight stubble, are slightly flushed, and he carries his boots under one arm.

She puts Misha’s pages back into the pocket of the
talmochka
. “The roads will be a sea of mud after all the rain,” she says, the attempt at keeping her voice matter-of-fact not quite successful. “It will be a difficult ride back.”

“Yes,” Grisha answers, and looks up from his belt to her. “How is your nose this morning?” He sits on a chair and begins to pull on a boot.

Antonina realizes this is the first time he has sat in her presence without being given permission. Her mouth is dry from the vodka. She longs for a cup of hot tea, and turns away as she ties the ribbons of her cape. “I’ll saddle Dunia,” she says.

“No, Tosya, let me do that.”

The name she’d asked him to call her now sounds wrong in the light of day.

She opens the door. “I’d rather do it myself. And—Grisha?”

He stops, the boot halfway up his leg, and looks at her, expectation of some kind on his face. He’s smiling, slightly. He looks pleased.

“I had too much vodka last night, Grisha. I was not … After what happened at Tushinsk, and my nose … But it was a mistake. Do you understand? I really can’t remember …”

They both know she needs to lie. He doesn’t contradict her.

She can’t read his face, but the pleased look is gone.

“We won’t speak of it, ever,” she says. There’s no need to say anything more, but something makes her add, “Do you understand?”

At this, Grisha’s face tightens. He is her steward again. She might be ordering him to bring her an account, or chastise a lazy serf. “I understand.” There’s no tenderness in his voice, nothing to hint at what they’ve just shared.

“Good,” Antonina says firmly. By the time Grisha comes out of the dacha, she’s already in the yard on Dunia, who is prancing in the cool autumn air.

Antonina finds it difficult to ride home beside Grisha.

She knows he didn’t force himself on her; it was the other
way around. Grisha would never have taken her if she hadn’t initiated it, encouraged him.

She tries to get the name he asked her to call him out of her head.

Tima.

Grisha is remembering the way it sounded coming from her lips. It took him back to a more innocent time, one where he hadn’t yet committed his great wrong. It allowed him to forget, for one night, what he has never been able to let go of.

No one has called him Tima—for Timofey, his given name—for twenty years. The last time he heard it, he was fifteen years old, and running away from everything he knew.

T
ima’s father was a
polkovnik
—one of a high position—in the Russian army. Senior Officer Colonel Aleksandr Danilovich Kasakov was also one of the notorious Decembrist revolutionaries of 1825. The small group of high-ranking officers had marched to Senate Square in St. Petersburg, trying to force the Senate—and Tsar Nicholas I—to sign a manifesto deposing the autocracy and abolishing serfdom.