To Dream of Snow (19 page)

‘Yes,' she said, taking off her hat and letting it drop on to the grass. ‘I need some exercise after kneeling and sitting all day.'

It seemed natural that they should turn away from the Palace and begin wandering deeper through the groves of the area where she had happened to be. There was no need to talk. It was too peaceful here for inconsequential chatter and they strolled in harmony. Now and again she looked up at the canopy of foliage when they passed under the branches of a tree, seeing how every leaf seemed translucent in the amber sunlight of the northern evening.

After a while when it was about time to turn back she paused, leaning against a tree and closing her eyes, her expression reflecting her total contentment in this beautiful place.

‘What are you thinking about?' Tom asked, setting the flat of his hand on the bark beside her head.

‘Nothing really,' she answered softly. ‘I'm just listening.'

He smiled. ‘What can you hear? It seems very quiet to me.'

‘That's what I can hear: the quietness. It makes me realize that no palace is ever silent. Always doors opening and shutting, voices and clattering feet and rustling skirts and the thump of the guards' boots.'

‘But you've been painting here on the plateau every day. Haven't you been aware of the quietness before now?'

She opened her eyes and saw his smiling face close to hers. ‘I've been too absorbed in my work.'

Then all words dried in her throat as he stepped closer to her. Immediately she would have moved from the tree, but swiftly he cupped her face between his hands.

‘Don't draw away from me any more, Marguerite,' he implored lovingly. ‘We tried avoiding each other, but that was useless. Now at Oranienbaum we have kept up a pretence that hasn't fooled either of us.'

‘I won't listen to what you're saying!' she cried out, something close to panic in her eyes. ‘I didn't hear what you said!'

His whole face was drawn by long-suppressed passion and it was as if she had not spoken. ‘The first time I laid eyes on you it was as if all my life I had been waiting for that moment.'

‘Don't say that, Tom!' Her expression was desperate and she would have jerked free, but his arms clasped her to him and he stopped her protests with his hungry mouth on hers. That mouth, so like Jacques's and just as ardent, hurtled her back in time, and suddenly the plateau could have been anywhere in Paris where she and Jacques had once loved and kissed. She was aware of him drawing her down with him on to the carpet of dry leaves. He kissed away the tears running from under her closed lids, not knowing how he was recapturing the past for her, and his caressing hand found her bare breast within her bodice.

‘You and I were meant to be together, my darling,' he said lovingly.

‘You're wrong!' Mentally she spun back into reality. ‘There can never be anything between us!'

‘How can you say that?' He gazed reassuringly down into her desperate face. ‘We've been given this once-in-a-lifetime chance to be on our own here every day. Nobody to question us or to observe. We're as alone here as if we were on another planet.'

‘But we can't let this happen, Tom!' Her voice broke.

He ran gentle fingertips down the side of her face, aware that she was being torn by conflicting emotions. ‘Darling Marguerite, I want to make love to you,' he entreated. ‘Don't you see what has happened? This secret place is our own. When we return to St Petersburg nobody else shall ever know it was here that we truly found each other.'

He would have kissed her again, but she turned her face aside and cried out despairingly, ‘This can't be!'

‘But Fate is being kind to us.'

She was unable to answer him, seeing no kindness in the circumstances that had created this terrible situation. All she knew was that she was on the brink of an abyss and somehow she had to force herself back from it. Even as she doubted her sanity in letting these moments happen she made no resistance as he kissed her again with even more passion than before. She was reminded of ecstatic moments in quiet places where she and Jacques had made love, her whole body alive to his, but they had had no responsibility for anyone except each other.

Summoning up all her strength of will, she broke away from his arms and scrambled to her feet. He remained where he lay, his head bowed in wretched disappointment. She stood staring down at him, her chest rising and falling breathlessly.

‘We have to promise each other that we shall never forget Sarah again! Never!'

For a few moments he neither moved nor looked up at her. Then he rose to his feet to stand facing her. Both knew there could be no going back to the guarded friendship of before. Barriers had been broken down. But as he reached for her again she drew back a step once more, shaking her head. He regarded her gravely.

‘No matter what we say or what promises we make, you and I both know that this isn't the end between us. There's too much feeling between us. Nothing need stop when we have to leave Oranienbaum. There are always ways to meet that will not hurt anyone else.'

‘You mean Sarah!' she said almost angrily. ‘Why don't you say her name? No, Tom. This short time we've spent alone here is all that there could ever be for us. We must not meet on our own here or anywhere else again!'

‘What difference would that make to what is between us?' He had dismissed her outburst and continued to love her with his gaze.

She uttered a sound in her throat like a sob and turned to run back the way they had come. Swiftly she gathered up her paintings and the rest of her belongings into her basket, snatched up her hat and set off down the long, grassy slope, her feet slithering in her haste. He had followed in time to watch her go. She ran all the way as if fleeing as much from herself as from him.

Next morning Tom went to the plateau as usual, but saw from a distance that there were several ladies of the Court waiting together. It could only mean that the Grand Duchess was with Marguerite and as he had urgent matters to see to elsewhere he decided to return later. He had to see Marguerite as soon as possible. She must be persuaded into seeing that his other life with Sarah need not be a barrier to keep them apart.

Catherine had been to see how Marguerite's work was progressing. She knew for certain now that she was pregnant again, but although there should have been no need to hide her condition this time she was in no hurry to let it become public knowledge. It was why she had wanted Marguerite to be at Oranienbaum with her in case she needed discreet adjustments to her garments. In the meantime the cape would set a fashion while at the same time it would be a useful garment in disguising the inevitable expansion of her figure. Later she would take pride in her condition, knowing it would please everybody, especially the Empress.

As Catherine left the plateau again, she thought of the moments in the forest on her first ride after arriving at Oranienbaum when she had broken the news to Sergei that she was pregnant.

‘So soon?' he had shouted furiously in the echoing forest, making her clamp her fingers over his mouth even though no one was anywhere near. She understood his fury, for he knew as she did that once her condition became known she would be cosseted and made to rest, concern for the baby uppermost, and steps taken to keep them apart, their love-making totally curtailed.

‘Hush, my darling,' she cooed to him. ‘We have the rest of the summer here at Oranienbaum. Let us make the most of it.'

He was difficult to pacify. It was if he wanted to completely reject the part he had played in her present condition. The Empress's condoning of their liaison was akin in his mind to his having been put to stud, and he found it humiliating. Now, all too quickly to suit him, there was to be living proof of their union!

Seeing him so tight-lipped with fury, Catherine wondered again if he still loved her, but with her own passion for him far from assuaged she thrust her misgivings aside.

For the whole of the day Tom was occupied in directing workers in the installation of a great fountain. When it was time to call a halt until the morning he went to bathe and change out of his working clothes before he set off eagerly for the plateau. There he ran all the way up the slope.

It took him a little time to find Marguerite, for every day she searched new areas. When finally he sighted her he halted abruptly, seeing she was not alone. One of the maids from the Palace was assisting her. Neither had seen him and he drew away to wait until Marguerite dismissed the maid and he could take her into his arms again.

But Marguerite had seen him out of the corner of her eye. She had chosen the only possible way to guard against any more meetings on her own with him.

Turning her head as she and the maid left the plateau, she saw him waiting not far away. For a long moment or two her gaze held his and then, although it tore at her, she looked ahead again. That glimpse of the torment in his face had shown her that he realized that she was resolved that all was over between them almost before it had begun.

He stood as still as one of Oranienbaum's marble statues, watching her until she was gone from sight.

It took Marguerite much longer than she had expected to finish collecting the plateau's many flowers and their leaves, even with the maid's daily assistance. She had seen Tom twice from a distance, but that was all. Yet she believed he had come to the plateau several times to see if by chance he would find her alone again, but as there was such an abundance of trees and tall bushes it was impossible for her to be sure whether or not he was there. Then one evening a letter was delivered to her. Breaking the seal, she saw that it was signed by Tom. It was very short.

Sinking down on to a chair, Marguerite bowed her head as she crushed the letter in her hand. There must have been some magic in that lovely place that had taken all reason from them and left this aftermath of yearning. She had always despised women who enticed away the husbands of friends and she bitterly regretted having come perilously close to that treachery.

Straightening up again, she read the letter through once more and was able to see now with a clearer mind that he seemed to have accepted that there could never be anything more between them. Then another interpretation came to her. Did he mean that in spite of a setback he would not give up?

The thought disturbed her deeply. At night her sleep was restless. Sometimes she would get up and rest her arms on the sill of the open window, seeing the park in the everlasting daylight of the White Nights and listening to the birds singing as if it were morning instead of a little after midnight. Often to welcome the sun, which barely slept itself, a ballroom gathering would pour out of the Palace on to the lawns as if from a cornucopia in their jewelled and colourful clothes, Catherine and Sergei in their midst. Led by musicians, they would all pass out of her sight as they danced on their way in the golden glow. Sometimes Marguerite's own feet danced as if of their own volition until the music could no longer be heard.

Daily she longed for work to keep her mind occupied and away from thoughts of Tom. With her task at the plateau finally at an end and a network of paths already being laid there, she was impatient to take up her needle again. Having sent the last of the flowers and paintings to Jeanne, she was at a loss with nothing to do. She had not come to Russia to be idle. But Catherine was not yet ready to release her.

‘No, Mam'selle Laurent, I'd like you now to choose one of those little flowers and let it inspire you in a new design for a gown for me. Is the cape finished yet?'

‘It should come from St Petersburg any day now, Madame.'

The design for the new flower gown was finished when Jeanne brought the cape herself, together with the finished shoes. Marguerite was glad to see her.

‘I took the chance to come,' Jeanne said conspiratorially when they were together in Marguerite's small salon. ‘We've all been so curious about this orange palace.'

Marguerite laughed. ‘As you've seen for yourself now, it's not even pale orange! Whatever made you think it would be?'

‘One of the Russian seamstresses said it was named after the orange tree. I never thought it would be blue and white! So that was a real surprise to me!'

‘I asked about its name when I came here. In this climate an orange tree would be so rare and valuable that only the imperial family ever has one. Thus this lovely palace has the same status, which is how it was given its unusual name. But of course it could be orange in colour at any time, because it seems from what I've heard that a different hue is often used whenever a palace has to be repainted.'

‘My first thought when I saw this palace was that it looked as if it had come out of a fairy tale. There can't be another like it.'

‘I can't answer that, although they say the Catherine Palace is the loveliest of all. There's even a room set with amber.'

Jeanne threw up her hands in astonishment. ‘What wealth! The Empress has many more palaces than she has toes on her feet!' Her peasant blood was stirred and she frowned angrily. ‘It's not right, is it? Just like at home. The rich are rich and the poor can starve.'

‘Don't let us talk of palaces any more,' Marguerite said, impatient for news and not wanting Jeanne to start on hotheaded talk just now, for once started on her favourite topic it was difficult to stop her. ‘I want to know what has been happening with all of you. You're not a good correspondent.'

‘I hate writing. It wears my brain out trying to think what to say. Everybody sent greetings to you, of course. Now I'll start with Sophie.' Jeanne began to tick off her fingers. ‘She has become betrothed to her nice Valentin Vaganov, but the marriage is not yet arranged. It suits Sophie, because she's preparing a trousseau for herself and it's not finished yet. He wants the wedding to be held when his sister and her husband and their family can come from Moscow and, if possible, when his brother is home from sea. I have come to know the rest of the Vaganov family very well through my friendship with Olga. She has sold some of my lace in her shop and is willing to sell more.'