Please enjoy the following preview from , also by Bianca Bloom.

* * *

St Petersburg is a city of theatres. It has a beauty that is European, but a savagery that comes directly from the Russian steppes.

Much like the man who was sitting next to me in the booth, a wild-haired Russian prince who still looked bushy and coarse from the cold outside. The man was built with a strength and crudity to his body, and yet his features were so remarkably fine that he could have made a model for any of the city’s aspiring sculptors.

No temptation could have been better designed to threaten my virtue.

The lights were low, and to any observers we must have looked much like any other young couple in a booth. In fact, I was supposed to be chaperoned, but the man had managed to dispatch the lady charged with overseeing me quite efficiently. There was little that I knew about the whereabouts of my abigail, but I felt in my heart that she would not be attending me in the booth until well after the final curtain fell.

And now the man was whispering, his voice subtle and insistent as the tense and dark music, now swelling into a crescendo. I didn’t know the man’s name – only that he was a prince, and that he clearly had no regard for a young woman’s dignity.

The tones of whispering turned his voice into a growl of sorts. “You must contrive to drop to the floor,” he commanded me.

My legs trembled beneath my long, silken gown, far less flimsy than the sort of thing that was fashionable in England. The skirts were full and hung loose on me after dropping from a fitted bodice. Though the lower part of the dress was not at all revealing, my body underneath it was warm, already sticky with longing for the stranger. In spite of my most sincere efforts not to move a single muscle, my legs fluttered. Squeezing them shut, I closed my eyes for the briefest of moments, willing myself to mentally walk back into the world of godliness and solitude.

“I cannot,” I murmured to him. “What, act as if I am falling?”

The solemnity of his tone was unchanged. “Or as if you have dropped a jewel, or lost your fan.”

Knowing that opera viewers all around us were observing, I kept a nervous smile on my lips, my heart fluttering along with the tormented soprano aria that had just begun. Some were looking at the young girl singing the solo, her bosom rising and falling as she strode about the stage, singing something nearly unintelligible. Both the actress and the opera were the sensation of all Petersburg, but there were plenty of opera-goers who were interested only in the crowd. They were present purely to chat with their aristocratic friends. Certainly, if I ducked down, they might see me and whisper about me behind their glittering fans. After all, they did not attend for the music – these individuals were there to see and be seen.

Or, perhaps, some of them may have come to the opera house to embark upon the same dark line of misdeeds that I desired. The thought set my skin into an even deeper blush, and I was glad that the lights were at least low. Could there be another pair of unmarried people sitting in this theatre, planning a liaison, mired in sin and distraction? Surely not. I must be the lowest of the low, the most wanton of all women present. Surely no other girl could be thinking about a deep wish for rough hands on her fair skin. My dress was crimson, but my skin must have been a rosy red that was distinctly unflattering.

The prince didn’t seem to find it so. He growled again. “I care not. No booth is higher than ours, and none shall see you.”

In that matter, it turned out, he was correct. We did have the highest booth in the entire opera-house, but that hardly mattered. Attempting not to move my lips, I tried to defend my honor in fluent but mispronounced Russian. “They may not see, but they shall suspect. The wiser ones shall know what is to be if we two disappear from view.”

His voice was now nearly choked. “Let them know.”

I wanted to agree to his suggestion, but the notion of such great scandal took my breath away. Though I was hardly in a position to remember my exact name, or my place in Russian society, I knew that my virginity was a highly valued commodity. And it was clear that the prince was a rake, and that his intentions toward me did not even contain the ghost of a gentleman’s honor. The idea of my fall becoming some twisted worm of an idea that all the young men of the city would think of as they were trying to find their own pleasure with hands and instruments, as I was informed they all did – no, my inner longing could not become such a public commodity.

And yet, since this rake could never cross my father’s threshold, any interaction of ours would have to be in public. He was publicly whispering to me, after all, and I was publicly shifting in my chair, attempting to talk myself out of making a very reckless decision.

After all, I was young, and this prince was not a true gentleman.

An observation that was confirmed by the way he grabbed my thin wrist through my opera gloves just as the soprano finished her aria. Most of the audience was distracted, and I was yanked forward, down onto the cold floor of the little booth.

For the first moments of applause, my body felt just as bombarded by sensation as the poor little soloist’s ears must have felt. The prince’s lips were already buried in my neck, tasting the flesh that had yearned for him so deeply I longed to douse out all feeling, but my legs and arms were positively massacred by the intensity of my surprise.

My body was on top of the prince’s, but if he had not held it there, I surely would have fallen in a great heap on the floor. It was already all I could do not to cry out, not to take one more moment to pretend that I wanted to make an honorable choice.

Because I knew that the prince, who was already starting to remove his own formal costume, had anything but honor in mind.

* * *

When I awoke, it was with the same hot and feverish feelings that had ended my dream. My body was rigid and pained, as it often was when I thought of mysterious Russian strangers, and my bosom was tender in the places where I had apparently been clutching at it.

My body was sweaty, and it had in fact gotten sticky. These dreams always contained my body’s frantic preparations for a physical congress which, in fact, was bound not to occur. Unlike many girls of eighteen years and two months, I knew exactly what a male’s member was meant to do on a wedding night – or after, or before. My mind was perfectly clear on the origin of children, and how unwanted children might be avoided – particularly after a wedding night. Even the details which some women doubtless never learned, involving fluids and the reduction and creation of friction, had been known to me for some years.

And yet no element of my own life had ever brought me close to such an encounter. My legs remained untainted and empty. There seemed to be nothing better for the dull and rote days of my little life than a love affair, and yet there was hardly ever a suitable man within a dozen miles of my home. The dreams simply left me sullen and exhausted, even less prepared to face my unacceptably long days.

Summer seemed to be the worst. Or perhaps it was this particular summer when my longing had reached a peak, and yet prospects of satiating that longing had never felt more bleak.

Worst of all were my feet. They were never beautiful at the best of times, but I had lately so often been incapacitated by such thoughts that they were quite sore. When I was overcome with passion – which could only ever happen when I was alone – I would arch and flex them, freeing my battered toes to stretch and feel.

But when it was time to do more of the tedious work of learning to be a young lady, they pained me greatly. There seemed to be nothing worse than starting the day by cramming one’s feet into a hideous and nonsensical pair of “elegant” shoes.

And there was a woman determined to get my feet into those sort of shoes. In fact, as I rubbed at my arches, I heard her coming up to my door with her little mincing steps. “Helena,” cried the woman I thought of as Dusty Dorothea, “Time for your breakfast!”

I wasn’t the sort of girl who could contain her groans.

In the past year, I had finally been sent out of the nursery. But my independence was not to last long. My old nurse, the woman who had seen me through every childhood illness and plight, including the death of my younger brother Alyosha, had taken ill and left service to live with her nephew off in Minsk.

Dusty Dorothea was hired by my mother, and I was quite unable to say her Christian name without adding “Dusty” on the front of it. Half the things she owned were so old they must have belonged to her dead parents, and the books she took down from the library were almost invariably so neglected as to have gathered a hearty coat of grime. Once I had tried to tell her that if nobody had read a given book in ten years, it was likely because the title itself could not hold the interest of the reader.

That particular comment got my knuckles rapped. Perhaps I deserved it, though that did not make my observation any less true.

Perhaps today I could tell Dusty Dorothea that it was, once again, my “time”, and that I was to be allowed to rest. Or perhaps I could use a sick headache as a reason for sleeping.

Lord knows I wasn’t to speak again of having nightmares. Dusty D. was quite immune to that particular excuse. The last time I had attempted to utilize it, her response had been, “Well, you must get to work then, so that thoughts of God and family put those ugly dreams straight out of your head.”

I saw through her response. She simply hadn’t believed me.

And actually, she wasn’t too likely to give credence to my stories of untimely bleeding or sick headaches, either.

The only thing likely to disturb my head was the soft down pillow that I had drawn over it, hoping to keep out the sounds of my persistent governess’s cries. She wasn’t going to actually enter the room, I knew, as her English sensibilities were a bit too fine. She would not stoop to the level of invading a young lady’s bedroom when the lady herself could be expected to rise.

Or when the lady’s mother was more than willing to perform that duty.

My own mother flew in, fabric samples under her arm, and promptly removed the pillow from my head. “Helena,” she said in English, “It is past time. You are to get up and dress yourself immediately.”

Unfortunately, neither my mother nor Dusty Dorothea believed in allowing an unmarried girl to be dressed by a lady’s maid.

I was spared for a few minutes while my mother walked over to my window, smiling at the view in spite of her vexation. We had been owners of our manor estate for seven years, my father having purchased it from a family of somewhat down-on-their-luck aristocrats, and yet my mother still looked on every corner as if it were new.

“The prospect from your room must be one of the best in the house,” remarked my mother, smiling down on the garden that she seemed constantly determined to change and improve.

“Perhaps another fountain . . .” she murmured, looking down again, and I could see her making calculations in her head as to how a new fountain should affect the rest of the garden.

To me, the window just seemed too bright. “I wish you would make me some better curtains, mama,” I muttered. “Sometimes there is a gap in these ones, and the light wakes me.”

“A very good thing, too,” said the mistress of the great house, walking over to my bed. She sat by my head and took one of my hands in both of hers, even as she berated me in accented but perfectly grammatical English. “Even your father is already awake. Who are you to lie abed when the entire household is at work? Rise, then, and be quick about it. Miss Dorothea has no time for you to be a lie-a-bed.”

“Mama,” I moaned, unable to keep myself from telling her the truth. “My feet are in terrible pain. Could you not beg my governess to allow me one day in slippers that do not feel like little instruments of torture?”

This brought a smile from my mother’s wide lips. Her skin, though pampered by the finest powders and lotions, showed her age. She had spent her entire childhood and early adulthood working in the sun, as she was fond of telling me.

“Lenotchka,” she said, starting to speak in her native Russian – a dialect that was both harsh and so utterly hers that it prompted me to lay my weary head on her lap. “When I was your age, I had been walking about for years in all weather. Little did I know of shoes, let alone of pain in my feet! We were taught not to speak of such things, and so I do believe we felt them less.”

I gazed up at her adoringly. “So, to you, it matters not whether my feet pain me.”

“That is true, my dear.”

Sitting up as if there were a spring in my back, I uttered an exclamation of joy. “So I do not need to take Dorothea’s awful lessons on posture! If you don’t care about my feet, I can avoid the lessons, as I shall have no need to accustom myself to the burden of formal shoes,” I said, my bright smile lightening my mental load.

My mother let go of my hand and looked into my eyes. “Lena.” Not quite as affectionate with her nicknames now, and even her Russian syntax seemed to have grown sterner. “We have spoken of this before. You are to do what Miss Dorothea asks of you. Or else she might not stay with us.”

Swinging my tired feet out of the bed, I grumbled in Russian, “That is exactly what I wish.”

One hand on my back, my mother guided me toward the wardrobe. She pulled out a simple morning dress and handed it to me – having grown up with few garments, my mother also grew impatient with my daily deliberations over what to wear. “I know that you wish your governess to leave, Lena. But you know full well you are not to voice that wish while any of your family members are present.”

With orders to me to be quick about my business, she left the room.

Waiting until she was gone, I spoke to the wardrobe. “I cannot abide one more day of being a lady. Dusty Dorothy must leave.”

Either she would leave, or I would have to leave. That was my conclusion. I could run off, perhaps after stealing some of my father’s fortune, and find myself a cheap situation in London. Then I would be free of the dull constraints of my rather non-social society life.

But when I saw the little London boarding-house in my mind, it was not the common food or the hard pillowcases that stopped me from walking through the door – though those things did seem rather disgusting, rather too reminiscent of the cheap garrets of my youth.

It was the absence of activity that kept me from completing, even in my mind, the act of leaving our home. If I ran off to London, what would I do? I had very little desire for social niceties, but being forced to earn my keep as some sort of nurse or governess would be even worse than what I was already enduring.

No, when it came to childhood, it was better to be a spoiled child than to be the person charged with caring for spoiled children. I might not love Dusty, but I was poorly suited to take on the kind of work that she had been doing for years. That much was imminently clear to me.

* * *

Since London did not exactly beckon, my declarations to the wardrobe notwithstanding, the morning found me tripping over myself in the room off the nursery that was supposed to look like a drawing room. My mother retained enough of her old imperiousness to force my compliance, and Dusty was more than usually displeased with me.

“Pour the tea like a lady, Miss Helena! Gracious, but you splash it all about the cups.”

My sister Masha reached over to help me. “Tak,” she said, her clear green eyes flashing into mine as she held the teapot with grace in her tiny fingers. She was barely four years old, and yet she still managed to pour more elegantly than I ever had.

Dusty shared my thoughts. “Exactly, Miss Masha. Please show your sister.”

I stood. “Perhaps Masha should do this with you, Miss Dorothea. I have not had the pleasure of mastering it, but my sister will make an excellent hostess.”

Dusty’s eyes were dull, but they were not quite as stupid as I liked to make out. “That is all the more reason for you to stay and learn.”

She was right. The sooner I learned, the sooner I could beg my mother’s pardon and escape from this cloistered world of false drawing rooms and crippling footwear.

“Would you like one lump or two,” I asked Masha, my voice syrupy with false solicitude.

Masha was too young to understand my brusque manners, even though she’d long ago discovered that Sister Helena was apt to shout, laugh, and tease much louder than even the brothers (an heir and a spare) that separated us in the Morton sibling line.

With a sigh, I reassessed the tone that I had taken with my sister, sitting there in her little blue dress, innocent and blinking. “Miss Masha, may I give you one lump or two,” I asked, forcing myself to think of her cherubic little smile at the expense of dwelling on the injustice of my predicament.

“Two, please,” chirped Masha, as I deposited two into the beautiful china cup. Knowing that she would like her tea particularly sweet, I made sure that they were large lumps.

About to lift my own tea, I caught the eye of Dusty. Well, perhaps saying that I caught the glare would be more accurate. As a young woman who never wanted any sugar in her own tea, I was constantly coming up against Dusty’s wrath. For some reason, she had decided that tea that most people liked with milk and sugar absolutely must be taken in that manner. Any young lady who refused either of those two additions should be displaying a most shocking rudeness.

I never minded the milk, but I generally did not wish my tea to be sweet. But after feeling Dusty’s formidable glare, I was smart enough to pretend to put sugar in my tea.

And for just a moment, there was peace. That is, until Masha decided to be a lady and start our conversation.

“Your garden looks very lovely this time of year, Miss Helena,” she said, after taking a sip of tea. It seemed a tiny sip, even for such a tiny girl. Masha was certainly quick, and I reflected that I should never be called upon for help regulating her behavior in fourteen years, when she was my age.

“Yes,” I said, to Masha, quite unwilling to fake polite conversation for Dusty’s benefit. “Mother fired one of our undergardeners for drunkenness, but he was easily replaced.”

Dusty glared, and so I tried a different tack. “Thank you, Miss Masha,” I said, attempting to make my voice a little higher and more grating than was strictly necessary. “We keep several young men employed cutting beautiful flowers, deemed weeds by our savage English sense of gardening.”

At this, Dusty actually walked over and stood next to me. I rose to meet her, seeing that she was in a fierce temper.

“Miss Morton,” Dusty said, her very figure quivering in rage. “On this day, it was imperative for you to show that you could have a civilized conversation for a few minutes. In every respect, you have failed.”

Though I had a bark that was a challenge to every governess, I also had a soul – a proud one, in fact. The type of soul that was cut to the quick by such hasty comments. Though most of the older adults who came into contact with me thought me soulless, and must have imagined me to be quite unaffected by such discipline.

“Miss Dorothea,” I snapped, “You have been my governess for nearly a year. If my conversation is wanting, perhaps it is you who have failed.”

And, wincing as I turned on the awful heel of my uncomfortable and ugly blue shoes, I left the room.

* * *

It was a good job I had decided not to go to London. In fact, I had decided to go to the stables. Although I disliked riding, a horse was the most acceptable way to exit the vicinity of my mother’s immense house. And, since I had accepted that I should not be leaving forever, there was no need to write letters or to procure provisions for the journey. The steps required for leaving one’s parents’ house were rather familiar to me, as I had attempted to run away at least six times in recent years, though I had always been speedily retrieved before I had gone far from the estate.

Unfortunately, on this day it appeared that I should not even be able to leave the house. As soon as I attempted to exit the house by cutting down a back staircase and through the drawing room, I ran into my father and some guest of his, both bent over a glass case with my father’s collection of knives. The pair of them looked up at me with pleasure but without surprise.

“Ah, Helena,” said my father. “Your Dorothea must have anticipated us. I said I would come call for you when the two of you were through, but never mind that, my girl. Come have a seat.”

When my father asked, I tended to obey. Unlike my mother, he was never open to reason. That meant that although I was usually forced to listen to mamotchka, as she saw through any attempts to fool her or get around our house’s rather strict regulations, my father was the one I obeyed immediately.

That is, until it was no longer convenient for me.

“You must be Miss Morton,” said my father’s companion, bowing to me. “I am Reginald Huntington, at your service.”

As I gave the man a smile, I pondered my escape routes. He was corpulent and red-nosed, but otherwise not terrible looking. My main objection to him as a potential suitor was his age – he looked to be nearly my father’s contemporary. Although I had found “lads” my own age, the few that I met, to be complete dullards, I had no desire to be saddled with some dolt who was friends with my father.

One way out would be the sick headache, but I had rather overused that one as of late. If I were to attempt it now, surely my mother would take her own revenge by confining me to my room in a false quarantine until I felt ready to scream with boredom.

Another choice would be to try and make myself blush, remaining silent. Unfortunately, this seemed to tempt men into being yet more solicitous. They were quite skilled at convincing themselves that I was some sort of maiden in a tower who was not permitted to speak unless ten gentlemen went around making dull statements about her beauty.

No, that was not the wisest course.

The only thing remaining to me, now that the dullard had actually begun to speak, was to be my very own self – Helena Morton.

That usually scared them away quickly.

“I was saying,” he stated, “That I admire your father greatly.”

“As do I,” I simpered, looking over at my slender father, with his busy brows and his ill-fitting wig.

There were many things I did not admire about my father. For one thing, he was quite an Englishman, never having bothered to learn one jot of his wife’s language (which was now his sons’ and daughters’ language as well). For another, he had not the least appreciation for any of the arts, and chose paintings for my mother’s house based strictly on his chances of impressing his friends. “That one, it cost a fur piece,” he would say, striding about importantly, nodding at paintings with his chin. “That other portraitist lad, he wanted two hundred pounds. Two hundred? For that, I should expect a much bigger canvas, I told him that much!”

Though my father could be an idiot about various matters of high culture, paintings and literature in particular, he never minced words. It was from dear old papa that I inherited a tendency to speak my mind, and I had to admire him for it. It was bound to make a man like Sir Reginald deeply uncomfortable.

I gave it a try. “What is it that you admire about my father, Sir Reginald? Not his tendency to go about lecturing our gardeners, telling them that they ought to make every rose bed into a kitchen garden, surely,” I laughed, rubbing one of my tortured feet against my other ankle as I rejoiced in the chance to play about with the brute. He certainly hadn’t used the title of “sir” in his introductions, but he seemed like just the sort of man who would run about trying to be knighted.

The man did look uncomfortable, but he did not look beaten. “I admire the way that he has built his own fortune from the ground up,” he said. “I did the same.”

My sigh must have been audible to both the men. If I were going to have to contend with a fortune hunter, I would have preferred a man who was determined to marry his fortune. That way, he would have been forced to at least pretend to admire me deeply, and to say all the right things about making a love match.

Fortune hunters who seek their fortune through business are a million times more tedious. Because they are self-righteous, they see it as some sort of sacred duty to be direct. And they see their large fortunes as some sort of moral victory, a special slice of heaven secured by hard work and discipline.

“I never thought that I was a fancy type,” he said, and I could tell by the unattractive scars on his hands that this was true. “But I knew that I had to provide for my future wife and children, and not just be some sort of rat in the gutter.”

I tittered. “Every home in town has rats, Sir Reginald. Even those living quite near Court itself.”

At this moment, I wondered how the man had made his fortune, as he looked genuinely baffled. Ah well, stupid men have their own ways of getting rich, apparently. “How did you know that I lived in town?” he asked.

Then, perhaps noting my sour expression, he hastened to explain the situation of his various residences. “Of course, I have a country estate as well. But my business often keeps me in town. So I keep a house for that purpose.”

It was all I could do not to faint with boredom. “Sir Reginald, that oversized waistcoat that you have purchased simply screams ‘London’. Nobody in this part of the country would think of wearing something so obviously new.”

He smiled, though he was beginning to look at me with suspicion. “My tailor will be pleased. I told him I didn’t want none of the foppery. Give me clothes that are big and well done, not mincing little ribbons.”

It was something that my father might have said. Indeed, I noticed that papa nodded in agreement. “That’s right. In town or country, one needs clothes that can take a little work.”

Now my sigh was audible by design. “Father, it is not as if you are working at a hot stove, or in a pigpen. When you work in the country, it consists mainly of writing letters to those in your employ, does it not?”

My father was not amused. “Those letters pay for your room and board, dearest.”

He turned to Sir Reginald with a conspiratorial air. “I slave over building this place up, but what thanks do I get?”

Sir Reginald seemed quite unsure of whether to leap over to my side with a gallant defense or to try and win over my disgruntled father. “Indeed you have. It is beautiful.”

“Beautiful because mama makes it so,” I said. Though my mother had completely lost herself in what I viewed as the frippery of home-decoration, the end result was quite visually pleasing – much superior to what my father would have put in place.

Sir Reginald no longer seemed so nervous. “Miss Morton, if I may be so bold, this great estate is made beautiful by its inhabitants,” he said, getting an approving nod from my father. Poor papa, he was probably relieved that I hadn’t completely scared the suitor off.

At least, not yet.

“Alas, it is also made ugly by its inhabitants,” I said, giving him a smile. It wasn’t cruel – Sir Reginald plainly thought that he cut a gallant figure in his large waistcoat. He should never connect my comment to his own dashing self.

Under my father’s glare, I cleared my throat. “The state of the house simply depends upon the day,” I said, continuing to smile stupidly at the two of them.

Two rich men talking of slaving away. Such nonsense!

There were footsteps on the stair. Perhaps too soft for these men, with their ancient ears, to hear. But quite good enough for me, and I rejoiced in them.

“I believe that mama is coming for me,” I said. “Thank you, papa, for your views. And you, Sir Reginald.” There was no way for me to say that meeting him had given me pleasure, so I simply omitted the pleasantry.

* * *

I was nearly duly punished, though. As I emerged from the drawing room, I caught a glimpse of the person who had been walking down the stairs.

It was Dusty.

This morning, at least, she had been in league with both my parents. The tea and pleasantries had been something that she was supposed to practice with me, and as per usual, I had failed. If I could not even keep a dull lady’s face when offering tea to my own sister, I should be hopeless with any suitor, no matter how important the matter seemed to my parents. Indeed, offering Reginald and father a cup of tea had been one of my sacred duties, and I had not even mentioned the beverage. By omitting the hostess’s expected offer of tea, I had bungled the refreshments with even more reckless fervor than I bungled the conversational opportunities.

There was no excuse for my behavior. All that was left was to escape.

Walking as quickly as my stricken legs would carry me, I went out to the garden. As usual, mama was out for a walk, admiring her own roses and thinking of new designs for the space that her husband had apparently “slaved” to secure. Though she looked placid in the comforts of her garden, I was determined to disturb her peace.

“You knew that he was coming,” I said, spitting out the Russian words. “That brute. Sir Reginald.”

Touching a rosebush that was looking a tad unwell, my mother shook her head. But it turned out she was not actually denying my accusation, she was simply quarreling with my choice of descriptors. “I wish you would not do him disservice with those words, Helena. Reginald Huntington is not a brute. There are days when I wonder if it wouldn’t have been better for us to stay on Spring Street a few more years after your father’s business started to prosper. Then you would know what a brute was, and stop lobbing those words at honorable men.”

That was a dangerous path – apparently mama had no idea that I did know what a brute was, at least in my imagination, and the devils that plagued my nightmares were largely brutish Russian men. In truth, she was partly correct – Sir Reginald had not made any overtures to me that my grandmother could not have heard without blushing. Though, in many ways, I should have much preferred hearing about his desire for me to hearing about his “slavish” work and his house in town.

Besides, I should not let myself get distracted from the material point – mama had not apologized for forcing Sir Reginald on me, and that was certainly unacceptable. Apparently, she had not the least care for my happiness.

Trying to get her attention, I clung on her arm, whining at her in English. “But he is an idiot, mama. A stupid man! Why do you let papa torture me with such unsuitable suitors?”

Now she was beginning to smile. “They are all unsuitable because you will not let them suit you, Helena. Have you ever really looked in your own heart, seeking the source of these troubles?”

I had no answer to this, and simply pouted.

Mother switched back into Russian to give me her explanation. “I would keep you here for an age, milaya, if that is what you yourself wished,” she said, giving me a pat on the shoulder before pushing me aside to continue her rosebush examination. “Indeed, I love having your company, and you have spent little enough time on these grounds – though you seem to have grown accustomed to your new life quickly enough.”

Though I frowned, she continued. “We have a beautiful home, one that your father and I have moved heaven and earth to restore.” At least she wasn’t saying that she had “slaved” over anything – mama knew of serfs from Russia, and was not quite so foolhardy as to pretend that she had no choice in life but to tirelessly restore and redecorate an enormous estate. An estate which, before the renovations and all of the fuss, had appeared to bear no stain – except the stain of benign neglect and lack of fashion.

Mama would not let me become overcome by my thoughts. She clucked at me. “But you do not wish to stay with us forever, Helena. You wish to travel. Is it not so?”

My frown was instant. “Well, mamotchka, you know that I want to escape Dusty. And I would like to see more of London. And truly, more of all Europe.”

She put down one of her rose clippings to stroke my arm. “And be out of the control of your loving papa?”

Jerking my arm away, I resisted her attempt to make light of my troubles. “Yes, of course. Mama, I cannot support the way that he brings these stupid men about. Part of me believes it is only for his own amusement, which he somehow thinks that he has earned.”

She shrugged, ever the practical woman who had brought our family through a decade of poverty on a strict regimen of decent food and no dirt. “Then marriage is your only way out, Helena. If marriage is not a route you are interested in taking, then you might try to get on a bit better with Dorothea.”

“It’s not the only way, mama,” I said, trying to grab the rosebush myself before it pricked me.

“Yes?” she asked. “Do you know of an alternative for a young woman of means? If you do, please inform me.”

At this, I strode off, down the hill and toward the woods. “There has got to be another path,” I murmured to myself. “There must be!”

* * *

It was strange to me that my body, now that I was outside, seemed to lift itself up and out of its previous misery rather quickly. My feet stopped giving me quite the pain that I had felt earlier. As I walked beneath the trees, the sun was not hot on my face, and I let my hair down and allowed it to blow free in the wind.

The boys were often allowed to go outside with their tutor, Donald. He had the queer idea that exercise was beneficial to the mind, and papa embraced the idea wholeheartedly for his sons. “It shall buck them up something brilliant,” he would say, tousling their hair and he strode about the Great Hall. And yet when I suggested the same, Dusty said that it was imperative for young women to be fair, neat, and quiet, and that the outdoors was conducive to none of the objectives. If I attempted to cite a treatise indicating that physical activity was greatly beneficial to the development of a sound mind, Dusty would invariably say that my ability to research scientific topics was certainly developing – and that I could further sharpen it by sitting indoors and reading.

Haughty though I might have been to Dusty, I had to admit that her remarks did not always smack of stupidity.

It felt like only a few minutes had passed before I reached mama’s meadow. Well, I thought of it as her meadow. Though our family had been hard-pressed to produce traditions that felt fitting for our grand new home, the yearly picnic to this very spot had become a favorite way to celebrate the beginning of spring. We had no Easter tradition, as mama was Jewish and papa was decidedly against his papist roots. Mama’s beautiful meadow had become the place where we all ventured to celebrate the beginning of spring, always a welcome respite from months of snow, mud, and days so short that every hour of daylight seemed to sneak by when I was sitting at a desk for my horrid lessons.

The meadow was special not only because it was an ideal picnic spot – alternately sunny and shady, depending on the preference of the picnickers – but because it was mama’s experimentation area. All of the flowers that she wanted to tell Jarvis to include in our garden were first tested in the meadow. Since many of them returned year after year, it had become an oddity of beautiful blooms and common English weeds. And, as I had pointed out to Sir Reginald, many of the plants mama referred to as “weeds” were quite beautiful, though they were generally outdone by the exotic flowers she requisitioned during her trips to town.

There was an orange one that was particularly stunning, and happened to still be blooming as I passed. I always called it a bird of paradise, though I knew that wasn’t the proper name. It simply seemed perfect suited to paradise, not to a neglected field near a great house. It seemed like the sort of flower one would find at the entrance to a secret cave on some deserted island.

With a great sigh, I took an extra moment to view the flower. Would I flourish outside of my own environment, which was dull and tedious? Hardly a day passed in our mansion that didn’t make me feel as if I might split with boredom. But I wondered whether leaving our estate would serve me. In my childhood, I sometimes found friends, but there were plenty of times I came home crying because some stupid neighbor boy had said things about mama being “unholy” or papa being “too big for his britches” – occasionally the insults were even uglier, though those I tried to forget. If I did not belong in the streets of my childhood, nor the grand house where my siblings were growing up, perhaps my true home should not be easy to find.

As I walked farther into the woods, I wandered into some horse tracks. Although I tried to avoid them, hoping to keep my feet well clear of manure, I pondered taking up horseback-riding more seriously. It was an activity in which Masha excelled, of course, having been coached from the cradle. My brothers, too, were eager riders. But my parents had raised me in far straitened circumstances for ten years, then been too occupied with expanding the family once my father had begun to have a very little money.

I smiled thinking of it. Most likely, a great many ladies with a dowry of nearly twenty five thousand pounds would know very little about matters that were to remain behind the bedroom door. And yet I was a young child when my mother explained the basics to me, as she wished me to be unencumbered by children myself. “I do not regret you, my darling,” mama always told me, and I believed her. She would lecture me on the benefits of purity, then put her head into her hands and sigh (when we were poor) or head off to a different room to ponder its decoration (when we were rich).

And she would say, not too softly either, “I do not regret marrying your father. I simply regret being forced to marry him.”

Well, one could hardly blame her for that. She seemed to love him as she loved her sons – with true affection, but with genuine condescension, too.

Among all these admonitions, though, my mother had told me that there were ways for women to avoid the scourge that afflicted her. In fact, when I was far too young, she had even hidden a book in my little dowry trunk, which had been fitted into another when our family began to prosper, and when mama had been able to replace most of the linens with fine silk and lace. “I hope that you shall never have to make use of this until you are married, Lena,” she murmured, and I knew that she meant both the lace and the little book.

But I had read it, and I was aware that women could take steps to avoid shame. In fact, those usually factored quite prominently into my tortured dreams. Though I had little sense of what it would feel like to consummate a union with a man, I had a good sense of when to remind him that he should not continue, lest his seed spark the beginnings of a child within me.

Lost in thoughts of the state of marriage, or at least of carnal sin, I nearly forgot that I was not to be entirely alone in the woods.

The first person that I encountered was Joseph, one of the boys who kept the hunting dogs. He was walking about with several foxhounds, scarcely more than pups, yelling things at them. The training seemed rather ineffectual, but I stooped so the pups could see me.

Their ripping enthusiasm was only heightened by the sight of a new admirer, but Joseph’s was quite curtailed.

“Miss Morton,” he said, “My deepest apologies. I did not see you until now.”

Shaking my head as the puppies tumbled over each other to lick my face, I tried to reassure him. “It’s quite all right, Joseph.”

It was the first time that the two of us had ever been alone in one place, and Joseph was turning quite red as he attempted to corral the little hunting trainees. Likely some of that redness was caused by my forward manner and freed hair, I realized. But I still had no such qualms myself, and started to ask him the names. I’d never been as fond of hunting dogs as my father was, but I envied the freedom of the little pups. How lovely to simply do what one loved, and make a life that way! Unlike the horses, they had no cargo, no tedious duties. They were simply told to track, and born to track. Perfect, really.

“That big one is Blowsy, the little one is ’appy Girl, and the runt is called Big John. My pa didn’t want to keep ’im, like, but I begged him so well that he did, Miss Morton.”

I smiled, rubbing the runt’s ears. “Oh, well done, Joseph. It wouldn’t surprise me to hear that he ends up being the fastest of the whole bunch.”

“Yes,” was all he managed. “Begging your pardon, miss, does your father know you’re in the woods?”

That was apparently all he was able to say, because even my quizzical glance didn’t get more of a response from him. “Well, not exactly. But my mother saw where I was walking, and I’ll be home in time for supper.”

His skepticism was written all across his brow. I must be a bit farther from the house than I had anticipated.

“Well, for a late supper, at any rate,” I said, amending my estimate.

This seemed to give him a little bit of relief. “Thank you, Miss Morton. I’ll be taking the pups back, then.”

And with some droll combination of snarls and whistles, he contrived to have them follow him back toward the house. I was relieved to see that he was heading west with them. Provided I did the same, there would be little doubt that I should make it back to the house eventually.

This was confirmed by the next person in my path, our esteemed groom Sergei.

“Sergei Gennadovitch!” I called, enjoying addressing him in my best formal Russian. “We haven’t seen you for weeks.”

My old friend, the only person on the entire estate who hadn’t given up on teaching me how to ride a horse properly, stopped short. “Lenotchka,” he scolded, “You should not be so far from your home.”

My scowl, the sneer of a woman who was sick to death of strangers and near relations alike telling her where to walk, was sharp. “It’s the Morton estate, isn’t it? I can be wherever I like.”

He was pensive. “Barely, Lena,” he said. I smiled to hear my Russian names – it was only Sergei, mama, and my siblings who called me Lenotchka, Lena, and Elena. The rest of the world seemed to call me only Miss Morton, a name that felt far too cold and formal. In spite of the informal naming, though, Sergei was clearly displeased with me. “You’re so far that you’re getting quite near the boundary with the Glover estate, and that’s a boundary you would not wish to cross.”

There were rumors about the Glovers, of course, but I took little stock in them. That the father was a tyrant and his daughters mad, or something like that. I feigned ignorance. “Why’s that, then? I am sure those Glovers are not half as bad as they are made out to be.”

Sergei shook his head. “You know that your father allows me to work for them, at times. I know the family, Elena, and clearly you do not.”

My laugh was lithe. “Yes, I know that they beg for your help with foaling! You shouldn’t be afraid to speak ill of them. The way papa says they carry on about needing your help, it seems clear they know nothing of horses.”

“Lena, have you never heard that English proverb about not biting the hand that feeds one?”

“I do so frequently.” In fact, I was surprised that I had gone the entire morning and afternoon without hearing it, even in my fits of petulance. It was a day in which I had managed to anger both my parents, as well as a suitor and governess, so I supposed that I was biting both the hands that fed me and the hands that attempted to feed me.

“Yes, I suppose you do. At any rate, I must beg you to return with me.” He looked over at the way he had come. “I was just walking about with Woos, our old dapple gray. She’s over by the stream. She’s not saddled, but there’s a great log by the stream that you could use to get up on her back. As you’re quite a ways off, perhaps you should go home on her.”

“Or on my own two feet, thank you.”

That would have been enough of an answer for most of our servants, but Sergei had known our family even when my parents were poor. Therefore, he felt that he did not have to answer my pert replies with deference.

“Lenotchka. From the near-constant complaints you make when you are at home, I would conclude that your feet are not up to the task.”

I looked down. It was a wonder that my stupid shoes were not yet soaked with blood. In truth, though my feet might not have been actually bloodied, they were quite sore.

“Fine.” I knew to admit defeat. “I’ll take her back to the stables.”

Sergei smiled over at the horse, his heart visably softer as he looked at her. “You may as well take her to the door. She’ll stay outside where you leave her. The old girl is past her cantering days, but I was surprised today how well she still walks.”

It felt like a rebuke. Was I to expect that the horse was somehow more adept than I, due mainly to her expert walking?

“Go ahead and head to the stream, Lena. You’ll find a horse. You might also try making yourself presentable – if your parents are only angry, rather than on the warpath, that might be considered a great blessing.”

Grumbling, I followed the sound of the stream and sat down. Sure enough, the dapple grey was still there. Although I was angry, I was more than ready to leap onto a horse and ride off, giving my weary bones a bit of a rest.

Sometimes my moods made quite a peasant of me.

The great summer light was not yet truly fading, but the sun had gone behind the trees, and I stopped feeling troubled by the heat. Soon another autumn would come, and the estate would be even less amusing. My mother went with the Russian view of cold, which seemed mainly to consist in avoiding cold stones and tying pickled cucumbers to one’s toes when winter illness struck. Mama never encouraged me to walk about outside, though she was quick to point out that she had done so frequently as a child and seemed to suffer far fewer colds than I did.

Yanking off my shoes and stockings, I began soaking my feet in the stream. The wisdom of Sergei, it seemed, was not yet exhausted. The cold water made my feet feel infinitely more refreshed. With my dress drawn back to my knees, my hair down, and my face wet with healing water, I must have looked almost wild. The thought of my uncouth, not-too-ladylike appearance was a comfort to me.

Until I realized that I was not alone.

* * *

The man above me spoke softly, but still stopped my heart.

Like me, he had dark eyes, but that was where the similarities ended. His skin and hair were so fair they seemed very nearly blinding, and his gaze so transfixed me that I felt every bit as taken aback as I had in my dream.

My feet, wet in the stream, seemed hopelessly improper. And I knew that even the cold water could not keep both my legs and my face from going quite red.

“Begging your pardon, miss,” he said, his voice even. “Are you lost?”

“Not exactly,” I confessed, trying at once to take in the sight of this gorgeous stranger and to keep my eyes cast down. “That horse over there is to take me home. She likely knows the way rather better than I.”

For a long moment he said nothing, and I was forced to look up again.

This time our eyes met, and I did not look away. He was a slender man – seemingly not far from boyhood – and his hair had a little bit of wildness. From his clothing, it was clear that he was a man of means.

And that he was a man who did not mind dirtying his best waistcoat by wandering in the woods. I shuddered with pleasure thinking of ways that he could dirty his clothes in the deserted clearing, next to the stream, as I dirtied mine. His pants were already torn – would it be such a loss if the rest of his clothing were torn as well?

Perhaps by my eager fingers?

But my ruminations were interrupted by an uncommonly polite introduction, and I was shocked at the direction my thoughts had taken. “I apologize for taking the liberty of speaking to you without an introduction. My name is Elias Glover, and I own this estate.”

This worried me. “I’m on your estate! And I was certain that this was my own family’s land. Sergei said nothing of this,” I fretted, wondering if this Elias was apt to grab me and accuse me of poaching birds on his land or some other such nonsense.

And wondering why it had never occurred to me that the name Elias was an uncommonly attractive one. With a startling burst of foresight, I realized that I was never going to be able to respond to mention of that particular name again. I might read some dusty and dull tome about an Elias who held some sort of insipid and important position in the government, and I would only be able to think of this lithe being before me. And of the fall of his breeches. I could not keep myself from looking at it, and prayed that he would not be unduly surprised by my interest.

Fortunately, it appeared that he was simply embarrassed, and more by our lack of mutual knowledge than by my steady gaze. “Well, the stream is supposed to be the divider. So you are on the proper side, Miss, er . . .”

“Morton. Helena Morton. Daughter of the family who decided to buy so much land that I obviously still haven’t learnt the boundaries of it, not even after eight years.”

This made him burst out laughing, though he quickly regained his composure. “That is quite a way of putting it, Miss Morton. Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

Without giving it much thought, I nodded as him. With my legs in the water and my derriere planted on the sort of cold boulder that mama always said would negate any hope of my ever having children, I couldn’t very well curtsy.

Though the tension between us was still high, I let out a sigh on finding that I was, at the very least, not some sort of trespasser. “Well, good. I suppose that as I have not strayed onto your actual estate, I have given no offense to your family.”

He nodded. “Of course not. But it is quite late in the day – does your own family know your whereabouts? If they think you lost, they must be near frantic by now.”

I tossed my head, thinking of Sergei. He probably walked faster than the dapple grey could walk, and must have been halfway to the house by now. The word would have spread from the hunting boy, as well.

As with any ordinary day, all the estate and half the village probably knew precisely which banal activity was occupying my life.

Then again, the godly being on the opposite bank was now removing his own shoes. Perhaps my little life was not quite so banal as I had thought. After all, I had gone for a walk in anger and encountered a Glover who was so handsome I was shocked to have been kept in ignorance of his good looks during our many years as neighbors.

“I don’t take much care with my family,” I confessed, sneaking glances over at him as he lowered his own feet into the stream. My own were now drying on a stone. Though I had modestly thrown the gown back over my bare legs, I was quite aware that the wet muslin was clinging.

His face darkened. “I can’t imagine how that might be possible. I wish that I had less care of mine,” he said.

Now it was my turn for disbelief. “You, caring for your family?” I thought of my own little brothers, racing about the estate, trapping all sorts of animals and getting the lovely outfits my mother had made for them quite dirty. “My impression is that the unmarried son of a great family has little by way of family care.”

He shook his head. “Well, perhaps my family is an exception.”

It was just like a moneyed boy, and it was just the thing to stir up trouble with me. There were just enough memories in my mind of my own childhood, when I was expected to cook, and mend, and scrub floors on my knees, to make me quite sure that I knew much better than anyone else what went into caring for a family. Granted, it wasn’t as if I ever practiced these acts anymore, now that we had an entire staff to take care of them. Perhaps my days would be more interesting if I did.

No, now I was just a lazy young woman with a great fortune, and the man across the river seemed much the same. My lip nearly curled as I responded to his assertions. “I suppose you’re a nanny, wiping scraped knees and giving hair cuts?”

To my surprise, this made him smile. It was a beautiful sight, even if there was something quite wistful in his look. “Bea doesn’t wish anyone else to cut hers, not even nanny. Not even when we’ve had one nanny for more than a year, which hasn’t happened for a decade anyway. Bea’s terrified of scissors.”

It was strange that he assumed so much knowledge, but I realized that the makeup of the Glover household was probably common knowledge in the village. “Bea?”

Indeed, the young Glover looked surprised that I did not know the name. “Beatrice. My sister.”

This gave me pause for a moment. Surely there was some sort of village gossip about a sister, but I could not remember having seen one. Mama tended to keep us out of the village, as we were her heathen children, and it seemed to hurt her that we were socially snubbed by the very people who should have been our own set.

Including Elias’s family. Though the members of that family might themselves be quite charming, and perhaps mysterious. I wondered whether Elias himself disliked us, or whether he might be an exception to his family’s rule.

“Tell me about your sister,” I urged him, leaning on my knees. This rather safe topic of conversation was a perfect excuse for me to look across the stream at the man. I had reached a hand into the dividing waters between us, and wait to see whether he would choose the same.

He did, splashing his face with a bit of the water. It may have been my imagination, but I fancied that he was also victim of a deep blush.

And I fancied that the way I must have been leaning might have exposed my bosom to a standing man even more than the style was meant to do. But there was no time to leap up and look for a covering, so I had to be content with simply blushing myself. After all, as much as my body longed for the man to take me and ravish me there in the woods, the fact of his actually looking down my dress was enough to set my face aflame.

And it did make it rather difficult for me to concentrate on the words spilling out of the beautiful mouth just across the water.

“Well, I have five sisters,” he was saying. “Three elder and two younger. All but Beatrice have married, though.”

“I might have guessed,” I said tartly. Surely women with fortunes that large met their future husbands outside the steps of Court, the very moment after they had been presented. Those lucky girls, resplendent in their best dresses, curtsying in that age-old ritual which I both mocked and envied. Russian Jewish upstarts, with fathers of humble beginnings, were not generally introduced to royalty.

Elias – I was already calling him Elias in my mind, with a familiarity that belied our short but sweet acquaintance – must not have noted my tone. “Would that I had the same opportunity. If I could marry, that would suit me very well indeed.”

This actually made me laugh, though I supposed that he must be just as offended by my honest manner as every other man I had met. “Opportunity, you call it? It is little less than legally permitted slavery.”

This didn’t offend him, it simply made his claims more impassioned. “Marriage? It is a new life.”

I cocked my head at him, quite puzzled. “Well, why don’t you marry, then? Surely it’s not a question of money.”

He shook his head. “If I married, I would have to stay on the estate. So it wouldn’t be a new life, not really. Not for me.”

He was correct there, but I could not help myself from forcing the point. “You could not leave? Surely your family’s coffers would stretch to a little house in town.” Or a big one, for that matter.

He nodded, still patient, now simply sad. “Yes, but Beatrice is different.”

Seeing that I did not understand his language, he was forced to elaborate. “My sister Bea is what some would call an idiot. But she’s not, really. She understands most things, she’s just been slower with reading and writing and the like.”

Now a memory came back to me. In one of the rare instances when I had been allowed to walk along a lane, guided by only Sergei and the nanny, trying to learn a few tricks on the odd little pony papa had tried to give me, I must have seen Beatrice.

There were several elder girls, and they had a younger one between them. Her face was round, and her eyes seemed to be set aslant. But she was quite lovely, alternately running and giggling.

There were hardly any formal greetings between our parties, as it was well before Sergei had begun to loan out his time to our neighbors. But that must have been the little girl. Since I could tell even from such a distance that she was not a typical child, my heart went out to her brother.

Still, though, I recalled that money could solve most problems of the very rich.

“If you were to leave, surely Beatrice would be well looked-after.”

Elias’s feet were swung out of the stream, and now I was sure that he would leave. “Miss Morton, begging your pardon, you know little of my family.”

This was a strange accusation. Sitting stiff on my rock, I was determined not to give in. “Because your family has done nothing to welcome us to the neighborhood.”

“Be that as it may,” he began, then noted my scowl. “It was very wrong of us, and I apologize.”

After what felt like an ages-long pause, I spat at him – “Well, all right, then. I accept your apology. What of your family?”

“You have no sense of my father.”

I nodded, watching the water dry on the rock where I had immodestly spread my toes. Elias was right – in being deprived of both village gossip and Sergei’s knowledge of the Glovers, I had lost the possibility of “knowing” my neighbors. “Give me a sense of him, then, Mr. Glover.”

Elias’s voice grew quieter. “He is a brute. A great boor of a man. Do you know what I mean?”

I thought of my earlier conversations. “My mother seems to think that the word ‘brute’ is over-utilized.”

“It is the only word I could use to truly help you know my father.”

This did give me something to ponder. My own father could be a bit of an idiot, and he certainly had the arrogance of a king. But he was never violent, and while he never understood a jot of my mother’s decorating fervor, he stayed out of her way and never had an unkind word for her.

In fact, considering that he indulged his children far more than he could ever bear to discipline them (even when it came to rejecting his choices of suitors), he was on the whole not the worst father in all creation. Not by any means.

When I looked up at Elias, I thought that he was sneaking a glance at me. But he would not meet my eyes, so I made another bid for attention. His face had grown less weary as we had spoken.

“You enjoy coming to this stream, then. To have some respite from your household?”

“I do. It is an escape, one that I can usually only make in the morning, as my father stays out until all hours and rarely rises before eleven.”

Looking up at the darkening sky, I shook my head. “I wonder that you have come out so late today, then. If your father away from home?”

He smiled. “My sister Jacqueline is visiting, so I need not worry for Bea on this day. If only Jack could stay here for the whole season, things would be quite different.”

He trailed his fingers through the water again, and I watched him, wishing that we were not separated by anything – or that he would ford the troublesome moat and make his way directly to me.

For I had two feelings in me. One was that Elias and I should not be likely to meet again, and that I must seize this moment with him. And the other feeling, which was a great desire to embrace him, feeling for myself both the fine fabric of his jacket, the soft quality of his fair hair, the misshapen fall of his breeches. Indeed, the fabric appeared to be of a peculiar cut, as it was bulging out in an odd manner. I wondered if this was yet another one of the recent fashions.

With a start, I realized that I had been staring again, and struggled to change the subject. What could I speak of? Perhaps a tendency to come to this particular stream in times of turmoil in the home, a freedom I envied, though perhaps not one that would appeal to young men fond of wilder habits. Elias’s odd affection for this little body of water was familiar to me only from literature, and I told him as much.

“You’re like the priest, come to get away from his troubles.”

His eyes blinked back at me without recognition, but with a great deal of beauty. “I’m sorry, which priest would you mean? Not the new vicar in the village?”

I laughed, sure that the boy was simply dense. “You know, the one in the poem. Rusalka.”

Still no response was issued.

I groaned. Perhaps he wasn’t quite as quick to find the literary equivalent. It was difficult for me to reference the poem exactly, as mama had always told it to us in Russian. Though the boys’ tutors seldom spoke passable Russian, and our governesses never did, mama had taken it upon herself to teach us. It had always seemed unfortunate to me that our family had too little prestige to secure a proper tutor, the type who spoke good Russian, as I assumed most of them did.

Muttering the first few lines to myself as mama had taught them, I thought for a minute of translating them into English but thought the better of it. “You know, ‘Rusalka’. By Pushkin? It was published only a few years ago, so you must know it. I suppose it’s called ‘The Water Girl’ or ‘The Mermaid’ in English, or something like that.”

Still no response. “Pushkin? I don’t know him.”

My face fell. Perhaps this man wasn’t who he claimed to be. In fact, that seemed impossible. Surely the sole heir of the Glover family was bound to know the most important writers.

His costume was expensive, but that could easily have been stolen. My blood cooled. “Are you illiterate?” I asked. The boy might simply have been an idiot, like his sister Beatrice, in which case he might have no hope of ever learning to read.

Shaking his head, he looked over at me quizzically. “I, illiterate? Certainly not. But I simply don’t know your Russian writers. I’m sure that most of these foreigners are not worth reading, though some women seem to like them.”

Well then. Apparently, my life was very little, as I seemed to spend it living in a heathen family and reading less than esteemed authors.

With a great snort, I stuffed my wet feet into my stockings and shoes, striding over to the dapple grey. “Well, I suppose I am one of the women who likes foreigners, then. Perhaps because my mother is a foreigner herself.”

Now he was all apologies, following at a respectful distance. “Miss Morton, please. I apologize. I have offended you.”

His flurries of words met with no response, but he continued to speak to me with humility and fervor. “I have spoken rashly. Please do me the honor of accepting my apology.”

For the first time in my young life, I flung myself over an unsaddled horse’s back and managed to get up without any great difficulty. I noted that I must remember to tell Sergei that my anger had made me quite strong.

And imbued with this new confidence (though still decidedly shaky in the side-saddle position forced upon me by my tediously long dress), I nudged the dapple grey into as fast a walk as I dared and headed back toward the house, ignoring the young Glover’s continued protestations of apology.

* * *

It would have been suitably dramatic to have cantered through the woods on a dapple grey. To have lost my cares in the thrill of speed, and to have left Elias looking after me, wondering what might have been if he himself were not such a great boor. Though that word didn’t seem to fit him. Perhaps, in my mind, I had better call him a fool than a boor.

Instead, I went off on the dapple grey in a rather speedy walk, which could not even properly be called a trot. Side-saddle already made the riding quite a slow endeavor, the wet hem of my dress clung to my legs, and I knew that Sergei would murder me if I were to lame one of his old but trusty horses.

So instead of cantering off, the horse and I walked out of sight. Even so, I could feel Elias’s eyes on me.

The worst thing I felt after leaving him wasn’t any kind of wound to an overly sensible soul. Miss Helena Morton, I thought, was not one to feel hurt when she was slighted by a man of the gentry – that happened often enough. No, my feeling was something much deeper and more alarming. It was a great sense of all-encompassing loss. That very morning, I had been lamenting the way that the pleasures of the flesh felt hundreds of miles away from my own bed. And yet less than a full day passed before I encountered a man who was, at the very least, physically perfect. And for many minutes, it seemed that he might be able to know me, in all senses of the word.

What a great shame that he had such scorn for literature, for women, and for Russians. But then, I knew not to expect better from the English upper classes. It was one reason that I could stand not being a fully-accepted member of the set – they were such dreadful bores when it came to book learning. Although my siblings and I were no scholars, at least we approached books with a sense of duty. And when it came to exotic, contemporary young geniuses such as Pushkin, I had no reservations at all, and quite devoured each volume and poem that mama managed to procure for us.

But now I was simply riding home on a slow and steady horse, wondering what I was to be given for my supper. Mama and papa were only too happy to order that I be sent to bed without supper, knowing that I survived quite well all of the years in which sleeping on an empty stomach was a daily necessity, not a punishment. But Cook would find a way to sneak a morsel or two to me. I reflected, with some sadness, that all our servants had to be in the good graces of every member of the family, not just my parents. Their employment was nothing if not dependent on the mood of every single family member at any given moment. I tried to spur the dapple grey on a bit, so I could reach home sooner and be rid of these dreadful thoughts, but she ignored my sore heels and continued to walk. Even her walk made me quite uncomfortable, and I hoped miserably that we were near home.

Indeed, in spite of all the bawdy jokes about women riding horses, I had never found that anything in particular happened to the center of my legs when I was atop a horse. But the speed and escape could certainly be thrilling. Generally, in spite of the physical difficulty, I did enjoy exploring our great grounds on a horse.

That is, until I was wanted at home, which never seemed to be long after I had started. My parents were hopeless on horses, but my father was determined, and could always manage to get within earshot of me.

When my mother wanted me, she simply sent a groom after me, which was highly effective and certainly devastating. Often, she sent Sergei, as she knew I would have no choice but to obey.

“Lenotchka,” he would say, “You are wanted by your governess.”

“Thank you,” I would pant, attempting to make my horse outrun Sergei’s. “You may leave.”

He would come up beside me, easily outpacing me. “You first.”

“No, you.”

Things would go on like this for a good while until I promised to go first, and Sergei would follow at a respectful distance until he had actually seen me return and dismount. But, I reflected at length, perhaps there was some hope with Sergei. He and Dusty were the only people in the household to order me about. Sergei, due to his long friendship with my father, knew that his job was safe. In fact, he had such a deft hand as a groom that he must be well aware that finding a job would be quite easy for him, with or without a reference.

The neighbors had been trying to poach Sergei for years, apparently, and my father delighted in not giving them that pleasure. “The neighbors” were Elias’s family, I reflected – trying to take everything that they liked by force. Typical. The English upper classes thought that they could simply buy everything, I reflected, taking care of any problem with an excess of money. The thought angered me, and the reins nearly slipped from my hands – I reflected that Sergei should have to secure some that were rather easier to hold.

The English upper ten thousand were quite easy to criticize, but it did force me to overlook a few things about my own family. I tried not to think about the force my father had employed when purchasing our home. The family before us had been hanging on by their fingernails with mortgages and cuts to their staff for many years. A large reason that they were willing to sell was that my father went behind their backs, offering pay raises and additional help to most of the family’s staff. Cook had been one of theirs, I reflected, and several of the maids and footmen. Their butler had left, but he alone seemed particularly loyal to the disgraced family that sold the monstrous mansion to us.

I realized that my heart was pounding in my breast, and stopped for a moment. My face was flushed with rage, my legs braced tightly to the side, my breath coming heavily. But that was not all due to my righteous burst of resentment toward the ancient, landed families. There were other reasons that I was short of breath.

The truth was, the scene which I had left could have been quite different, if only Elias were slightly less honorable.

We could have left all talk of families, literature, and land to dull old grannies in their drawing rooms. Elias could have stood in the stream himself, lifting me up and covering me in warm kisses. Pulling me to the bank, he could have laid me down tenderly in the soft grasses.

My mind began reeling, and I felt as if I were remembering something that had already occurred, so vivid were the sensations in my wild imaginings.

He had held me, then laid me down. The sole heir to the neighboring family was young, and that made him unable to contain himself. He did not have the grace or slowness that an older man might have had, but his hands were sure and quick.

Those hands, warm and free of unsightly hair, were quick when they were pulling up the damp skirt of my dress. And they were quick when pulling up the shift that sat under the dress, supposedly to allow me a modicum of modesty.

And they were quick when undoing just enough of his own garments for an organ that I had hitherto never seen on a grown man to burst forward.

Wood and steel were the materials that this organ was most often compared with, and in my imagining, it was every bit as hard as a bedpost, with no way of surrendering to any pressure and absolutely no springiness. For this reason, our congress was quite painful at first, feeling much as my own hard fingers had felt when I had attempted to create a realistic impersonation of this organ in the solitude of my own bed.

Soon, though, the pleasure that I my lover had brought began to overtake me, as my bleeding slowed and Elias was no longer forced to be gentle. My body was nearly still fully clothed, as was his, but both our faces were turning red with the exertion.

And, indeed, soon he was unable to be gentle. His eyes widened as he whispered that he was quite near his end.

Thanks to mama’s intervention, I knew just what to do. “We must separate,” I whispered, and he extracted the hard piece of flesh from me. With expert hands, he rubbed at me and at himself until he achieved the desired result, the fruit of his labors flying high up into the leaves.

Indeed, though the few materials I had read warned most heartily that a good cleanup was to be in order after a man decided on an onanistic course, it was unclear to me exactly the length that his liquid would flow. I imagined it to be something like ten yards, for why else would these authors warn so solemnly of the necessity of cleaning walls after such a congress? Surely this meant that some of Elias’s seed would end up in the trees?

The farther my fantasy extended, the less it could satisfy. Due to the hasty and bungled kisses of exactly two overeager suitors, I was familiar enough with the early stages of such congress, but was highly unskilled in what apparently followed. What Elias would look like in a fit of passion, and how he would behave, was still essentially a mystery.

As I contemplated this particular mystery, exiting the woods, I bumped into a familiar figure walking towards me.

“I expected you about this hour, Elena Feodorovna,” said Sergei, walking up to me and giving the horse a pat. “I have informed your parents, but as you may imagine, neither was particularly thrilled to learn of your escape.”

I sighed, enjoying the opportunity to speak Russian with a man who didn’t think himself above reading Pushkin and other “foreigners” – in fact, Sergei was quite interested in literature of all sorts. “I knew they would be angry. Who is more livid, mama or papa?”

“Elena, I hardly know. You have been away from home a great many hours.”

“Yes,” I said. “The weather was beautiful, and I had horse that you gave me. What need had I to be home?”

He laughed. “Well, you were grossly negligent of your duties, at the very least.”

I threw up my hands. “If you were negligent, horses would go hungry. Some of them would likely sicken, and none would have properly fitting shoes. If I am negligent, what changes? Not a thing.”

Helping me dismount, Sergei looked thoughtful. “Perhaps that is the trouble here, then.”

I frowned. “That I neglect my responsibilities?”

“That you have none to neglect. Or practically none.”

I started for the house, but Sergei called me back. “Wait, Lenotchka,” he said, commanding me as he had when I was small. “Walk to the stables with me. The sight of the horses may cheer you, and you shall need some good cheer tonight.”

My mind was still occupied by Sergei’s pronouncements on my laziness. “I do have duties,” I mused, “But I did not choose any of them. I did not choose this horrid business of entertaining suitors, or learning the dullest dances, or writing in perfect little loops.”

This made Sergei laugh, and his lined and bearded face fairly lit up the twilight. “Many of us did not choose our duties, Lenotchka. Do you think the servants of your father’s house chose to have the requirement of working? Do you feel that I chose my exile to this country, and I chose a situation in which I would not have enough money to live decently without spending each day caring for another man’s horses?”

It was the longest speech I had heard from Sergei in quite some time, and I felt my heart drop as I contemplated it.

“Sergei, you do not wish to work here?”

Now he was shaking his head quite emphatically. “You mistake my meaning, dorogaya. As you know, this situation is my ideal for the present. But I cannot help but wonder that the person under this grand roof with the lightest duties seems to be the only person openly complaining about her lot in life.”

“I’m not complaining,” I murmured, starting to split off toward the house.

Sergei touched my arm as I left. “I know things cannot be perfectly easy for you, Lenotchka. But if you give it a moment’s thought, you’ll recall that your life used to be much more trying.”

* * *

I did give Sergei’s assertions a moment’s thought. In fact, it was more than a moment, as my footsteps slowed with dread on my approach to the house.

My childhood had not been at all easy, that was certain. But when I thought back to those years of hunger and strain, I simply remembered my companions in the cheap quarter of town in which we were forced to make our home. I would spend the morning with the neighboring children, be fed by my mother, then immediately run off with my companions again. Supper might be light or nonexistent, but mother would at least see to it that I had something to drink before I went to sleep. Though she could not afford to send me to school, she taught only me, and she simply chose her favorite stories from one of the few books that we owned. I was not forced to go through large chunks of classical nonsense simply to please tutors, nor did I need to learn how to dance.

With a pang, I wondered after my childhood friends. We had been completely separated from them, and I wished that they could all simply live with me. The greatest feature of my life in our still-new mansion was not luxury, it was loneliness. Not only was I far from companions, I was very rarely able to encounter a young man like Elias.

The thought of him next to the stream very nearly made my knees buckle. Was there something that I could have done differently to entice him, to show him that I was a woman who knew her own mind, not some simpering fool who would scream if he so much as touched her hand? And to convey to him that if we were never to meet again, I should regret my diffidence during our sole meeting with heavy heart – heavier for the thought that I should have been willing to overlook his rudeness to “foreigners” simply because of his god-like good looks.

But when I walked into the study to look for my father and try and wheedle permission to eat a late supper out of him, I was quite surprised.

Dusty was sitting there with him and with the boys’ tutor. Apparently, they were in some kind of conference. The younger children must have already been put to bed in the nursery.

“Father,” I said, “Good evening.”

“Have you got an apology or wot, Helena?”

Much as my father had attempted to modify his accent, the more authentic slang of the streets came out when he was very angry.

And this was certainly one of those instances. His face was already looking blotchy.

“I’m sorry for my behavior earlier today,” I said. They were the safest words I could muster.

Then, standing there, I waited for someone to praise my immediate apology. The tutor looked down, Dusty looked at the curtains, and only my father looked at me.

Then he turned to Dusty. “I cannot say I know what to do with such a wayward child. Still quite a child, although she ought to be a grown woman at eighteen.”

I scowled, knowing that I was, indeed, a grown woman. What on earth was my father on about?

He continued speaking to Dusty and the tutor. “You two must forgive me. I shall have to let her mother settle this.”

Like a fool, I went directly to my mother’s room, believing that at last I had won the war with Dusty.

“Dusty won’t speak to me,” I blurted out. “You must let her go!”

I delighted in the firing of governesses. In fact, it had been many years since any had been fired – they tended to quit and leave quickly. Then there would be a blessed period in which they were gone, and my mother was searching, and Masha and I were left to our own devices. Only our old nurse would stay on, laughing at me and scolding me, though now she had also left.

My mother was sitting at her dressing table, already nearly ready for bed, free of the beautiful dress she had apparently worn for dinner and completely devoid of patience. She looked at me in her mirror as she spoke.

“Elena,” said my mother, and my ears perked up instantly. From her tone, I could tell that this was going to be one of her more serious admonitions.

“Dorothea deserves your respect.”

My mouth opened ever so slowly, but mama held up a hand, signifying that I was to stay quiet. “If you have any brains at all, surely you can put them to good use. Find a way to secure some modicum of happiness without taking away from the dignity of that poor woman.”

My lip grew ragged from the way that I bit at it. I had expected something more specific from my mother, such as “Finish the Latin book you were to have finished” or “Spend ten hours in your horrid shoes each day”. To insist that I not upset Dusty, and that I actually try to be happy while not upsetting Dusty – that seemed perfectly impossible.

“My very presence makes her unhappy, mama,” I ventured.

To my great relief, my mother looked more thoughtful than angry when I mentioned this. “Yes, I suppose that is true. I have given her one week of leave from your presence. That should give you enough time to set your mind to the task I have given you.”

It seemed like a perfect dream. “So for the next week, I shall not have to spend time with Du – with Dorothea?”

“Precisely. But you are going to do your studies with me instead.”

From the serious expression on her face, I could see that mama did not mean to neglect my education. And I began to feel that I gone from one breed of misery to a very similar sort of tedium.

She could not have known how forward I was with Elias, and yet she was going to punish me for a different offense. My side hurt from sadness, but also from keeping in any mirth at the irony of my situation. It was as if God had witnessed my lust next to the stream, and was looking down and laughing at my punishment.

* * *

It was a dull penance, indeed. By the second day, I was certain that I preferred entertaining papa’s dreadful suitors to the “self-study” regimen that mama had forced upon me. At least the suitors were like innocent, blind little kittens – if one were very cruel, one could delight in teasing them. Sitting in mama’s deserted morning room, the world moving about just outside the window, I truly felt as if I were on my own little Elba.

Though I did thank God that I was, in fact, not Napoleon Bonaparte. The way papa told it, my mother was so occupied in rejoicing after Bonaparte’s death that for days she walked around with a large and constant smile, the likes of which he had never seen. Even the mewling and fussing of little Helena, her tiresome infant, could not worry her.

And yet, my brief excursion to the woods after my run-in with father’s “suitor” friend had apparently worried my dear mamotchka so much that she saw fit to keep me cooped up for an intolerable length of time. She had assigned me Taras Bulba, having somehow scraped a copy of Nikolai Gogol’s book of stories from an acquaintance in town. From mother’s descriptions, and from the way that she read the stories out loud, they should have been interesting. But my own lethargy prevented me from enjoying Mr. Gogol’s writing. I knew little of Cossacks, and the land described was very unlike the Russia of my heart and imagination. Saint Petersburg, for example, occupied my dreams. Not only the canals and the beautiful streets, which were said to rival those of any European capital. But the idea of the actors there, the literary personalities, the men. Just the thought of the lovely city, the so-called “Venice of the North”, made me sigh.

If Nikolai Gogol had thought fit to set his story in a more romantic location, rather than deep in the desolate countryside, he might have found more of an admirer in me.

Mama might be angry, but she wouldn’t want to punish me horribly if I found another sort of study. So I walked about the room, attempting to think of a topic for a literary treatise that would pass muster with such a difficult judge. The challenge lay in topic selection. Mama didn’t want me to write about anything that she knew I had already read, and a page of penmanship exercises (tortuous but simple) would not satisfy her either. This would have to be something original and compelling.

With a blank sheet of writing paper and a quill in front of me, I felt a certain power. At the very least, I could be thankful that for some days, my intellect – rather than my ability to take mincing steps in disgusting attire – was going to be on display. If more girls were encouraged to be learned, rather than stupid, this might make for a richer nation. Rather than the essays that mama demanded, which were hardly possible given my dire lack of Russian penmanship, I decided to put my own ideas to paper. Perhaps I would be just like Taras Bulba, fighting for ideals! In the past, I had fought only for my own comfort. And, in fact, in hoping for a school that would earn me a living, without need of any men or inheritance, was another way of selfishly securing my own comfort. But it was a way to do so while being of use to young women, which couldn’t be entirely without merit.

Beginning with tiresome things that girls were forced to learn, I used up nearly the entire page scribbling out my thoughts. Dancing came at the top of the list, a useless and thoroughly humiliating preoccupation. Embroidery. Manners. All of the details of undergarments and fashion. Household economics, ever a dull chore.

Then I added the things that I wished my governesses would teach me. Languages, particularly those such as Chinese and Hindustanee, would be most fascinating. Russian, of course, I wrote, angrily thinking of the proudly ignorant Elias. And history would need to get its due. My mother, never much of a patriot, had given me indignant publications about the tyranny of the bloody broadsheets in the American colonies. These had secretly thrilled both of us, as we liked to see the king mocked. Indeed, we both of us agreed that the colonists had rather a point when it came to taxation. But we never told my father, of course – it was a sort of secret among the women of the house. Yes, little girls would do well to learn history on their own, rather than from the lips of war-mongering fools such as my dear father.

Mathematics, too, and Greek. All of the languages and classics that the boys were learning, that were neglected in favor of more “feminine” topics. Latin, of course. Perhaps even Hebrew.

My quill wasn’t writing well. For the first time, I realized that this might be due to a rather studied neglect. Unlike mama, I never took much care with any of my writing implements. My quills scratched horribly, my seal was always caked in yesterday’s wax, my letters grew crimped from being put away in entirely the wrong manner. My governesses had always been after me to change my slovenly ways, but for the first time, I realized that the deficits in my care actually lead to genuine discomfort and inconvenience.

It was not a particularly comforting thought.

Marking up the paper with my inelegant hand, I reflected on the needs that one might have when attempting to open a proper girls’ school, the type of place that my mother would see as legitimate. Perhaps, if I were quick enough, I might have it running soon enough to accept Masha as a pupil. And future children, if there were to be any – mama said not, but I knew that a woman of her age might well have more little darlings. In particular, those still trying for an heir – perhaps, after bearing six children, with four still living, mama was rather exhausted on that score.

A school would need a building. How was one to go about purchasing a building, or purchasing land? Or advertising in a newspaper for staff? Or attracting any students?

These business decisions all appeared to be in my father’s realm, and I reflected that my ambition of not asking him for any assistance was apt to be a rather unrealistic one.

Additionally, in order to know exactly how to teach little girls the rather dull tasks of dancing, sewing, and household management – those things that would convince reluctant parents to send their sweet little girls to the school in the first place – I would need to consult a different kind of expert.

I walked off in search of Dusty. Or, as I was to be forced to start calling her, Dorothea.

* * *

When I found her, she was not with Masha. My sister, apparently, had been allowed to accompany my mother on a shopping trip to the village. Reflecting that I had once accompanied mama in all things, when we lived in town and our life was far less circumscribed, I longed for the days when I could have a presence that was considered sweet and pleasant, without any sort of caveats.

In these days, I rarely accompanied mama, as the talk of marriage had started to wear on me. When we were out together in public, it felt a bit like a meat market. Every impertinent villager seemed ready to ask mama when I was to be married off. And though I might pout and frown, mama herself was never much troubled by it. “When she is grown,” she would say, placing a gentle hand on my head. “Sometimes they are not, yet, and one doesn’t want to marry them off in that condition.”

Then she and any number of horrid women would laugh, talking of how young they were at marriage and all of the mistakes they had made as youthful brides. Depending on how closely I seemed to be following the conversation, they might even let drop several bawdy details that were certainly better left unsaid. Mama still seemed to think me too young for marriage, and the thought always outraged me. I was old enough to have a mind, I was old enough to leave my father’s house.

And, presumably, old enough to negotiate a mutually agreeable settlement with my governess. Or so I hoped.

“Miss Dorothea,” I said, taking the chair next to her writing desk.

She looked up, but it was without joy. “Good afternoon, Miss Morton.”

My governess always seemed to be rattling on about something or other, so I thought that she would have more words for me, but she did not.

“I hope you are well,” I began.

“Quite well, thank you,” she responded.

Our stalemate continued.

With a sigh, I thought of my mother. Her apologies to her children were often in jest. If I scolded her for forcing a dull story upon me or forgetting a promised treat, her response was nearly always to pretend great regret while her eyes laughed over at me.

Perhaps I could use my mother’s words with a little more sincerity, thereby winning over Miss Dorothea. If she were to provide me with information and ultimately help run my future school, her feelings toward me would certainly need to undergo a sea change.

“I apologize for my rudeness,” I began. “It was quite uncalled for.”

Miss Dorothea’s face was turned toward me, expectant, and I hastened to continue my thought. “I am sorry for the trouble that I have caused you, Miss Dorothea. I hope that you shall see a way to forgiving me.”

She was not at a loss for a response. “It is not a question of forgiveness, young lady. Rather, it is a question of my benefit to your household. If you are learning nothing from me, than I must go. It is quite apart from this question of your rudeness.”

I blushed to hear my own flaws acknowledged so coarsely. “I hope to show that I have learned, Miss Dorothea. Might Masha and I make another attempt at a model tea this afternoon?”

At this time, Miss Dorothea actually turned to face me, which I initially took for a good sign. When she spoke, however, I realized it was because I still had not satisfied her.

“A model tea is all well and good for a young girl Masha’s age, but it shall not do for you, Helena. You know quite well what is expected of you at tea, and if you will not play along with the suitors your father arranges, there’s hardly anything I can do that will influence that.”

Sadly enough, this was a fair point. I did know precisely the right things to say to men like that horrid Sir Reginald, but each time I began to say them, I would feel pressure like a knife to my belly not to give in. And after I was honest with them, I never felt ill for myself, only feared the punishment that my angry parents might dole out. In that vein, I was going to have to improve – perhaps I could find a way to let the men save face by rejecting me. By pretending to be a bit too religious, perhaps, or a bit too stupid. That was certainly a thought.

But Miss Dorothea was still looking at me, rather critically, as if she were unsure of my next move.

“What could I do to prove myself, then,” I asked. “I ought to be asked to manage something more difficult than a child’s tea. I accept. What is it you would ask of me?”

She clasped her hands on the desk, thinking. “There is to be a ball next week over at Beckett Park. I had already asked your mother to see if the pair of you might attend together. You shall know all the dances, and only want only a bit of decorum to make you a success.”

“Thank you,” I burst out, thrilled for a chance to prove my worth as a marriageable young woman, thereby obscuring my true plans. “I shall certainly go, and you shall feel quite proud of my performance.”

This made her smile. “Well, then. Why don’t you put on proper shoes and we shall begin practicing now.”

* * *

My costume at the next ball would seem to belie the extensive “discussions” with Miss Dorothea, mama, and all of the ladies maids that had been required before I was allowed to set foot out of doors.

Many of the other young ladies would have fine lace and flowers on their gowns, and the fashion in London that year was apparently to add as much decor to these horrid pieces as humanly possible.

I had a fine blue gown that mama had ordered, and I had taken off all of the frills and lace, even managing to sew it up myself so that it looked quite decent. At first, Miss Dorothea would not hear of it.

“You’ll be laughed out the doorway. To have so much finery before you, and yet refuse to use a jot? No, it shall not do.”

But I had held firm. “Please. This will show that I have an eye for beauty, but do not wish to appear ostentatious.”

After several minutes, Mama approved. “In fact, the plan is not unwise. It may yet be a good approach, a way of helping the neighbors remember you. They see you at balls rarely enough.”

And so it was approved that I should go to the ball in a simple dress, one that would allow me to glow by comparison. Perhaps, next to the over-dressed and nervous young ladies, I should be a beacon of taste and simplicity.

Of course, this was not why I had decided to wear the dress. I simply hated the excess flowers, ribbons, and lace that were in fashion. It was not out of a desire to make a fool of myself, or even to stand out.

* * *

When I reached the ball it appeared that, indeed, I was to stand out.

The hosts greeted us politely – one Mrs. Simpson, I believed, and her unmarried son. Mrs. Simpson was a longtime resident of the neighborhood, but her son had spent much of his childhood in London. Mrs. Simpson made some remarks about the ball that were so soft I scarcely heard her.

Her son, who either did not know or did not care that my mother and I were not exactly the social stars of the neighborhood, provided a greeting that was much more warm – at least to me. As my mother spoke a moment with the diminutive Mrs. Simpson, I listened as the son – only slightly taller than I, but broad-shouldered and unmistakably masculine – recalled our past acquaintance, a subject of which I knew little.

“Miss Morton! An honor. I believe I sold you a tart at the village fete three years ago,” he said, his glance lingering on my dress.

I now wondered whether even my “modest” affair was not pulled rather too low. It certainly seemed tighter about the bust than I recalled. Trying to meet Mr. Simpson’s eyes, I attempted to recall the last time I had been to a village fete. Perhaps he was right, and it was when I was fifteen, and quite embarrassed by the glances of rowdy villagers.

Though the intensity of Mr. Simpson’s greeting was not lost on me, I reveled in it more than I would have at the fete, all those years ago. His attention was unexpected, but flattering. “I don’t recall. Perhaps your memory is more reliable than mine.”

“Perhaps I had more to remember. How could the most fetching girl to visit my stand possibly escape my memory?”

This sounded rather too forward to me, and I looked to my mama for guidance, but she was standing just far enough away that she seemed to have missed Mr. Simpson’s scandalous remarks. She and Mrs. Simpson did not appear to be engaged in particularly interesting discourse, but nonetheless, they were prattling on about some subject and seemed disinclined to turn round and rescue me.

Additionally, there were no additional guests lingering on the stairs. Perhaps we had arrived at an inopportune moment.

Mr. Simpson didn’t seem to think so. His pale skin, surpassed only by his excessively fair hair, did not turn the least bit red as he spoke to me again. “Miss Morton, would you do me the honor of dancing the next two dances? I believe all the guests are arrived, and it would bring me great pleasure.”

I hardly knew how to respond, but as usual, my thoughts came tumbling directly out of my flustered lips. “Well, if it would bring you great pleasure, I supposed I must acquiesce.”

“Au contraire, Miss Morton,” he said, quietly enough that I was certain that I was now the only person in the crowded rooms who might be able to hear him. “Sometimes denial of an object greatly desired has the opposite effect. It increases the feelings of pleasure.”

As this elicited a confused frown from me, Mr. Simpson continued. “When there is a delay, but the pleasure sought is ultimately obtained – that is perhaps the most satisfying feeling of all.”

This addition clarified the true nature of his thoughts, and I blushed rather furiously. “I must go to my mother.”

“I shall find you when the next dance begins.”

To my surprise, the sight of him was bringing me greater and greater excitement. “Thank you, Mr. Simpson. I trust we shall both enjoy the delay.”

They were perhaps the most disgraceful words that had ever escaped my lips, but I greatly enjoyed saying them. Nearly as much as I enjoyed the surprised but greedy smile that eclipsed my admirer’s face as he heard them. He began to realize that I meant precisely what I said, and that when it came to verbal combat, I might be an enemy worthy of him.

* * *

My mother and I barely had time to greet Mrs. Winters, an old eccentric who was quite attached to my mother, before the dances began.

Mr. Simpson walked me over to the dancing floor with such a commanding, proprietary air that my own steps were not quite steady. Since my coming-out, I had danced with many men of his age, but none had been able to maintain the same devil-may-care manner as Mr. Simpson. His air seemed to be that of a king, sweeping about one of his loyal subjects thoughtlessly.

And his smiles toward me assured me that this was certainly not an air born of indifference. Indeed, his clear interest made me feel rather faint.

“Miss Morton,” he said, “You are seldom seen at neighborhood gatherings.”

This was a fairly safe opener, and I nodded in agreement. “Generally speaking, I have little patience for balls.”

“What makes tonight the exception?” he asked.

The presence of a man who bears some resemblance to the arrogant, well-favored rakes of my dreams, I thought. A man such as you makes a ball dangerous and exciting, not tedious and long.

My answer was rather more proper. “I found my parent’s house rather stifling.”

His smile returned to his chiseled face. “Quite so. Understandable, for a free-spirited young lady such as yourself. And yet, it does not do to abandon your parent’s house without thinking.”

I permitted myself a small, highly undignified snort. “Even if it is a house that makes one think unceasingly of escape?”

It was an unkind characterization of my home, but an accurate one. This remark, though, somehow made Mr. Simpson’s face go quite serious.

“Especially if it is the sort of house a young person wishes to escape.”

The dance slowed, giving me a chance to catch my breath and ask my dancing partner to elaborate. “I fail to take your meaning, Mr. Simpson.”

Since pointing would have been noticed, Mr. Simpson managed to direct my attention with a tiny jerk of his chin. “Take, for example, that young lad over there. Excellent background and breeding, not to mention a tidy fortune, and yet he seems perfectly willing to court a lady whose grandfather was not even a gentleman.”

At that point, we turned round again, so I had no opportunity of viewing the scandalous couple of which he had spoken. But, as a lady whose grandfather was certainly no gentleman, I felt I had to come to the young woman’s defense.

“Are we not speaking of glass houses, Mr. Simpson,” I managed, trying to make my tone light. After all, little though I knew of his family, I was aware that they were not on the short list of eligible matches father spoke of late at night (after drinking “fine” whiskey).

He quite anticipated my point, and responded to it without delay. “I know that, in spite of our well-regarded name, my family has very little money to speak of. If I attempted to dissemble around that very salient point, I should be a complete scoundrel.”

As Mr. Simpson was turning me about at that very moment, handling me with a bit more vigor and force than I expected, he seemed to be proving himself a scoundrel anyway.

But I could not help pushing the point. “If you yourself cannot boast of a perfect financial situation, I wonder that you criticize this lady for her imperfections.”

His smile was broad, almost a little wolfish. “Far be it from me to criticize any lady, Miss Morton. Where ladies are concerned, I admire – never do I criticize. For example, I have been admiring the suitability of your costume for the practice of dancing for some time now.”

It was no secret that current fashions quite often allowed the taller gentlemen a generous view of a lady’s bosom, but this was the nearest I had ever been to hearing a gentleman (even an impoverished one) admit that fact.

Once he appeared assured that I was blushing again, he continued. “In the case of that couple in the corner, I criticize not the young lady, but rather the gentleman. His family has a line that stretches back centuries, not to mention great amounts of money. Their only son and heir ought to be seeking out a wife who has the same.”

And at that moment, discomfited by the conversation and seeking a new place to rest my eyes, I actually looked at the man whom Mr. Simpson was so harshly criticizing.

It was Elias.

He looked remarkably well. My impressions of him from my one fitful encounter had not been inaccurate. If anything, I had missed the sweet curve of his cheeks, his broad and restless shoulders, the slender hips that I had earlier longed to touch. In truth, I still longed to touch them, but I forced myself to spar with Mr. Simpson so that I would have to look away.

“Are not your criticisms rather beside the point, Mr. Simpson?” I asked, suddenly turned daring by the circumstances. I would not have bothered to parry with him if not for my fondness for the subject of his scorn, my dear Elias.

Or perhaps he was not “my” Elias at all. After all, I had no claim on the young man’s heart. And I could not help noticing that this Miss Mulhearn, the apparent object of Elias’s affections, appeared rather excessively pretty. Her pale yellow hair was done up in an intricate mass of curls and little jewels, and her gown flowed so freely in its reams of pink material that she looked rather like an angel.

Mr. Simpson’s assessment of the situation, however, remained the same. “Certainly not. I have never gotten on with young Mr. Glover, to say the least, but I do not wish him to make a silly sort of choice when it comes to marriage. Even my worst enemy, I should hope, would not make such a decision.”

“Mr. Glover may think differently.”

This gained a true laugh. And my annoyance with Mr. Simpson would have bubbled over into genuine anger, except that when he pulled me closer (his arm brushing my bosom in what I could only conclude was a deliberate moment of clumsiness) I was quite enraptured and ready to listen to any diatribe of his, no matter how ridiculous.

“If he thinks differently, someone must put things to him. At any rate, I am sorry that we seem to have spent the better part of this number discussing a neighbor of so little consequence. During our next dance, let us speak more about you, Miss Morton - it is an infinitely more interesting subject.”

* * *

And then he turned away and walked off, and I bit the stupid tongue inside my mouth. How happy I had nearly been to say a couple of words to Mr. Simpson, and what an idiot. My mine reviled his simpleton views of wealth and status, but inwardly I had to admit that I was quite besotted with his wolfish manner. If his motivation included money as well as lust, well, wasn’t that something I should expect in any man who knew of my family’s great and recent fortune? At any rate, he should have risen in my estimation by the very fact that he was willing to speak to me. Even if Mr. Simpson made me feel clumsy, at least I could be assured that he was favorably disposed toward me. Apparently, to Elias (I still could not think of the boy I had met in the woods as Mr. Glover), I was of very little consequence.

The fire in my mind made my feet hurt all the more. If I was not going to gain either a friend or an admirer from the ball, I might as well see if my mother would accept my efforts thus far as proof that I had reformed. Provided she was ready to make a raving report to Miss Dorothea, our presence was likely no longer required – a blessing, as my swollen toes were in desperate need of rest. I practically stomped over to where my mother was standing, fanning herself rather lazily and speaking with Jonas Mathieson, one of the villagers who came from a family that farmed on my parents’ estate.

It appeared that she was enjoying talking of sows and scythes more than I had enjoyed all of the apparently “droll” amusements of the party.

Jonas Mathieson greeted me with respect, but soon took his leave of the two of us. A twitch of my mother’s chin told me to turn round, and when I did, I saw Elias and a woman whose face strongly resembled his. The greatest difference between their visages was that the older woman’s seemed starved with sadness.

Her eyes were sad but her tone was polite as she greeted my mother. “It has been far too long since we have had the honor of seeing you at a ball. May I present my son, Elias. Elias, make your bows to Lady Morton.”

The very brief pause gave me a moment not only to examine Elias, but to pretend surprise at the acquaintance.

My mother was genuinely surprised, but not worried. To my astonishment, she seemed quite friendly with Elias’s mother, whom I had always thought of as just as much an enemy as Lord Glover himself. “Of course. Lady Glover, my eldest girl, Helena.”

I gave Elias’s mother a deep curtsey. It felt cruel that the rules of social engagement prevented me from speaking, particularly as Elias’s mother was quite taciturn.

Fortunately, my mother was not the worst person one could call upon for the task of polite conversation. Perhaps realizing that Lady Glover was not likely to be eager to chat, she turned to Elias.

“Mr. Glover, I trust you and your mother are enjoying the ball.”

“We are indeed, thank you. My elder sister has been visiting, and we have been unfortunately rather isolated during her stay.”

This got a smile from my mother. She had no living relatives in England at all, so the thought of having a large family that would visit the house she had so carefully assembled gave her great pleasure. “How delightful. May I ask whether your sister is in attendance at the ball?”

Elias looked to his mother, who practically jumped. Her answer, which was only just audible, was quick. “She had matters to take care of at our home, and was not able to attend.”

Elias’s eyes met mine for a brief moment, and I recalled that his younger sister Beatrice must need care. Perhaps my mother was not insensible to this, but her answer betrayed no knowledge of the inner workings of the Glover family.

“Indeed? Well, I shall hope that those of you who have been able to attend the ball shall enjoy it, then.”

Elias nodded rather eagerly. “Indeed. It has been quite some time since I have had the pleasure of attending one,” he confessed, and I was able to guess that this was due to his solicitous care for his sister.

“Miss Morton, if you would permit me, might I ask you to dance the next two?”

For a moment, I was silent. Oh, if only the moment would have allowed me the possibility of saying all that I wished to say! I wanted to ask Elias about his family, about the girl he was apparently courting, and at the same time to laugh in his face over his contempt for my mother’s culture.

But because I could say none of this, my mother prodded me. “Helena, have you forgotten your manners? Do say you will brave the dancing once again, in spite of your delicate little feet.”

It was said with a mocking tone, but certainly none of the well-clad ball attendees knew the scars my mother’s feet bore from years in terrible shoes or no shoes at all, not to mention many years of labor. In her eyes, the soreness in my feet was a mere trifling concern, and rightly so.

“Yes, Mr. Glover,” I breathed. “Thank you, I will.”

And before the conversation could truly continue, the orchestra began, and I was lead out by Elias. The reel was very familiar to me. When I was much younger, I would pretend to be a great lady in our little rooms, and my mother would encourage me. I danced all of the steps with her, imagining that to be invited to a true ball would be the purest pinnacle of happiness.

After my first ball, I was quite disillusioned and bored. But when I took my place with Elias, in spite of the fact that I was properly dressed and ready to properly dance, an enormous flush spread over me. I could feel the prickling in my neck and shoulders, and even my vision of the candlelit room was affected.

My partner, however, mistook this flash of hot emotion and embarrassment for anger. “I beg you to forgive me, Miss Morton. Truly, I must urge you to accept my apology.”

It was clumsy, and I let him know it, relieved that he had misinterpreted my discomfort. “I believe that I have not yet heard an apology, Mr. Glover.”

He cringed immediately under the blow, and seeing him at a disadvantage gave me a little bit of relief. “Of course! I – well, I’m very sorry. The fact is, I mocked your Pushkin, and have since been humbled. I am now quite ashamed that I said those horrible, ignorant – I mean, that is to say, those stupid things.”

I gave a slight nod and a smile, as I could feel my mother’s eyes on us, but could not completely change my manner. “So now your feelings have changed about Pushkin? I wonder that this transformation could happen in so short a time.”

Sharp breaths came from Elias, as a moment occurred where we had to switch partners. Mine was Mr. Wendt, a villager who was recently out of mourning for his wife of thirty five years. The sight of his great bald head was a relief, and he greeted me politely. “Enjoying the dancing, Miss Morton?”

“Not entirely, but is the obligation of anyone who attends such a gathering,” I told him, and he was not offended by my honesty. Indeed, I was hardly enjoying the dancing – as much as I wished Elias’s words to be true, he could hardly have gone from a barely literate and blindly nationalistic Englishman (rather like my father) to a great scholar in less than a fortnight.

When we were joined in the dance again, however, he endeavored to explain his recent conversion. “I began reading translations of your Pushkin. And not just him, but other authors as well. I confess that Nicholas Gogol is rather a puzzle to me, but I hope to learn more about him yet.”

Though my heart sang, my skeptic mind was still unable to allow for such a quick about-face. “You have been to town to visit booksellers, then?”

Elias nearly tripped with eagerness, taking my hand to lead me into the next sequence. “No, not at all! Though I certainly hope to, please don’t misunderstand me,” he continued, hurriedly. “But as for what I read, no. It was all in our library, which father likes to keep looking well-stocked, but I was blind to all of it.”

My heart took off, but I managed to keep my countenance calm as I told him, “I wonder that it was on your shelves, then.”

At this, Elias actually laughed, though he still looked a bit discomfited. “Well, it’s my father’s doing, really. He takes a great deal of pride in having the books, but reading them is secondary.”

In spite of myself, I was drawn out. “You are not expected to read them either, then? My father also cares little for books, but then, he never buys them.”

At this, Elias gave a deeper smile. “Well, perhaps he is more honest. My tutors often had me read, but I would do so quite slowly out of laziness and ignorance. When I was forced to read, it was by my elder sisters. Now that they are gone, there is nobody to recommend works to me and sit sternly until I grow to like them enough that I finish reading.”

The picture of his family life softened my countenance further, and I responded warmly. “Your mother does not take this on, then? In my house, she is the taskmaster when it comes to literature. In fact, I have never read a Russian translation, mainly by her influence.”

“Pardon?”

“She has us read in the original. It can be quite tedious for me, as she is always after me to improve my grammar.”

“Yes, but what a gift! To speak another tongue well, and read someone like Pushkin. If I had a daughter, I should think that knowledge of a different mother tongue would be a marvelous thing to pass along to her.”

At this point, our eyes met, but we both looked away rather instantly. The idea of children had always seemed a bit odd to me, though younger girls than I were marrying and having children rather constantly. In fact, at eighteen, I was already past the age where girls married in haste to be wed to a father for babes conceived out of wedlock. Many girls younger than I were marrying in purity and having children years after. And yet, I had never envisioned myself possessing the energy that was required to endure even the confinement of a lady, replete with rest and various delicacies.

But looking at Elias, I felt a little bit older – and more ready than ever to leave both the comfort and the boredom of my father’s house.

It was a terrifying, yet thrilling, prospect.

Before I could work myself into more of a frenzy over an imaginary future, the dance ended, and Elias rather abruptly offered me refreshment. “I have noticed that the punch bowl has become rather less mobbed than before. May I offer you a glass, Miss Morton?”

It was a socially acceptable sentence, meant not only for me but for any curious onlookers. But I was more than willing to accept. “Indeed, I find myself in need of refreshment. I am afraid that I have grown rather weary of dancing.”

We walked over to the table, and without thinking of anything, took two of the empty seats by the wall.

“Thank you,” I told Elias as he handed me my cup.

As he seemed quite tongue-tied, I was now the one to begin our conversation. “Mr. Glover, I fear that I have wronged you by not quite accepting your apology.” Holding up a hand to stop him, I continued, “I do wonder at your present situation, however. You say that you do not read many authors who are not English as we are.” I paused for a moment to see if he should contradict my statement. I well knew that to most in the village, I was not to be considered English.

But Elias simply watched me, waiting for me to continue.

I tried to explain my doubts. “To me, one of the greatest delights of books is the ability to revel in memories of countries that one has visited. Have you never been able to make a European grand tour of sorts? It is a luxury afforded to young men that I have often envied.”

He smiled cautiously. “I have not made such a tour, primarily due to the, well, indisposition of my sister Beatrice. It is a luxury only offered to wealthy young men, and as you can see, not even every young man in that category may afford to go.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You said that it is a luxury afforded to young men. But truly, it is only for a very small set of young men. There are many others who travel abroad out of necessity, to seek their fortune, and those on sea often suffer greatly for it.”

I frowned. “When you say that, I’m not sure whether you remind me more of my father or my mother.”

Elias began to laugh, smiling, but his laughter was soon cut short. He was looking over my shoulder, his face growing tense. “Father, thank you for joining us. May I present Miss Helena Morton. Miss Morton, my father, Lord Glover.”

I stood and curtsied deeply, “It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Lord Glover.”

For the first time in my life, a gentleman I had just been introduced to failed to bow. “Elias,” he barked, the word ugly in his mouth. “You have kept me waiting. I believed that you were to dance the next with Miss Mulhearn.”

He looked up, then away. “I’m sorry, father.”

Lord Glover stood, and Elias started to follow him, but he then said to me quickly and quietly, “Thank you for speaking to me of that friar waiting daily by the water, Miss Morton. It was quite an interesting story.”

Then he walked off, hurrying to catch up with his father’s lengthy stride.

I walked back over to my mother, angry in my defeat. Apparently, Elias didn’t even have the courage to say anything truthful in his final, murmured words to me. Rather, some lie about a “friar” was supposed to suffice to explain his sudden rudeness.

“Mama,” I said, my lips trembling, “Have we stayed a sufficient length of time for you?”

She was wary as she answered, sure that something was disturbing me but unable to put a finger on the cause. “Yes, Lenotchka. You mean to ask whether we’ve stayed long enough for me to judge your manners and dancing up to the occasion, and the answer to that query would be yes.”

“Might we . . . ” my utterance slipped off, distracted by the sight of Elias sitting with the beautiful Miss Mulhearn. She appeared to be giggling behind her beautifully gloved fingers like some little fairy sprite, and Elias’s broad grin seemed as if it might well be sincere.

My mother stood, taking my arm. “Might we call for the carriage, then? Yes, if you wish it. I’m to have an early morning tomorrow with the roses, and would not wish to sleep through it.”

* * *

“You are sleeping through this lesson, Miss Helena,” said Miss Dorothea, looking ready to rap my knuckles. “Your sister and brothers are hard at work. Is this geometry too difficult for the morning after a ball?”

I sighed, unable to prevent myself from responding to the question that I had been asked. “Most anything would be too difficult for the morning after a ball, Du – Miss Dorothea.”

“Not for your own mother, it would appear. She was in the garden before either of us had dressed, though Cook had prepared her a tray.”

Furious, I got up from the desk and walked to the window. After all, Dusty might be wrong – perhaps my mother had woken early for other reasons, or gone briefly to the garden and then stepped back inside.

In fact, that was not the case. My mother was standing outside, smiling as she held a trowel in her gloved hands and examined the stems on one of her rosebushes.

Behind my back, the woman I was beginning to recognize as a frustrated but well-intentioned teacher told me to return to my seat.

Instead, I simply turned to face her. “Miss Dorothea, pardon the impertinence, but do you not think that working at a girls’ school would be a sight better than having to school me? I know that I wear on your nerves.”

I was not quite ready to apologize for wearing on her nerves, but just the knowledge that she probably prayed to marry me off and be rid of me went a long way toward allowing me to have more charitable feelings toward the poor woman. After all, if I were teaching an impertinent little Helena Morton, I’d likely want to achieve the exact same aim.

Miss Dorothea looked at me, her head tilted slightly. Whether this was in thought or simply an unfortunate effect of tiredness, I was unsure. For the first time, I noticed that Miss Dorothea did seem to have gained a great many grey hairs during her brief tenure in our household – or, more specifically, her brief tenure as the most recent in a long line of governesses driven to madness by my failure to obey.

“May I speak plainly, Miss Helena?” she asked, her tone level.

For the first time, I felt a prickle of fear as I nodded.

But Miss Dorothea’s comment was not specifically about me.

“To own the truth, I should very much like to open a finishing school.”

For a moment, I forgot my sympathy for the woman, and saw only a way to get myself out of lessons for at least a month, perhaps two. “Then why do you not do so at once? I have heard that, far from town as we are, there is a very particular demand for such establishments.”

Miss Dorothea nodded. “Absolutely. In that, you are correct. But you do not think of the requirements of beginning such an establishment. I would not easily be able to raise the capital that I needed. Indeed, if I were rich enough to even begin such a venture, I would hardly need to seek employment.”

I took a deep breath. “It’s a sort of, erm, paradox, is that correct?” I tried to remember if I was using the term accurately.

Again, she nodded. “In that, you are correct, Miss Helena. But each of us must make the very best of her current situation. In that vein, I must beg you to sit down and continue with your geometrical lesson. The figures that you drew earlier were quite crooked.”

“Miss Dorothea!” I burst out, walking toward her rather than sitting down. At her sour frown, I amended my utterance. “Please forgive me, Miss Dorothea. But if we were to open a girl’s school together, that would solve your capital problem, would it not? I am quite sure that my parents would lend out whatever we might need to get started.”

Miss Dorothea’s lips were pursed as she answered. “I never had a notion that you were thinking of starting such an establishment, Miss Helena. Do you not wish to marry?”

It was the first time somebody had asked me such a question. And there was really no reason that I should be kept from making a splendid match. But every time I thought of entertaining a suitor, the image of Elias speaking with that odious Miss Mulhearn sprang before my eyes, and I had great difficulty containing my anger.

“I do not intend to marry for the time being,” I said. “I am undecided as to whether I shall ever marry. After all, being the proprietress of a new sort of school for girls would be quite as interesting as life as new wife and mother.”

At this, Miss Dorothea simply pointed to the chair I was supposed to be occupying. I sat, and she sat across from me. “Miss Helena, pray enlighten me as to what you mean by a ‘new sort of school’ – I cannot understand what is wrong with any of the schools in existence now.”

I sighed. “Those schools teach little beyond social arts. I have learned much more than that frippery from mother,” I said, and noticing Miss Dorothea’s glare, added “And I have learned many things from you. Even if I have been lazy in my geometrical work, which I shall admit quite freely, I am still much more accomplished in it than most any girl my age.”

She frowned. “This much is true, indeed. But your idea of a new curriculum seems rather murky in its dimensions. For example, what literature would the young ladies be asked to learn?”

“Oh, a great deal! Certainly Russian literature, that is scandalously neglected in the schooling of many children,” I said, thinking rather bitterly of Elias.

“What else? Have you a list of the books you would want each girl to learn?”

I frowned deeply. “Well, not exactly. I have some notion of how to get the school started, but a list of books? I had not got that far.”

Miss Dorothea gave a small smile. “I might have expected it. Well, Miss Helena, before either of us entertains this notion any farther, I might advise you to draw up such a list.”

* * *

I was not given much time in my father’s library, as he was to entertain again at lunch. Miss Dorothea allowed that if I would make myself scarce, I should not be forced to join them at this time. Perhaps her eagerness for my prospective nuptials had waned a bit. At any rate, she seemed more excited by the thought of my drawing up a new curriculum than she did by the notion that I might finally find a suitor in one of father’s uncouth friends.

But if I was to avoid those friends entirely, I should need to exit the library in haste. Father might not use the area for any literary activity, but he did like to strut about in there with acquaintances, complaining loudly about the high cost of books.

As I strode about by the shelves, I marked off a great deal of English classics. Still, I wanted the girls of this little school to learn something a little bit more classical without having to strain their eyes with Greek and Latin. My hand fell upon the King James Bible. I wondered at its inclusion – would not a great many of the girls have already studied it in their own homes? There was certainly little likelihood that many of them would be Jewish, as I was.

Still, I reflected that whether one believed in all or none of the book, it had a great deal of literary merit. The words had been translated by certain brilliant writers and thinkers, and the stories themselves were dramatic and rather lovely.

I could hear stirring in the hall. There was not yet a horse and carriage, but I could tell that the arrival of papa’s friends must be imminent.

With haste, I amended the list to include many of my favorite Russian works. But for some of them, I did not even have an English title. And there were various clippings I had organized, some from my mother and others from friends, all of which contained Russian works.

As I re-entered the schoolroom, noticing that my siblings had been taken out of it, I rustled through the papers. They contained a great deal of poems. My aunt Vera was particularly insistent in copying out new poems as soon as she read them and sending them, unable to wait for a moment when they would be published and the book would fall into our family’s hands.

With a great sigh, I sank to the schoolroom floor. My mother would scold me more than anyone if she saw me here, no doubt subjecting me to tirades over cold floors and my hope of having children in the future, but I wished to sort out the poems and choose the perfect ones for my curriculum.

As I read, I realized that mama truly could have been the perfect Russian schoolmarm. There were, in fact, no poems that were truly unfamiliar to me. This was due entirely to my mother’s strict tutelage – she had made us read every single one of them. Some were so familiar that we could practically recite them. “Rusalka” was one such – I gritted my teeth thinking of Elias when I read the title, but eventually fell into a rhythm of reading the poem itself. The beauty of the setup struck me. Pushkin didn’t give a single irrelevant detail, but laid out a setting that was absolutely complete, and a sad old priest who seemed ready for his life to end.

If this poem were to be used with English girls, though, even with years of Russian they might not proficient enough to read it well. I would have to translate “Rusalka” as “The Water Sprite” or “The Fish Girl” or some such thing, and talk about the man as a minister or friar.

With a start, I realized that Elias had been speaking of a friar! The friar who was waiting by the water each day. Looking outside with a gasp, I realized that he must have been attempting to send me a message. And like a fool, I had failed to receive it. Would he be waiting by the water? When? Instead of muttering something stupid, Elias had actually been covertly telling me something quite intelligent. I had underestimated him, and had only myself to blame.

I recalled that his father rose late, so he would likely be there only in the morning. And even from the schoolroom, I could hear the booming voices of my father’s friends.

Breathing deeply, I resolved to visit Elias the next day. I would have to leave quite early in order to ride all the way there and back without being noticed, but it would be the one way that I could speak to my neighbor again.

* * *

The rest of the story can be found in .