“That’s what the guy who was wearing them thought. Be grateful he left them for you.”
Dimitri wasn’t grateful for anything at his point. The campsite was abandoned except for the topknotted man, who sat with a rifle across his lap as he watched Dimitri.
“Where is everyone else?” Dimitri asked.
“Gone. We were getting too big to feed. They are headed for Abakan, but I need to go farther east.”
Abakan sounded good to Dimitri. It was still in Russia but remote enough that nobody would be looking for Count Sokolov there.
“What’s wrong with Abakan?” he asked.
“I am a wanted man in Abakan,” the other said. “Horse theft. I need more distance before I settle somewhere, and I’ll move faster without them. The two of us can help each other.”
Everything hurt as Dimitri pushed himself into a sitting position. “You’ve stolen my coat and one of my gold coins. You attacked me. Why should I help you?”
“Because I have half a squirrel and a cup of water. I am willing to share. Are you interested?”
Dimitri’s mouth salivated. Were he able, he’d be willing to kill for that squirrel and cup of water. All he could manage was a weak nod.
“My name is Temujin,” the man said as he extended the skewer with the lump of squirrel meat on it, and Dimitri had never been so grateful for a mouthful of food in his life.
8
Natalia moved into her new townhouse in mid-November. It was only three blocks from the bank and four blocks from the New York Stock Exchange. She was in the heart of the Financial District, so she could walk to work each morning instead of spending half an hour in a lumbering carriage on jammed city streets.
Why hadn’t she done this years ago? She loved this compact townhouse even though it lacked electricity and the plumbing was rudimentary. It washers. The kitchen was inadequate, but there was an Italian delicatessen on the street corner and plenty of pushcart venders offering a huge array of hot pasties, sausages, and sandwiches.
She bought a sofa, a wingback chair, and two bookshelves, which filled most of the parlor. The flaring bell of her phonograph stuck out from its corner table, and she purchased a special rack for her records. Instead of crystal, she bought charming stoneware mugs and plates. This part of the city had peddlers selling flowers on almost every street corner, and she treated herself to a bouquet at least once a week. She loved nothing more than walking home from work, buying her own flowers, and arranging them in one of her new stoneware jugs.
Each evening she slipped into a sarafan like her mother used to wear. The loose gowns with their wild tribal patterns werea staple of the Russian countryside, and there was no garment on earth that made Natalia feel more feminine. Poppy always mocked Natalia’s sarafans, calling them peasant garb, but Natalia was now her own woman and could wear whatever she pleased.
Despite the joy she took in her new home, it wasn’t without difficulty. Her first attempt at making a hard-boiled egg resulted in a rubbery mess with bits of shell stuck to the whites, prompting her to buy a cookbook to learn the trick for slipping the shell from a cooled hard-boiled egg. It only took a few tries, but she beamed with pride as she enjoyed her first hard-boiled egg made on her tiny stove. She sprinkled it with salt and pepper and felt like a genuine chef.
Washing her hair was a challenge, but she soon figured out a system. Heating and lugging water was tedious, but she played the phonograph loud enough to be heard throughout the house, and she loved the charm of Mozart while performing the humble chore.
Her only truly disastrous mistake came when she tried to light her first fire. She’d never laid a fire before, but she’d seen servants do it, and she knelt before the compact fireplace in the parlor, mimicking the way she’d seen servants lay the wood with plenty of open space for air circulation, then set some smaller kindling at the bottom. She did everything right... except she forgot to open the damper before lighting the fire, and billowing clouds of smoke poured into the parlor. She flung a bucket of water on the fire, which splattered wet bits of charred ash all over the hearth and her gown. Clearing the stench of smoke from the room took forever, since the windows were so old that they’d been painted shut long ago.
Minor disasters aside, she was learning how to be independent, and her relationship with her father had never been better. Now that he no longer had to perform peacekeeping duties between his feuding wife and daughter, they hummed along in perfect harmony at the bank. Her third-quarter report on the profitability of the Trans-Siberian Railway almost had him levitating.
“Are these numbers right?” he asked as he stood in the open doorway of her office.
She nodded. “Enough of the railroad has been completed that it can now be used for transporting supplies, which has slashed our transportation costs to one third what they were before.”
Her father still scrutinized the report. “Very good, but that still can’t account for this level of profit.”
“We’re also charging the British and the Germans to use the line,” she said with pride. “Anyone who wants to do business in central Russia is now paying us a surcharge.”
Oscar straightened, his face still expressionless, but his voice vibrated with pride. “That’s my girl,” he said before leaving her office.
The interchange took less than sixty seconds, but it filled her with satisfaction. Half the robber barons in New York lived in fear of Oscar Blackstone. He never gave praise without cause, and she had just exceeded their third-quarter expectations. The railroad would ultimately belong to Russia, but until the bank’s loan had been repaid, a portion of the profits went directly into the Blackstone coffers.
That night she hurried home a little early because the weather was taking a turn for the worse. Tiny bits of sleet pricked her face by the time she arrived home. It was early for a cold snap like this, but Liam had already taught her how to use the cast-iron radiator on each floor. She turned them on, but it seemed to take forever for the steam to build up and begin heating the house.
By nightfall, snow had crusted along the panes of the windows, and chilly drafts snaked through the rooms. She made a pot of hot apple tea, wrapped a heavy shawl around her shoulders, and leaned against her bedroom window to watch the snow flurries fly.
Did an early winter in New York mean an early winter in Russia too? She doubted Dimitri had access to a radiator or hot tea. By now he was probably becoming used to a gloomy prison camp in the middle of nowhere. All the money in theworld could not buy him a warm blanket or a bowl of hot, nourishing soup. She had no understanding of what he’d done to earn such a harsh punishment, but she ached for him.
A chill rushed through her at the thought of what his life had become. She snuggled deeper into her shawl and said a prayer on behalf of the friend she would probably never hear from again.
