“Yes! I want to go shopping at Macy’s and ride in a trolley, even though they appear to be a horse-drawn deathtrap to me. I must experience all things New York. I want to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge and climb to the top of the Washington Monument.”
“The Washington Monument isn’t here. It’s in Washington, DC.”
“So? I still wish to see it.” When she cautioned him that Washington, DC, was far away, he scoffed. “Don’t try to tell me about long distances.” He then launched into an ode about the mightiness of the Russian taiga.
He was still waxing poetic as they mounted the steps leading to Natalia’s townhouse. “Don’t be too critical,” she said. “It’s nothing grand, but I am ridiculously proud of it.”
She turned the key in the lock. The interior was dim because the drapes had been drawn across the window. The wooden floors creaked when she stepped inside, and she stopped, blocking his entrance so he could not follow. Even from the porch, the house smelled odd.
Natalia darted into the front room to yank the drapes open and gasped when sunlight filled the space.
It was chaos. The ceiling had caved in, and water dribbled through the ruined plaster. Strips of wet wallpaper curled away from the wall. The fireplace mantel had fallen down,lying at a haphazard angle in the middle of the floor. It was split in half.
“Oh no,” Natalia moaned, staring in horror at the ceiling. Everything looked and smelled wet. Water gurgled through a pipe overhead.
“I will go upstairs and find the problem,” Dimitri said, then vaulted up the steps two at a time. He followed the sound of water to a washroom, where water gushed from an old pipe beneath the pedestal sink. He squatted down to examine a corroded joint on the copper pipe. Water had pooled on the wood floor and seeped into the plaster ceiling below, probably for days. Maybe even weeks.
He was no plumber and couldn’t fix this, but downstairs Natalia was heartbroken. He returned to her quickly. She knelt on the floor beside the fireplace, looking at the hand-carved mantel that lay split down the center.
“It’s ruined,” she said, her voice bewildered and despairing. “Everything I’ve done is ruined. The wallpaper, the mantelpiece. Did I leave the water running upstairs? How could I have been so stupid?”
“Shh,” he soothed. “There was corrosion on the pipe beneath the sink, and it cracked open. This can happen with old pipes.”
She glanced up at the ceiling, where water still dribbled, soaking the walls. It had damaged the plaster and caused the mantel to fall away from the wall. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Stay here. I will go outside and find a way to turn off the water to your house. It is going to be all right, Natalia.” After the horrors he’d seen and endured in Russia, a leaky pipe was not a problem, but it had destroyed something Natalia valued, and that meant he cared too.
She drew a ragged breath and nodded. He hurried to the alley behind the house, where a pipe and a valve were low to the ground. He cranked the iron lever, which took a few twists before he was confident it had been turned off. He entered the house and hurried back upstairs, relieved to see the jet of water was dribbling to a halt. He turned the knobson the sink faucet, which caused a short spurt, and then all the water stopped.
“The water is turned off,” he said, rejoining Natalia where she still knelt with slumped shoulders amidst the damp plaster and sodden floorboards.
It was his fault this had happened, for if she had not spent weeks traveling to San Francisco and back, she could have stopped the leak before the damage got this bad. He ran his hands across the cracked mantel, seeing the carved ivy patterns she had told him about. The floor and the plaster could be repaired. New wallpaper could be bought and hung. But he did not know what could be done for this mantel. How proud she had been about this humble house, but it was not fit for habitation in its present state.
“Perhaps you would like to stay with your father as well?” he suggested.
She shook her head. “I can’t bear the thought of what Poppy will say if I have to move back because I destroyed my own home only a few months after I bought it.”
“You will have no water here,” he said gently.
She swiped a lock of hair from her face, leaving a trail of plaster dust in the dark strands. “I’ll be all right. I’ll figure something out.” She pushed herself to her feet. The skirt of her gown was smeared with grit and water stains. “I need to change before we go to my father’s. Please say nothing about this. I’m simply not up to Poppy’s derision today.”
He nodded and watched as she trudged up the stairs, her usual spritely manner vanquished and defeated. The wet, smelly catastrophe of her house would be dispiriting for anyone, but it could all be repaired.
She emerged a few minutes later wearing another of the prim suits she’d worn since he met her. This one was moss green with a tailored vest, a wasp-waisted jacket, and a slim skirt. She sent him an apologetic glance.
“I hoped to take you on a trolley so you could feel like a real New Yorker, but we need to go by cab. We’re already late, and Poppy is going to throw a fit.”
“Whatever you think best,” he said.
Impressing Poppy Blackstone was of little interest to him. Of far more importance was establishing a rapport with Oscar Blackstone. Natalia had put her faith in Admiral McNally’s ability to find someone who could verify what happened at the Amur River, but that was an uncertain prospect. In the meantime, Dimitri still needed to be prepared to scuttle the ongoing construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway.
That meant finding the best way to maneuver around Oscar Blackstone.
19
Natalia could tell Poppy was annoyed the moment she and Dimitri arrived in the foyer of her former Fifth Avenue home.
“We expected you hours ago,” Poppy said with ill-concealed annoyance. “Couldn’t you have at least worn something appropriate? Everyone else is dressed for a formal dinner, and you show up looking like a day at the office.”
