“Then you were cheated,” the tutor said. “He only charged me four rubles, and I hear he sells it to the farmers for as low as two.”
“I told you that man wasn’t trustworthy,” Dimitri’s mother called from the other side of the room.
The tutor shrugged. “It seems like good business to me.”
“But he’s making it at our mill,” his mother sputtered.
“He’s only pressing the cider here,” Dimitri said. “The work of growing the apples and fermenting them happens on his own property.”
Why was he defending Ilya Komarov? The man was a surly hothead who never had a kind word for anyone. He hadn’t even thanked Dimitri for the barrels, just walked away as though they were his due.
The dominoes were forgotten as a good-natured debate ensued about whether it was dishonest for Ilya to charge people different prices for the same applejack.
Olga approached, a hint of amusement in her eyes. Dimitri had never realized back when they were children prowling the woods together how lovely she would someday become. Now, with her elegant figure and white-blond hair, she looked like an ice princess ... but a warm and friendly ice princess.
“When are you coming to Moscow?” she coaxed. “Princess Maria has begged me for an introduction to you. She says heroes are too rare in the world today, and she wants to hold a feast in your honor.”
Heat gathered in Dimitri’s face. It still felt odd to be considered a hero. No man who quaked in terror the way he had in the Siberian forest could claim hero status, and those anxieties were starting to take root again as he contemplated his coming battle with Baron Freedericksz.
“You know I don’t care for Moscow,” he said. “Too big. Too crowded.”
“The princess lives in a palace surrounded by three hundredacres. You won’t feel crowded. I can introduce you to the princess, and then we can dine on caviar and champagne.” Olga settled on the arm of his chair. She lowered her voice as she leaned down to whisper in his ear. “Then we can run out into her garden and search for frogs.”
“You remember that, do you?” He smiled up into her eyes. She was so close that her lemony scent surrounded him.
She touched the back of his hand, her fingers soft as eiderdown. “Of course I remember.”
The spot where her fingers touched tingled. It was only Friday, and they had a long weekend ahead of them. He needed to change the subject from thoughts of running into a moonlit garden with her.
“When am I going to hear you play the piano?” he asked. “My mother says your rendition of Chopin could make angels weep.”
Olga squeezed his hand. “But will it make you weep, Dima?”
No one besides Olga called him Dima anymore, but his childhood nickname felt right on her lips.
“We won’t know until you play,” he said, wondering if it was wrong to flirt with Olga when his heart still belonged to Natalia.
Either way, he needed to escape from her. It was suffocating in here. He stood, causing Olga to shift off the armchair.
“Forgive me,” he said. “I promised Pavel I would help at the mill this afternoon.”
He gave a perfunctory bow to Olga, who looked stunned as he left, but he needed to get away. The prospect of working at the mill with Pavel suddenly seemed more appealing than another game of dominoes. Wasn’t that odd? There was a time when he loved every moment of these long house parties from start to finish, but that was before he started work on the Trans-Siberian. Things were different now. Around-the-clock leisure no longer held quite the same allure.
He grabbed a rough canvas coat from a hook in the mill and nodded a greeting to Pavel, who had already begun a vatof apple cider vinegar. Dimitri pried the lid from a barrel of discarded apple cores needed for making vinegar. It was a sticky, smelly job, but he didn’t mind.
He was scooping apple scraps into the hopper when he spotted Olga picking her way across the yard.
“Dima, please,” she coaxed as she stepped up onto the old slate of the mill. “Let’s talk.”
He didn’t want to have this conversation, but it was time. Pavel pretended not to notice as Dimitri brushed off his hands and gestured to the old stone wall bordering the creek that fed the waterwheel.
This wall of fieldstone rock was one of his favorite places on the estate. As a child he used to walk along the top of it even though his father forbade it because a loose stone could send him tumbling into the frigid water. Later he learned that his father had also walked atop the wall during his youth, and his grandfather before him. They had all been scolded about the danger, and should Dimitri ever raise a child here, he would do the same.
Dimitri gestured for Olga to join him on the bench beside the wall, and she started pressuring him to come to Moscow with her.
“You are a celebrity,” she said. “Come to Moscow, where you will be the toast of the town. It won’t last forever. You can come to the city and meet my children. They are adorable.”
A fond ache bloomed in his chest. Olga would someday make a charming wife to a Moscow aristocrat who enjoyed city life as much as she did. Perhaps the curse of the illness he suffered at nineteen had been a blessing in disguise. Olga was not the right partner for him. He wanted Natalia. He wanted Natalia here in the valley, where they could adopt children and watch them grow up tramping through the apple orchards and fishing in the lake and making cider in the autumn. They could spend time at his townhouse in the city, where Natalia could commission the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic to make records to sell all over Russia and Europe. Their lives would be perfect.
