The idea sounded far-fetched, but Dimitri needed a better idea of what taking the wheel apart would entail. Wearing waist-high waders, he climbed over the stone wall and into the flume. The water slowed his stride as he trudged toward the wheel. It had been motionless ever since he closed the sluice gate this morning, so he was able to get close enough to examine the axle and metal bearings in the center of the wheel. Ilya hunkered down on the wall beside him.
“You see how those boards are warped? That’s your problem. Let’s get this thing rotating again so you can see the problem in action.”
Dimitri stepped back a few paces, and Pavel opened the sluice gate. Water poured down the flume, and the wheel groaned as it went back into motion. The internal thump seemed even louder. Dimitri stepped farther back, but his foot slid on the algae, shooting out from beneath him. He crashed into the water. A weight clamped down on his ankle, dragging him forward. The wheel! He yelled, but icy water flooded his mouth and throat, sucking into his lungs. He thrashed, craning upward for a breath of air, but couldn’t reach the surface.
His ankle exploded in pain as the wheel dragged him deeper beneath its weight. Blue sky rippled above the surface of the water. So close, but he couldn’t get to the air. Icy water seized his muscles, but he had to keep fighting. Pain was everywhere. Was this it? Why hadn’t he known that dying would hurt this badly?
A hulking shadow blotted out the sunlight. Someone wasover him, a weight on his hips holding him down, hands around his ankle pulling. His ankle felt torn apart, but finally it slipped free.
Hands beneath his shoulders hauled him upright. He broke through the surface and gasped for air but coughed up water. Ilya was in the flume with him, hoisting him to the stone wall.
Behind them, the waterwheel slipped back into rotation, the familiar sound causing him to shudder in horror. Another minute, and he would have been dead.
He was freezing. Pavel helped him out of the sluice, and both Dimitri and Ilya collapsed on the ground. Dimitri puked up water and sputtered for air. There was no way he’d be able to stand. His ankle was surely broken.
Ilya looked shaken too. He’d risked his life by reaching under that wheel to pry Dimitri’s foot free. A bloody scrape marred Ilya’s face, and he shivered in his sopping clothes.
Pavel sounded panicked. “I’ll send for a doctor,” he said and raced toward the house, leaving the two of them alone in the dirt, shaking with cold. Pain radiated from Dimitri’s broken ankle, but he got up onto an elbow to look Ilya in the eye.
“I owe you my life,” he managed to gasp. “You saved me at great risk. What is it that you want? If it is in my power, I will grant it.”
Ilya’s eyes widened. He was no longer the surly, angry peasant. He was a shaken man, bloody and panting from what had happened. Then suddenly a fire lit in his pale eyes, and he said the last thing Dimitri expected.
“I want to go to America.”
Dimitri knew even before Dr. Sopin arrived that his leg was broken. He was given a shot of vodka and a lungful of chloroform that put him in a painful daze while the doctor set his leg and wrapped it in a cast.
It was dark before Dimitri emerged from the drugged stupor. He lay beneath a mound of quilts in his bedroom, the cast-ironstove heating the room at full blast. His mother hovered over him, worried he would catch his death of pneumonia after being submerged in the icy water for so long.
He drew a breath. His throat hurt, but his lungs felt clear, and he would never take the blessing of a deep breath of air for granted again.
He relayed the entire story of what happened, and Anna was appalled—not so much by the danger Dimitri had endured but by Ilya’s audacity.
“He can’t go to America,” she sputtered. “He’s the only carpenter in the valley. What would we do if he leaves?”
Dimitri had to smother a laugh at the self-centered horror in his mother’s voice. Before the freeing of the serfs in 1861, no worker could leave an estate without permission, but they lived in a new era, and Ilya was free to seek his fortune in America if he wished.
“We will find a way to survive,” he assured his mother, but a part of him envied Ilya’s ability to forge a new destiny for himself.
36
Natalia loved watching Alexander totter around her home. In light of Poppy’s jealousy, Oscar now brought the baby to her townhouse for a visit at least once a week. It let Natalia play with her brother while talking business with her father. This morning she sat on the floor with Alexander while Oscar watched them from the upholstered corner chair, looking like a king on his throne as he listened to her grim predictions about the disaster Liam was about to confront. His proposal for a drastic workers’ pay raise would be presented to the board of U.S. Steel tomorrow, and it was too ambitious to succeed.
“He’s determined to shove it down their throats no matter what they say,” she told Oscar. “I’ve tried to suggest a more structured rollout, but he won’t listen.”
“Let him proceed,” Oscar said. “Getting taken down a notch will teach him a lesson.”
It sounded as if Oscar was secretly hoping for that to happen, but she hated watching Liam walk straight toward a buzz saw while doing nothing to intervene. Liam was a strong and charismatic man. His heart was in the right place, but he didn’t respect the rules of Wall Street, and it was going to cost him.
“I don’t want to see him be publicly humiliated,” she said as Alexander tried to climb on top of her.
“That’s his doing, not yours,” Oscar replied. “Speaking of public humiliation, you should know that I have initiated a libel suit against Silas Conner for the rumors he spread about you.”
Natalia sighed. An investigation at the bank confirmed that Silas had been the one feeding inside gossip about her to the Russian embassy. Her father wanted vengeance, but a lawsuit wasn’t the right course of action. She scooped Alexander up and carried him to the sofa, where she settled him on her lap while parsing through her complicated feelings about what Silas Conner had done to destroy her career.
“I wish you wouldn’t,” she finally said. “The damage is already done, and getting a pound of flesh from him can’t undo it.”
Her father’s expression was iron-hard. “It’s not my way. When someone strikes at me or my family, I retaliate hard enough to ensure it will never happen again. I intend to make an example of Silas Conner. Do you really want to let him get away with it?”
