“Ah, but I insist.” He chuckled when she tried unsuccessfully to leave her new seat. “I forced you to take a vacation, which you sorely needed if even half of the things you claim are true. I have given you adventure, new friends, new places to see, even a new language—yes, Marusia has told me how quickly you mastered Russian with her help.” His voice suddenly deepened. “I have also forced you to experience new and wonderful feelings. I introduced you to passion.”
“Stop it!” Her eyes flared as she pushed against his chest to keep him from drawing her closer. “You think you have all the answers, but you don’t. First off, a chaperon means nothing when my disappearance without a word speaks for itself. And I won’t accept your money. I’ve told you that repeatedly. My father is wealthy, extremely wealthy. I could live quite comfortably for the rest of my life on my dowry alone. If you want to give away a fortune, give it to Lord Seymour—he needs it, I don’t—and I certainly wouldn’t let you kill him, for God’s sake, no matter how much misery he will cause my sister.”
Before she could say another word, Dimitri defied the push of her hands and kissed her. It wasn’t exactly an ardent kiss, just enough to stop the flow of her words—at first. It became much more than that after only a few seconds. His kisses were a drug, a potent tranquilizer. Katherine became all weak and malleable—and heard him groan.
“Sweet Christ!” And then his eyes looked into hers, those dark, hypnotic eyes. “We don’t need a bed. Say we don’t need a bed, Katya.”
His fingers were stealing under her skirt as he spoke. She put her hand down to block the way.
“No.”
“Katya—”
“No, Dimitri!”
He leaned back, closing his eyes. “This is what I get for asking.”
Katherine didn’t comment. She was so flustered that she could barely make it back to her seat when he released her.
“I had thought to share the carriage with you, but that’s not such a good idea, is it?” he continued. “I would end up attacking you within a mile.”
“You wouldn’t.”
He opened one eye with the brow sharply cocked, then the other with a sigh. “No, but you would consider any overture an attack, wouldn’t you, little one? And since I can’t quite manage to keep my hands to myself, I suppose the decent thing to do is leave.” He waited a moment, hoping she would contradict him. He sighed again when she didn’t, long and loud. “Very well. But be warned, Katya. The time is going to come when I won’t be so easily managed. You had best hope you are on your way back to England before then.”
Chapter Twenty-two
When she thought about it later, Katherine was glad that Dimitri wasn’t in close attendance on that long ride to Novii Domik, and not for the obvious reason. Marusia and Vladimir had joined her instead; consequently the trip became a learning experience. With Dimitri present, she would have been aware of nothing but him. But with Marusia she was able to relax. Not even Vladimir’s dour company could inhibit her, nor did his tolerant silence seem to bother his wife. Marusia was informative, entertaining, talking the whole way.
Katherine learned a little more about the people, the land, and between villages and estates that were described in detail, more about Dimitri. Some things she could have done without knowing, but once Marusia started, it wasn’t easy to deter her from a subject.
The countryside was breathtakingly beautiful, awash with summer colors; wild flowers, tall stands of silver birch, fields of golden wheat, and the vivid green of pines. But the villages were the most picturesque, with their blue or pink cottages, all with identical red-painted porches. Katherine thought they were quaint until she learned that such orderly villages were actually military colonies. The carriage passed close enough to one for her to see even children in uniform.
These military colonies were one of the subjects Marusia expounded on, since she had particular distaste for them. They had been started nearly thirty years ago by Alexander’s order. The provinces of Novgorod, Mogilev, Kherson, Ekaterinoslav, and Slobodsko-Ukrainski were soon housing one third of the army in these new camps. The process was simple. A regiment was moved into a district, and automatically all the inhabitants of that district became soldiers, reserves for the unit settled on their soil. The old villages were torn down to be replaced by symmetrical cottages. The serfs’ new role was taught with blows of the stick. Everything became military, even to plowing the fields in uniform to the sound of a drum.
“What about the women?” Katherine wanted to know.
“The Tzar’s idea was to keep soldiers with their families when they weren’t off fighting his wars, but also to combine the work of the soldier with that of the serf, who would be given military training. So the women are an important part of the colonies. Marriages are decided upon by the military authority. Not one widow or old maid is overlooked, and none has any choice. They have to marry the man they are ordered to marry and produce children. And fines are imposed if they don’t give birth often enough.”
“And the children?”
“Enrolled among the army children at the age of six to begin training. And everything is done by regulation: the caring of cattle, the washing of floors, the polishing of copper buttons, even the nursing of children, everything. For the least infraction—the cane.”
Katherine was incredulous. “And the people just went along with this?”
“Thepeoplewere serfs. They simply went from civil obedience to military obedience. But no, many protested, entreated, fled, or hid in the forests. There was even a full-scale rebellion in the colony of Chuguyev, which reached such proportions that many death sentences were pronounced by the military tribunal. These were carried out not by shooting but by having the condemned pass under the rod twelve times between the rows of a battalion of a thousand men. More than one hundred fifty men died under the blows.”
Katherine looked to Vladimir to confirm this appalling story, but he was studiously ignoring both women, considering the subject highly inappropriate for female discussion. But his wife was in her element when she was gossiping, especially when she had such an avid listener. And she had a flair for drama. He didn’t have the heart to curb her enjoyment.
“Alexander loved his colonies,” Marusia continued. “Tzar Nicholas loves them as well. But then he is even more of a military man than his brother was. He insists on order, neatness, and regularity, and so he naturally feels most at ease among army officers. The Prince said the Tzar even sleeps on an army bed in his palace and when he travels through his empire, inspecting his troops and institutions. Prince Dimitri had to accompany him several times on these inspections when he was in the Imperial Guard.”
Katherine knew nothing about this most elite unit of the military or that Dimitri had at one time belonged to it, but Marusia was quick to change that. And so the talk had come around to Dimitri, and Katherine’s interest picked up, as did Vladimir’s disapproval of their choice of topics. It was one thing for his wife to gossip about the Prince with the other servants, all loyal to Dimitri, but something else again for him to be discussed with an outsider, and this one in particular.
After describing his illustrious if short military career, Marusia went on to proudly delineate his ancestry, swearing it could be traced back to Rurik, the very man hailed as the founder of the Russian state. “Rurik was one of a group of Varangians from Scandinavia who settled along the Dnieper River in the ninth century, taking over the leadership of the Slav robber bands already established there.”
“You mean Vikings?” Katherine now made the connection, only surprised she hadn’t before. Dimitri could in fact have been a Viking of old. “But of course, I should have realized. The height, the coloring—”
“Vikings, Varangians, yes, they were kinsmen, but not many in Russia are as tall as our prince. The royal family, yes. The Tzar himself is more than six feet.”
