"You are a bumpkin! I can't stand it, really!" The loud female shout echoed through the servants' quarters of the house on Birchin Street.
A door slammed shut somewhere followed by the sound of hurried angry footsteps.
Alina leaned on the doorframe to the kitchen, her arms crossed at her chest, and watched with amusement as another servants' brawl unraveled. She rarely stepped into the servants' quarters, but her maid and footman were the topic of constant entertainment on quiet dreary days.
The large kitchen reminded her of home. Trunks, boxes, chests, sacks with seeds and dry flowers and herbs, strings of garlic and onion. The shelves were lined with goblets and jugs of all sizes and colors. A large basket of apples spread the scent of a summer garden across the kitchen.
Prosha, the cook, had made sure her dwelling space was just like home. She minded her own business, the sleeves of her chemise rolled up as she sank her thick red arms into a tub of hot water.
Yegór sat at the kitchen table, his strong thick legs spread wide, his giant fists on the table. Even sitting down, the twenty-five-year-old footman was almost as tall as Prosha standing up. With a thick beard, unruly hair that pushed his cap off his head, and a mountainous body, he could eat a cow for dinner, drink a decanter of moonshine, read a prayer kneeling in the corner, cross himself, and fall into a deep healthy sleep. And the silly smile that beamed through his thick beard just now was no match to his intimidating form that scared passersby on the streets.
Alina studied his livery. It already seemed to come apart at the seams, the fabrics straining against his muscles. A loose chemise with a belt was what he preferred, but Anna Yakovlevna insisted on the proper Western attire.
The irritated female voice belonged to Martha, Alina's twenty-year-old English maid, a curvy girl with a pretty, almost doll-like face and straw-colored hair. Her voice grew muffled as she disappeared deep in the scullery, the annoyed chirping never stopping. Her curvy form reappeared with a stack of pots in her hands.
"And your ears are evidently dead," she rambled, not looking at Yegór but making him shift with the swing of her wide hips as she stomped by. "For if you opened them, you'd hear what I am telling you. And I told you a dozen times not to touch my belongings."
She came back to the table and struck a pose in front of him, putting her fists on her waist and glaring at him.
Yegór only smiled, looking up and down her hourglass figure and big bosom, constricted by her uniform.
Those two had quarreled almost constantly for the last two years since Alina and her parents had come to England.
"Why do you always smile? Answer!" demanded Martha, her eyes blazing.
Yegór's smile grew into a grin. His cheerful attitude was like a wall that Martha's anger hit all the time with no results.
She leaned on her hands on the table, bringing her face closer to Yegór's and narrowing her eyes on him. "You like being called a fool, don't you? Or you don't understand? You want me to say it in Russian?"
Oh, Yegór understood all right. The Kamenevs had hired a tutor to teach their Russian servants basic English. But the footman didn't respond, his gaze sliding to Martha's bosom, which looked even plumper as she leaned over. She noticed and straightened up.
"Gah!" She stomped her foot and clenched her jaw in frustration.
Alina cleared her throat, startling them.
"My lady." Yegór rose abruptly, bumping into the table and shaking it. Martha wiped her hands on her shapely hips and straightened up as Prosha continued the washing with her usual smirky expression.
"Anna Yakovlevna has been waiting for her tea," Alina said without anger, despite having to come here, for the bell hadn't been answered. Their servants were a mess but amused their household greatly.
"Those two will either kill each other or end up in a good tumble," Prosha often said, making Anna Yakovlevna gape in shock and Alina giggle.
Martha picked at her fingers, her eyes snapping up at Alina. "If it weren't for this fo—"
The words died on her lips under Alina's reproachful gaze.
"Forgive me, my lady. I'll send Dunya right away," the maid said quietly.
Alina walked back to the sitting room where her mother half-sat half-lay on the sofa, an herbal compress on her forehead.
"If they don't learn to lower their voices," Anna Yakovlevna said weakly in Russian, "I shall throw both of them out. They are like cat and dog."
Alina took a seat on the sofa across the low table from her mother and picked up the book she'd been trying to read for some time.
"Where is that insolent girl? I asked for tea an eternity ago," Anna Yakovlevna murmured. "One day they will kill each other."
Kill…
The word instantly tugged at Alina's mind with the memories from a week ago.
She'd thought the memories would be traumatic. But the weather was turning quickly. And as the last days of summer were gone, so was the dread at the memory of the night by St Rose's.
Strange.
The events from a week ago now felt like a distant dream. So did the summer. The leaves seemed to have changed color overnight. And just as fast, instead of summer jackets and parasols, the first days of September brought with them coats and umbrellas.
Rain started pouring relentlessly, draining the color out of leaves, turning them burnt ochre, gray, and knocking them off the trees one by one.
With the sun's cheerfulness gone, smiles disappeared, giving way to exhausted glares, grumbles, grunts, and curses as drenched feet stomped through mud and puddles.
Alina quite enjoyed it. People's eyes stayed down on the ground, searching for another puddle to avoid instead of burrowing into her with curiosity. The Season had been long over and the parties had subsided until they would pick up in December. She was glad there were fewer excuses for her mother to drag her to yet another function, trying to sell her off to some respectable bachelor. Preferably, a duke or an earl. A prince would be great, for Anna Yakovlevna thought her daughter deserved a king.
The fire crackled in the fireplace of the sitting-room as Alina tried to read, despite her mother's too frequent comments. Anna Yakovlevna had requested the fire to be lit, complaining about the early cold and the dreadful rain and her arthritis.
"This city turned from a glamorous lady into a shabby harlot in a matter of one week," her mother complained in Russian.
Anna Yakovlevna sulked, missing home like never before. She hated the monotony of cold seasons. She drank tea and Nalifka, sweet homemade berry liquor, idly picked out melancholic strains of music on the piano, and more often reprimanded their servants. She was restless one minute, another stood by the window, her arms wrapping the shawl tightly about her shoulders as she stared into emptiness as if waiting for someone.
The low rumbling voice of their footman sounded from the entrance. His disjointed English words with the thick aggressive accent cut through Martha's snappy replies.
The entrance door slammed.
The servants again—Anna Yakovlevna sighed in response.
Visitors rarely came these days. At first, when Alina and her parents had arrived at London, the entire ton had burst with curiosity. But there were few friends made. Alina preferred it that way, at least for now, feeling grief and bitterness take over her at the thought of home.
This is our home now.
Thank God for the servants they had brought with them. Anna Yakovlevna had insisted and had been right. The small two-story house they had acquired on Birchin Street was Little Russia, as Olga Kireeva had called it laughingly the last time she'd come to London. Prosha, the older, grumpy, but brilliant cook. Dunya, the young slender maid who had picked up on the English language and manners surprisingly quickly. And Yegór, the Viking of a man, who scared anyone who glanced at him.
There were three more servants who were English and in constant war with the Russians.
"Almost like back home," Olga had said jokingly and burst out in laughter.
Oh, how Alina missed Olen'ka! She couldn't wait until November when she would see her friend again.
Meanwhile, she was quite content with the foul weather.
Minus her mother's complaints.
Minus Doctor Grevatt's deteriorating condition.
Minus—
The dark man who she'd encountered a week ago.
She'd had nightmares for several days. But they'd subsided, just like the memories of him.
Now it seemed like a bad dream. She hadn't told anyone. Petty crimes were common. Lady Boarberry was said to have been robbed right in her carriage on Knightsbridge. Granted, it was in the middle of the night as she was coming back from seeing her lover. That part had been intentionally omitted in the story. And yet! This city was ridden with crime. But not many could say they'd met the man who was a myth and, according to some, didn't exist.
The sweet smell of baked dough seeped into the sitting room.
The English hated the smell of food in their houses.
"That is because it doesn't smell good," Anna Yakovlevna often said bitterly and thanked herself for bringing Prosha.
A round woman in her forties, their cook had a fiery temper, booming voice, huge hands that could knead a tub of dough in minutes, and a deep bark that scared the kitchen staff and even made Yegór straighten up. Prosha was reluctant to learn the English cuisine.
"Dogs have better taste than that."
Same went for the English language. The only words that had found their way into her vocabulary in two years were, "Sank you," "Good mor-r-rning," and "Br-r-rute." The latter she'd overheard on the street when someone snapped at Yegór. When she'd learned the meaning, Prosha cackled in that contagious way of hers and slapped the glaring Yegór on the forearm, saying, "Br-r-rute," bulging her eyes at him and rolling with laughter again. In her thick accent, that of a war-drum, the word sounded like the deepest insult.
"Prosha is making poppyseed pies," Alina said absent-mindedly.
"About time." Her mother started on the sofa. "I can't get used to the food here. Tasteless. Unimaginative. No wonder it dries out people's wits," Anna Yakovlevna whined in Russian as she played a dying swan.
Alina snorted. "You are being judgmental. You talk as if you are on vacation here for a short time." She answered in English, knowing it irritated her mother.
"I miss home, yes! Who can blame me?" Anna Yakovlevna answered in Russian, their conversations a never-ending war. "The fall with its bright colors. Oh, how beautifully Pushkin described it! Can you ever compare the golden fairy to this!" She motioned vaguely at the window as she half-lay on the sofa, shifting her feet on a pillow, a shawl over her shoulders, a warm compress on her head. "This country gives me headache. Dunyasha! Where is that insolent girl? Bring Nalifka!"
"Mamá, you are being melodramatic," answered Alina in English, not tearing her eyes off the book she was trying to read, stuck on the same page for the last half an hour.
She'd been trying to coax her mother to speak more English. But Anna Yakovlevna preferred French. Despite the wars, the close relationship with France had forged a flare for the French language among Russian nobility for centuries. "A love-language," she often said. "Unlike English. Br-r-rute," she mimicked Prosha, rolling the r-sound.
"The autumns are much the same in Russia," Alina argued now. "Your nostalgia is altering your memories. You used to hate Petersburg in the fall. You used to say it was dirty and full of rats, on the street as well as in its state offices."
Dunya walked in with a tray that held a teapot and a cup, a crystal cordial glass, and a decanter with dark burgundy liquid.
The thick, sweet berry liquor had become Anna Yakovlevna's medicine and now swiftly made its way down her throat.
Prosha was an expert in homemade drinks, tinctures, and liquors, vodkas infused with peppers and honey and apricot pits and sage and centaury, wines fermented from berries and fruit.
"Perhaps, you should drink more tea instead of strong spirits," Alina dared to suggest.
"Tsk." Anna Yakovlevna motioned for the maid to pour one more. "A wise man said, 'Tell me what you drink, and I shall tell you who you are.' Get rid of the tea, Dunya. I changed my mind." Anna Yakovlevna snapped her fingers at the maid but eagerly accepted the cordial glass with the second helping.
"E-ni-sing els-se, ma'am?" the maid asked with a willing expression and a strong hissing accent.
Alina pursed her lips to hide a smile.
Just like Yegór, eighteen-year-old Dunya tried to learn English. But unlike everyone who still quite often donned kaftans and loose knee-long shirts and bast shoes, she dressed like a proper English girl. Only late at night, running chores, she would answer the bell and show up in front of Anna Yakovlevna barefoot.
"Manners!" Anna Yakovlevna would snap, then complain to Alina. "By God, will they ever learn? You can put a dress on a scarecrow but you can't give it a brain, can you?"