Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [303]
So it was that Alexander Bobrov came to claim his bride.
A light snow was falling that evening as Alexander made his way across the city. The little fires by the watchmen’s huts at the street corners looked orange; the houses loomed as though in a mist. All of which pleased Alexander. For he did not wish to be seen. At the Fontanka Canal, he got out of his sled and, telling the coachman to wait for him, walked across the little bridge alone. In moments, he had disappeared.
He walked briskly but carefully, occasionally turning round, almost furtively, to make sure that he was not being followed. The quarter was respectable enough: about half the houses were wooden, half brick and stone. He passed a church and turned into a quiet street.
Only one thing puzzled him. What the devil had become of that letter? When the stranger had brought it to him the night before, he had intended to burn it as soon as he returned home. But then he had forgotten. Only after leaving Tatiana in the early afternoon had he remembered it, felt in his coat pocket, and discovered that it was gone. He shrugged. It didn’t really matter. It would be completely meaningless to anyone who found it.
Now Alexander turned through a covered archway into the shadowy courtyard of a large building. Its walls were covered with peeling pink stucco, and like many such buildings, it contained a series of sprawling apartments, two per floor, most of which were occupied by merchants of the middling sort. With a last, backward glance, he ascended the ill-lit stone staircase to the second floor. The stairs were deserted with the sole exception of a very large, black cat which sat by a window, and which Bobrov ignored.
When he reached the apartment he knocked carefully, three times, before the door opened a fraction and a voice from the gloom of the hall said quietly: ‘What do you seek?’
‘The Rosy Cross.’
The door opened wide. For Alexander Bobrov the gambler, unknown even to his mistress, was a member of the innermost circle of that great, secret Brotherhood – the Freemasons. And they had important business that night.
Perhaps she should have expected it. But she was very young. That was the conclusion Tatiana herself came to, in the years that followed.
She loved him. When she saw his carriage approaching or watched the lackey at the door help him off with his coat, a thrill of excitement would go through her. He had known how to make her love him. Even in the early days of their marriage he had seemed to control everything. In their lovemaking, when he was done himself, he would still arouse her in other ways, again and again, leaving her glowing, yet always wanting more of him. She loved the way he looked, the way he dressed, his knowledge of things beyond her. Even the slight thickening around his waist, which had begun in their first year together, seemed to her to suit him very well: he looked neat, yet powerful.
And surely he, too, was excited by their love. She knew he was: she could tell. She was learning too. She was eager to learn, both to experience new delights and to please him. She was happy; she was enthusiastic; she would – and did – astonish him!
Tatiana had great gifts. She was warm-hearted and practical. She liked to supervise the women in the kitchen; and would proudly make dainty pastries with her own hands, sitting opposite him afterwards, her face flushed with excitement, to watch his reaction to them. How delighted he seemed, how charmed.
It was therefore a shock to her when, six months after they had been married, he failed to come home one night and she began to suspect that he was still in love with Adelaide de Ronville.