The Property of a Lady - Elizabeth Adler [88]
When Boris was eleven years old and Sergei only seven, the younger boy could beat him at almost anything, and there was no doubt that his father was well aware of it. Grigori made no secret of the fact that he was proud of Sergei’s progress at school. He had already skipped a couple of grades and was only a year behind Boris. It wasn’t that his father ignored Boris. He went out of his way to praise his industry and efforts, but Boris had to work three times as hard to achieve reasonable marks. Somehow Sergei had made everything he did, from riding a horse to book learning, seem easy.
But there had been things about his new brother that his father did not know. Secret things that Boris knew because he slept in the same room with him, and sometimes Sergei talked in his sleep. And the strangest thing of all was that Sergei talked in a foreign language. Boris had not understood what language it was because he had never heard anyone speak anything but his own Russian dialect. He also knew that in the old days, unlike the peasants and the working classes, all good Russian households spoke French or English as their first language, and he suspected that Sergei was not what he was pretending to be. He had been determined to find out what he was saying but had only been able to make out a few names: “Papa” and “Maman,” “Missie” …
He had forced himself to stay awake at night, straining his ears into the silence, waiting for Sergei to speak, until his mother grew worried at his shadowed eyes and white face and dosed him with an evil-tasting tonic she brewed from the bitter leaves of plants, just the way her grandmother had done when she herself was small.
One day they had been out riding, Boris, his father, and Sergei. There was a certain high wooden fence over which he had been practicing jumps for weeks, screwing up his courage every time he set his horse at it. Finally he had mastered it. Aware of his father riding behind him, he had kicked his horse into a gallop, hurdling the fence clumsily, managing to stay in the saddle only by clinging to the horse’s mane. Behind him he had heard the thunder of hooves and his father’s admiring cry as Sergei took his horse over the same fence as gracefully as if it had wings.
There had been no doubt that his new brother had been devoted to his father. He followed him around whenever he was home until, laughing kindly, Grigori would tell him to be off about his own business. Nevertheless, Sergei’s gray eyes would be fixed unwaveringly on him like an eager pup awaiting his master’s signal of a walk.
Boris had decided there and then that one day he would find out Sergei’s secret, and then he would expose him to his father as a fraud and a liar. He vowed he would find out, even if it killed him. Or killed Sergei.
His hands clenched into two tight fists as he remembered that vow. If he had been cleverer, he would have killed Sergei years ago and been done with it. Now he would have to deal with both him and his son. Grabbing the message, he stalked across the red carpet to the heavy double doors. The two armed soldiers outside snapped smartly to a salute and he raised his hand in a perfunctory response, marching through the lofty halls, down the marble stairs, across the courtyard to his brother’s office.
Sergei saw him coming from the window; Boris was nothing if not predictable. He was wearing the uniform he had devised for himself and which, like that of the old German SS, was designed to intimidate—military jacket glittering with gold epaulettes and a chestful of ribbons, cavalry jodhpurs though he had never been near a military horse, and tall shiny boots with built-up heels to boost his dwarfish height. His peaked cap, glinting with gold and flashing with red insignia, sat squarely on his bald bullet head.
Sergei thought of Grigori, wondering how such a fine man could have fathered such a psychopath. He remembered when Grigori had first taken him home and introduced him proudly as his