Hunted(5)

Yeva stood clenching her jaw, tongue pressed against her teeth to still it. Let them believe she had leaped to her feet to greet their father. How could she break Asenka’s heart with the truth?

“I was thinking of spending next summer in the city,” her father was saying as he mopped up the last of the gravy on his plate with some of the fresh bread.

Yeva lifted her head, torn from the thoughts swirling around Solmir and Asenka. Her father had taken Yeva and her sisters with him to the city on business once years ago, and while they had lit up at the flood of new sights and experiences, Yeva had found it overwhelming. The streets stank and every face was strange, and she could not follow any paths or trails through the churned-up streets or across the uneven cobbles. She had spent every moment clinging to her father’s hand.

Now, his glance passed between his older daughters before coming to rest on his youngest. “I have some business with the cartographers there, and it’ll take some time to get my affairs settled. So I’ll be required to take a house in the area for a few months. It’ll be quiet there all by myself, so I was thinking of bringing you three to live with me.”

The older girls exploded with glee, chattering and laughing, celebrating their good fortune. While none of the sisters was solely fixated upon fashions and society and standing the way the baronessa was, the prospect of being surrounded by so much of it for three months of the summer was a delight.

Yeva alone was quiet, watching her father. She knew how much it cost him to move away from the wilderness; it cost her the same. But she knew why her father wanted to go. None of the men here had spoken for Asenka. Perhaps somewhere new, her loveliness would catch a man’s eye the way it hadn’t here. Her father raised eyebrows peppered with gray, watching Yeva in return. She took a deep breath and summoned a smile. He nodded and leaned back in his chair.

“Of course,” he said, speaking now primarily to his older girls, “you’ll be required to bring along any husbands or fiancés you may have acquired in the meantime.” This pronouncement brought on further shouting and laughing, and even Yeva’s smile grew less stiff in the face of her sisters’ glee.

“Pechta!” called her father, summoning the cook into the doorway. “I believe the girls would like some sweets to celebrate.” The cook bobbed a curtsy and vanished back into the kitchen.

The dogs had crept in during the merriment, as if hoping they wouldn’t be noticed. Lena, as lady of the household, objected to them in the rooms where people ate and slept, but for right now even she could not be distracted. Pelei stood watch beside her father’s chair, and Doe-Eyes slunk over to Yeva, nose nudging up under her elbow and into her lap. Doe-Eyes had been purchased during that trip to the city all those years ago. Yeva sat stroking her absently, watching her sisters’ excitement.

Outside, the wind had picked up, beginning to beat against the sturdy frame of the house. The servants had shuttered the windows already to prepare for the storm, but Yeva felt a flicker of the uneasiness she’d experienced at the baronessa’s, a restlessness she could not name.

Suddenly, over the howl of the rising storm, a heavy pounding against the front door broke through the sounds of chatter and laughter. The sisters exchanged glances as their father leaned to the side to look around the edge of his chair toward the hall.

“Is it Radak?” wondered Asenka, glancing at her younger sister. It was unlike Lena’s fiancé to come calling without first having made an appointment with their father.

“He is away on business. Maybe it’s Solmir,” whispered Lena before dissolving into quiet laughter again at the blush that crept over Asenka’s face.

Yeva volunteered no guesses. She could hear the howling of the wind, and could imagine no one who would venture out in such weather except due to some terrible emergency.

The pounding came again, this time so urgently that the smiles faded from the older girls’ faces. Albe had finally arrived at the door and was nearly thrown back as he opened it by the force of the wind on the other side. Yeva couldn’t recognize the man who stumbled through it, covered head to toe in winter gear. Only the tip of his nose was visible over his muffler, red and shiny from cold. He pawed at his face to free his mouth, gasping their father’s name.

“Tvertko,” he said, choking in the sudden heat of the house as Albe struggled to close the door again. “I need to see Tvertko. Where is he, I must see him immediately.”

Albe gaped at him, stammering his usual greeting. The man glanced past him to see Yeva’s father in his chair and shoved his way into the room.

“Tvertko,” he said, throwing himself forward. “It’s gone. It’s all gone.”

Her father’s face became very still, brows lowered. “What’s gone, Pietr? Speak clearly, man.”

“All of it,” the man moaned again, dropping to his knees. He was exhausted, that much was clear. And he was not a local, or Yeva would have recognized him the moment he pulled the muffler from his face. And yet, her father knew him. One of his contacts in the city, perhaps?

Her father was silent, watching the man gasping for breath and dripping melted snow onto Lena’s immaculate floorboards. Then he lifted his head, addressing his daughters. “Girls, please go upstairs. Take the dogs. And please tell Pechta to boil some tea.”

“But Father—” Yeva began, startled. He had never excluded them from his business discussions before.