Written on the Wind (The Blackstone Legacy #2)(100)
“It is mending?” she asked, glancing down at his foot.
“Yes, but look—I have a blister on my palm because of the cane.”
She kissed it.
“I have not had a decent manicure since I left New York.”
“I’ll take care of that,” she assured him, already looking forward to the chance to start pampering him. Once again, he seemed to have suffered terribly over the past few months. He needed someone to look after him, and she desperately wanted to be the person to do it.
“Why did you come back?” she asked.
“I got your letter suggesting you would visit in the spring. It got me to thinking. . . .” The corners of his eyes darkened with grief. “Natalia, I do not think you belong in Russia. It is not the sort of open society where a woman like you can flourish. I came to tell you not to come.”
She swallowed hard. “All right.”
Did that mean they didn’t have a future? If so, he could have told her in a letter.
“I realized that I must decide between you and Russia,” he said. “I will always love Mirosa, but it has changed. Or perhaps it is I who have changed. A peasant from Mirosa emigrated to America, and I found myself envious that he could break away for a new life. A lady I cared for who once lived for nothing but her father’s bank broke away from it to start a new company, and I was envious of her too.”
“Even though she lives in New York City?”
His shoulders sagged, and he looked even more tired. “Even though,” he acknowledged with a reluctant smile. “When I struggled with pneumonia, I feared I was about to die. I had so many regrets, mostly that I had found my dearest friend and the woman I wish to spend the rest of my life with, but I walked away from her because of my love for a family farm. A farm! Natalia, I don’t know what the future holds, but we have conquered greater challenges in the past, correct?”
“You got the czar to recommit to the 1858 treaty,” she said. “You moved a nation.”
“Only because you helped,” he said. “Together we moved a nation.” His hands covered her chilly ones, warming them. “I came here so we can have some of those conversations you mentioned in your letter. I think we are destined to be together, and it must happen here in New York. Perhaps my fate is to be like one of your mundane domestic novels with a predictably happy ending. A shame, but I have survived this long, so perhaps I am not supposed to enjoy a heroic death quite yet. Dearest Natalia, if I stay here, would you be willing to marry me?”
A lump swelled in her throat. All her dreams were coming true at the same time, but it hurt because Dimitri was giving up Mirosa and so many other things he loved. She would spend her life making sure he did not regret it.
“I would be willing to marry you,” she said. She reached up to cradle his face in her palms, touching her forehead to his. “I hope we will have mundane domestic bliss, but who knows?”
They lived in a world of corporate titans, scheming politicians, and a burgeoning music industry. None of it sounded like mundane domesticity to Natalia, but Dimitri’s measuring stick had always been a little different than hers. It was one of the reasons she adored him, and together they would step out into this bold new world side by side.
Epilogue
Dimitri leaned over a lilac bush, frowning at the brown splotches on the underside of the leaves. Their entire garden was a glorious, overgrown tangle of clematis, wisteria, and climbing roses. The Blackstones thought he was demented for refusing to trim the profusion, but this was how a proper dacha was supposed to look. He had bought the property next to Maxim Tachenko’s land, and now their dachas shared a ridiculously overgrown garden.
“Natalia! The spots on my lilacs are back!” The windows were open, but he had to shout because she had the phonograph playing.
She eventually came outside in the red-and-yellow sarafan he had bought for her during their honeymoon. “Didn’t you use the formula Gwen recommended?” she asked.
“Yes, but it’s not working. Gwendolyn needs to come out and inspect these in person.”
“She’s not going to do that,” Natalia said.
Gwen was in the city finishing her doctorate and had her hands full with a toddler. She rarely came out to the lake house. Likewise, Tachenko had gone overseas for a European tour, so it was up to Dimitri and Natalia to keep an eye on all three lake houses.
“We can take her a clipping when we are in town next month to record the Chopin sonata,” Natalia said.
He quirked a brow at her. “Will I be allowed to accompany you?”
“Of course! Just please don’t adopt another child while I’m not around.”
They now had two children. Shortly after they adopted four-month-old Anna, he and Natalia were in town to commission another Brahms duet. While Natalia was at the studio, he went to the orphanage with no purpose other than to be sure the facility was well provided with everything they needed. That was his intention, but his heart was swiftly captured by three-year-old Mischa, a little boy who’d recently been orphaned and spoke only Russian. How abandoned and lonely he looked! None of the nurses could understand the toddler, and Mischa clung to Dimitri’s leg while looking up at him with huge, soulful brown eyes. In that instant Dimitri knew this boy was destined to become his son.