Written on the Wind (The Blackstone Legacy #2)(26)

“There will be time to shop after you’re clean,” she said. Dimitri didn’t have a single American dime to his name, so she pressed a few bills into his hand. “Buy yourself a haircut and a bath. I’ll head to the emporium next door and bring back clean clothes.”

Thirty minutes later, she returned to the barbershop with a charcoal-gray suit, a shirt, socks, undergarments, and a pair of new shoes. She sent the clothes to the back of the shop because Dimitri was still in the bath.

Ten minutes later, he finally emerged from behind a paisley curtain, and she gasped at his transformation. The beard was completely gone. The long hair was gone too, cut short to reveal light brown hair with rich chestnut highlights. His facial features were finely molded, with high cheekbones and a long, aristocratic nose.

“You look like a new man!” she enthused even though the suit she’d bought for him was a little too big. Dimitri was very slim, but he’d tied the exotic red sash around his waist because she’d forgotten to buy a belt, and it made him look even more dashing.

But something was wrong. Instead of looking pleased, he was tense as he strode to her side, leaning in close to speak in a low voice. “I need three dollars.”

She blinked. “What for?”

Dimitri glared at a man standing behind a register. Several large, dark bottles sat on the counter before him.

The barber pushed one bottle across the counter. “This is the oil I recommend. The others are cheaper, but eucalyptus oil is the most effective.”

Dimitri looked back at her. “Please say nothing. Just buy the eucalyptus oil, and let us be on our way.”

It wasn’t the money that concerned her but the fact that Dimitri was coldly furious. Had someone said something unkind to him?

She instinctively wanted to protect him, but he was already drifting toward the door, eager to leave. She gave the clerk a bill and didn’t even wait for her change, just grabbed the bottle and followed Dimitri outside into the bright sun.

“What happened?” she asked, struggling to catch up to his long-legged stride. He pulled her into an alcove behind a newsstand. It was quieter back here, sheltered from the view of the bustling street.

“The barber informed me that I have . . . I have already forgotten the English word he used, but it is bad. A humiliation.”

Her eyes widened, not understanding what could have upset him so. “Tell it to me in Russian,” she prompted.

He said a short, blunt word, spitting out the harsh syllable like a curse. He repeated it for her twice, getting angrier each time he said it, but she didn’t know that word.

“Describe it for me,” she said.

“The barber says I have little things in my hair.” He held up his fingers, pinched together. “Tiny animals. In my hair.”

She gasped. “Lice?”

“Yes! That is the word he used. Lice! It must have happened on the ship because it was too cold for it to have happened in Russia. Natalia, I assure you, I am not a man who normally has lice in my hair.”

This explained the eucalyptus oil. Dimitri looked mortified as he explained the procedure the barber recommended to treat the infestation and why he had to cut his hair so short and shave his beard as well.

“Let’s get checked into a hotel, and I’ll help you,” she said. “It doesn’t sound like this is something you can do alone.”



Natalia made arrangements for two rooms in the Palace Hotel, then went to Dimitri’s room to begin the long, exacting procedure for treating a lice infestation. Dimitri sat on the floor while she perched on a chair behind him. He’d already soaked his hair in the eucalyptus oil, and she pulled a fine-toothed comb through sections of his hair, leaning in to search for the tiny lice. The menthol made her eyes water, nose run, and skin tingle, but it was working. The pungent oil stunned the lice into immobility, making it easier to drag them from his hair.

Dimitri was in a better frame of mind, casually sitting with a towel draped over his shoulders while submitting to the treatment.

“Once this is over, we will never speak of it again.”

“You think?” she teased, scraping out a few more nits and dunking the comb in a mug of hot water. He was so lordly, but she felt no compunction to fall into obedience.

“Have you issued the quarterly dividend from my investment in the bank?” he asked.

Normally the bank issued a huge check to their investors on the fifteenth of March, but Natalia had put a hold on it, not sure how it should be handled after Dimitri’s bank account in Saint Petersburg had been seized. There had been no demands from the Russian government for Blackstone Bank to surrender Dimitri’s American assets, and she doubted they even knew about them.

“We’ve been keeping your funds in an escrow account,” she said. “They are yours whenever you wish.”

The tension visibly drained from his shoulders and neck. “Good,” he said simply.

She waited, hoping he would offer more details about what drove him out of his position at the railroad, but he added nothing. Dimitri clearly had no wish to discuss whatever happened in Russia, and for the first time since she met him in the telegraph office, an awkward pause filled the air. She blotted her eyes against the watering from the eucalyptus oil, then moved to another section of his hair.

“Did you get the copy of Little Women I sent you?” she asked.