Written on the Wind (The Blackstone Legacy #2)(83)

“He’s using our best barrels too,” Pavel said. “The older the barrel, the better the cider. Last night two of our best barrels went missing. He’s been doing it every year since you left for Siberia.”

“Does he bring them back?” Dimitri asked.

“Eventually.”

Dimitri didn’t want to discuss this in front of his mother. He turned to her with a smile. “What can I do for you, Mama?”

“I need help planning the house party, and you always have such clever ideas.”

His mother loved hosting gatherings that lasted for days. Local landowners and aristocrats from the valley gathered for party games, walks in the woods, and singing long into the night.

“Come sit on the bench and let’s discuss it,” Dimitri said, eager to get his mother off the subject of the sticky mill floor. It was a working mill, which meant it was going to get dirty, but someone of his mother’s station had little experience with the world of work.

He led her to the bench outside, but before they could begin the discussion, he spotted a familiar figure heading their way.

“Is that man back again?” his mother asked, displeasure plain in her voice.

Ilya Komarov had just rounded the bend by the cedar trees, walking alongside a wagon filled with apples and pulled by an aging nag. Dimitri pitied the old horse. At least Ilya had the decency to walk instead of riding in the wagon and making the nag work even harder.

“He pays to use the mill every evening after six o’clock,” Dimitri said.

She frowned in disapproval. “We don’t need the money, and I don’t like him spattering apple juice on the floor.”

“Then head indoors while I speak with him.” Dimitri didn’t care about the sticky floor, but he did mind the loss of the barrels. The milling season wasn’t even halfway over, and he might need them.

His mother was gone by the time Ilya pulled the wagon up to the mill and unhooked the kerosene lantern attached to the buckboard. Ilya would need the lantern because he rarely finished before midnight. It couldn’t be an easy life. During the day Ilya worked as a carpenter, and then he made cider long into the night.

“Is Pavel done for the day?” Ilya asked as he began unloading crates of apples. He had blond hair and pale blue eyes and was the sort of strong, brawny man whose features looked like they had been carved by an ax.

Dimitri nodded. “The mill is yours until dawn.”

Ilya gave a brusque nod and lugged a crate of apples inside the mill. Dimitri followed a few steps behind, and Ilya looked at him curiously.

Dimitri glanced at the supply room. “Am I going to find two more barrels missing from the supply room by morning?”

“Maybe,” Ilya said with a nonchalant shrug. “Why should you care? You’ve got plenty, and I always return them.”

“You didn’t ask, and I might need them.”

Ilya’s blue eyes turned flinty. “Those barrels were made by my father back when he was a serf for your family. Nobody ever paid him a kopek for those barrels, and your family took his labor for free all his life.”

“Ilya, let’s not refight the emancipation battles. All that happened decades ago.”

Like hundreds of others in the valley, Ilya came from a family of serfs bonded on Sokolov land until they were liberated by Czar Alexander II in 1861. At that time, a third of the Russian population had been born into serfdom, which was little better than slavery. The czar wanted to liberate the serfs from above rather than wait for revolution from below. Czar Alexander successfully freed the serfs, but it didn’t buy him goodwill. He was blown to pieces by an assassin’s bomb twenty years later because the anarchists claimed he hadn’t done enough. The aftermath of the czar’s assassination put the Russian nobility on edge for years, but those times were long past. In the decades since liberation, many of the former serfs managed to earn a respectable standard of living.

Ilya Komarov was just such a man. He was hardworking and successful, but his pale, flinty eyes always seemed to be glaring in resentment. Perhaps liberation hadn’t changed Ilya’s world all that much. While Dimitri was sent off to elite schools in Moscow and Zurich, Ilya never went to school at all. Ilya grew up in his father’s footsteps by becoming a carpenter. It wasn’t fair, and ever since that horrible day at the Amur River, Russia’s history of oppression weighed more heavily on Dimitri’s conscience.

“Keep the barrels,” he said impulsively.

“Keep them?” Ilya asked, surprise evident in his voice.

“Yes. Your father made them. They are yours.”

Ilya’s expression did not soften. If anything, a hint of suspicion took root, but he nodded and touched the brim of his cap as he turned away to unload the rest of his apples.

Dimitri was going to have to keep his eye on this one.



To Natalia’s surprise, Liam’s proposal to improve the wages for the workers at U.S. Steel was finally taking shape. The meeting of the board of directors was coming up, but despite how hard Liam had been working, it was doubtful his idealistic proposal would fly. It was too ambitious, and Liam refused to scale it back.

Natalia arranged for Liam to practice his presentation for her father on the Black Rose. When Oscar owned this yacht, he used to host regular parties for her entire family. She’d loved the afternoon sails as her aunts, uncles, and cousins gathered to play shuffleboard and dine al fresco on the deck. Now that Liam owned the yacht, she’d persuaded him to continue the periodic gatherings. Most of the family was up on deck while Liam and her father retreated to the cardroom downstairs to discuss his proposal.