Written on the Wind (The Blackstone Legacy #2)(99)
She blew into her bare hands to warm them. It was impossible to make change while wearing gloves, and it was cold tonight, with steadily falling snow and a hint of wind.
Liam was with her, but he was completely useless as a salesman. He kept wanting to give the records away for free.
“It’s Christmas, Natalia,” he nagged. “Show a little of the giving spirit.”
She pretended not to notice when he slipped an album to a woman wearing a patched coat who had just purchased a phonograph for her children.
Natalia reached down to the crates beneath the table for more albums. This was the infancy of a new industry, and she hadn’t anticipated how much fun it would be to share music with others.
Once, Dimitri was the only person who shared her taste in music. She had found others who loved discussing music, but Dimitri would always be who she thought of first whenever she heard a new symphony, a mournful sonata, or a lively Russian dance.
It still hurt to think of him. It had been two months since she wrote to him of her plans to visit Russia in the spring, and she hadn’t heard a peep from him. On the day she read that the Treaty of Aigun had been reaffirmed, she went to her father’s house, where her mother’s Russian chapel had been undisturbed for months. She lit candles and knelt to give thanks to God for being allowed to play a tiny part in this adventure that might bring peace and security to a tiny corner of the world. But she desperately wished she could have been with Dimitri. It strengthened her resolve to seek him out and settle things once and for all. Natalia had stared at the gold icons flickering in the candlelight. “Mama, I’m going to Russia,” she whispered, and in her imagination the icons seemed to approve.
She shook off the memories and loaded another crate of records onto the table.
“Tell me that isn’t who I think it is,” Liam said, squinting into the distance. The annoyance in his face caused her to straighten and peer through the fat clumps of falling snow.
Poppy was marching through the crowd, wearing her finest chinchilla furs, her expression triumphant. The evening had been so pleasant until now.
Poppy cut to the front of the line, ignoring the annoyed glances behind her.
“You’ll never guess,” Poppy gushed. “It baffles and amazes me, and I have no idea what Count Sokolov sees in you, but he showed up on our doorstep, looking like death itself, and claims that he wants to see you.”
Natalia looked around, but Dimitri was nowhere in sight, and nothing made sense. “Poppy, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Poppy rolled her eyes. “I think he’s being ridiculous and ought to stay home where I can host a proper celebration for him, but he insisted on coming to the park. That cane he uses makes him so slow, but he should be here any moment.”
If this was a joke, Natalia was going to smash this stack of records over Poppy’s head, but her heart was pounding so hard that she couldn’t think straight. She came out from behind the table, scanning the crowds.
There he was.
Dimitri’s tall, slender form was unmistakable. He looked as gaunt and sickly as he’d been in San Francisco, but he was gorgeously attired in a fine black overcoat with a red scarf wrapped around his neck. He was leaning on a gold-handled cane. Scars marred the side of his face, and he walked gingerly, as if each step hurt. But oh, that smile! It cut straight to her heart.
She closed the distance between them, heart pounding as she arrived to stand before him. “What happened to you?” she asked, taking in his ghastly pallor and a fresh scar running from the corner of his right eye down into his beard.
“A bomb in Saint Petersburg,” he said, and she recoiled in horrified surprise. He was supposed to be in his country dacha, not mingling with crowds and anarchists.
She reached out to lay a hand, gentle as a butterfly, against the side of his face.
“Ouch!” he said and flinched back.
“I’m sorry,” she gasped. “Is it still tender?”
“No, your hands are cold.”
She choked off a laugh and wanted to berate him for being such a crybaby except that it was obvious he’d been through something terrible. Every ounce of longing for her sweet, heroic, and terribly dandified dearest friend came roaring back. She wanted to embrace him but didn’t dare, because he truly did look awful.
“Oh, Dimitri, I’m afraid I’ve missed you terribly.”
“I was hoping so.”
“You did?”
“I’ve come all this way to see you, and it would be a shame if you had not suffered at least a little on my behalf. And now here I am. Half-dead on my feet and nowhere to sit down.”
She would fix that! She glanced over her shoulder at Liam. “Get Poppy to help you sell the records!” she called out. Poppy looked aghast, but it would do her stepmother good to stand on her feet in gainful employment for an hour or two.
Natalia led Dimitri to a bench, and he winced as he lowered himself to sit. The light from a nearby lamppost made the hollows on his face look even worse.
She held his hand as he told her of the explosion in Saint Petersburg, how time felt suspended as he watched the explosion unfold before his eyes, incapable of escaping the bricks and glass that came flying at him. He suffered a concussion from the blast, as well as cuts on his face and elsewhere on his body from the flying shrapnel. He fell sick with a wicked case of pneumonia, and his ankle had been broken during an accident at Mirosa.