hands were clasped inside a white fur muff, which she let drop as she moved quickly toward him across the scuffed wooden floor.
“Oh,” she said, suddenly remembering the stationmaster who stood beside his counter. He was a small fat man who wore a grey Tolstoyan shirt with a broad leather belt, felt boots, and trousers bagging at the knees. He looked a kindly enough fellow, but a tiny gold pincenez on a wide black ribbon quivered angrily on the end of his nose.
“Nikolai, this is my new friend whom I’ve been telling you about.”
The Russian bowed, saying something under his breath to Anastasia.
“He says you’re very handsome but that I shouldn’t have come all this way for you on such a night. He’s very protective. I’ve known him since I was no taller than a poppy.”
“Come here,” Hawke said to her, dropping his portmanteau to the floor and spreading his arms wide.
She ran to him, and he enfolded her in his arms, burying his face against hers inside the warmth of her furry cowl, inhaling the fresh outdoor scent of her, the perfume of her skin, finding her lips and kissing them, at first softly and then with a sudden urgency that surprised even him. He’d struggled mightily to banish her from his mind for all the long hours on the train, and now he was overwhelmed at the strength of the feelings suddenly welling up inside.
“You look so-beautiful,” he said, aware of the word’s ridiculous inadequacy, holding her away from him so he could look into her brightly shining green eyes, hardly able to believe anyone could ever be or look or seem so lovely.
“And you, handsome prince.” She laughed. “Come to Mother Russia at last, have you? Come along, now, we’ve got a long journey yet.”
“Are we walking?” Hawke said. “I saw no sign of a car. Or a road, for that matter.”
“A car?” She laughed again. “You think an automobile could travel two feet in snow this deep? Get your bag and follow me, bumpkin.”
She bent to retrieve her dropped white muff, then hurried to the still-opened station door, turned and said good-bye to the stationmaster, then rushed outside. Hawke grabbed his bag and followed her, catching up with her under the single lamp illuminating the snow-covered platform. It had begun to snow again, snowflakes coming down one by one. They spun slowly and hesitantly before finally settling like fluffy white dust on the sparkling blanket of already fallen snow.
“Kiss me again,” she said, and he did, standing under the lamppost, aware of old Nikolai peering out at them from a corner of the window. She saw him, too, and pushed Hawke away.
“Now, follow me, sire. Your carriage awaits.”
He followed her, matching her determined march through the deep snow stride for stride, their boots making a great crunching sound. They made their way around the side of the station house to the rear, their angular shadows preceding them across the new-fallen snow. There in the moonlight, three white stallions stood abreast of each other, harnessed to a magnificent gold and blue sleigh. A troika.
He hurried toward this apparition, having never seen a conveyance quite so marvelous in his life.
He ran his hand along the steaming, glistening flank of one the three enormous stallions. The restless horses were snorting great clouds of white steam from their flaring black nostrils and pawing the snow impatiently. As he approached the sleigh and ran his fingers over the bodywork, he could see that it was a dark blue decorated with shooting stars and comets, all the wonders of the heavens, carved into the wood and picked out in gold leaf.
“My God, Anastasia, what a lovely thing.”
“Isn’t it?” she said, climbing up into the sleigh. “It was a gift from Peter the Great to one of my more illustrious ancestors. Baron Sergei Korsakov gave Peter a billion rubles to help him defeat Louis XIV. Luckily for us, Peter won. As a reward, the Tsar also built for us the roof you’re going to be sleeping under tonight.”
Hawke laughed and slung his bag into the rear of the sleigh behind the leather-upholstered bench seat. The sleigh was smaller inside than he’d imagined, just room enough for two, filled with blankets of sable and mink. He climbed up and joined her inside, pulling a mink blanket over both of them.
“I’m fast,” she warned him, taking up the four reins.
“Fast is good,” Hawke said, watching her carefully and inspecting the unusual rig. He’d never seen a troika up close and was fascinated at the complicated arrangement of the horses. “Usually,” he added, striving for nonchalance.
“Shall we go?” she asked him, smiling, flicking the reins lightly.
“Ever onward.”
She spoke a few urgent words to her chargers, and they were off at breakneck speed, careening wildly through the trees and then racing down across the face of a broad, snow-covered meadow. At the bottom of the vast meadow, a narrow lane led off into the hills to the south. The tinkling sound of the many silver sleigh bells added to the magical quality of their journey, and Hawke was content to remain silent, sucking the cold air down into his lungs and watching the girl, the horses, and the white clouds scudding across the face of the fat yellow moon.
The center horse, between the wooden shafts, was clearly the lead. He was trotting. The two outside horses, with one rein apiece, were harnessed at slightly divergent angles so that all three animals were arranged like a fan. The horse on the far right was galloping furiously, while the one on the left was more coquettish. It was a style of coaching developed over many centuries, and it worked.
Hawke noticed she never used a whip but spoke to the three stallions, calling on each one continuously, urging them onward with a combination of flattery and invective.
“What are their names?” he asked her, leaning close so she could hear.
“Storm, Lightning, and Smoke. My favorite horses.”
“Which is which?”
“That’s my great galloping Storm on the right. Smoke does all the work in the center, and Lightning canters on the left. You! Storm! What are you looking at? Get on with you! Go!”
Presently, they came to a stop under a stand of birch trees at the top of a hill. Below them lay a small valley. There was a frozen lake, gleaming white, and standing along its banks was a magnificent palace, ablaze with light glowing from hundreds of windows. It was three stories of gold and grandeur, a mix of the best of Russian and European architecture, with galleries and flanking wings that stretched along the lakefront for at least 900 meters.
“My God, Anastasia,” Hawke said, gazing down at it, his eyes wide with delight.
“What is it, darling?”
“Don’t look now, but we’re living in some kind of bloody fairy tale.”
“I’ve been living in one since the afternoon I discovered a naked man sleeping on a beach. Might I tell you a great big secret?”
“Yes, you might.”
“I might be falling in love. Not with you, of course. But with my life again,” she said.
“Life’s lousy in bed, darling. You’ll need men for that.”
She laughed, kissed his cheek, and, snapping the reins, said, “Storm! Are you awake? Home! Fly away! Fly!”
40
All Beef Paddy liked to whistle while he worked. Now he was whistling one of his favorites, an oldie but goodie called “Be True to Your School.” Beach Boys. After he’d finished cleaning up over at the Bailey household, he’d gone back to the little riverside park the next morning, where he kept his truck hidden in the bushes, then hiked through the woods to his deserted motel and caught some Z’s. Must have slept six hours. He’d seen a couple of cruisers on the way, parked, uniforms having their morning coffee gabfest, and managed to avoid them.
Now he parked his white Happy Baker Shoppe truck, fitted with carefully counterfeited Kansas plates, in the Cottonwood Elementary School parking lot. He loaded up his dolly and hurried inside to make his delivery. Even
