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‘It’s been worse here?’
He nodded. Ella opened her mouth to ask why, but Roman pressed on.
‘When I was younger—before my mother...’ He stopped, seeming to begin again in a different time and place. ‘After Vladimir cut off my mother, and she could no longer dance because she was pregnant with me, she was hired as a cleaner by a rich family in Voskresensk. They were a decent enough family, from what I could tell. But they had this garden that bordered the river there. And sometimes—more often after she became ill—she would wake me in the middle of the night, and bring me out under the stars to dance.’
* * *
As if he had conjured her from his memories, Roman could have sworn that he saw her that night. Dressed in a white cotton shift, moving beneath the stars, twirling pirouettes, the gentle sweep of her arms as they reached, yearning, probing the night air, dancing to music that only she could hear, the gentle footfalls and sweeps creating their own rhythm. He had sat there for hours, over hundreds of nights, and it was not enough, would never be enough. He would swap his soul to be sitting there, shivering in the cold and not minding it one bit, because it was the only time he’d ever seen his mother truly happy. Truly free.
‘She was an incredible dancer. She had been the principal at the Utonchennyy Ballet Company. And the last performance she had with them before Vladimir cut her from his life was Giselle.’
From the corner of his eye he saw Ella raise her hand to her mouth as if to stifle some expression he wasn’t sure either one of them wanted to acknowledge.
‘What was she like?’ Ella ventured after a while using hushed tones as if not wanting to break the gossamer-thin web around them.
‘Sad,’ Roman admitted. ‘She was sad a lot of the time. It was hard for her, the life of a cleaner so different from the luxury that she had grown up in. I could see, even as a child, the wrench that she felt at not being able to give me more. The struggles she had, working and raising a child on her own. But the nights when she would bring me out were...they were enough for me.’
‘I’m sorry. So sorry. If I’d known, I would never have asked you to come with me.’
Roman didn’t do her the injustice of dismissing her apology. ‘I know.’
‘I wish I could have seen her dance.’
He smiled. Somehow, no matter how their wedding had come about, he knew that his mother would have liked Ella. The kindness in her, the goodness. All the things that he was not. That he had forced out of his breast the moment he had laid his mother to rest. And, for the first time ever, he feared that while his mother might have liked Ella, she might not have liked what her son had become.
‘She would have been proud of what you have achieved,’ Ella said as if she had somehow sensed his inner thoughts.
‘But would she have been proud of me?’ he said, finally giving voice to his fear.
For a moment he thought she might not answer, might not be able to find any redeeming quality within her husband.
Then he felt her small hand slip beneath his arm, winding him towards her, and her head lay on his shoulder as she leaned into him.
‘She would have been proud of the man determined to raise his child with its mother. Proud of the man determined to give his wife the home she’d always wanted. She would have been proud of the man who comforted his wife when she felt lost.’
‘Even if that man was the cause of his wife’s insecurity?’
Ella nestled her head deeper into his shoulder. ‘And proud of the man who would change his ways to try to be better for his wife and child. Because that’s all we can do. Try.’ She paused, as if working up towards something Roman feared might hurt. Might cause an even greater ache in his chest. ‘Earlier I said I was sorry for asking you to come to the ballet tonight. But I’m not,’ she said, pulling back so that she could look at him, so that he could see the sincerity in her eyes. ‘I’m not, because it brought us here. Because I now see a little of your mother.’
‘I haven’t thought about her dancing in years,’ Roman admitted roughly.
‘That is a shame. Because I want you to have those memories. I want you to talk about her, so that our child can know their grandmother. I don’t have any real memories of my parents, only what Vladimir told me, and my grandmother told me. And I want you to be able to talk about Tatiana—share stories, anecdotes, memories that made you laugh and love, because that’s what I want our child to be surrounded by.’
He looked at his wife for the first time, seeing her properly as she sat beside him, her cornflower-blue eyes large and round and her lips so red against the pale creamy skin lit by the stars, and he wanted to lose himself in her. Wanted to take what she was consciously or unconsciously offering. But he didn’t feel as if he had that right. Didn’t know if his touch, his kiss would be welcome after all the damage he had wrought. Not just the loss of a business deal, but long before then.
And as if she could sense his hesitation, sense the current of his thoughts, the need coursing through him like wildfire, as if all this time, all these weeks and months of frustration and want and desire, came crashing about them in this one moment, she pulled him to her and pressed her mouth against his in comfort, in her own need.
The passion she offered him, matched only by his own, set light to his thoughts, to the hold of the past and the uncertainty of the future. The moment her lips opened to him, her tongue drawing his deeper into their kiss, he was lost.
He spread the red cloak across the marble floor of the stone gazebo, the crimson pooling about her as he laid her back.
‘This was what I saw when I bought this cloak,’ he admitted, desire painting his voice dark. ‘Removing it from you, revealing the beauty within.’
The thin cotton nightdress glowing in the starlight made her angelic and him unworthy. ‘I should take you back to the house, to soft cotton sheets and soft deep mattresses. You deserve more than this.’
More than he could offer.
She looked at him then, large crystal-blue eyes wide and crimson mouth part opened on a breath. ‘There is nowhere I’d rather be than here beneath the stars with you.’
