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“Well, you certainly sound Russian.”
“Fatalism is the true national contagion,” Ella said with a slight laugh. “And I fear I have
caught it. This baby will be the salvation of Serge as well, as you have undoubtedly noticed, doctor.
Your eyes are very sharp. He and I shall have our child and Konstantin will have his new life in
Paris. He is innocent, we all know this, but once a man has been singled out by the private guard, the
truth does not seem to matter. Tatiana will concur with this opinion, I believe, and realize that I do
not mean it as a criticism of her husband, but simply as a pragmatic analysis of the situation.”
She is so like her grandmother, Tom thought. Moving people about to suit her aims.
Manipulating the world and calling it fate.
Tatiana had now closed the trunk and was buckling the strap. “And if Konstantin gets his
freedom and Ella and Serge get a child, what do you gain from this bargain?” Tom asked her. “You
seem the forgotten soul in this grand plan.”
“I gain redemption,” she said quietly. “My sins have been numerous, Dr. Bainbridge.”
“Somehow, my dear Mrs. Orlov, I doubt that your sins have been any more numerous or more
damning than those of anyone else.”
“She will live in the closest proximity to the child,” Ella said, her voice conveying no
particular understanding that such proximity might well be a torment and not a relief. “And not just
this year, when Tatiana and I must remain inseparable, even after the men have returned to the city in
the fall. She will always attend me, and thus my family. Her husband will become guard to mine. It
happens all the time you know, this swapping back and forth of servants. And I assure you, Doctor
Bainbridge, that Tatiana and Filip shall be rewarded for their loyalty, both of them.”
“Yes,” said Tatiana. “And besides, life is long, is it not, Dr. Bainbridge?”
“For some of us it is far longer than it is for others,” he said. The most painful part of the affair
was not the woman’s sacrifice, but the faint flash of hope which remained in her eyes. She was
clinging to the idea that she might someday yet join her lover in Paris, a dream Tom deemed unlikely.
Once the child was born Tatiana would undoubtedly find it impossible to leave, knowing that she
would never again see her son or daughter. She would trade away any chance for her own future
happiness and remain forever in the thankless role of Ella’s new lady in waiting, and thus servant to
her own flesh and blood.
“I shall write my grandmother this afternoon,” Ella said. “And all you must do, when she asks,