Chapter Text
The fire had long settled into a sullen, red-eyed heap of embers. Its heat no longer reached the windows where the frost had begun to fern across the glass, a sure sign that the deeply entrenched winter ruling over the Ryazan flats had no intention of slackening its grip. In the dim, pulsing light of the hearth, Isfahan rugs ran like spilled wine over the satin-lustred planks stretched in an orderly march line. Where the wood lay bare, it shone with the colour of old brandy. The pale, moonlight-silvered edges of the room felt even colder by comparison. The only note of cohesion came from the woodsmoke with a hint of lavender; definitive proof that the two spaces remained parts of an undivided whole despite their distinct, even contradictory character. Sonya, in the midst of sleepy contemplation of this very duality, startled gently at the deep groan of burdened larch. She lifted her head from the goose-down mounds which encircled her like risen dough. Her eyes darted to the door and her fingers peeked from beneath the blanket, pinching all layers from wool to fur in anticipation. The creaking of the hinges, a sound not entirely unlike a forlorn widow’s wail, anticipated her husband’s arrival by a fraction of a heartbeat.
And then he stood in the threshold, a shadow cast in the blue-grey light of the pre-dawn snows. She could make him out only faintly through the thin sliver between the bed’s half-drawn velvet curtains. He stalked towards her, his usual elegance muted in the gloom. The hangings were thrown aside. Fyodor didn't speak. He never did when he came to her in the wee hours of the morning. Sonya sat up as he pulled the curtains shut behind him, the metallic rasp of the rings a song of sealing. He was looking at her; Sonya felt the burn of his stare, as if she were the last bridge left standing across the Berezina. That half-wild glint in his eyes pinned her in place.
Fyodor reached out, grabbing hold of the velvet-clad bedpost. “I am cold.” He didn’t mean his hands. It wasn’t the chill of the hallway, or the bite of winter. She couldn’t make out the expression of his face in the heavy darkness. But she didn’t need to.
Sonya reached out for him. “Come; let me warm you.”
He fell upon her like a starved wolf. His lips brushed the side of her face; his arms trapped her like bands of steel, fingers dug into her shift and pressed into her flesh with bruising intensity. Fyodor caught himself for just a moment, but before he could even attempt to pull away, Sonya reached back, pressing his hands against her once more. For the length of one long heartbeat, his mouth tormented the side of column of her throat. Then he drew her into his front. Sonya gasped feelingly as her breasts pressed tightly against his chest, the crush causing a spike of hot ache. The pain hastily dulled into shivery tingles.
He murmured something into her skin, his voice carrying that distinct low pitch which set a fire in her veins. warmed like a furnace as his hands stoked the flames. Her own fingers tugged at him, slipping into the opening of his khalat, trying to push the silk away. The heat of his skin exploded, through the inner linen layer, against her seeking palms. She tried lifting on her knees, but he was already pushing her backwards into the soft down, blindly drawing the heavy cocoon of fabric around them.
There was no waiting. He hadn’t the patience. Sonya braced for the deep stretch she knew was coming. She held onto him, allowing her head to sink back into the pillows. He was quick, already trembling all over like a newborn thing. One of Fyodor’s hands cupped her breast. The lingering soreness stole a gasp from her lips. A steady stream of praise poured into her ear as he shuddered above her, incinerating his disquiet into the blazing fires of their vigorous nightly exercise.
Heat and heaviness filled her, anchoring her to the mattress as surely as did her husband’s sinewy body. His chest expanded with the ragged breaths he took, pressing her tender breasts cruelly. Sonya gave an involuntary little noise before she could stop herself. Fyodor grunted and heaved off of her, bodily dragging Sonya onto her side and into his arms. Beneath the sting of sweat, she could detect the distinct aroma of the Latakia tobacco he favoured along with the comforting scent of sandalwood. Her lips sought out his collarbone, tasting salt. Her fingers traced a soft, lazy line down his ribs before she slipped her hand around his middle. Fyodor stroked her hair idly, still panting slightly.
Without the wind howled with sudden violence. Sonya imagined it storming across the trees like a cavalry charge, forcing the boughs to forfeit their snowy garments. But like as not, they would not remain bare for long. She settled into Fyodor’s embrace more comfortably. His fingers skimmed down over her shoulders, running the length of her arm and, finally, finding sanctuary against her middle, sinking slightly into her skin with the pressure of his claim. Sonya felt her cheeks heat up with a biting reproach, even as fatigue threatened to lull her into slumber. I am growing as fat and lazy as a pampered housecat, she thought. Fyodor continued to knead the flesh as her eyes sought his out in the gloom. They lacked that faraway look which never failed to set her on edge. His gaze was, dare she think it, downright tender.
“Rest, my sweet,” he rumbled gently, planting his lips against her forehead. “I can see your eyes are heavy with sleep.” It was his way of apologising for having woken her, Sonya knew. He was no less tired, she reckoned, but he remained restless.
It was a full month since he had returned from Moscow and a fortnight since the weather had turned foul. The bitter winter winds always sapped him of his good humour. And unlike Moscow, their little Ryazan estate offered him too few distractions. Little wonder he was desirous of town life once more.
Sonya did fall into a mild doze eventually, briefly opening her eyes to gaze at her husband where he stood before the washstand, cleansing himself with the cool water left over since the previous evening. The watched the muscles in his back shift and tense with movement, her gut tightening with warmth at the faint lines she could see adorning the backs of his shoulders. Had she done that?
Unable to utter a single syllable for shame, Sonya closed her eyes tightly and pretended to sleep even as she heard the rustling of his loose robes signal that he was on the move. The connecting door between their chambers made a quiet noise as it opened and closed under his hand. Foolish girl, she remonstrated, you should have risen and given him a kiss, instead of hiding beneath the covers like a pious nun in fear of her immortal soul. Of course he prefers Moscow.
Keeping still thereafter proved impossible. Sonya shoved the covers down her body and struggled to rise. At least the servants would not find them abed together yet again. She couldn’t help it; she had none of her husband’s brazenness and whenever she considered that the entirely household from high to lowly knew precisely where the master of the house liked to spend his nights, a swarm of the old Rostov propriety fell down upon her head.
If the old Countess could see her now. She would fall into an apoplectic fit. The thought had her pushing her way out of bed. She put a silk slipper on each foot and stepped towards the window, drawing the curtain slightly to the side. She had a good view of the lantern-lit inner courtyard.
The head groom was holding Fyodor’s horse, an ill-tempered beast that had plodded the blood-soaked field of Borodino with her husband and later carried him through the frozen forests during the partisan raids on retreating Frenchmen. He trashed his head back and forth, kicking furiously at the snow while the groom tried to temper him. Fyodor’s man had little luck on that front, though from her vantage point a great deal of his strength seemed to be poured into the task.
There exists in the animal kingdom, just as there does among men, the fundamental and unbridgeable gulf between that which is bred for the admiring eyes of society and that which is bred by the harsh, uncaring hand of necessity.
While the wealthy counts and princes of Petersburg and Moscow, whose lives were entirely governed by French novels and the artificial laws of the ballroom, filled their stables with the Arabian and the English Thoroughbred, these were horses of nervous, trembling elegance. With coats as thin as silk and legs as fragile as blown glass, these animals had been fashioned to dance upon swept gravel paths and to eat sugared oats from the gloved hands of ladies. Yet such horses, much like the society that bred them, possess only a superficial vitality. The first touch of the true Russian frost, the first absence of their daily comforts, withered them and they perished.
The Cossack Don horse is of an entirely different, one might argue primeval, order. Nature, in her inescapable wisdom, does not mould the horses of the steppes for the parade ground, nor does she concern herself with the elegance of their silhouette. They are bred for freezing mud, biting wind, and endless, storm-swept expanses of Russian winter. The Don horse is born with a heavy nose, a chest as wide as an iron stove, and a coarse, thick coat that never quite relinquishes its earthy scent. He holds none of the anxious, fluttering desire to please his master that one finds in the European breeds. Instead, he harbours a dark, sullen, and unshakable belief in his own strength. He asks for no affection and gives no quarter. He requires only the brutal, honest understanding of survival. He will endure weeks of starvation, he will sleep standing in snowdrifts, and he will carry a man through artillery fire not out of nobility or courage, but out of a vicious, pure, and unconquerable will to live.
It was from this very lineage, stubborn and foolhardy, that Fedor Ivanovich’s stallion descended. He bore the name Korsak, after the small, russet foxes of the southern steppes, creatures which possessed little in the way of majesty or grace, but which exhibited cunning, a feral independence, and an absolute refusal to be caught, in spades.
Korsak was a true son of the Don. He was a massive, heavy-boned mahogany bay, entirely devoid of polite stable manners. Where an English horse might whinny softly for his supper, Korsak demanded it with violent, splintering kicks of his heavy hooves against the wooden stall. He looked upon the grooms not as caretakers, but as irritating, weak-willed obstacles between himself and his desires. There dwelt in his dark, liquid eye the ancient, cynical intelligence of the solider, the look of a creature who had seen men die in the snows and could summon no pity.
In this way, the horse and his master were entirely indistinguishable. When Fyodor threw a saddle over Korsak’s back in the freezing dawn, it was not the union of a man and his servant, but a temporary, hostile pact between two feral beasts, both of whom had swallowed the terror of the war, which sat as a hot, unextinguished coal in the stomach.
And then her husband stepped up from under the shadow of the house. He had buried himself in thick fur layers to ward off the brutal chill of winter. Sonya’s breath caught in her throat as he grabbed hold of the horse’s cheekpiece, tugging until the creature’s muzzle until it lay against his forehead. It never failed to amaze and frighten her how two such beastly creatures could bond so strongly. She tensed, watching the scene from within the stifling warmth of the bedchamber, praying, as she always did, that the horse would not attempt to throw him off as it did to anyone else foolish enough to approach. The wind howled. She needn’t have feared the horse would lash out, because Fyodor swung into the saddle without issue. He looked up then, at her window. Could he see her? Sonya pressed her hand to the cool glass pane, eyeing horse and master moving as one.
They circled once, twice, like whirlwind in the snow, and took off at a fast trot, spraying little frozen pellets onto the groom in their departure. The horse moved with that peculiar, jarring gait that allows a Cossack to cover fifty versts without tiring the animal or himself. Soon enough, they were lost behind the white curtain of snowfall and distance. If she were a more able horsewoman, she might have bestirred herself to join Fyodor. Sonya thought, rather guiltily, of Chérie, likely fast asleep in her stall. The little silver dapple, whom she had baptised in the lingering French fashion of her Rostov youth, had been a name-day gift. But owing to her all thumbs approach to riding in general, and her peculiarly unusual torpor of late, the poor thing was exercised mostly by the grooms and had been, otherwise, permitted to go to fat.
When Fedor had first purchased the mare from a fashionable Moscow breeder, she had been a creature of exquisite, almost fragile elegance. In possession of a coat the colour of dark, finely polished slate, contrasted by a mane and tail of flowing, spun silver, Chérie had encountered many an envious glance. In those early days, she had carried herself with the trim, anxious readiness of a young debutante. Her waist was tucked, her legs were slender, and she presented that nervous, high-stepping energy of the overly-eager, constantly prancing and shying at the shadows of the stable yard, hungry to prove her obedience and her worth.
But Tikhiy Ugolok could never get away with being thought a place of fashionable restraint. It proved a hothouse of staggering, overbearing abundance. And within its walls, Chérie had undergone a profound metamorphosis. Under the unrelenting instruction of the master, who demanded that her trough be eternally overflowing with the finest crushed oats, molasses, and sweet apples, the mare had completely abandoned her aristocratic anxieties. The trim, girlish lines of her belly had vanished, sinking into a deep, luxurious roundness that swayed with a rhythmic, contented weight when she walked; all the better to put Sonya at ease. Her silver-dappled flanks had grown thick and plush, thoroughly insulated by a soft layer of unapologetic fat.
Much like her mistress, came the unbidden thought. Sonya glanced down, along the length of her own body, at curves which had not been there before with a small sigh. While it had never been her objective to make up the numbers of the fashionable set, she could not help but wonder whether her changing physique inspired any manner of disappointment in her husband. One might be tempted not to credit the possibility. He held her. He kissed her. He stroked her. Nary a word of censure ever left his lips. But where else could he turn? He certainly hasn’t been looking at the household staff. That much she could vouch for.
Sonya tortured herself with the notion there might be some woman in Moscow. One of those scandalous actresses or, God forbid, one of those Gypsy fancies him and his set had once scandalised the ladies of high society by preferring. The ugly thought gave her pause. Fyodor had been nothing but attentive towards her, since the day he took her hand in his and swore a vow before God and men. Sonya flushed with shame, thinking to her dear sister’s outbursts whenever Pierre’s attention, always innocently, strayed from her. Surely, I am not as bad as all that. She much doubted Fyodor would take it for the compliment Pierre’s equanimity made of the occasional outburst.
No; she must remain reasonable. Sonya moved away as she heard the noisy trudging of Sima coming up the stairs with water for the morning wash. The maidservant scratched at the door, the sound barely audible when compared to that infernal trooping up the stairs.
“Come on in,” Sonya called out.
The door opened softly. “Good morrow, barynya,” Sima greeted, her face flushed with heat and exertion as she brought the warm water to the washstand.
“To you as well,” Sonya offered, drawing closer to the steaming pitcher.
Sima poured a bit of warm water in the washing bowl and waited for Sonya to complete her morning ablutions, pouring out and refilling as needed. Once satisfied with the state of herself, Sonya called for the bedchamber to be aired. “And send for the men to ready the bathhouse,” she instructed Sima, whose expression bore that simple, uncomplicated air of obedience which mastered the entire household. It was still so strange to be obeyed without a single word of protest or insolent look.
Sonya reached for the small bottle of perfume resting on her vanity and dabbed herself in the usual spots. Not too much. She had no desire to overwhelm. Sonya took a seat, pinning her hair up carefully.
Another soft scratch at the door and Katya followed in Sima’s footsteps, carrying in Sonya’s morning brew. She felt the note of cinnamon at once, wafting from the concoction. The cup was carefully set by her, the little maid giving her an anxious look.
“What’s the matter, Sasha?” Sonya questioned gently, picking up the offering. She took a sip. The kitchens had been generous with the honey.
“The master’s horse nearly brained one of the grooms this morning,” Sasha mumbled.
That was nigh upon a daily occurrence. Sonya crossed herself and sighed. “Saints preserve us, but he is well?” The maid nodded dutifully. “And Chérie?”
“Oh, the grand dame took no notice of the commotion,” the younger servant said.
Meanwhile, Sima had picked out Sonya’s morning dress. “Dress warmly, barynya; the wind is rough this morning.”