Her father shook his head. “Just . . . go to your room until we can sort this out. I can’t fathom what the Popovs . . .”
He didn’t finish the sentiment. He didn’t need to. Matrona balled her hands into white-knuckled fists and rushed past her parents, hurtling down the hallway to her small room. Once inside, she shut the door behind her, and only then did she let the tears fall. She wiped at them, but that only wet her hands and wrists.
Were all her secrets known, then? Every little sin that had ever crossed her mind, every sour thought toward her parents or other villagers? But they didn’t know about the dolls . . . Surely they couldn’t. No one had asked about the dolls.
She thought of Jaska, and her cheeks burned as surely as if someone had sliced open hot peppers and rubbed them on her face. Even before Feodor, she’d never shared her thoughts about the potter with anyone. Not even Roksana knew about Jaska. Matrona never spoke of him or the Maysaks unless someone else mentioned the family first . . .
Was this the reason for the cross looks Alena Zotov and the cooper’s wife had given her? Because they knew she was a twenty-six-year-old betrothed woman who harbored desires for a younger man—a boy, he was practically a boy—in the dark shadows of her thoughts?
Could they hear what she was thinking right now? A passage from the Good Book bubbled up in her thoughts: “Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight: but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do.”
Matrona collapsed onto her bed and smothered her head with her pillow until her body craved breath. Did her fellow men suddenly possess the eyes of God? Her mind sought out any other secrets she’d buried over the years. Did the villagers now know about the triangle of moles on her left hip? The time she’d lied for Roksana so her friend could visit the granger? What of the test she’d cheated on in school some fifteen years ago? Did they know about that, too?
Shooting up to her knees, Matrona grabbed her tear-spotted pillow and threw it against the wall. She’d spent her whole life trying to do what was right. Trying to keep her parents smiling enough that hard words would never leave their lips. Trying to be good. Even so, she could bear the whole village’s censure—she was sure she could bear it—were it not for the gossip about Jaska.
She wiped her sleeves across her eyes. There was a reason she was twenty-six and unwed. There was not an abundance of bachelors in the village, and she had stayed away from them as a maiden should. As her father had always wanted her to. Only an occasional smile or nod of her head. She had chosen her words to any possible match with care to ensure they could not be misconstrued. Yet she would be punished for this? Who among her family, her neighbors, had not harbored indecent thoughts?
She collapsed back onto her mattress, biting her tongue to control the urge to weep, wishing she could sleep and wake up to a normal world without secrets and without dolls. She did not sleep. Matrona never napped during the day—there was too much to do. Too much required of her.
The walls of her room pressed into her, the slivers in their wood picking apart the rhythm of her breathing.
Spitting Slava’s name like a curse, Matrona pushed herself off her mattress and stepped back into the hall. She heard the mumbling voices of her parents talking in the front room, but she slipped through the kitchen and out the back door to the cow pasture. Work would pull the strain from her body. Work would clear her thoughts. Work would make her sleep.
Matrona churned butter with a vigor that would have surprised her had her mind been present enough to realize it. She lost herself in the familiar pain of her arms and shoulders. She muddied the bottom of her sarafan, hauling hay into the cow troughs and mucking out their tie stalls. She rubbed her hands raw twisting cheesecloths.
She was separating the curds from the whey when a familiar voice spoke her name, startling her from her work.
“Feodor.” She kept her focus on the curds. Rude of her, yes, but she just couldn’t—
“I’ve been speaking to your parents.” His voice sounded deeper than usual, flatter. “I must say . . . you have shocked us all.”
“I didn’t do so willingly.” She scrambled for something clever to say, but the sudden exposure had left her empty.
Feodor scoffed. “I should hope not. The entire village is whispering about you and that Maysak boy. You’ve dragged my family’s name through the mud as well.”
“Do they also talk of the dolls?”
His brow furrowed as if she’d spouted gibberish. “What dolls?”
So that secret had been preserved, no doubt by some sorcery of Slava’s. Matrona crushed the curds in her hand, took a deep breath, and let the cheesecloth fall to her worktable. Turning around, she bowed her head. “Please forgive me, and do not hold it against my parents.”
The words felt like sand in her mouth, and her blood seemed to pump the wrong direction through her veins. Her head spun, and an ache formed behind her eyes. Did he have to confront her now? Could Feodor not allot her one day to process her humiliation?
Could he not understand?
“I suppose I should not.” From the corner of her eye, she saw him fold his arms. He was silent for a long moment, then sighed and said, “I don’t know what to do with you, Matrona. Hide you and myself away until the gossipmongers find something better to talk about? I need to sort out my own . . . feelings on the matter.”
Matrona lifted her eyes to meet his, but Feodor stared at an unknown spot on the wall behind her. Feeling daring, Matrona asked, “Then you will not break the engagement?”
“I have not decided,” he answered, too quickly, as though he had been waiting for the opportunity to say it. To let her know what a disappointment she’d become to him. His gaze finally met hers. “You know I value tradition, chastity—”
“I am not unchaste.”
“—the subjection of a woman to her husband,” he added, his lip curving downward. “You are well dispositioned and know how to hold your tongue and please your family. You strive to follow the Good Book. That is what drew me to you, Matrona. To know of these”—he scowled—“fancies—”
“Matrona!” sang a new voice, Roksana’s, and the loudness of it was jarring. “Matrona, are you here? You never told me—”
Roksana appeared in the doorway to the barn and stopped short, her eyes open and round as she took in Feodor and Matrona, who undoubtedly looked a mess. “Oh, excuse me.” She offered a small curtsy. “I didn’t think—”
Feodor waved her apology away with a limp hand. “I have nothing else to say, only thoughts to think. Good day, Roksana.”
Roksana nodded, and Feodor pushed past her. Matrona picked at the cheese under her nails. She ached to tell her dear friend to leave her be, just for now. To give her time to sort through this strange mess that had been laid upon her lap. But the words wouldn’t come, and then it was too late.
“Matrona.” Roksana glanced back at Feodor before stepping into the barn, guarding her full belly with her hands. “Oh, he must be livid. What did you tell him?”
Matrona shrugged and turned back to the cheesecloth.
“I’m sure you can mend it,” Roksana added, stepping up to the worktable, her own dark braids swinging over her shoulders. “I’m in terrible trouble with Luka, I hope you know. He had no idea the granger and I used to fancy each other, though I’m not sure why he cares so much. It was before Luka and I even noticed each other.”
“Of course he does.” Matrona squeezed the cheesecloth, milky water streaming over her sore knuckles.
“But Matrona,” Roksana urged, leaning against the worktable to better see her face. “You told me you had no fancy for anyone, and that Feodor—”
“Roksana,” Matrona pleaded.
“You always were good at keeping secrets.”