Afterwards, as she lay in his arms, Dmitri experienced new depths of guilt. Of all the bad things he had done in his life this was the most despicable. He listed them in his head: he hadn’t visited his parents before they died because he was too busy trying – and failing – to rescue the Romanovs; he had almost certainly caused the death of the farm girl Yelena through his blinkered selfishness; he had done his best to save Tatiana but in doing so he might have sealed her family’s fate; he had let Rosa fall in love with him even though he loved another. But now, this huge infidelity – this was inexcusable.
During their stay with Valerina his sister had warned him he would never be able to manage an affair, that it would tear him apart. But how could he hurt either of these women? He couldn’t bear it. He loved them both in different ways, wanted them both to be happy and to be part of his life.
Rosa seemed to have no idea of his turmoil. She curled her body around his with a sigh of contentment and fell asleep in his arms.
The following day, Dmitri left home at the time he would normally go to the office, despite Rosa pleading with him to rest and recover from his jetlag. He drove straight to the town-centre hotel where Tatiana was installed and hurried up to her room, where he found her reading by the window, quite content to wait for him.
‘Is Rosa all right?’ she asked, smiling as if it were the most natural thing in the world for her to ask.
‘Yes, fine.’ He was uncomfortable talking about Rosa. ‘And you? Is the hotel to your liking?’
‘It is utterly luxurious. I had a delicious dinner last night then spent an hour in the bath so I feel quite pampered.’ She smiled and stretched, cat-like.
He sat down on the bed. ‘Tatiana, I don’t think I can do this. The dishonesty feels fundamentally wrong. I think I should tell Rosa that I’ve found you and that we have to be together. She will be devastated but at least I won’t be lying to her.’
Tatiana shook her head decisively. ‘What you’re saying is that you would rather make Rosa suffer than live with your guilty conscience.’ She held his gaze. ‘If you hadn’t met me, would you be leaving Rosa now?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Well, our relationship need not change anything between you two. In her position, I would rather keep the man I love, with whom I had raised two children, than be left on my own.’
Dmitri sighed and pursed his lips.
‘You will get used to it. All will be well.’ Tatiana rose to put her arms round his neck, pulled his head to her breast. ‘First, we need to find somewhere for me to live.’
Dmitri resigned himself to the situation for now. ‘We can visit a real-estate agent this morning and pick out somewhere.’
She shook her head. ‘It’s best that we are not seen together around the town. Why don’t you choose? Pick an area where Rosa seldom goes but not too distant that you can’t visit easily. Whatever you like is fine with me, so long as it has a little outdoor space where I can grow a few plants. I will wait here for your return.’
She seemed to have thought it all through, Dmitri mused. Perhaps women understood these matters better. He found the whole idea of the deception abhorrent. It certainly didn’t come naturally to him.
He followed Tatiana’s instructions and found her a two-bedroom cottage in Buckingham Lake, just walking distance from his rug import office but on the opposite side of town from their home and the area where most of Rosa’s friends and her mother and sister lived. He opened a bank account for her and put in plenty of money so she could furnish the cottage and buy all that she needed in the way of clothes and household goods.
Back at the hotel they had lunch together and talked about the translation of Interminable Love, which she was keen to start. To anyone watching from the outside, they could have been two old friends. But after lunch they went up to her hotel room and made love, still discovering each other, still overwhelmed by the force of their feelings for each other after thirty years apart. While in her arms, Dmitri didn’t think of Rosa once.
He pulled up in his driveway at six o’clock, the time he would have got home from a day at the office, and Malevich came limping out to greet him.
‘Are you OK?’ Rosa asked as he kissed her in greeting. ‘I called the office and they said you hadn’t been in.’
Dmitri picked up the mail from the kitchen table, knowing he would be unable to look her in the eye while telling an outright lie. ‘I had a long meeting with a wholesaler. He took me for lunch.’ He tore open an envelope but stared without focus at the letter inside, while he waited to see if Rosa had any more questions.
‘It’s chicken supreme for dinner,’ she said. ‘Nicholas called to say he’ll come home on Friday evening and he’ll stay till Sunday. I hope Marta can come too but you know what her social calendar is like! We’ll be lucky if she can squeeze us in for a lunch.’ She laughed, proud of her gregarious daughter.
‘Good. Well, that will be nice.’ Dmitri seemed to have got away with it this time but he was useless at dissembling. This is where the arrangement would fail: he had never been good at telling lies. Rosa had believed his excuse today but what about next time? And the time after that? Would Tatiana become impatient if she didn’t see enough of him? He realised Rosa was talking and he wasn’t listening because his head was full of the problem of loving two women and not wanting to hurt either of them.
It was relatively simple on a practical level for Dmitri to see Tatiana on weekdays. He could slip out of the office, ostensibly for a meeting, or use the time when Rosa had engagements: she volunteered at the local hospital, attended a weekly flower-arranging class, and often went for coffee with friends. At weekends, he could use the excuse of taking the dog for a long walk, but more than once his plans were thwarted when Nicholas or Rosa decided to accompany him.
Dmitri usually drove to Tatiana’s cottage in his Lincoln Continental Cabriolet. Physically, he could be there in ten minutes, but it was harder to make the mental adjustment from one woman to another because he was a different man with each. With Tatiana he discussed literature, politics and history, while with Rosa he talked of their children and mutual acquaintances and they laughed at lot. He was utterly besotted by Tatiana, just as he had been in the old days – she was the creature of his fantasies, his great love – but sometimes when he was with her he found himself thinking of Rosa’s indomitable cheerfulness. When he was at home with Rosa and his thoughts turned to Tatiana he flushed to the roots of his hair at the strength of his feelings. Rosa had been a wonderful mother and companion but she would never be his soulmate; she would never totally understand him because she did not share his Russian heritage.
Tatiana was different from her teenage self. She seemed strong and self-reliant now, quite content with her own company. She never asked that he visit her more frequently but was always pleased to see him when he arrived. There was no sign of her making friends in the neighbourhood; she seemed to live a solitary life when he was not around, working on the translation of his novel or cultivating her garden. She had furnished the cottage in a simple, functional style, devoting all her creative energy into growing vegetables, herbs and flowers in the little twenty-foot by twenty-foot yard out back. He was surprised to find that she could cook now.
‘Do you remember when you were learning to make bread?’ he asked. ‘I was shocked that a grand duchess should have to do such a thing.’
‘That was in Tobolsk …’ Her voice trailed off and a haunted look came into her eyes. Dmitri knew she was thinking of her family.
‘I have your diary,’ he said. ‘The one you left in my cottage. Would you like to see it?’