And it was not as if he hadn’t already suggested that to her.
They had been in the garden, and Flora had been pulling out weeds. He had watched her as he smoked his pipe. And somehow, their conversation—as so often—came back to the store. Flora had told him that she still had so many ideas flying around in her mind for decorating the front window, and that her time there was running out. And she had looked so sad that Friedrich had simply had to ask her, “Then why don’t you just stay? Write to your mother and tell her that my father is not completely back on his feet yet, and . . .” He had taken Flora’s hand in his and squeezed it as he spoke. “Wouldn’t that be a good idea?”
“No.” Flora had shaken her head fiercely. “I won’t lie to my parents.”
And Friedrich, embarrassed, withdrew his hand. “You’re right. Please excuse my stupid suggestion. What I actually wanted to say . . . well, I—”
“Stupid?” Flora laughed hoarsely. “Do you think I haven’t already thought of doing just that a dozen times already? The thought of leaving almost breaks my heart.”
It’s the same for me. I can’t imagine and don’t want to imagine a life without you in it! Friedrich had wanted to say, but all he had managed to get out was “It is not as if you’ll be gone forever. You’ll come back to our lovely town in the future, I’m sure. As a seed trader.”
He slammed the wardrobe door, furious at himself. As if that was anything like the same thing! He did not want to have Flora in his memory as a brief acquaintance. He wanted to love her.
In good times and in bad, forever and ever.
Chapter Twenty-One
Princess Irina Komatschova gazed out the window of her suite at the Hotel Stéphanie les Bains.
Three more days and August would be over. How the days flew past, faster than the horses at the racetrack.
After the first cooler nights, the leaves of the enormous chestnut trees were slowly changing from green to yellow. Here and there, a single leaf was already sailing earthward. It had rained overnight. The small tables on the hotel terrace were abandoned, and she knew the proprietor of the restaurant would not be putting out tablecloths or cutlery that day. On mornings like these, the guests preferred to take breakfast inside, where it was warm. But Irina had no appetite, either for an omelet or anything else.
She hated these days, no longer part of summer but not yet truly autumn. They spread a strange kind of melancholy that was not good for her. Irina shook herself like a bird shaking water from its feathers.
At fifty-three, the princess was still an attractive woman. And she was shrewd and spirited, too—as a simple country girl, would she ever have landed the great Nikolajev Komatschov otherwise?
It had, admittedly, been a loveless marriage. When it became clear that she was not able to give her husband any children, he had quickly lost all interest in her. Tokens of affection? Compliments? She had only ever received those from other men.
Life at Nikolajev’s side had been hard. Her wealth helped, of course. Nikolajev’s death five years earlier and her inheritance of half the Crimean Peninsula had made her one of the richest women in Russia. At least in death he had been generous.
Wealth bestowed security. Money was good against fear.
And yet . . .
If only there wasn’t the constant talk of rebellion in her homeland! Of rampaging serfs, of farmers who, instead of doing their work, demanded more money, more rights—who had ever heard of such a thing?
Every day, Irina went to her mailbox in the hotel, and every time, she held her breath as she flicked through the letters and cards. She was able to relax only if she found no bad news from home, neither a fire in her gem mines nor a revolt on one of her estates.
What if the seemingly endless river of money dried up one day? That was what instilled in her a fear of falling back into the poverty that she remembered only too well from her childhood.
She stared as if numb at the pile of bills on the small table in front of her. So many! And the season was not even over.
Some of them were silly, little bills from a restaurant here or there, a hairdresser, or the confectionery store with the wonderful pralines. There was a rather grimy invoice for the coach that she had rented for the entire season, and now the man, a farmer with a leering grin, wanted part of his payment in advance.
“Poshel k chertu!” He could go to the devil! Irina sniffed with contempt. He could stand on one leg and dance and make his two old nags do the same, but he would get his money only at the start of October, when the season drew to an end.
Irina was shocked to see how much money she had lavished this season on the excursions that she and Kostia had made in the Black Forest. And then there were the bills for the countless gifts they had taken along! When one was invited to visit Prince Menshikov, one could not merely take along a bonbonnière, oh no. One had to take a gift more appropriate to the prince’s station. The same was true for the visits to Matriona Schikanova, or dear Anna or the Gagarins—Princess Isabella appreciated receiving expensive French porcelain from her guests, though the cabinets at her villa in the city were already overflowing with the stuff.
Invitations, naturally, also meant return invitations.
For years, Irina had gotten into the habit of setting herself up as a hostess at the start of each new season. The last thing she wanted was a reputation as a sponger, happy enough to enjoy a party at someone else’s cost, but never arranging anything herself. Her summer party that year, in fact, had been celebrated in grand style on the terraces of the Hotel Stéphanie—Konstantin had persuaded her to hire a band, and that invoice, like all the rest, had not yet been paid.
On the other hand—Irina scratched a wavy pattern into a misted window with one fingernail—it would be even worse not to get invitations at all anymore. To be cast out from the upper reaches of the Russian aristocracy. A nobody, unrecognizable.
She and her charming young companion, however, were welcome wherever they went. Everyone liked Konstantin—his laugh, his mad ideas, his perpetual good mood.
Irina frowned with confusion when she noticed a bill for her suite. Hadn’t she agreed with the hotelier to pay for everything at the end of the season? Were installment payments some kind of new fashion?
“Durák!” The simpleton!
There were rumors that the Hotel Stéphanie was not doing well at all. There was talk of a frantic search for a buyer to renovate and modernize the crumbling building. Irina could only hope that the rumors had no substance. The hotel was still affordable. She had to admit that, if one looked carefully, it was easy to find places that needed attention, and the water was almost always ice-cold from the spigot, although the hotelier boasted of being an adherent of the so-called curative baths—what a travesty!
Irina’s hand flicked through the air as if she were chasing away an annoying insect. Who cared about such trivial things? When it came down to it, they were in the hotel only to sleep, and sometimes not even that. So why did she have to pay such horrendous sums?
Yes, she brooded over everything she spent. But was it any wonder, with the constant fear that gnawed at her?
It was a mystery to Irina how Püppi and the others could live for the moment. Almost every day she heard stories about Russian farmers who burned down their master’s barn, or ran off, or stole the livestock, and whose bad behavior was stirred up by political rabble-rousers—cretins who sat around in universities and came up with idiotic ideas just to keep the commoners from doing their work.
“But that’s what we have our overseers for,” Püppi had said in bewilderment the one time that Irina had dared to air her fears. “That’s why we pay them to pull out their whip if they have to.”