“Judging by the first two, I imagine the third is bronco-busting a reindeer? And what makes you think spring has arrived?”
Aleksy chuckled, the rich sound so unexpected Clair had to swallow her heart back to where it belonged. He soon dispelled her misconception by securing them a ride in a sleigh pulled by three horses. Snuggling her into his side, he let the English-speaking driver tuck them under a blanket and educate her on the festival, which was pagan in origin, but also related to Lent. When Clair expressed too much interest in the bear wrestling contest, the old man turned in his seat. “Not for you, malyutka. Wrestling is for old men who only have vodka to keep them warm.” He winked at Aleksy.
The man ended by fetching Clair a plate of blini, round pancakes covered in caviar, mushrooms, butter and sour cream.
“I can’t eat all this. You’ll have to buy me a whole new wardrobe,” Clair protested after a few bites of the deliciously rich food. “Here. Please,” she prompted Aleksy.
“No.” He held up an adamant hand. “I can’t eat pancakes.”
“Too many as a child?” she teased, imagining him as a strapping boy gobbling everything in sight.
“Far too many,” he said grimly. “If you can’t eat it, give it to the dog.”
She followed his nod to where a German shepherd was licking a plate, the owner unconcerned. Clair let the dog wolf down what was left of her blini and disposed of the trash, her mind stuck on Aleksy’s remark.
They moved under an ornately carved archway built of ice to a park filled with ice sculptures. The angels, castles and mythical creatures were beginning to thaw, their sharpest edges blurred, but they were still starkly beautiful, transparent and glinting in the sun.
“The driver said the festival has only been revived recently. You weren’t eating pancakes just for Lent growing up, were you?” she mused aloud, stepping back and hiding behind her camera to keep the question less personal.
“No, we ate them for survival,” he said flatly, gaze focused somewhere beyond the stunning sculptures.
“You weren’t working for Grigori then?”
“I was hardly working at all. My mother wouldn’t let me quit school.”
Clair lowered her camera. “Somehow I can’t imagine you taking orders from anyone, even your own mother.”
“I would have given her anything,” he said with a gruff thread of torture weaving through his tone. “I couldn’t give her what she really wanted—my father’s life back. I worked ahead and was in my last semester when Grigori hired me. My mother still worked at first, and at least we ate something besides pancakes. I gave her that much, at least, before she withered away.”
His bitter self-recrimination caught her off guard, making her want to touch him again, but she was learning. He would talk a little, but only if they kept it to the facts.
“Cancer?” she guessed, unable to help being affected by his loss. He gave an abbreviated nod and she murmured, “That’s tragic.”
“It was suicide,” he bit out. “She knew something was wrong and didn’t seek treatment. I would have done anything—” His jaw bit into the word. “But she felt like a burden on me.” His hand opened, empty and draped with futility before he shoved it into his pocket. “And she wanted to be with my father.”
Clair caught a sharp breath, frozen with the need to offer him comfort, but very aware she couldn’t reveal too much empathy right now.
“She must have loved him very much,” she murmured, voice involuntarily husky.
“She was shattered by his death. Broken.” His gaze fixed on a sculpture that had fallen over and splintered into a million pieces, its original form impossible to discern. “I hated seeing her like that. Hated knowing I—” He cut himself off and shuddered, looking around as though he’d just come back into himself. “Are you finished here?”
Clair huddled in the constricting layer of her jacket, aching for Aleksy even as she silently willed him to finish what he’d started to say, sensing he needed to exorcise a particularly cruel demon. Yes, she needed to keep from becoming too connected to him, but she couldn’t ignore his terrible pain.
Carefully stowing her camera in her pocket, she put her hand on his arm. He stiffened against her touch, rejecting her attempt to get through to him.
“I’m sure you did what you could. Don’t blame yourself for something you couldn’t control,” she said.
“Who else is there to blame?” he countered roughly, utter desolation in the gaze that struck hers like a mallet before he yanked it away.