Silver Nights by Jane Feather Read Free Book Online

the muzhik, chuckling. “You’ll get nowhere with her if you go head to head.”
    But just what choice had she left him? Adam mused irritably as he made his way back to the house. She had declared war, not he. He lifted the latch on the front door. It would not budge. Disbelieving, he shook it and felt the resistance of the heavy internal bar. Who the devil would have relockedthe door? Even if a servant had happened to come into the hall and discovered the open door, he or she would surely have made the logical assumption that whoever had opened it was still without. Suspicion grew, became certainty. It could only have been Sophia Alexeyevna.
    All the anger and frustration he had kept tight-reined since his meeting with her that afternoon finally broke free. Of all the childish, spiteful tricks! A piece of typical female malice, secret and underhanded. The sort of trick that Eva would have played him…He hammered on the door knocker with all the force of pent-up resentment, outrage, and the absolute knowledge of the misery in store for him until this abominable mission was accomplished.
    â€œWho is it?” A familiar voice from above broke into the trance induced by his furious thoughts and his rhythmic, remedial hammering.
    He looked up and saw Sophia Alexeyevna’s face, pale in the starlight, framed in the long brown hair falling forward as she leaned out of a casement. “Come down here and open this door, at once!” he demanded with a parade ground crackle that she found herself obeying without thought.
    Sophie flew down the stairs, wondering what disaster could have struck. She wrestled with the bars, but they were too heavy even for her wiry strength. “I cannot,” she called. “Just a minute.”
    A couple of minutes later she appeared from around the side of the house, huddled into a thin wrapper over her nightgown, her feet thrust into a pair of skimpy slippers. “Whatever is the matter?” She pushed her hair away from her face, tossing it over her shoulders, her eyes showing him a mixture of indignation, anxiety, and bewilderment. “You will wake the entire household, and it is not just. They rise much earlier than we do.”
    His jaw dropped. What on earth was she talking about? “How dare you lock me out!” he spat out furiously. “A piece of childish spitefulness—”
    â€œLock you out!” Sophie exclaimed. “Why would I do such a thing?” The candid dark eyes stared in shocked confusion. “The front door is always kept locked from sundown. There are brigands on the steppes.”
    â€œI left it open,” he said, but uncertainly now.
    â€œThen Gregory would have locked it again,” she replied. “He is the night watchman. He checks the doors every hour.”
    Adam sensed the shadow of his inevitable discomfiture. “How did you enter?”
    â€œThrough the side door. That stays open until Boris Mikhailov comes in. It is a small door, not easily seen. Did you not ask Boris Mikhailov to let you in?” She shivered as a gust of wind tipped with the cold of the flatlands whistled around the corner of the house.
    â€œNo, I did not,” Adam said, feeling foolish. “You will catch cold in your nightgown.”
    â€œYou did not give me time to put my clothes on,” she said with utter truth, still standing on the gravel path, regarding him gravely in the milky starlight. “Did you really imagine I would serve you such a stupid, pointless trick?”
    He wished with all his heart that he could deny it. Not only did he feel foolish, he was overwhelmed with guilt, as if he had committed some appalling solecism. Indeed, he knew that he had. What little he knew of Sophia Alexeyevna should have told him that she was incapable of such a mean-spirited act.
    â€œI ask your pardon,” he said a little stiffly. “I cannot imagine what I was thinking of. But you must go inside now, before I