“No. I was sent with a team to look at a bridge we were trying to repair. The attack on Pavel’s group came out of nowhere. It was all over very fast. I’m sorry.”
“Thank you,” I managed to whisper. No matter how good I’d become at pushing thoughts of Pavel away, I still couldn’t keep away visions of how much pain he might have suffered. It haunted me.
I don’t know why, but everything spilled out of me then, everything about Miles and the flyers and the raid on the apartment.
Dmitri was so quiet when I finished, I was afraid I’d been wrong to tell him. He’d said he’d agreed to take the tutoring job to prove the baron wrong, and I’d just proved that someone in our family was actually acting against the czar.
Dmitri sighed. “I suspected something like that. Miles is in very serious danger now. If the baron comes here to arrest him, nothing I say will make a difference. We need to get Miles out of Petrograd.”
Hearing those words made me want to fling my arms around Dmitri. He really was on our side. “I know. I was already planning on sending Miles and Hap to the United States, but we’ll just have to move their departure up. I need to work out the details.”
“Yes, details.” Dmitri tapped his cane up and down on the floor. “They’ll need to get permission to travel, and if Miles’s name is on a list of suspected agitators, he won’t get the approval,” he said. “That’s a problem.”
I hadn’t thought of that. Dmitri was right. Everyone in Russia held an internal passport, and a person had to get permission from the police to travel from one city to another. The policy had been put in place a long time ago to prevent people from leaving town without paying their debts, and it made travel much more difficult. The police didn’t bother checking the peasants’ movements in their carts and sleighs, but anyone who looked like they could afford the fee for the stamp was at risk if they traveled without it, especially by train.
“They’ll have to try to get permission,” I said. “If they go right away in the morning, the police stations won’t have updated lists, will they? It has to take hours or even days to distribute those.”
“Maybe. At least get Hap to go into the station first,” Dmitri suggested. “If the last name of Mason is on a list, they’ll double-check his first name, and that way he’ll know if it’s safe for Miles to try to get the stamp.”
“Yes! That’s a good idea.” If it was safe, Hap could make up some story about his brother being late and then go outside and get Miles. “They can go to the train station right after that. I’ll wake them up early in the morning and tell them the plan,” I said, a yawn nearly swallowing my words. I felt like I hadn’t slept for days.
“I’ll go see the baron early tomorrow morning,” Dmitri said. “If he knows about Miles, he’s likely to tell me.”
Dmitri’s face had gone very pale, and I could see he was exhausted too. He gave a weak smile. “At least now I can stop pretending I’m actually teaching Hap and Miles anything. People who told me your brothers were incorrigible had no idea exactly what that meant.”
“You’ve taught them how to drop glasses without breaking them,” I said, wanting to draw out a few more moments. We couldn’t do anything about Miles until morning, and I didn’t know when I’d get the chance to have time alone with Dmitri again. “That has to count for something.”
“Yes, I suppose that’s true.” Dmitri leaned back against the wall as if he wasn’t in any hurry either. “I’ll cherish that accomplishment. And they’ve taught me some card tricks, which I suppose may be useful someday. I may regret that I turned down the opportunity to learn how to saw a person in half.” He shook his head. “You have quite a family, Charlotte Danielovna. And I mean that in a good way. Tell me one thing: Do you really know how to juggle while riding a horse and a unicycle? Pavel never mentioned that little detail about you.”
I could feel the heat rising in my face. “I can, or at least I used to be able to. It’s not something I’ve practiced for a long time.”
He smiled. “Actually, there is a second thing I want to know. Why did you want to run away and join the circus? I can’t imagine you ever wanting to leave your family.”
I couldn’t believe he remembered what Stepan had said when I introduced him to the boys. “I didn’t want to leave them. Stepan doesn’t have the story right. It was all before we even came to Russia and met him. I wanted my mother, Hap, and Miles to run away with me. Her second husband was awful and I hated him. We’d been to see a circus in Paris and I was obsessed with it, the sparkly costumes and the horses and everything. Running away to join it seemed the perfect solution.” I realized how much I was babbling and forced myself to stop talking. “I’m sorry. That was a long answer to your question. It was all very silly.” I couldn’t help myself. I yawned again.
“You’re tired,” he said. “And I really have to say good night before I fall down right here and sleep, which would ruin Archer’s good opinion of me.”
“Good night.” I tried to drag my gaze away from his face, from his eyes. I couldn’t believe I’d ever confused him for Pavel. A twinge of guilt or regret or something made me finally look away. I felt my face flush. Did Dmitri think I’d acted as if I’d forgotten Pavel? I wanted to explain to him how it had been, how I’d cried for a boy I hadn’t really known.
“Good night,” he said.
The moment was gone. Maybe it was for the best. Only days earlier I’d told myself I didn’t want to get close to another boy. I didn’t want that hurt again.
We didn’t speak again as we went upstairs, not wanting to wake anyone up. I went into Miles’s room to find him asleep on top of the covers and still dressed. His breathing sounded almost normal. I took an extra blanket out of the chest at the end of his bed and covered him up.
I tried to think what to do next. Telling Papa had to be at the top of the list. I went to his room and knocked on the door. When he didn’t answer, I knocked again, surprised he hadn’t heard the first knock because he was such a light sleeper. I opened the door to look in.
He wasn’t there, and his bed hadn’t been slept in. I looked all around the room as if he’d be somewhere standing about, but of course he wasn’t. I ran back downstairs to see Osip dozing in the room by the door, which meant someone in the family was still out; otherwise the footman would be asleep in his own room. Osip had to be waiting for Papa, though I had no idea where my stepfather would be at such a late hour. I went back to the sitting room, intending to stay awake until he came home.
I sat down by the fire and didn’t realize I’d fallen asleep until the next morning, when I woke up with an aching head and a throat so dry it was painful. I drank some cold tea from the samovar. I knew I had to move, to make up for the time I’d wasted sleeping. When I went to find Papa, Osip told me he’d come home late but had already left again.
I wanted to stamp my foot, angry at myself that I’d slept through his coming and going. “Do you know where he went?”
“No. He seemed like he was going somewhere important, you might say, because he was in a serious mood. He didn’t joke with me like he usually does.” Osip’s eyes flickered over me, and I’m sure he noticed I hadn’t combed my hair and that I was still wearing the clothes I’d had on the day before. “What’s wrong?” he asked.