“No!” I yelled. “We’ll take a later train and meet you in Moscow! Stay with Miles and Stepan.”
I set Sophie down. Dmitri let go of Nika. We watched the train pull away. Both twins began to cry.
“We had to bring her!” Sophie said. “She’s too little to catch mice by herself.”
I couldn’t bring myself to speak. Miles had the passport with the exit visa and the tickets. We had nothing. We were stuck. The twins kept babbling and crying but I ignored them.
Dmitri put his arm around me. “We’ll think of something,” he murmured.
“Yes,” I said, though I wasn’t so sure.
Chapter Twenty
AS I STARED down the tracks, I heard a voice. “Dmitri! Dmitri Antonovich!”
I looked around to see a young man with a wispy beard and wire-framed glasses trying to get to us while he called out Dmitri’s name.
When he finally made it through the crowds, he put his hand on Dmitri’s shoulder. “I’m glad I saw you. I thought you were going to leave a week ago.”
“Some things came up,” Dmitri said. “Charlotte, this is a friend of mine from the university, Evgeni Kurnetsov. Evgeni, this is Charlotte Mason. And these are her sisters, Nika and Sophie.” The twins had fallen silent after realizing exactly how much trouble they’d put us in. It was a good choice because I was still so angry I didn’t want to speak to them.
“You must be the girl with all the brothers,” Evgeni said. “I’ve heard all about you.”
“You have?” At any other time I would have loved to know what Dmitri had told his friends about me. Dmitri looked uncomfortable for some reason, as if he hadn’t wanted to introduce me to his friend.
“What are you doing here?” Dmitri asked.
“An old friend of my parents is coming to stay with her daughter, and her daughter is ill, so they recruited me to meet her and help her navigate the crowds. What time is your train?” he asked Dmitri. “I am so glad you managed to get an exit visa. They came looking for you again today. For some reason you are high on their list.”
“What? They? Who came looking for you?” I asked Dmitri.
“The Red Militia,” Evgeni said. “I heard they were after your stepfather, too, Charlotte. We tried to convince them that Count Lieven had died in Paris and they couldn’t arrest a dead man in a different country, but somehow they learned there was a new Count Lieven. So how did you get an exit visa?” he asked Dmitri.
Dmitri didn’t respond for a few moments. “I don’t have one,” he said finally. “I was here to see Charlotte and her family off, but we ran into some problems. I’ll get one later.”
I was still taking in what Evgeni had said. Why hadn’t I realized that since Dmitri was now a count, he’d be on an arrest list just like Papa? They were looking for him too and he hadn’t said anything.
“Oh, I think I see the woman,” Evgeni said. “Nice to meet you, Charlotte. Dmitri, if you need help, come see me. I don’t know what I can do, but I’ll try to think of something.” He disappeared into the crowd.
“You stayed for me and now you can’t get out?” I said, feeling like I was going to throw up. I wrapped my arms around myself so I could stay upright. “How could you?”
“I didn’t plan it,” Dmitri replied. “I didn’t know they were going to go against the nobility like they did.”
“What were you going to do once we left on the train?” I asked the question calmly but I wanted to scream instead. If they found him, they’d beat him just like the police had beaten Samuel, and then he’d be in prison, and then … and then …
“I haven’t made a plan yet, but I will,” Dmitri said. “Let’s concentrate on getting you some new papers. I think you can go back and explain to someone at the embassy what happened. There’s no reason for them not to give you replacement documents.”
Sophie was tugging on my sleeve. “Why can’t Dmitri leave? Why doesn’t he come with us?”
“He is going to come with us,” I said. “I’m not leaving this city without him.” I turned to face him. “If you think I’m going to go and leave you to the mercy of these men, you don’t know me at all.”
“Charlotte, there is nothing you can do,” he said.
“Oh yes, there is. I mean it. We are not leaving the city without you. We’ve fooled the people at the embassy before. We’ll do it again. You can leave here using Miles’s name when we get that document.”
Dmitri sighed. “If the same man is there when we go in, he’s going to remember Miles, and Miles and I look nothing alike. Charlotte, I know you want to help, but that idea won’t work. If they discover what we’re trying to do, none of you will get out. You have to go without me.”
“It will work,” I insisted. “We’ll put a hat and a scarf on you and say you’re sick and you’ve lost your voice. I’ll do the talking.”
“You do look kind of like Miles,” Sophie said. “You’re taller, but if you acted sick and sat on a bench, nobody would know. Miles has to sit down a lot.”
“Why don’t you paint your hair red?” Nika suggested. “Then you’d look a lot more like Miles than you do now.”
I stared at Nika and then picked her up and swung her around. “That’s brilliant!”
“Paint my hair? Are you serious? That’s not going to work,” Dmitri said.
I set Nika down, excitement racing through me. “Just wait. You’ll be surprised at what we can do.” I didn’t let him offer up any more objections. “We’ll go to my friend Raisa’s house. She’ll help us. There might be some old paints there, and if there aren’t, I can go find some. Once your hair is painted, we’ll go back to the embassy, get the paperwork, and get on the next train. With any luck, we’ll be gone by nightfall.”
Nika and Sophie jumped up and down, giggling. I knew they were happy I was no longer angry at them.
“Don’t argue,” I said to Dmitri. “You won’t win.”
“I don’t know where you get these ideas,” Dmitri said, “but I suppose I’m willing to try. I know I won’t get you out of here any other way.”
We headed to Raisa’s house. With every step that took us farther from the train station and away from the safety of the crowd, the more nervous I got, sure someone would stop us or recognize Dmitri.
When we reached Raisa’s house, she was just getting home. “Charlotte,” she cried, hugging me and then looking at Dmitri and the twins and the kitten in the basket.
“Can we go inside?” I asked. “We need to get off the street.”
Once inside I tried to figure out how to explain about Dmitri, but it was so complicated I stuck with something simple. “I wish I had more time to talk, but the situation isn’t good right now. My friend Dmitri needs to get out of Petrograd with us as soon as possible. We need to try to make him look like one of our family, so Nika came up with the brilliant idea that we could paint his hair red and then he’d look more like a Mason. And while we do, we need someplace where no one will look for him. That’s why we came here. Do you have some old watercolors or other paints we could use?”