Read Online Encore by Monique Raphel High - Free Book Online

exercise, and she had not wished to refuse his request. He appeared disturbed, and she, who absorbed others’ moods like a sponge, was growing nervous. The Summer Garden stretched before them; they were like moving figures in a still life, and she thought that the large statues seemed grotesque replicas of a time when the sun had shone and blood had coursed through human veins. Now, only she and Boris traversed this lovely French-styled park, only he and she existed in this frozen landscape. In Kiev there were the sugar plantations, enormous stretches of flat ground. But she had pictured more movement in the capital, and the emptiness gave her a headache.
    What was it that Boris wanted? She sneezed and tried to keep pace with his long strides. She was certain that her father was concerned for her, and that he had forced her to come here for a reason. She had never before wanted to leave the safety of her home—not since that awful year when everything had turned into a dark hole and she had stopped sleeping. Even now the memory of Baron Revin made her eyes burn. He had not loved her—had not found her worthy. Or had someone told him stories of her frail constitution, of her fainting spells? Because she was genuinely sickly, nobody knew how frequently she had enlarged on this weakness and literally made herself black out or attain heights of hysteria when she rolled on the floor—to frighten her parents or her nurse into granting her fulfillment of a wish. She had wanted Revin, had wanted somehow to bind him to her, and in the effort Marguerite had become very ill. But Revin had returned to Moscow without proposing marriage. She had set her mind to win him and had failed. Even her considerable dowry had failed. After that her parents had sent her to the rest home in Switzerland. And since then she had been afraid to appear much in public. She knew that some of her former friends in Kiev said that she was crazy, that there was a streak of insanity in her that could resurface at the least provocation. But the Brianskys were most kind to her, and as for Boris—who could have hoped for a more enviable escort?
    Suddenly she did not want to hear what Boris had to say. She already knew what it would be: He had not wanted to mislead her, but he did not care for her. Somebody must have told him about the sanitarium. She clasped her hands together until they hurt. She had not allowed herself to want a life, any kind of life outside her calm existence in Kiev—until now. Going out into Petersburg society with this handsome, intelligent man—she did want this, desperately. She remembered wanting a ruby necklace once in Geneva and sitting down in the middle of the street with her arms crossed, while coachmen maneuvered, cursing, around her, until her father had been forced to give in and purchase the gems. She had been barely twelve years old at the time. No, most decidedly, today she did not want to hear Boris’s excuses. Marguerite uttered a small cry and started to run, light as a sparrow, across the snow-covered park.
    At first Boris watched her erratic advance in bewilderment. Then, with annoyance, he ran after her. His steps were longer, quicker than hers, and soon he had reached her side. “What on earth—?” he began, then stopped, for the small pale face turned to look at him with an intensity of emotion that robbed him of speech. She bit her lip until it was almost bleeding, and he saw that the rims of her pale eyes were red. “What is it, Marguerite Stepanovna?” he asked. Her expression was so strange that he felt ill at ease so close to her.
    She took a step toward him and stood right in front of him, her hands touching the lapels of his coat. “Do you love me?” she whispered.
    He thought he had surely mistaken the question. “I beg your pardon?”
    â€œI said: ‘Do you love me?’ Because you see, it is essential that you love me. I need your love!