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doesn’t answer immediately. “No one has actually come forward and said they have seen the young master,” he says at last. “But the villagers are frightened. Of course, they may have been threatened and are afraid to speak up. And so we will continue to look. We won’t give up, madam. And you know your son is strong, and clever. You must comfort yourself with that thought, madam: that he is all right. He is all right,” he repeats, more loudly.
    Antonina nods, but doesn’t look convinced. “Perhaps they took him to the city—to Pskov. Or even all the way to St. Petersburg.”
    Grisha shakes his head. “I feel strongly that he’s nearby, but well hidden. We will search the whole province, madam.”
    “Will they send another note? Will they ask for more money?” This is the question Antonina has been wondering about since yesterday. She hoped Grisha would mention it first, in his usual firm way. “Because Konstantinfoiled the first attempt, will there be another chance?”
    Does his expression change, ever so subtly, now? Antonina remembers how Konstantin had murmured Grisha’s name in the night.
Grisha knows
.
    “It is certainly a possibility, madam. Men like these … they’re corrupt and greedy.”
    His answer doesn’t bring as much relief as she’d hoped. “So we just wait?”
    “And continue to search, madam.”
    There is silence, except for the snapping of the fire. Grisha stares at the flames.
    “Last night, Grisha, Konstantin spoke to me,” Antonina says.
    Grisha doesn’t react for a moment, then turns from the fire to face her. “He regained consciousness?”
    “For a moment.”
    Grisha is very still.
    “He said your name. It sounded like he said,
Grisha knows
. What did he mean, Grisha?”
    Grisha doesn’t answer immediately. “I thought I recognized one of them. The Cossacks. As they came for me, I called out a name.”
    Antonina rises from her chair. “You know him?”
    But Grisha shakes his head. “As I said, madam, I thought so for a moment. I could only see his eyes, and as they beat me, his scarf came away, and it was not the man I thought. But Konstantin … he heard me call a name. This is what he must have spoken of.”
    Antonina, standing in front of her chair, studies Grisha’s dark eyes. “Thank you,” she finally says, when a log drops heavily. “You may leave, Grisha.”
    Grisha bows and turns. Once out of the study, he leans against the closed door. As negative as his feelings are for Konstantin Nikolevich, he doesn’t want him to die.
    The kidnapping had not gone as he expected.
    And death was not part of the plan.

H ad Grisha suspected how terribly wrong it would all go, how Soso would deceive him, he would never have agreed to it.
    He now knows—although he had never seen it in all the time he’d known Soso, Lilya’s husband—that in the same way he hates Konstantin, Soso hates him. Konstantin had no clue of the deep, dark anger Grisha felt towards him for his superior air and expectations, the casual demands. And now Grisha is having done to him exactly what he wanted done to Konstantin. Soso is punishing Grisha, as Grisha sought to punish Konstantin—by blackmailing him, extorting money.
    When Soso invited Grisha to a game of cards in the servants’ quarter one night early in January, Grisha should have been wary. Because of his lofty position at Angelkov, the other men treated him with cautious deference. It was he, after all, who supervised all the serfs on the estate, who reportedtheir infractions or disobedience to the count, and who meted out their punishments. Grisha knew he made the serfs uneasy; when he was around, they had to be on their guard. He wasn’t a man who needed the company of either men or women, and he had never particularly liked Soso, but the winter had been harder than usual, each evening long, dark and frigid. The idea of a night of cards and vodka unexpectedly appealed to him, and so he let down his guard. He said yes.
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