The Lady in the River

That Clara woman had been right about one thing. The rock-filled corset certainly was uncomfortable. It chafed at old scars and felt like a weight against her chest. Soon it would be over, though. Soon she would be with her family again and the weight, one that had been on her heart long before she slipped on the overloaded corset, would finally be lifted.

She considered writing a note, leaving it on her bed, but then decided against it.

Who would care that a scrappy nobody named Anya had died? Who would care if she put down that her father's name was Nicholas and she'd like to be buried under Nicholaevna rather than Unknown, if they pleased?

Besides, what right did she have to ask for a proper burial? No one else in her family had gotten one. Poor Alexei's body was doubtlessly found by the guards in those woods and burned or else put with the rest of them to rot someplace.

Better if no one knew to look for her, if nobody found her at all, if her worthless, exhausted body was food for the fishes.

Once her soul was free to rejoin the others, what became of this cast-off shell wouldn't matter anymore.

The sun hung low in the morning sky as she crept towards the bank of the Neva. She could see the remains of so many former pleasure palaces. She could even see one, only partially obstructed, side of The Winter Palace. One of the homes that had belonged to her family so long ago. She and Maria had rather hated that palace – their shared room there was drafty and nowhere near as snug and familiar as the one in the Catherine Palace, their true home.

Still, it was comforting to see it now, even as a public building. She could just imagine Olga looking out one of the windows, a novel in hand. Or – a memory from when she was barely six years old – Tatiana taking Alexei's beloved spaniel, Joy (the one who got rabies and Papa had to shoot), for a walk on the grounds.

Anya took a deep breath, bidding farewell to the world she no longer liked and had resolved not to remain in, and jumped into the river.

Dimitri was sitting up in bed, looking at the snow-globe with young Anastasia's likeness inside. It was a cheap trinket, of course, but the crudely crafted similarity was still enough to bring back memories from their shared childhood.

Some days these memories were too painful to linger on, such as the day before, which had been Alexei's birthday, but every now and again he would wake up with the desire to wallow in the past.

A desire he usually squashed like a bug. A person close to the edge of a building didn't allow themselves to sway in the breeze with abandon, for fear they'd fall.

Today, for some reason, he'd been unable to resist. He tempted the feeling of hopeless loss, of letting himself go to pieces, with the sweet lure of momentary pleasure in old thoughts recalled.

He was so lost in the memory of being a little boy in a shared time-out with the youngest grand duchess, he could practically hear Nicholas roaring, I want quiet out there! Not one word for the next half hour, both of you!

Sighing, he shook the globe lightly, watching the snow fall around her.

A knock on his door jolted him, almost making him drop it. Hiding the forbidden object under the covers so he could sneak it back into the cabinet later, he grunted and stumbled to the door, unlatching it and glaring at Irina, who stood there wringing her hands.

"I've told you not to disturb me while I'm in here," he reminded her, impatient to have Irina out of the threshold leading into his personal space.

"Dimitri, it's an emergency."

He noticed, then, how pale she was, and forced his expression into a kinder one. "All right, what is it?" This had better be good. Not like the last emergency, which had mostly to do with two drunk men who smelled of excrement and piss, claiming their underwear was frozen from standing in a factory all week, panhandling in the lobby.

"One of our guests may be trying to...to harm...themselves." Irina's voice trembled, on the verge of hysterics.

This wasn't as uncommon as it should have been. The Bolsheviks may have told them times were better, but the rising number of attempted suicides and self-mutilations – even in just this one Saint Petersburg hostel alone – would say they were most certainly not.

"She's so young, Dimitri!" Irina blurted, her knuckles going white. "My age, perhaps."

He motioned with a roll of his hand for her to hurry up and get to the point.

"She came in here yesterday, wanted a room, agreed to take a bed when I told her it was impossible," Irina explained, her voice speeding up. "The other guest – in the bed near hers – says she saw her sewing rocks into her corset. She didn't show for tea – I just assumed she was tired; I mean, the poor thing looked like she'd walked halfway across Russia – only now she's been spotted wandering along the river...probably looking for a good place to...to..."

"Christ!" Dimitri dashed back into the room without bothering to close the door, giving nosy Irina the in she usually could only yearn for to snoop around. "You're just telling me this now?" With all the time Irina took babbling out her story, the young lady might already be dead. "Damn it, Irina! You're completely useless sometimes, you know that?" He threw on his boots without lacing them, stomping his feet to the floor to get his heels all the way in so they didn't fall off, then jumped up and pushed past her. "Next time, just tell me a woman is drowning herself and move out of the way."

It might have been impossible for Dimitri to find the woman in time, if he hadn't – by a stroke of luck – made it to the river just as she vanished into its waters.

He caught sight of her back, of a flash of fair, gold-flecked red hair in the low morning sunlight, and nothing else – but it was enough to give him a general idea of where he needed to dive in after her.

Because he hadn't taken the time to remove his shoes, he lost one boot in the process, finally spotting the woman in the murky current and grabbing onto her waist to heave her back up.

There, of course, was the rub.

She was heavy as hell. Probably from those rocks Irina claimed the guest who'd ratted on the suicide attempt had seen this woman sew into her corset.

Her limps stiff and useless, neither fighting him off nor helping him rescue her, Dimitri found himself being dragged down with this madwoman.

It occurred to him, eventually, at least in the back of his mind, that he might need to let her sink and save himself – that this whole endeavor might be hopeless.

Except, something in his body rejected this knowledge – this possible, if tragic, eventuality – entirely.

From the moment he grabbed onto her, his body didn't react as if he'd snagged a stranger in his arms. Instead, it clung to this woman as if she were the dearest being in the world to him and letting her go would kill him as surely as sinking permanently to the bottom of the Neva would.

Twice, he told his arms they'd tried their best, to just give up and let her go. Twice, he waited for his self-preservation to kick in. Twice, it did no such thing.

It didn't matter that they were a hostel, not a charity. That it was not their job, technically, to rescue these loonies who wanted to end it all. That no one would hold him personally responsible for failing to save her.

No, all that mattered was fighting, kicking his legs, until he got himself and this unknown woman to the safety of the bank again.

Mercifully, all he needed to do was get the woman's head above water and there was a rush of other people – a mix of guests and locals – on the bank ready to help pull her out. He knew Irina must have been the one to bring them all down here, and felt momentarily sorry he'd called her useless. He also knew he'd probably never apologize to her for it – they rarely ever apologized to each other.

"Oh, dear! Someone take her arms." He saw Irina pointing above him through the murky ripples. "He can't hold her much longer! Somebody do something!"

In the end, two burly men with wide, inexpressive faces and greasy-looking hair helped Dimitri lift the woman out and place her gently on the ground.

"Is she breathing?" Irina gasped, her hands clasped together and positioned over her heart. "Oh, what on earth could have possessed her?"

Irina's words seemed muffled, as if he were still underwater. Dimitri was transfixed on the woman, now that he saw her properly. The resemblance, which his mind refused to accept and his body refused to ignore, was uncanny.

For well over five years, a good half-decade, he'd secretly followed every claimant he heard of swearing to be Anastasia Romanov – he'd seen smuggled pictures of girls from all over the country – and not one of them looked as much like the grand duchess as this woman they'd just pulled from the Neva.

She was the same age, the same physical type...

He wondered what color her eyes were.

Shaking himself out of the ridiculous notion that it just might be her, he lowered his head to her chest to listen for a heartbeat. It was hard to hear through the rock-filled corset, so he ended up feeling for a pulse in her wrist instead.

It was there, though a little weak.

He felt annoyed, highly aware this was probably self-inflicted. She wasn't fighting to survive, because she hadn't wanted to.

That was, after all, why she'd tried to kill herself.

Still, he put his hand behind her neck, propping her up, and slapped at her cheeks until she vomited out a mouthful of water.

Even so, she did not open her eyes or respond to their presence, aside from a low, disappointed moan.

But at least she was breathing now.

"What is the matter with you?" Irina whined at Dimitri, who had immediately plopped himself into a chair at the bedside of their unconscious guest, not taking his eyes off the mysterious woman since the moment they'd gotten her out that horrid corset and into a decent nightie. "Can't you make yourself useful and fetch something for her? Maybe a glass of water, or a bit of cheese?"

"She's going to eat cheese in her sleep?" he snorted, not dignifying what Irina sincerely believed was a legitimate complaint with even the smallest of critical glances. "Besides, this isn't a soup kitchen."

Irina turned away, muttering, and started dunking a small towel in a basin of tepid water to make a cool compress.

When she looked back at Dimitri again, she was utterly shocked; he was leaning over the woman to unfasten the string that held her nightie closed.

Rushing over and slapping his hand away, she snapped, "Pervert!"

"Irina," he growled. "Get out."

She scowled at him. "Yeah, I'm really going to leave after what I just saw you doing."

Sucking his teeth, Dimitri stood up and moved his chair further from the woman's bed. "I'm all the way over here – I'm not going to touch her. Now get out."

"Why should I?"

"Because I asked you to."

"You're not the boss of me, Dimitri."

"Oh, yeah? Wanna bet?" He turned his head, looking at her finally, a nasty twinkle – one she hated seeing, since it never boded well for her – in his eye. "One letter to your father, Irina, just one letter..."

"You wouldn't! You'd be ruined with me!" she protested, terrified of his threat all the same.

"Are you convinced I care enough about that to risk upsetting me?"

Tears filled Irina's widened hazel eyes. "You're a real son of a bitch, you know that?"

He motioned with his chin. "There's the door – go cry about it outside."

Dimitri knew he was too harsh on Irina. She might have been a dimwit and a whiner whose snippy little voice grated on him more often than not, but he secretly felt a little – albeit, a very little – bad whenever he pulled the 'letter to her father' threat out of his arsenal.

The fact of the matter was he simply didn't want her in here with him – with them – now.

There was too much he was trying to sort out. He hadn't been – as Irina had thought – trying to look at the unknown woman's breasts or feel her up. What he'd been trying to see, more than a little afraid to, was if she had any scars where Anastasia would have. Any healed wounds from Bolshevik bullets. He had readied himself to find only smooth, unmarred flesh so that he could calm his body down, reassure his racing heart this was not her.

He hadn't had a chance to look when Irina undressed the woman and threw away that deadly corset. Irina had proven surprisingly (given what Irina was when he first met her, and the fact that her friends still loved walking in on him in various states of undress whenever they could) prudish in regards to preserving this young woman's modesty.

Even though Irina had fled the room in tears – which was all his unkind threat was meant make her do, really – he still couldn't risk checking.

Irina had frustratingly sharp ears, and he suspected she hadn't fled very far. If she heard him get up, or move the chair closer, she'd be right back in here, demanding to know what he was up to.

It wasn't like he could tell her the truth. She didn't know that he'd served the royal family, apart from a vague knowledge that he'd once been a kitchen boy at the Catherine Palace and didn't like talking about them now. Besides, she was such a blabber-mouth that, come teatime, all her friends would know he was in love with a dead princess.

Worse, Irina might play at being sweet when it suited her, or when she wanted to come across as a victim, or when she felt Dimitri was wronging her in some way or other, but he knew she could be vindictive.

In fairness, he probably deserved to be the object of her revenge, but that didn't mean he was about to metaphorically hand her a sharpened bread-knife, expose his rib-cage, and give her leave to stab at him.

If she knew about his prior connections to the late imperial family, he shuddered to think how she would counter the – comparatively minor – threats he had so often used on her.

So all he could do was sit and watch the unknown woman sleep.

He decided that if Irina did weasel her way back in here within the next hour or so, and their suicidal guest was still not awake, he might ask her to bring him the registry.

He wanted to know what name she'd given when she paid for her stay at The Sunbeam.

Anya woke to the scent of lilies.

Was this what heaven smelled of? Lilies?

For a horrible moment, back at the river, she'd thought someone had rescued her, preventing her from joining her family.

Her eyes opened and focused on a single white lily in a glass vase. She began to smile, still convinced – for the moment – that she had indeed made it to the other side and her spirit was about to be clasped in her Mama's loving embrace, that she would hear Maria and Alexei's voices any second.

Then it became horribly clear, and she wanted to weep.

She had not died. She was not in the afterlife, smelling haunted lilies off the graves of the dead, but in an ordinary room lying on an ordinary bed looking at a live snowy-colored lily put out on a nightstand for decoration.

"No," she moaned. "Nyet..."

A nearby voice said, very matter-of-fact, "You're awake."

"Why didn't you let me die?" she sobbed into the pillow under her. "I was supposed to die. I'm tired of being here – I can't anymore, I can't!"

"I could throw you back, if you want," said the voice, not seriously but not exactly kindly, either.

"Why are you so unkind?"

"I'm unkind? I nearly killed myself, saving you." There was a slight chortle of disbelief in his tone. "What were you running from? Why did you–"

"I was running to someone," she croaked out, not letting the speaker finish the borderline insulting question. "My family. They were killed in the revolution. I wanted to be with them again."

"Jesus. I've rescued a crazy person."

"I'm not crazy."

She blinked, her tears slowing as she rolled over to face the speaker. She knew that voice – her skin was prickling with fear and delight as she recognized it. It couldn't be! Not after all this time, not after she'd given up hope of ever finding him.

Sitting in a chair a foot or so away from her bed, looking almost precisely how she remembered him from years ago, was Dimitri.

"It's you," Anya gasped, stretching her hand out for him, wishing his chair were closer so she could make contact. "Oh, God, I can't believe it."

He stared at her skeptically, the obvious lack of warmth in his brown eyes far from what she expected. "Have we met?"

"Dimitri!" she snapped, about to scold him for not recognizing her, hardly convinced she could have changed enough in nine years that he wouldn't know her, when the door behind him swung open and Irina – the woman she'd met yesterday when she paid for a bed – came in.

"Oh, so you've finally returned to us, have you?" She was carrying a bowl of broth on a tarnished tray. "You gave us quite a fright, you know."

"I..." Anya's throat closed.

Irina pointed at Dimitri, clearly misunderstanding why their guest had cried out his name a moment ago. "Don't let him worry you, dearie, he just gets a little handsy with red-haired girls." She studied Anya's face for a moment, then sighed heavily. "Uh-oh, and blue eyes to boot! How unfortunate. You'd best let me know if he bothers you, sweetheart." She sighed again. "I'll make sure he leaves you alone."

"Irina?" Dimitri said the woman's name in a slow tone Anya knew meant he was rapidly losing his patience. Even Alexei had tended not to put too much pressure on him when he used that tone, as it usually meant he was on the verge of completely losing it. His eye was, unmistakably, twitching.

"Yes?"

"Shut up."

Irina did shut up, but Anya didn't like the testy way Dimitri and this woman were looking at each other – as if they shared a number of darkly unpleasant secrets between them.

Dimitri rose from his chair, and Anya – catching sight of his right hand – felt her chest tighten, constricting painfully, as the world in front of her eyes seemed to fill up with tiny dark spots.

He was wearing a wedding ring.