The modus operandi that had been second nature to Dimitri for so long - always have an escape plan and remember to cut your losses - seemed to have oozed right out of his ears the last night in the palace. Anya's unforeseen...circumstances had shaken his confidence even more than their escape from the guards on the train, which now felt like a minor inconvenience after what had transpired in that house.
At one time, Dimitri could part a widower from his life's savings as easily as he could a young lady from her unmentionables. Years of practice had made it effortless, molding him into the consummate artist. Teaming up with Vladimir and his counterfeit prowess had made Dimitri unstoppable. He'd been a con's con, the man, and anything in the city he wanted was his for the taking.
Then he'd met Anya and turned into a fucking amateur overnight.
Mistake after mistake, blunder after blunder. Murphy's law in action in every aspect of their carefully crafted scheme - all day, every day. It drove him insane. Never more so than in his needing to play hero to Anya's damsel in distress.
It triggered an identity crisis for Dimitri at first. He'd never met the distraught man running to Anya's rescue, and he certainly hadn't recognized the guy spilling his guts beside a cozy campfire. Even amidst the horror of his emotions being exposed to Anya's pity, Dimitri understood one thing: his sentimental doppelganger had to go. Immediately.
He regrouped once everyone had fallen asleep that first night, mentally ticking off the factors that had brought him to the forsaken Latvian wilderness in the first place.
He had no home, no real family, no woman, and very little money. Which meant he had no legitimate future at the moment. The only endings waiting for him in St. Petersburg should he fall short were a tiny jail cell or a forced labor camp or a soldier's bullet with his name on it. If failure hadn't been an option before they left Russia, it sure as hell wasn't now.
The self-assessment gave Dimitri the strength to bind and gag the pitiful version of himself deep within his mental prison, where he belonged. Sad bastard never should have gotten out in the first place.
He also realized - not without an initial wave of self-loathing - that the attempted rape may have even worked in his favor. Anya hadn't broken, but she had definitely softened, so pliable now she'd follow any command he gave her without complaint or protest. All was not lost. A traumatic experience may have been just the thing to get the con back on track.
"We need to stay out here," he explained to Vladimir, who didn't like Anya exposed to the elements when there were perfectly good inns in town somewhere, no matter what Inga had said. "Do you want people to think one of us has been knocking her around?" Dimitri had just managed to keep his expression neutral, as the thought of Anya's bruised face still made him feel like someone had set his lungs on fire. Each time he'd sneak into town past the local police for a few days' worth of food and beer, Dimitri prayed he didn't run into Ivan and have to strangle the urge to finish what he'd started.
Keeping things impersonal with Anya became a necessity. He taught her exactly what she needed to know and no more. No smiles, no teasing, no clever Dimitri-isms he knew would make her laugh - nothing. He didn't make eye contact longer than he needed to. He wouldn't come anywhere near her to prevent inadvertent touching of any kind.
Dimitri had to remain vigilant. Now that it had broken out once, his jailed alter ego wasn't going down without a fight.
The nightmares Anya thought she'd kept hidden, for example, had it straining against its rusted chains with the need to comfort her. Dimitri heard her thrashing and whimpering every night but reinforced the padlock on those restraints, not allowing himself more than a cursory glance to check on her welfare. As long as she wasn't beating her head against a rock or something, she was fine.
While his softer side was susceptible to Anya's impromptu sob session, practical Dimitri just wanted to shut her up by any means necessary, and thank God he was still in charge. Throwing Ivan in her face felt much like pouring vodka over an open wound, but it had to be done. In the end, when he'd been able to strike a balance between sympathy and detachment and she'd snapped out of her funk, Dimitri wondered if humanizing her lessons a bit might advance her faster than cold, hard facts alone.
As he predicted, Anya more easily retained the glut of information after he relaxed his teaching style. Though he held the leash on his feelings with an iron fist, he no longer balked when Anya strayed from the subject matter. If delving into a lively debate on philosophy - how the hell had she studied Descartes in an orphanage, anyway? - somehow committed the intricacies of royal court life to her memory, then so be it.
"Dimitri," Vladimir said one afternoon, as the sun speared bright white light through the trees surrounding them, "the bus left nearly a week ago. We should focus on finding transportation to Germany."
"No," Dimitri said, brushing off his partner's unnecessary concern. "Anya hasn't healed enough yet."
So Vladimir kept Anya supplied with scraps of cloth moistened with icy water from a nearby stream; she winced and held them against her face until they warmed to aid the healing process.
Dimitri also found it interesting, if not fortuitous, that Anya already shared the Grand Duchess' known tastes in music and art. It hadn't been his intention to spend so much time lying on his back in the soft new grass by her side, discussing the work of artists he knew and blithely teaching her lewd songs from the whorehouses Vladimir used to frequent when Dimitri was younger.
He rather liked how she'd snort with laughter, teeth gleaming white in the sun, but it was all in the name of education. If a friendly rapport was what she needed to recall the daily routines in the Romanov household, he'd oblige her.
"Dimitri," Vladimir said late one night, voice gruff with unease, "it has been over two weeks. Anya's face is almost completely healed. We should leave soon."
Dimitri shook his head from his seat on the ground, watching Anya wriggle into a more comfortable position under his coat, fast asleep. Since discovering that his presence kept her nightmares in check, he'd relocated his sleeping spot to her side of their camp. She needed to sleep well to learn well. No danger there; he never got too close. "She's still too skinny, Vlad," he said. "We need to get some more fat on her first."
Their remaining funds dwindled even faster when they doubled their efforts in fattening Anya up: dark, dense loaves of bread, whole pieces of smoked fish all to herself, thick chunks of pungent goat cheese, the fattiest chicken thighs they could find. Dimitri even made Vladimir hand over the local honey cake he'd tried to hide in his coat. Going a little hungry to ensure Anya looked presentable for the Dowager was a sacrifice Dimitri was willing to make.
"Dimitri," Vladimir began, exasperated.
"I know it's been almost a month, Vlad," Dimitri snapped, irritated that his mentor seemed to be losing faith in Dimitri's judgment. "We should wait until the weather gets a little warmer. Traveling will be easier on these back roads then. We're lucky it hasn't really snowed or rained since we've been out here."
After another straight week of balmy spring weather, when it became clear that Anya could walk and talk and roll royal facts off her tongue like she'd known them all her life, Vladimir simply shot Dimitri a withering look.
For no reason, it made Dimitri anxious. "She's not ready yet, Vlad," he said. "We - she just needs a little more time." Saying it out loud made it sound uncomfortably close to a lame excuse, which it wasn't at all, but Dimitri had to make sure Anya had learned everything she needed know, that he hadn't missed anything. They still had so much more ground to cover, and if that meant more illuminating conversations about everything and nothing that burned through the hours of the day to make absolutely sure, well...
Dimitri knew what he was doing.
Another morning soon after, Vladimir squeezed Dimitri's shoulder hard enough to make him wince. The older man's beard had overgrown to become one with the rest of the frizzled hair on his head. "Dimitri, we will soon have no more money. We are leaving. Right now. Or would you rather we all starve?"
Dimitri bristled and shrugged off his hand. Who did Vladimir think he was? Anya would be ready when Dimitri said so, not before.
Luckily for his friend, Dimitri just so happened to think that day had come.
As they packed up Pooka and the rest of their belongings and took to the road at last, Dimitri noticed Anya had adopted Anastasia's royal gait with no encouragement. She'd evidently refined it to perfection and made it her own, creating a sight as she walked ahead of him that was downright sensual. Dimitri's throat and trousers tightened as he swallowed mouthfuls of nothing.
It was the celibacy talking again. Nothing to fret about. The second he got rich, that would be the first thing he'd rectify.
In addition to her highborn stride, Anya recalled everything else she'd been taught with flawless accuracy.
She maintained immaculate table manners as they lunched in the back of a pig farmer's truck on the way to the Lithuanian border.
She rode horseback deep into the boonies to skirt the patrol like she had been born in a saddle.
Hour after hour, she recited the names and nicknames and personal histories of every single member of the royal family - the Romanovs and the rest of Europe - after they hitched an overnight ride across Poland into Germany.
Then she handled her bicycle with an instinctive grace for the half day journey to Berlin before practically passing out from exhaustion on the bus.
Dimitri watched her sleep with her cheek pressed against the window in a state of astonishment. And perhaps a tinge of admiration. She was a trooper.
"Here," Vladimir said in a whisper, pressing a thick wad of German Rentenmarks into Dimitri hand during a rest stop a few hundred miles from their destination. "There is enough for food and boat fare, as well as some clothes and toiletries for Anya."
Dimitri's eyes widened. "Where the hell did you get all this money?" Then he noticed the faint tan line on Vladimir's right middle finger where his gaudy ruby ring used to be. The one he hadn't taken off since the day he'd barreled into Dimitri's life.
Dimitri's heart sank. All these years and he'd never asked about its significance. Now he wished he had. "Jesus, Vlad...you didn't have to do that. I know it was important to you - "
Vladimir held up his hand to stop Dimitri and smiled. He threw an affectionate glance at Anya, who had started snoring. "Anything for Her Majesty."
Dimitri had a good half hour to find Anya something suitable to wear for her grandmother's inspection. He purchased a decent hairbrush, a bottle of shampoo and some kind of fancy soap at an apothecary near the bus stop, blushing at having to use hand gestures to communicate with the surly clerk.
Thankfully, he didn't have to wander too far to find a dress shop. As he perused rack after rack of girlish confections in lace and satin and cotton gauze, snippets of recent conversations he thought he'd forgotten floated into his mind unbidden.
Their pupil may have learned a great deal over the past few weeks between himself and Vladimir, but Dimitri had unintentionally picked up tidbits about her. Things that were just Anya and not Anastasia at all.
Like how tulips made her sneeze and how she loved summertime thunderstorms. How she was deathly afraid of butterflies. That she hated wearing shoes and could darn a sock by hand with her eyes closed. That the one chocolate she'd received the Christmas of her thirteenth year had tasted so good she'd cried. That she'd had the mumps once, lice and whooping cough twice, and influenza at least eight times. That her favorite color was that of a clear sky because of how she'd stare out of a dirty window from a sick bed in the orphanage, wishing she could play outside.
Dimitri remembered everything, down to how Anya's nose had crinkled or her eyes had squinted or the dimple in her left cheek had flashed when she spoke. Every last detail had stuck in his brain like cloves in an Easter ham.
So he understood why the blue dress beckoned to him, its sleeve a bright island in a monochrome sea of dull gold, brown and gray. He worked the hanger free from the rack and held the dress up to the rich sunlight streaming through the windows. The smooth sateen fabric gleamed softly, flowing like a fluid between his fingers.
It was a bit on the large side, but he didn't have time for any more browsing. It had to be the one.
He paid the aggressive cashier, but not before she'd somehow talked him into buying a matching set of cotton pajamas and some coordinating hair ribbons using body language alone.
Dimitri had a spring in his step as he strolled back down the street to the bus depot. With a start he realized it was because he couldn't wait to see the look on Anya's face.
Fine, maybe he did care much more than he should have. But this enterprise had been his entire adult life's work, and these were extenuating circumstances. It required a certain level of passion. He could cut himself a little slack.
At the end of the day, it didn't matter how much of what Anya hated and loved had been branded onto his mind. Ten million rubles could buy all the amnesia he'd ever need when all this was over.