Chapter 5 #2
Bending over the plan, Mikhail shifts the musician platform to the pavilion and traces a wider exit through the southern doors. Without asking her husband, Irina moves two blocks of the schedule.
Irina confirms that the change can be made. The older room limits the ceremony to immediate family and required witnesses, while everyone else can watch through the pavilion's open doors.
Galina blinks twice before closing the folder, her voice firm when she says, "Then that's what we'll do."
Larissa reaches across the table and squeezes Galina's wrist. She releases her before comfort can become embarrassing.
Half an hour later, two armored cars carry us downtown through streets made bright by snow.
Past the thick glass, I recognize the pharmacy where I buy toothpaste in bulk and the bus shelter I use when my car is being repaired.
Although I can name every storefront, I can't reach any of them without an escort.
Against the warm leather seat, I press my palm until the urge to ask the driver to stop passes.
The couture house occupies a narrow stone building with its name cut discreetly above the door.
Its curtains are closed to the street. Inside, ivory walls rise around a central fitting room where three seamstresses wait beside racks of silk.
Long mirrors catch the women from every angle, multiplying the diamonds and pale fabric around my borrowed gray sweater.
No one asks my size aloud. A woman with a tape measure leads me behind a screen while the others argue over necklines. She checks how the sample falls across my hip before tightening the bodice and brings alternatives with room for me to breathe.
In the first gown, I become a very elegant lampshade.
Sleeves on the second are so ornate that my hands appear to have joined a royal procession without me.
For the third, I step out in a fitted ivory sample pinned open along the back, its unfinished skirt falling from my waist in one pale, fluid sweep.
Conversation stops.
For a reason that has nothing to do with the bodice, my breath catches.
In the mirror, I still have tired eyes and the serious mouth I see every morning, but the dress asks me to regard them differently.
Without disguising either, it draws attention to the curve of my waist and the straight line of my shoulders.
These parts of me have always deserved to be seen this way.
At Galina's request, the seamstress preserves the simple front. For the conservatory aisle, Irina adjusts the train while Dasha sits on the carpet and tests whether she can reach the hidden fastenings if something tears. With each suggestion, the gown becomes easier to inhabit.
"The back should be lower, since Konstantin has behaved terribly and should suffer a little before receiving forgiveness," Larissa says.
Galina lifts one eyebrow and reminds Larissa that we're preparing for a family ceremony.
"She's also marrying a forty-seven-year-old man who announced an intended wife after ten minutes. I propose we respect both institutions."
Heat climbs from my chest into my face. "How much lower?"
Larissa comes behind me and folds the loose fabric inward without touching my skin. The new line stops just above my waist. It's elegant from a distance and devastating from anywhere Konstantin is likely to stand.
Larissa steps back. "That line rewards attention."
I meet my own eyes in the mirror. "Keep it."
The lingerie fitting occurs in a smaller room with Dasha guarding the door. Galina carries the earring case into the adjoining salon, then shuts the door behind her. Larissa opens drawers of silk without lowering her voice or her eyes.
"My husband loved watching other men want me," she says as she lays an ivory set across the table.
"Sometimes I chose one of them, with his knowledge and my pleasure at the center of it.
He was killed, and people have been trying to turn our marriage into either a tragedy or a scandal ever since.
I won't let them flatten it. We were happy in the form we chose. "
I run one finger along the narrow silk strap. "I wasn't planning to reduce you to either fact."
Larissa meets my gaze, the mischief briefly absent from her face. "That is why I told you."
A moment later, she lifts a black scrap that would fail to conceal a postage stamp.
"This one is for later. As for the wedding night, wear what makes you feel dangerous and then make him wait. Men who command rooms become remarkably foolish when denied permission to touch. Move his hand away, then look him in the eye until he asks for whatever he assumed would be his."
The memory of Konstantin's thumb beneath my ear sends warmth across my skin. In the conference room, he promised the marriage would never grant consent. Larissa's advice puts the other half of that promise into my hands, the pleasure of deciding exactly when to give it.
"What if I don't want him to wait very long?"
"Then make the wait memorable."
We choose ivory for the ceremony and the black scrap for a future I have no sensible reason to picture so vividly.
By evening, pins hold my hair in a loose arrangement that leaves my face recognizably mine.
The skin-care woman abandons a tray of harsh treatments when I tell her my face reacts badly to fragrance.
Galina loans me old diamond earrings from the family vault, and I refuse a necklace heavy against my collarbones. Nobody argues.
Mikhail returns to escort us home and raises his phone toward the fitting room.
Galina intercepts his wrist with her cane. "If that photograph reaches Konstantin, I'll tell airport security that the saber belongs to you."
Mikhail lowers the phone at once.
Dasha gathers the garment bags and remarks that one day without seeing everything he wants might finally educate the groom.
I look from her to Irina, Larissa, and Galina. This morning, every rule protecting me had to be written onto paper. These women have known me for a few hours, yet they're already protecting my choice to keep something from their own relative.
Galina turns to the waiting security man. "Tell my nephew that his bride is unavailable to him until tomorrow's date. After that, he waits until the conservatory doors open."
Konstantin has made every decision since announcing our marriage. Now someone else is making him wait.