back to the hotel. If you will complete the picture of what happened, I will try to spare you interrogation at the police station. And, by the way, the police have already been here — the hotel staff will probably tell you about it. So let me assure you that it would be much better to make your explanations to me.”
The collegiate assessor paused, calculating that more than enough had already been said. Wanda rose abruptly to her feet, took a Persian shawl from the back of a chair, and threw it across her shoulders, although the evening was warm, almost hot. She walked around the room twice, glancing from time to time at the expectant functionary. Finally she stopped, facing him.
“Well, at least you don’t look like a policeman. Have a seat. This story might take some time.”
She indicated a plump divan covered with embroidered cushions, but Erast Petrovich preferred to take a seat on a chair. An intelligent woman, he decided. Strong. Coolheaded. She won’t tell me the whole truth, but she won’t lie to me, either.
“I met the great hero yesterday, in the restaurant at the Dusseaux,” Wanda said, taking a small brocade pouffe and sitting beside Fandorin, positioning herself, in fact, so close to him that she was looking up into his face from below. In this foreshortened perspective she appeared alluringly helpless, like some oriental slave girl at the feet of a pasha. Erast Petrovich shifted uncomfortably on his chair, but to move away would have been ridiculous.
“A handsome man. Of course, I had heard a lot about him, but I never suspected that he was so very good-looking. Especially his cornflower-blue eyes.” Wanda pensively ran one hand across her brow, as if she were driving away the memory. “I sang for him. He invited me to sit at his table. I don’t know what you have been told about me, but I am sure most of it is lies. I am no hypocrite; I am a free, modern woman, and I decide for myself who to love.” She glanced defiantly at Fandorin and he saw that now she was talking without pretense or affectation. “If I take a liking to a man and decide that he must be mine, I don’t drag him to the altar, the way your ‘respectable’ women do. No, I am not ‘respectable’ — in the sense that I do not accept your definition of respectability.”
This is no slave girl, there is no defenselessness here, Erast Petrovich thought in astonishment, looking down at those sparkling emerald-green eyes; she is more like the queen of the Amazons. He could easily imagine her driving men insane with these impetuous transitions from arrogant defiance to submissiveness and back again.
“Could you please stick more c-closely to the subject,” Fandorin said dryly out loud, trying hard not to give way to inappropriate feelings.
“I could hardly be closer,” the Amazon queen teased him. “It is not you who buy me, it is I who take you, and I make you pay me for it! How many of your ‘respectable’ women would be only too happy to be unfaithful to their husbands with the White General in secret, skulking like thieves? But I am free and I have no need to hide. Yes, I found Sobolev attractive,” she said, suddenly changing her tone of voice again, from challenging to cunning. “Yes, why should I pretend I was not flattered by the idea of adding such a big, bright specimen to my butterfly collection? And after that…” Wanda twitched her shoulder. “It was the usual thing. We came here, drank some wine. But what occurred then, I don’t remember very well. My head was spinning. Before I knew what was going on, we were over there, in the alcove.” She laughed hoarsely, but almost immediately her laughter broke off and the light in her eyes faded. “After that it was horrible, I don’t want to remember it. Don’t make me tell you the physiological details, all right? You wouldn’t wish that on anyone — a lover in the very height of his passion suddenly stopping like that and falling on you like a
The collegiate assessor paused, calculating that more than enough had already been said. Wanda rose abruptly to her feet, took a Persian shawl from the back of a chair, and threw it across her shoulders, although the evening was warm, almost hot. She walked around the room twice, glancing from time to time at the expectant functionary. Finally she stopped, facing him.
“Well, at least you don’t look like a policeman. Have a seat. This story might take some time.”
She indicated a plump divan covered with embroidered cushions, but Erast Petrovich preferred to take a seat on a chair. An intelligent woman, he decided. Strong. Coolheaded. She won’t tell me the whole truth, but she won’t lie to me, either.
“I met the great hero yesterday, in the restaurant at the Dusseaux,” Wanda said, taking a small brocade pouffe and sitting beside Fandorin, positioning herself, in fact, so close to him that she was looking up into his face from below. In this foreshortened perspective she appeared alluringly helpless, like some oriental slave girl at the feet of a pasha. Erast Petrovich shifted uncomfortably on his chair, but to move away would have been ridiculous.
“A handsome man. Of course, I had heard a lot about him, but I never suspected that he was so very good-looking. Especially his cornflower-blue eyes.” Wanda pensively ran one hand across her brow, as if she were driving away the memory. “I sang for him. He invited me to sit at his table. I don’t know what you have been told about me, but I am sure most of it is lies. I am no hypocrite; I am a free, modern woman, and I decide for myself who to love.” She glanced defiantly at Fandorin and he saw that now she was talking without pretense or affectation. “If I take a liking to a man and decide that he must be mine, I don’t drag him to the altar, the way your ‘respectable’ women do. No, I am not ‘respectable’ — in the sense that I do not accept your definition of respectability.”
This is no slave girl, there is no defenselessness here, Erast Petrovich thought in astonishment, looking down at those sparkling emerald-green eyes; she is more like the queen of the Amazons. He could easily imagine her driving men insane with these impetuous transitions from arrogant defiance to submissiveness and back again.
“Could you please stick more c-closely to the subject,” Fandorin said dryly out loud, trying hard not to give way to inappropriate feelings.
“I could hardly be closer,” the Amazon queen teased him. “It is not you who buy me, it is I who take you, and I make you pay me for it! How many of your ‘respectable’ women would be only too happy to be unfaithful to their husbands with the White General in secret, skulking like thieves? But I am free and I have no need to hide. Yes, I found Sobolev attractive,” she said, suddenly changing her tone of voice again, from challenging to cunning. “Yes, why should I pretend I was not flattered by the idea of adding such a big, bright specimen to my butterfly collection? And after that…” Wanda twitched her shoulder. “It was the usual thing. We came here, drank some wine. But what occurred then, I don’t remember very well. My head was spinning. Before I knew what was going on, we were over there, in the alcove.” She laughed hoarsely, but almost immediately her laughter broke off and the light in her eyes faded. “After that it was horrible, I don’t want to remember it. Don’t make me tell you the physiological details, all right? You wouldn’t wish that on anyone — a lover in the very height of his passion suddenly stopping like that and falling on you like a
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