The Ice Swan by J’nell Ciesielski

Sunlight filtered through the partially drawn drapes, spotting hazy orbs around the room. Svetlana rolled over and stretched in bed, feeling light and heavy all at once. Touching one of the star earrings still dangling from her ear, she turned her head to gaze around the unfamiliar chamber. Wynn’s room. Her nightdress trailed over the arm of the leather chair. One slipper had landed near the fireplace while the other lay forgotten by the closed door, and her robe had disappeared altogether.

A note with her name scratched across the front lay on the bedside table next to her.

Lana,

You looked so peaceful in my bed that I didn’t want to wake you. Wait for me. I’ll be back shortly.

Wynn

The handwriting was barely discernable, but she smiled anyway. Lying back on the pillow that still carried his scent, Svetlana held up her left hand and smiled as her wedding band glowed with new appreciation in the morning light. She had finally become Wynn’s wife. His true wife in all manner of the name. It had been a night of revelations and discoveries, tenderness and passion. She had lain in his arms wrapped in love as a new beginning stretched before them.

Again and again he’d told her he loved her. She’d reveled in the words, never having heard them before. It wasn’t a phrase commonly used in aristocratic Russian families, and she’d certainly never allowed a man to say it to her. Oh, some had tried, but she’d cut off their flowery words before they embarrassed themselves in dribbling nonsense. Wynn was the only man she wanted to hear say it and the only man she wished to say it to. Last night she hadn’t out of fear. She wasn’t accustomed to allowing her emotions so close to the surface, much less confessed out into the open, and panic had seized her. It was past time for fear. Today was the day. This morning she would tell Wynn she loved him.

Swinging her feet out of the large bed, she ignored the soreness and went in search of her robe. Somehow it had been flung on top of Wynn’s bureau next to the gifted Fabergé egg from Leonid’s name day. She slipped on the robe and tied the sash about her waist as ideas for the day bloomed in her head like spring flowers after a long, bleak winter. Upon Wynn’s return she would confess her love and he would kiss her. Her eyes darted to the bed and heat rushed up her cheeks. Afterward they might go for a walk in the snow and visit one of the lakes—no, he called them lochs—nearby. Maybe go ice skating or on a sleigh ride. She would need to ask if he—they, she corrected herself with a pleased smile—owned a troika or other snow-appropriate conveyance. They could begin the honeymoon they’d never had.

She pirouetted around the room, neatly refolding her nightdress on the chair, arranging her slippers next to the shoes Wynn had kicked off by the fireplace. Taking his crumpled jacket from the floor, she gently shook it out while humming to herself. A yellow telegram fluttered to the floor. It was none of her business, but the sender being the Royal Medical Academy piqued her curiosity. It was dated the day he’d been summoned to London and addressed to the Duke of Kilbride. Odd. He usually requested his colleagues refer to him as Dr. MacCallan.

Your appearance is required before a medical board of your peers. Stop. Hereby to determine fault of surgical procedure and death of Lt. J. Harkin. Stop. Physician title and license remains withheld until inquest concluded. Stop.

Fault of procedure. Death of Harkin. License withheld. The meanings battled through Svetlana’s brain as the words ran together before her eyes. Was Wynn being accused of killing Harkin because of the surgery? She knew he’d been questioned about it, but never to this degree. Never to the point of stripping away his medical license. An ache throbbed at the base of her skull. All this time. Why had he not told her?

The door opened. “Good morning, my beautiful wife. Or I should say, lyubimaya? Did I get that one right?” He shuffled in behind her and closed the door.

“How long?”

“I was only gone about thirty minutes. Luckily Cook already had the oven heated for the scones.”

Clutching the telegram, she slowly turned around. She tried to ignore the mussed hair falling across his forehead and the undone buttons at the top of his wrinkled shirt where a few golden hairs smattered across his wide chest. She tried to block the memory of resting her cheek against that warm chest and clenched the condemning paper tighter.

“How long?”

The pleasantness evaporated from his face as he glanced at the telegram. Very carefully he placed the breakfast tray on the foot of the bed. He’d brought her golden toast with butter, scones with clotted cream, sliced apples, and thin cuts of ham. Somewhere he’d found three snowdrops blooming early in the season and put them in a small vase next to a steaming cup of tea. His thoughtfulness cut to her wounded heart.

“Since Glasgow,” he said quietly.

The cut sank deeper. “Thank you for not lying to me. Again.”

“I was going to tell you. I tried to—”

“When? You’ve had weeks. What would deem me, your wife, worthy to know of your troubles?” Her voice grew cooler with each word as she stepped back into the familiarity of distance and reserve even as pain poured into her widening wound. She folded the telegram precisely in half and dropped it on the table.

“I started to tell you the night of the charity bazaar, but Sergey arrived with news of your family, and my troubles were nothing in comparison to your loss. I tried again last night, but then . . .”

“Then what? You became distracted by falling stars and music under the moon?”

“You asked me not to say anything and if we could have one night for ourselves. I tried to think clearly, not to be selfish, but how could I deny you?”

“This is my fault?” She hiked an eyebrow, daring him to accuse her.

“No. It’s mine. I should have told you from the beginning, but I wanted to try to salvage things. My name and career were being dragged through the mud. They still are. I wanted my name to free you from disgrace, not tarnish you.”

“Did you not think I had a right to know? After all, it is my name now. Or was your plan to patch it all up before I ever found out? Blissful are the ignorant after all.”

“I wanted to keep you safe from one more bad thing happening. To keep you from hurt.”

Had she not proven her strength time and time again? “I am not some fragile piece of glass threatening to shatter at any moment, unlike your ego.” The sharpened words recalled from that night in the solarium during the charity bazaar hit their mark squarely. She wished she hadn’t.

Wynn’s expression darkened to a shade of brewing thunder. He crossed the floor to her in three long strides, stopping close enough for her to see the unloosened storm.

“How easy do you think it is for a man to admit failure to his wife? Everything I have ever worked for has been snatched away. My honor and reputation have been slandered because a young man died on my operating table for a procedure fueled by my arrogance to prove a point. Patients die every day. It’s part of a surgeon’s cruel reality, but I’m the one they’ve chosen to crucify in order to prove that methods cannot and should not be changed. Every hour I wonder if they’re not right about me, but intuition gained over years of experience is quick to swoop in and reassure me that everything I did in that operating theater was for the betterment of my patient. So yes, my ego, my pride is to blame. My savior and my destroyer. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

The full gust of his anger blasted across her, revealing a man raked of his dignity struggling to piece himself together with the tatters that remained. She should go to him, comfort him, tell him she understood. But she couldn’t. He had promised honesty but betrayed her instead. Oh, how she missed her armor of isolation and self-preservation. She may not be able to slip back into it, but she would not be caught defenseless again.

She gathered the folds of her velvet robe and tightened the sash. “If it is the truth, yes. What other lies have you told me?”

“None, I swear. I was only trying to protect you by keeping this from you.”

“What kind of protection is lying?”

“The kind that loves you. That wants to spare you any further hurt in this world and provide you with an honorable name so you can wake up each morning without worry.” He reached for her.

She stepped back as the disappointment and pain grappled in her heart. These months together as man and wife had become some of the best in her life as she discovered what it meant to take comfort in another. They had shared in the joys and agonies, but now to discover she and Wynn were not as she’d thought them to be hurt her in a way that would not have been possible if she’d remained invulnerable.

“How can you speak of love and honor when you’ve withheld something so important? I may not be well-versed in the subject, but I know deception holds no place in true affection.”

His arms dropped, hands clenching at his sides. Each word that came out was clipped with restraint. “Aye, I kept the truth of Harkin’s death and my revoked license from you, but never doubt my affection for you. Never. Everything from last night was the truth.”

“I do not wish to discuss last night.”

“Last night was the most honest moment of my life. I love—”

“No! You justify yourself and expect me to follow along blindly, which I did. All I wanted was for you to rely on me as I have on you, and now that reliance lays scattered between us in broken pieces.” Like my heart.

The thunder dissipated from his eyes, churning them to the unsteady brown-green of the ocean after a storm. “My greatest concern has only ever been for your welfare. I’ve made mistakes along the way. Not telling you the truth of my troubles from the beginning being the biggest, and for that I’m truly sorry. I wanted the burden on myself. Never to fall on you. You have become too precious to me to be crushed under the weight of my failure.”

Precious.That was how she had felt held in his arms hours before, but the feeling crumbled as her heartache suffocated all in its wake. She felt foolish and exposed. This was what came from vulnerability and giving one’s heart to another.

“After everything I went through escaping Russia and being forced to secrecy for fear of my life, I fought against allowing anyone to see my vulnerabilities ever again. Even you. Until you convinced me you were trustworthy. You became my one true north as the rest of the world spun on an axis of chaos.” She pressed her lips tightly together, gathering the strength to defend against the anguish in her soul. “You have broken that trust.”

Pain twisted his face as if she’d struck him. “Let me earn it back.”

“I don’t know if you can.”

“Have you never made a mistake? Or have you been so cold for so long that you’ve frozen out what it means to be human?”

It was her turn to feel struck. The accusation she’d heard too many times to count, but never from him. And that made the sting all the sharper. “That’s right. The Russian princess is cold and heartless. At least that way I can avoid disappointments.”

“Disappointments are a part of life, like the one between us now. I’m sorry for what I’ve broken between us, but I swear to you, I will prove I am a man deserving of your trust.”

His arms reached to circle around her. Oh, how she wanted them to. She wanted to end the struggle and find peace together again, but her need for self-preservation tightened, choking off any means of acquiescence as her body stiffened at his touch.

“Lana, don’t cut yourself off from me.”

She brushed past him toward the door connecting their chambers. “‘Lana’ belonged to a dream that disappeared somewhere between the stars of last night and the cold dawn of today.”

“So that’s it? Something breaks and you toss it onto the rubbish heap because it’s no longer good enough for you?” The dejection in his voice pleaded after her, begging her not to cut the fragile threads binding them together.

Svetlana blinked back the threat of tears and twisted the doorknob. She’d allowed her pragmatism to be clouded by hope. If betrayal was all hope offered in the end, she was better off without the burden. “Better alone than trusting a man who doesn’t keep his word.”

Sweeping into her room, she closed the door behind her as the first tear fell. Followed by another and still more. The weeping of her heart slipped down her cheeks as silence enveloped her in its lonely embrace.