Katerina's Secret Read Online Free PDF Page B

warm impulsiveness. But one must begin to take steps, she thought, if one was thinking about marrying a man. Of course, if he and the countess – Yes, that would be wonderful.
    Katerina Pyotrovna sat at her dressing table. Outside, the night was flooded with silver. A single light only, that from her bedside table lamp, cast its glow over her bedroom. The reflection of her face in the mirror was shadowed. The hairbrush in her hand was still.
    One clung to life, even when life was so empty. Because there were always memories, she was never completely divorced from what life could offer. She thought of those she loved. She thought every day of them. Her mind turned on the man she had seen, the man who appeared so quietly out of nowhere, with his face lean and drawn, and his eyes very intent. He had looked at her and the pine wood had suddenly become a place of breathless silence for long moments. Then he had smiled and spoken of the rifle shot.
    Boris Sergeyovich had fired that shot, to warn off a creeping intruder. Boris, seeing him from a distance, had gone to get his rifle. The intruder, knowing himself discovered a minute later, had run, with Boris in pursuit. Boris had been furious with himself afterwards. It had been the impulse of a fool, he said, to loose off a shot. And he had not been very pleased with her for venturing into the wood.
    The other intruder, the man with brown eyes and a fine, firm mouth, was not a creeper. He came like a brightness into her mind. Such a man would be so interesting to know and to talk to. He had smiled, and his smile had shed the lines from his face. She felt sad. He represented only a moment of time, a momentthat had come and gone. Boris had carefully followed him, had seen him climb into a car and drive away, and had concluded he was merely a motorist who, having heard the shot, had stopped to investigate and then retreated from her confined world to return to his limitless one.
    Celeste was coming tomorrow. That was a sweet something. She loved the girl. She would talk to her about the man, and Celeste would weave an imaginative story about him, and they would laugh together.
    But she still felt sad, and very lonely.

Chapter Four
    He had retired early last night, after meeting the other guests before taking dinner. Tired after his three-day journey, he had slept well. He had done a small amount of writing after breakfast, and this afternoon he had his work on the table by the summer house, his pencil between his fingers. He always wrote his rough drafts in pencil, his finished drafts in ink. For once, the pencil was indeterminate. It idled. He lacked concentration. His mind was not attuned to the first battle of Ypres. His mind was on a woman of singular enchantment. A Bulgarian countess, Celeste had said. He had never met any Bulgarians, but he imagined the women to be broad-faced and Slavonic, not slender, elegant and breathtaking.
    It was warm again today, the French Riviera basking in its sunny autumn, and conditions could not have been better for the completionof a chapter. But her image was a floating disturbance.
    â€˜Herr Somers, do I interrupt you?’
    The voice was deep, the accented English slightly guttural. Edward looked up. Colonel Franz Brecht, stalwart and upright, a retired forty-five-year-old officer of the Brandenburg Grenadiers, and still an inveterate user of a monocle, smiled enquiringly down at him. Edward had met him last night and they had exchanged a few civil words, then several friendly ones.
    â€˜Since I haven’t written a thing yet, no, you’re not interrupting me, Colonel Brecht.’
    â€˜Ah, a few moments together, then?’ said Colonel Brecht.
    â€˜By all means.’
    The handsome, stiff-haired German took a seat. He viewed the garden with approval and then turned interested eyes on Edward.
    â€˜One cannot complain,’ he said.
    â€˜One doesn’t, I hope, when one is fortunate enough to be able to spend time