Stealing Hearts

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Trieste, March 1868


The blare of trumpets and the sonorous beating of drums cleared the narrow road winding through Trieste in front of the Pensione Anglais. A veritable parade marched behind the banner of the Kalishnikov family crest. Two female Eldren hussars rode ahead, with liveried trumpeters and drummers close behind. His venerable heritage, Alexi rode before the coach and six, mounted on a Lipizzaner stallion, strewing coins to the children dancing alongside the procession from a sack at his sword belt.

Alexi's hair shone like a nimbus around his head, the shocks of bright red held back by the diadem of silver and gold encrusted with raw gemstones. Hewas decorated in the dress blue uniform of a colonel general of the Imperial Artillery. Standing at stiff attention in the carriage was a herald liveried with the family crest, and the sash of a graduate of the Romanov Academy.

The parade came to a halt in front of the hotel's narrow doorway, and the herald exclaimed in very broken English.

"Evangaline of London is summoned to the sublime presence of His Venerable Heritage, the great Boyar Alexi, beloved of God and the Tsar!"

Evie had thought Miss Katherine was wealthy. But she weren't nothing and a half when it was compared to this Alexi cutter. She stood in the hotel doorway watching the progression move through the street, shaking her head the entire while. Weren't no blood in the world worth this kind of attention and Evie certainly wasn't worth even a quarter of it. But then again, she thought, if I had that much money, I'd want to show it off every now and again too.

Char sat on her shoulder as the carriage came to a halt and she shushed him back inside to wait with Miss Josephine. He'd be fine for the short while that this little lunch would take. As the herald nearly screamed her head off, she made sure to get her brain box into the right space. He may have caught her off guard before, but not this time. She didn't have any reason to think he'd be anything but nice, but there weren't no reason she should let charm and money keep her from being Evie.

She called up to him, "I tell Miss Katherine I ain't no princess and I'll tell you that I ain't no Evangeline. I'm just Evie to you and to them and that's okay. Now where do I sit in this thing?" She looked up at the over-elaborate carriage. It was hard not to get jangled over that much jink, but she was going to do her best.

Alexi gave a hearty laugh at Evie's response, and bellowed a command in Russian. He clutched the sack of small coins, and tossed it to the herald standing in the carriage. As a trumpeter helped Evie into the carriage, the herald dumped the remaining coins in a puddle behind the carriage, clearing the path in front of the parade. The small band struck up again, and the march began anew.

As the road widened near the docks, Alexi fell back, his stallion high stepping beside the carriage. The tall red head leaned over to speak with the young cat girl seated in state facing forward.

"It is well for you, piroski, that you leave Trieste soon," he said, an obvious jovial tone in his voice. "Sneaking out to pilfer, you'll be beset by beggars and not be able to sneak." He smiled warmly at her, oblivious to her reaction. "I shall have to make good your hardship and privation."

"We got more beggars in London than you can shake a stick at," she said with a hint of a smile on her face. She thought of Bobby, who ran a begging peel better than most people twice his age. Too many damn beggars as it is, he'd say. Creating extra competition I don't need or want. "And trust me, ain't no shortage of sticks being shook either."

Evie looked at him riding beside her, a slightly puzzled look on her face as she processed the last of his statement. "But what's a piroski and why are you making my hardship good?"

Alexi roared with laughter, and had to wipe tears from his eyes. "Piroski is only a term of endearment, not disparagement," he said, still overcome with surprisingly boyish giggles. "And I want what is bad to be made good." He rode beside the carriage, his high spirits obvious as he waved to the crowds, and pulled a few remaining coins from pockets on his uniform.

As the parade reached the docks, the Russian dismounted, allowing the Eldren Hussars to lead away his horse. He marched to the carriage to open the door himself, taking Evie's hand to help her step down from the high brougham. With a courtly grace that betrayed his skill as a dancer, he held her hand at her shoulder's height, and walked with her up the gangplank to the Odyssey.

A small round lacquered table with two overstuffed wing backed chairs from the study below deck had been arranged under the awning on the deck. A groaning board loaded with what he understood to be English delicacies stood to one side.

A corned brisket of beef, stewed with cabbages and carrots in a silver ewer, fresh baked bread, clotted cream and ginger cookies, with a glass tureen of spotted dick were arrayed on the Chippendale. The plates were simple glass, on brass chargers, with large wine glasses filled to the brim with excellent port decorated the table.

Alexi led Evie to the chair on the right, and let go her hand to pull the chair out, holding the wings of its back to slide under her as she was seated. "I hope the menu is to your liking," he said with exaggerated seriousness. A small side table held an envelope, and two brightly ribboned and wrapped gift boxes, the tags labled, "Evangaline."

Evie had already seen Alexi's generosity in action back on the boat and Miss Katherine and Miss Josephine had told her that he was exceptionally willing to give things away. But none of that made it any easier for her to keep her hackles from raising up at the sight of all the food and gifts. That inner voice kept screaming, Ain't nothing in this life for free, Eglantine Varney. Everything comes with its price. But she knew she just had to think about it all like Bobby did. When he ran a begging scam, he was trying to peel people by taking their jink using their own goodness. He called it a pilfer of the heart. Evie wasn't too bad at it. But that didn't mean she liked it all that much.

"It looks good, but you mind if I ask you a question before I dig in?" She looked at all the food and her mouth watered a little as Alexi sat down in his own chair. "I know they say that you shouldn't go looking a gift horse in the mouth..." Evie had never understood why it was a horse and why you'd want to look it in the mouth in the first place, but words were a strange beast of their own. "But I'll look anyway. What do you see in me that deserves all this?"

Alexi took his own seat, and waved away the servants. "You ask a fair question, and in truth, I am being unfair to you," he said evenly. The Russian reached to pile corned beef and cabbage onto his plate.

"You are being tested, most unfairly, but not without reason," he continued. "If I can learn to buy your good will, I can reestablish my role as an agent of my Empress, and my personal policy." He smiled warmly at the cat girl, trying not to betray his unease at the cat girl having her hackles up. "You think I wish to run the gamut of the lovelies England has to offer. I tell you no," he sighed. "I have no wish to bed you." Narrowing his eyes, he grins wickedly. "Not that the desire isn't there, but no will. Only to show you two worlds, and two choices. Josephine's world, and my own."

He extended his hand towards the side table with the gifts. "If you wish, we can skip the meal, and proceed to the test?"

"No," she said, shaking her head, "that ain't called for. Don't get far if you pass up good food when offered." And she reached out and scooped some of the beef onto her own plate, following by just ripping a hunk of the bread off and quickly throwing it onto her plate, the heat of it almost too much against her sensitive fingertips. Even disregarding her own hunger, Evie was willing to wait it out a little before getting to the real purpose of the whole deal. After all, she thought, first rule of the peel is wait as long as it takes. And then wait a little longer.

Before she started eating though, she looked Alexi in the eye. "I'll be straight with you. If I had a need to scratch an itch, you'd be a prime target for sure. Besides the looks and more coin than I ever seen in my young life, you deal straight up. And ain't enough people do that. May sound odd coming from a mistress of the cross-trade, but I ain't a mark to be peeled and I got no plans to be treated like one." Then she stabbed a piece of beef and stuck it in her mouth, contentedly chewing away.

Alexi laughed happily. He picked at his food as he watched the cat girl eat food more to her custom. He studied her openly, trying to get a handle on this urchin with the pride of a princess.

"Careful with that gilded tongue," he said. "Our Josephine might be tempted to anger by it."

When Evie had pushed aside the plate, he reached for the envelope. "Please accept this gift, to be redeemed upon your return to London," he said with great formality.

Inside the envelope was a ten pound note, inscribed, "To be redeemed for tickets to a West End show only." "With this gift, you can learn that all my poor attempts to impress you are as dust before the hot wind of the true showman's art."

Evie nodded and smiled, an almost schoolgirl smile from a girl who had never seen the inside of one. It made her look truly her age. "Never seen a show before, so I'll gladly take this one from you with no regrets." Been hard to justify spending on frivolities when the coin needed to go so many other places. But there was no denying that she was seeing a bit of a show right now. Alexi had some showman in him, she thought, and she wasn't displeased with the idea.

Obviously pleased with her reaction, he grabbed the first box, wrapped in pink paper with a bright red bow. The box contained a calling card with an address in St. Petersburg. Glued to the bottom of the calling card was a single pound coin. "This gift, I wish you to keep with you until you feel the need to use it," he said with solemn seriousness. "It is my home in Petrograd. Should the time come you marry, " he couldn't resist a smile. "WHEN the time comes that you marry, I wish to provide you with a dowry that will purchase a home for you and your young man."

Anticipating objections, he lifted his hand. "Now, it is traditional in England that a father buy the first house for a young couple. I can afford it, and I'm old enough to be your father," he said. "If it must be refused, at least keep it as a memento of how you were tempted by my evil wiles."

Married? Evie couldn't even picture who might want to marry her. Jump in the sack with her? There'd probably be some that wouldn't mind that. But who married a beastie mistress of the cross-trade?

But she took the box from him and said, "I ain't making no promises that I'll ever get married. Or that I'll accept a house if that time comes. I never had no father, so expectations ain't high about what I'd get at a wedding that ain't ever likely to occur." She turned it over in her hands. Nobody handed over a house without there being a price to be paid. But, she thought, since I ain't gotta need of it now, I can put off this loan til later.

"Let's call it an agreement to revisit it. Who knows, cutter? We go forward enough, you might need the jink then more than you want to gift me a kip." And she waited for the second box, comfortable that so far, she hadn't made any promises. But those would be coming, she was sure of that.

The Russian feigned a shrug at her equivocations about marriage. "God is fickle. The day might come when I must come to you for a loan," he said. "If I have you feeling generous with promises of gifts you don't redeem, perhaps you will be more open to my pleas when the time comes, n'est pas?"

Alexi reached for the last box, wrapped in powder blue paper, with a green ribbon with white polka dots. "Of all my gifts, the only offer of immediate satisfaction I can provide is this." The box contained a pretty silver-gilt box, with a winding key. When the lid opened, there was a roughly made copper wire outline of a woman's form. With the lid lifted, the tinny music box began to play Mozart's "Eine Kleine Nacht Musik".

"The only true value of this trinket, beyond what it would fetch at a pawnshop, is merely representational," he stated, his voice flat and emotionless. "The figure is your Josephine. I give her to you, always. I find I cannot possess her, and never shall." With some effort, his mouth smiled, but his eyes were sad, the metallic blue shifting to gray. "You have what I shall never have, Evie," he said, his voice cracking a bit. "You have the ability to be loved. I can only be indulged."

Evie had been expecting a lot of things out of this lunch, but feeling sympathy hadn't been one of them. He reminded her of one of those forlorn puppies at the edge of the marketplace, looking for a shopper rushing by to give it some attention. But as she ran her fingers across the silver edges of the box and the copper wire on the inside, the sympathy started to turn into anger, tinged with a little bitterness. He wasn't no puppy, he was a high up with more given to him then she'd ever have the chance to have in her whole life. And that, maybe, was the problem, she realized. Time to set him straight.

"You better listen close to what I got to say, Alexi," she said quietly, using his name for the first time to emphasize she wasn't kidding around. "You got everything. Looks, grace, coin, power. Can't be loved? That's a pile, is what that is."She stood up quickly, pacing a little to burn off some of the angry energy that had gathered in her, still holding the music box in one hand. "You're like the addle-coved berk of a cross trader who goes to break in a place and when the front door won't open, turns around and goes home. Everything worth having has to be worked for," she said firmly, giving him a stare. "If it ain't earned, it's ashes blowing in the breeze."

She moved over to the table and with her free hand, forcibly shoved Alexi's plate away from him. In the cleared spot, she carefully set down the music box, with a brief inner pang at having to give it up. "That's one gift I can't be taking," she said, lowering her voice so that he had to lean in to hear her. "Because you're going to give it to Miss Josephine. If you want her love, then don't be giving up while you're still standing at the stoop." She slammed her hand firmly on the table.

"Fight for her, you soddin' berk! You want love? You gotta prove you deserve it."

"Ah, my martial friend," Alexi said. "I cannot win this fight for Josephine. No, I must bide and wait, until some lady more fierce then myself claims me, and takes me for her own." He smiled, and took the music box and rolled it, staring at the small trinket as it moved between his hands. "I will return to the field. Too often, if I know me. But I wait to be conquered, not to conquer." Throwing off the melancholy turn of conversation he looked up at the angry girl, and smiled. "I bargain you will not have that problem. You are one who takes what she wants; when you decide to, you'll be the very thief of hearts."



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