Russia than out.”
“Will we take Cook?” I asked.
Father nodded. “If he wishes.”
“Servants?” Luba asked.
“We’ll have to make do with hotel staff. I’ve written to Afon of our intentions.” Father pulled off his spectacles and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Without Afon here, little Max will be…” He paused, overcome.
Luba went to him and smoothed his back. “We’ll protect him, Father.”
He took her hand in his. “While I breathe, I hope.”
“I’ve been hiding some things in the perfect spot in case we must leave quickly,” Luba said.
Father smiled up at her. “Of course you have. But we’ll leave soon. Be packed and ready to go. Tell no one.” He stood and opened his arms to us and held us close. “We are stronger as a unit and no one will harm you girls if I have a breath left.”
* * *
—
LATER THAT NIGHT, BEFORE BED, Luba and I amused Max on the nursery floor. Varinka was home with her Mamka and it was wonderful to be alone with Max and Luba. We spread a few coverlets and featherbeds on the floor to do what Luba called “camping out,” to sleep there, which Max enjoyed immensely. He lay between us paging through his picture books, every now and then straying to bring back a favorite toy. Luba lay on her belly, marking calculations in a tiny notebook. The room seemed smaller in the darkness, lit by a candle and a kerosene lamp.
“He’s going to ruin his eyes in this low light,” I said.
“So take them away. You’re the parent.”
“Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if Mother had lived and I’d been able to work with Professor Bartell.”
“At Brillantmont? You’d be somewhere in Switzerland dressed in a white lab coat mating pea plants.”
“She said I could be the next Gregor Mendel.”
“It was a terrible thing having to come home to help Father after Mother died but you never would have met Afon. Or had Max. Or broken Cook’s heart.”
“I was fine until Agnessa started wearing Mother’s coat.”
“How could she? It still had Mother’s name in it. Let’s be honest, that woman is our hair shirt.”
Luba was quiet for a moment. “Remember Mother’s story about the two sisters bound by a silver thread so strong they could never be apart? Sometimes I feel like that’s us.” Luba took my hand in hers. “Promise we’ll never be apart? Even if Afon wants to move away someday? I couldn’t bear it.”
I kissed the back of her hand. “Promise. So where is this perfect hiding spot of yours?”
“There,” Luba pointed to the floor at the corner. “Under the floorboard.”
“What is so perfect about that? Servants are in and out of here all day. We should put our supplies in my room. No one goes there. In a bottom drawer.”
“Think, sister. If we are overrun by bandits—which is a high probability the more time we spend out here in the woods—what’s the first place they’ll look? The main bedrooms, of course. Under mattresses. In bureau drawers. No one will think to look under nursery floorboards.”
“We should include money,” I said.
“Jewelry is a better choice. If the tsar is overthrown—”
“Unlikely. He already beat down one revolution.”
“Father said that if the tsar is overthrown, money may become worthless and that gold and gemstones are always good currency. I asked Agnessa for one of her brooches and she said she’s taking them herself, so I took this instead.” Luba pulled from her pocket a bracelet. It was one of Agnessa’s favorites, a Moghul-era gold armlet, with two makara dragonhead terminals, which met at their ferocious-looking, toothy, open mouths. It was enameled in deep indigo and the dragonheads set with ruby and onyx eyes.
“Luba. If she knew—”
“Agnessa will never miss it and we can hide Father’s list in here.”
Luba opened Father’s ledger and ripped the first page from it.
I grasped her wrist. “Are you insane?”
Nimbly as a spider wraps her victim in silk, Luba rolled the paper tight and threaded it into one of the dragons’ mouths. “There. Who would dream this was in here?”
“You should work for the secret police.”
“I also packed my sextant, of course.”
“If you get the sextant I want my rose clippers.”
Luba tilted her head down and looked up at me as though I were a child. “With a sextant we can navigate. Flowers serve no purpose in survival.”
“I would need my Montessori books—”
“You don’t need a book to raise Max. Just get away from Agnessa and trust yourself. You were born a good mother, Sofya.