The Red Tide by Christopher Nicole
Author:Christopher Nicole [Nicole, Christopher]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Endeavour Media
Published: 2015-02-04T05:00:00+00:00
Chapter Eight - The Mistress
The Princess Dowager Nathalie Bolugayevska knew the glow of anticipated pleasures as she got out of her car in the forecourt of Rasputin’s apartment house, and smiled at her daughter. Afternoons with Father Gregory were all they really lived for. And when they had been summoned on a non-regular day, it was even more exciting. Winter had come down with a blast from the north; snow was thick on the ground and even with chains it had taken them nearly an hour to drive from the Bolugayevski Palace to this house, only a few blocks away. The car had slithered to and fro. and such passers-by as were out had scurried to and fro as well to avoid being mown down.
Nathalie thought winter was the best time of the year, in Petersburg — she refused ever to call it by its new name — providing, of course, that one was a princess. Or the daughter of one. Nathalie endeavoured never to see a newspaper, much less buy one or read it. But even she could not be unaware that things were not right with Russia. It was not so much the war. The front had been stabilised along a line stretching roughly from Riga to the eastern end of the Carpathians; this left an enormous amount of Russian territory in German hands, but it was a lot better than what had at one time seemed likely, and with the Tsar himself in command great things were hoped of next year. Of course, people were saying that Russia had suffered more than two million casualties in the first year of the war — some people put the figure as four million — but most of these were prisoners and they would one day be coming home. If they survived the German prison camps. But there could be no escaping the great hunger that was sweeping across the capital, accentuated by the chill. Nathalie made a habit of driving through the streets with the curtains closed in the back of the car, so that she would not have to look at the emaciated faces, staring at her and her furs and her plump, well-fed body. Rasputin liked her plump, well-fed body. As he liked Dagmar’s plump, well-fed body. At eighteen. Dagmar was an only slightly smaller edition of her mother.
Nathalie had not the slightest reservations about prostituting her daughter to the staretz. Physically, there was no reason to have reservations; she knew that Dagmar was still a virgin, however she had become used to a man fondling her body. Morally. there could be no crime involved, as long as one believed in Rasputin’s message. But Nathalie knew she would not have had reservations in any event. Born the daughter of a wealthy Georgian merchant, and of a Circassian mother, she had been brought up in the hot heady atmosphere of Tiblis. Her virginity had been equally well protected, but simply to ensure a good marriage, not for any moral reasons.
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