He could have kissed her for not saying his name. He didn’t look over his shoulder, but still, he heard the hitch in the conversation behind the bushes. They wouldn’t be alarmed at hearing an English miss, but they could well react if they heard his voice, with its Russian accent.

In that moment, he envisioned no fewer than five different scenarios. He let them play out and deemed all but one of them unacceptable.

So he touched a soft hand to Lily’s elbow and leaned close enough to whisper in her ear. “I am not. Can we walk a bit away from here? I will explain.”

For five long seconds, she simply held his gaze, thoughts ricocheting through her winter blue eyes. But then she smiled, tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow, and said, at a normal volume, “I’d like to get a few photographs of the ducks from another angle now if that’s all right, dearest. Over by that tree, perhaps?”

Far enough away to be out of earshot, and the tree would provide him cover if Suvorov and Nabokov emerged onto the path. That should have been all that concerned him.

So why did his heart stutter over that dearest? She’d said it only to preserve the anonymity he was clearly striving for. He knew that. Even so. No one had ever called him by such an endearment, other than his own mother. Alyona certainly hadn’t.

It made a bit of the tundra thaw.

They ambled toward the tree as if they were just two carefree Londoners out for a stroll. But Zivon was careful to keep his back to the other Russians.

Once at the tree, Lily raised her camera again, but she didn’t look through the viewfinder. She looked at him. “Talk.”

First, he took in a long breath. “Apologies. It is probably nothing. It is only . . . there were men speaking Russian over there. And one of them is an old acquaintance. We served together in the Foreign Ministry before the war.”

Which meant that had the two spotted him, Fyodor would have called out an enthusiastic Marin! while his cousin was calling Filiminov!

Disaster.

Lily blinked. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

He exhaled. “Of course. Apologies again. I have not announced to anyone in Russia that I am here. Given the target I painted on my back, it seemed wisest to remain incognito for a while.”

She glanced past him, though only for a second, then she looked at her camera. That, as much as the soft padding of feet over grass and the voices, now speaking in French, talking of the theater and children and Kira, told him that the men had emerged. “Do you fear they’re Bolsheviks?”