Peter smiled, and his gray eyes crinkled at the corners. “I was his shadow. He was the gamekeeper on a big estate and he took me out with him, rain or shine, and taught me all about animals, trees, plants, and weather. It was a happy childhood.”

“You didn’t go to school?”

“A bit. In our world, there’s not much call for book learning, every call for understanding the land.”

He was clearly not ashamed of his lack of education, and Maria liked that. “How does your mother manage now?”

He shrugged. “She is a capable woman, so she gets by, but she is somehow . . .” He searched for the right word. “Somehow less.”

With the edge of her finger Maria wiped away a tear that threatened to spill over. The poor woman. “Do you live with her?”

“I live here,” he said, “in a house across the road. Mother stays with my sister, who is married and has a baby on the way.”

Maria smiled. “You must let me know when it arrives and I will send a gift. I love babies.”

Peter coughed, seeming embarrassed again. “I don’t think that would be right somehow . . .”

“I don’t see why not. You mean because you are our guard? My sisters and I were very friendly with the guards at the Governor’s House in Tobolsk and I hope you and I can be friends here. Otherwise life gets so tedious. You are fortunate that when you finish your shift you can go outside and do whatever you wish. I am stuck with my parents and neither of them is in a particularly gregarious frame of mind.”

He frowned, and she sensed he did not understand the word “gregarious,” so she continued, “In fact, their company is rather dull. So would you mind if I slip out to chat to you sometimes? To help us both pass the hours?”

He thought about this for a moment. “I’m not sure what the commissar will say, but it’s fine with me.”

“Good. That’s agreed then.”

As he had promised, Konstantin Ukraintsev came to their drawing room later to give his regards to her parents. They invited him to sit and chat, which was most unusual for them. Before he left, he promised to send a cable to Maria’s sisters in Tobolsk to let them know where they were and that they had arrived safely. Her mother and father seemed much cheered by his visit and spoke for some time about how wonderful it was to see him, then about their memories of Livadia.