The Devil's Favourite Obsession

”No one is going anywhere.” Lorian’s words sounded like ultimate words. ”No one,” he repeated, ”is leaving this place until the engagement. We will leave this place only after we have our house key. And you will sit beside me at that table, and you will smile, Olga, because that is what you are for, and you have done it for thirty years, and you will do it for one more year.”

Something in Olga’s chest, a small lit corner of it she had kept walled and dark for a very long time, opened a single inch. ”The way I sat and smiled,” she repeated, ”and I will do this for years?” A sardonic laugh escaped her throat. ”I realise now that you have always been a stranger to me. If I had known this side of you, I would never have married you!” Olga was more certain than ever that she would never reveal Cixi to Lorian. Her decision was the right one.

”The past cannot be altered. You married me of your own free will.” After placing the watch in its box, he turned and looked at his wife, who was trying to punish him for thinking well of his first daughter. ”If you don’t grasp the extent of my efforts to give my daughter a life free of pain, then you are the one who misunderstands me. I told you everything, thinking you would understand me. But it looks like you have made up your mind for me to be wrong... What will it take for you to end this foolishness?”

”Seeing your true face makes me realise how blindly I have been living. I refuse to be your puppet,” declared Olga.

And Lorian shook his head in disappointment. ”I am only like this because you are not making anything easier for me. I have shown respect until now, so don’t put the blame on me.”

”You were nice because I always agreed. I always tried to understand your point of view. Now that I am voicing my thoughts, is it unacceptable to you?” Olga questioned Lorian, who was trying to gaslight her. But she was no longer a fool to fall into his trap. ”So I am done trying. I will take the divorce, and I will not let this engagement happen, and you can stand at that table on your own.”

For a long moment, Lorian said nothing. Then he picked up the cufflink again, turned it over in his fingers, and said, ”Go and check on your daughter. You will feel calmer when you have spoken to her.” It was the cruellest thing he could have said, because it was so reasonable, and because it worked.

Olga walked out because she didn’t want to spend one more second where Lorian was.

Tatiana’s room was empty.

The bed was made. The wardrobe stood open on a row of dresses chosen for a girl who was about to become useful to powerful people. Olga stood in the doorway and felt the particular hollow that comes when you go looking for someone to save, and find the place where they should already be cold.

She turned to leave, but her eyes caught something. She went on her way to the window — the long one that looked down over the south garden.

Below, in the green, half-shadowed by the hedge that the gardeners kept too tall, her daughter was in Rafael’s arms. Tatiana’s face was lifted. Rafael’s hand was at the back of her neck. They were kissing passionately, believing no one was watching.

A rage coursed through Olga’s body, and every part of her body wanted to scream in fury.

But she did nothing.

She decided to go to the garden.

She came out of the Palace and across the lawn at a pace that was not quite running and was not anything calmer than running either, and her voice arrived in the garden before she did.

”Tatiana. Come with me!”

It was a strong voice, and Rafael smiled before letting go of Tatiana.

He did it easily, without hurry, the way a man sets down a glass he intends to pick up again. And as he stepped back, a small private warmth moved through him that did not reach his face, because the scene assembling itself in front of him, the mother, the daughter, the demand, the trembling, was exactly the kind of thing Rafael liked best in the world.

He did not love power because of what it brought. He loved it because of the dramas it set in motion, the way people came apart in front of you if you simply stood still and let them. He wanted very much to hear what these two women were about to say to one another.

He said nothing. He arranged his face into a polite expression and then waited for the fight.

He did not get it.

Olga did not look at him. She did not give him a single second of her attention, which was, though he would not have admitted it, the only thing in the encounter that genuinely annoyed him. She took Tatiana by the wrist, and she turned, and she walked her daughter away across the lawn without one backward glance.

”Mother—” Tatiana started.

”Not here.”

And then they were gone, in through the far doors, and the garden was quiet again, and the show Rafael had been promised had packed itself up and left before the second act.

He stood in the cooling green a moment longer, mildly entertained, mildly cheated.

Then his gaze drifted — idle, unhurried — up the face of the palace, along the windows of the east wing, and came to rest on the floor where Cixi was staying.

His smile, when it came this time, was for himself.

He had an afternoon to fill.

”Well,” Rafael said softly to no one and started toward the house.

Meanwhile, Emily left without saying goodbye to Cixi, which was the most affectionate thing Emily knew how to do.