Free Sweet Love, Survive by Susan Johnson Page B

out the train door he paused, turned, and said, “Let’s hope they don’t evacuate Taganrog before I get back.” Then, shrugging, he added, “Although, come to think of it, maybe that wouldn’t be so bad either.”
    Everyone knew by now that Red victory was imminent. A sense of impending doom had settled upon the retreating army and refugees alike. As officers, though, both Apollo and Peotr, along with the entire division, would follow orders until there were no more issued. All the years of military training in the elite Guard regiments had left their mark. No one would desert the cause, no matter how hopeless it was, but just the same, everyone knew it was only a matter of time now. The front was dangerously close to Ekaterinodar and Rostov. If they could not be held, it would be full-scale panic to the seaports. Already the six-hour train journey to Novorossiisk took over four days. What would happen when all of South Russia tried to retreat via the southbound train?
    After Peotr left, Apollo stood in the doorway of the railway carriage, his thoughts alive to an intoxicating situation: Peotr’s wife was spending Christmas alone. Very tempting, he mused, his eyes ranging over the hundreds of railway cars drawn up in the snowy yards north of the depot. 7 Damnably tempting. He could talk one of his pilot friends into lending him a plane for a day or so. Apollo had learned to fly at fourteen, while other boys his age were learning to drive their first motor cars, and soon after that he’d driven his parents to near apoplexy by insisting on flying his own plane in the treacherous cross-currents of the Caucasus mountain valleys near their aul. In less than two hours, he thought with a spoiled child’s relish for excitement, he could be at Aladino. That would give him almost four days—provided he could keep the plane that long—to be with Kitty. They were both alone for Christmas. Why not?
    Apollo turned from the doorway and was halfway down the corridor to his compartment to pack before the unpleasant answer materialized. For a long moment he stood arrested in the corridor, then swinging around with an exasperated gesturehe struck both fists on the inlaid mahogany paneling. “Damn.” What sort of explanation could he give for Peotr’s absence when the unit was obviously on Christmas leave? The truth, of course, was out of the question. Your husband has a mistress plus a family. Always unpleasant news to a wife.
    Pushing away from the wall, he thought, Oh, hell. He’d make up some kind of story. He resumed his long-legged stride down the corridor. Some plausible explanation could be fabricated before he reached Astrakhan. Wartime was chaos at best, anyway.
    Apollo paused, his hand on the doorlatch, contemplating a facile lie, and in that brief moment hardheaded pragmatism began reversing his spontaneous decision to see Kitty. All the unwonted practical considerations flooded into his mind. Remember, she’s your best friend’s wife. Regardless of Peotr’s behavior, there is no excuse for you to become even more ungentlemanly than you already are. Perhaps more pertinent, why renew a relationship with no future? It would be even harder this time to say good-bye. God knows it was hard enough—for some unknown reason—last time.
    Much as Apollo wanted to see Kitty, he realized, with a grimace of astonishment, that he found the thought of treating her with the careless expediency of an erotic interlude distasteful. For a man who prided himself on the laudable merit of erotic interludes, this was a staggering conclusion. And what settled the issue in the end was not the moral or ethical considerations, but the uneasy recognition that Countess Kitty Radachek had become a constant image in his mind of late, a disturbing, devouring, never-diminishing focus of desire. This preoccupation, this
decided preference
for a specific woman—there were no reference points in his previous experience to explain it. He didn’t