Free Silver Nights by Jane Feather

stepping backward to the ground, where he was able to adjust his burden so that she lay in his arms.
    The long sable eyelashes fluttered. “I do beg your pardon,” she said in a thread of a voice. “It is feeble, I know, but I cannot seem to help it.”
    â€œI did not imagine you could,” he observed on a dry note. “We all have our weaknesses.” He carried her into the posting house, laying her upon the cot in the bedchamber. “The postman’s wife will help you with whatever you need,” he said to Tanya as he left the room.
    â€œOh, don’t you worry, now, Your Honor,” Tanya said comfortably, bustling over to the baggage piled in the corner of the room. “I’ll make the princess a tisane, and she’ll sleep for a little, then she’ll be ready for her dinner, I don’t doubt.”
    Adam stared. The idea that one who had been painfully spewing up her guts every twenty minutes throughout the day, and was now collapsed in a state of complete exhaustion, could possibly be ready for her dinner any time within theweek struck him as pure fantasy. He went outside to see to the disposition of his troop and wrestle with the problem of the morrow. A month of days like today would fell an ox, and Sophia Alexeyevna, for all her wiry strength, was not of that breed.
    He returned to the posting house two hours later, when the savory smells of cooking filled the air. In the one living room, already sitting at the plank table, he found Sophia, pale, certainly, but composed.
    â€œI am famished,” she stated matter-of-factly, cutting into a loaf of black bread and helping herself to a dish of salted pickles. “The stew smells wonderful, does it not?”
    Adam sat down opposite her. “Wonderful,” he agreed, bemused by this astonishing transformation. “Oh, thank you.” He took the slice of bread she offered him on the point of her knife. “You are feeling better, it seems.”
    â€œOh, yes,” she said cheerfully. “I am not such a milksop that I cannot recover once the motion stops.”
    â€œClearly not. I cannot imagine how I could have thought otherwise,” he murmured, reaching for the pickles.
    â€œIt is a chicken stew,” Sophie informed him through a mouthful of bread. “The postman’s wife killed it in your honor. I am not in general in favor of fresh-killed chicken, myself. I think the flavor is better, the flesh more tender, when the bird is allowed to cool before plucking. But I gather the good woman did not have anything else she considered suitable to put before such an important soldier.” Her voice was utterly innocent, yet he could have sworn that there was a glimmer of mischief in the dark eyes, which seemed amazingly to have recovered their glow.
    â€œI am honored,” he said. “But I shall be more so if I can find something to drink.” He looked around the room.
    â€œThere is klukva.” Sophie passed him a jug of cranberry liqueur. “The postman’s wife makes it. It is really quite tolerable. But she said that if it is too strong for you, you may have kvass, instead.”
    â€œThank you, but I do not care for weak beer,” Adamreplied. “You, however, should not be drinking liqueur. It cannot possibly be good for your stomach.”
    â€œIt is very warming,” she declared blithely. “Do not tell me, Count, that I am not even to decide what I may eat or drink on this journey.”
    The arrival of the postman’s wife bearing the chicken stew saved him from response, and throughout the remainder of their meal his companion offered him no further provocation, except that she drank klukva as if she had hollow legs. It appeared to have no effect on her whatsoever, and he decided this version could not be as strong as some he had tasted. Either that, or Sophia Alexeyevna had been taught to hold her drink with the same ease with which she held a