The Concubine's Secret - By Kate Furnivall Page 0,5

I be grumbling, Lydia? Tell me why.’

She pushed back her hair, lifted her head and gave him a sharp glance. She had a way of doing that which was always catching him off guard, making him feel she could see inside his head. She was sitting cross-legged on the bed, the thin quilt pulled round her shoulders and a square of green material between her knees. Her busy fingers were counting out her winnings into small piles.

‘Because you’re angry with me about the arm wrestling for some reason.’ Lydia studied the money thoughtfully. ‘It does no harm, Alexei. It’s not as if I’m stealing.’

He refused to accept the bait. Her thieving activities of the past, snatching wallets and watches the way a fox snatches chickens, were not something he cared to discuss right now.

‘No,’ he said, ‘but you took something from them downstairs and they won’t thank you for it.’

Lydia shrugged her thin shoulders and returned to her miniature coin towers. ‘I took their money because they lost.’

‘Not the money.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Their pride. You took away their pride, then you rubbed their noses in it by emptying their pockets.’

Her eyes remained firmly on the money. ‘It was fairly won.’

‘Fairly won,’ he echoed. ‘Fairly won.’ He shook his head angrily but kept his voice low, his words deliberately measured. ‘That is not the point, Lydia.’

She twirled one of the coins between her fingers and flashed him another quick glance. ‘So what is your point?’

‘They won’t forget you.’

A shimmer of a smile touched her full lips. ‘So?’

‘So when anyone comes asking questions, the people here will take pleasure in recalling every detail about you. Not just the colour of your hair or how many vodkas you fed into Popkov or your name or your age or the names of your companions. No, Lydia. They’ll remember carefully the numbers on your passport and on your travel permit and even what train ticket is hidden away in your bodybelt.’

Her eyes widened and a blush started to creep up her cheek. ‘Why would anyone bother to remember all that? And who would come asking?’ Suddenly her tawny eyes were nervous. ‘Who, Alexei?’

He pushed his shoulders away from the door and only one half-pace took him to the bed where he sat down next to her. The mattress was bullet-hard and the three piles of coins tottered slightly in her lap.

She treated him to a surprised smile but her gaze was wary. ‘What?’

He leaned close, so close he could hear the whisper-soft clicking of her teeth behind the smooth curve of her cheek. ‘First of all, keep your voice down. The walls are paper-thin. That’s not just to save money on materials, they’re designed to be like that.’ His voice was the faintest trickle in her ear. ‘So everyone can eavesdrop on everybody else. A neighbour can report a muttered complaint about the cost of bread or about the incompetence of the rail system.’

She gave him that direct look again and rolled her eyes so dramatically he almost laughed out loud, but stifled it with a frown instead.

‘Damn it, listen to me, Lydia.’

She took his hand, scooped up one of the piles in her lap and dribbled twenty coins on to his palm.

‘I don’t want your money,’ he objected.

But she gently wrapped his fingers round the little heap, one by one.

‘Keep it,’ she whispered. ‘One day you may need it.’

Then she turned her face to him and kissed his cheek. Her lips felt feather-soft and warm on his skin. His throat tightened. It was the first time such an intimate gesture had passed between them. They’d known each other for eighteen months now, much of it unaware of the fact that they were brother and sister, and he’d even seen her stark naked that terrible day in the woods outside Junchow. But a kiss. No, never that.

He stood up awkwardly and flexed his legs. The room was suddenly claustrophobic, and silent except for the vibration of a woman snoring next door.

‘Lydia, I’m just trying to protect you.’

‘I know.’

‘Then why do you make everything so . . . ?’

‘Difficult?’

‘Yes. So damn difficult. As if you prefer it that way.’

She shrugged and he studied her for a long moment, the mane of fiery hair that she refused to cut, the delicate heart-shaped face with candle-pale skin and the firm chin. She was seventeen years old, that’s all. He needed to make her understand, but he knew she had long ago learned to be stubborn, learned to be