The Concubine's Secret - By Kate Furnivall Page 0,3

smoke rose, turning the air as grey and thick as rabbit fur. In one corner a forgotten dog hurled itself forward to the limit of its stubby chain, choking off its bark. Its scrawny ribcage heaved with excitement.

All eyes were focused on the struggle taking place at the centre table. Chairs had been kicked roughly aside. Bodies jostled to find a place close, close enough to see the sweat burst forth and veins rear up like serpents under the skin. Two men were seated opposite each other. Big men. Men who looked as if they chewed the heads off weasels for fun. Their heavy bearded features were contorted with effort and the greasy black eyepatch of one of them had slipped out of place, revealing a sunken, twisted socket the colour of overripe plums. Their massive forearms were locked in battle.

The arm wrestling had been Liev Popkov’s idea. Lydia hated it at first. And yet in a strange insidious kind of way she loved it at the same time. Hate. Love. She shrugged. A hair’s breadth between them.

‘You’re out of your crazy Cossack mind!’ she responded when he came out with the idea. He’d just downed half a tankard of gut-rot vodka.

‘Nyet. No.’

‘What if you lose? We need every rouble of the money we have left.’

‘Hah!’ Popkov shook his big shaggy bear’s head. ‘Look, little Lydia.’ He jerked up the sleeve of his filthy shirt, seized her hand in his paw and placed her fingers on his massive biceps. It didn’t feel like a piece of human anatomy. It felt more like a winter log that had been warming in front of the fire. She had seen him break a man’s face with it.

‘Popkov,’ she whispered, ‘you are a devil.’

‘I know.’ His white teeth flashed at her above the black beard and together they had laughed.

Now she glanced quickly up at the gallery landing above them. It coiled round two sides of the room and led to the corridor of shoeboxes which the hotel chose to call bedrooms. A tall figure was up there, leaning forward, alert and staring down on the scrum beneath him, his arms resting on the banister rail, his thumbs linked as if he couldn’t bear his flesh to touch its grimy surface.

Alexei Serov. Her half-brother.

They shared a father, if it could be called sharing. Which Lydia doubted.

His brown hair was swept back from his face, emphasising the arrogant forehead inherited from his aristocratic Russian mother, the Countess Serova. But his fierce green eyes came straight from the Viking father Lydia could only dimly remember. Jens Friis was their father’s name, a Danish surname neither of them bore. Jens had worked as an engineer until 1917 for the last Tsar of Russia, Nikolas II, and now, more than twelve years later, he was the reason that she and Alexei had spent months travelling with the unruly Popkov in tow, all the way through the mountains of China to this godforsaken dead-and-alive hole in Russia.

A shout dragged her attention back to where it should have been, and her young stomach swooped with a sudden flutter of panic. Popkov was losing. Not just pretend losing. Really losing.

She felt sick. Coins were pouring into the grubby green kerchief on the bar where the bets were held, and all of them were now against Popkov. That was exactly what she and he had planned, but she’d left too late her signal to him to start fighting back. The black hairs on his burly forearm were only a hand’s breadth from the surface of the table as his opponent forced him down, and the bulging muscle started to twitch and shake.

No, Popkov, no.

Damn it, how could she have left it so late? She knew he would see his arm break before he’d allow it to collapse in defeat.

‘God damn you, Popkov,’ she yelled at the top of her lungs, ‘are you some kind of babushka or what? Put a bit of effort into it, will you?’

She saw his teeth flash, his shoulder swell. His fist lifted a fraction, though he never took his one good eye off his opponent’s face.

‘He’s done for!’ someone shouted.

‘Da, I’ll drink well tonight.’ Raucous laughter.

‘Finish the job. You’ve got him—’

Sweat dripped on to the stained table and the dog in the corner barked in time to their rapid heartbeats until someone slapped it down. Lydia elbowed a path through the crush of bodies to stand right behind Popkov, desperately rubbing her own right forearm as if