I raise a brow. “Is that what’s going on here?”
She laughs once, under her breath, with no real amusement in it. “Please. Don’t insult both of us.”
I glance back toward the table where Vika and Elena are still locked in some quiet, elegant war while Arkady tries to look important enough to survive it.
Then I look at Katerina again.
Her mouth is tight. Her eyes are bright in the way they get when she’s angrier than she wants to show.
And beneath the irritation, beneath the disgust she tried to pin on me a moment ago, there is something else I know too well.
I lean one forearm on the railing beside her and say, “You’re the one who looked offended.”
Her eyes flash. “I looked disgusted.”
“With me?”
“With all of it.”
That, I believe.
The wind lifts a strand of her hair across her mouth. I have to fight the urge to move it myself.
Behind us, Sofia says, “Mama, can I throw bread to the birds?”
“No,” Katerina and I say at the same time.
The children both turn to look at us.
Sofia huffs and leans against the railing instead, dramatically oppressed by all authority. Nikolai stands closer to his mother, one hand tucked into her coat sleeve, watching the river with the kind of seriousness children should not have and some do anyway.
I look at Katerina.
“What are you doing here with Arkady?”
Her mouth tightens. “Enjoying myself enormously.”
“Katerina.”
She exhales through her nose and finally looks at me properly. “I’m not here by choice.”
Her face hardens. “I’m here because my father decided I should be.”
I glance back toward the table, and then look at her again. “He’s making a match.”
She gives me a flat little smile that has no humor in it at all. “Well done. You’re still very quick.”
I ask, “And you?”
“What about me?”
“Are you agreeing to it?”
Her jaw tightens. For a second, I think she’ll give me another smart answer. Instead, she looks past me at the water and says,very quietly, “I don’t agree to most things in my life. They just happen around me.”
That shuts me up.
She seems to realize she said too much, because she straightens at once and the mask comes back down.