She saw his dark eyes glisten in the instant just before he closed them, tightly, as though warding off a pain. And then she raised herself on tiptoe and she kissed him, and his arms came round her as he kissed her back. It did not matter that the world was all unsteady then, because with Edmund holding her she knew that she was safe.
He raised his mouth a little from her own, though she still shared his shaking breath and felt the warm curve of his smile.
‘Your father is a fierce man,’ Edmund said, ‘and he did warn me if I were to lay a hand on you I’d lose the hand.’
She moved her hand to where his own was tangled in her hair, and closed her fingers round his larger ones, and felt the hard line of the scar beneath her palm. ‘Ye’ll not,’ she said. ‘Ye’ll never take a punishment because of me.’
‘You’re fierce as well, then, are you?’
‘Aye. All fighters are, I’m told.’
The second kiss was deeper than the first, and lasted longer. When he broke it this time he drew back to look at her. ‘I must still go to Amsterdam.’
‘I know.’
‘As long as Deane believes he pulls my strings, I must pretend to dance to them.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘I’ll wait.’
‘It might be months.’
Why was he talking? Anna wondered. Reaching up she kissed him lightly on the hard line of his jaw. ‘Ye’ll have your pardon, as Deane promised, will ye not?’
He gave a nod, his own mouth lowering.
‘Well then,’ she said, ‘I will return to Ireland with my mother and my father, and I’ll wait for you,’ she told him, ‘to come home.’
And that, to Anna’s satisfaction, was the last thing Edmund let her say for quite some time.
The sun had set, the wind was blowing strong across the Strelka, and in front of me Rob stood against the waist-high granite wall and turned his gaze towards the river where the fortress lay in floodlights. There were lights, too, coming on all down the line of the Embankment and across the long green bridge, reflecting in the water of the Neva, but Rob’s face was half in shadow.
‘What did he say?’ he asked me as I pocketed my mobile.
‘He was angry.’ Then, as he looked round, I added, ‘That I hadn’t told him earlier. Apparently I could have saved him time and money, telling him what items were worth bidding on at auction.’
‘And what did ye say to that?’
I shrugged and smiled. ‘I told him what I do will never be accepted as a true authentication.’
‘Not the now, at any rate,’ said Rob. ‘I’d not say never.’
As I joined him at the wall, he changed the angle of his body slightly so he blocked the worst part of the wind, and told me, ‘But you have your job.’
I gave a nod. ‘It seems that way.’
‘That’s good, then.’
When I nodded for a second time, not answering, he slanted a quick glance at me and asked, ‘So why the frown?’
‘I’m disappointed. I was really hoping we could prove the Firebird had come from Catherine, but I don’t see how we can. Can you?’
He thought a moment. Shook his head. ‘No.’
‘And that means, after all this, Margaret Ross won’t get her cruise.’
Rob shrugged in his turn. ‘Well, I’d not assume that, either. She could always sell her books.’
My frown grew deeper. ‘What books?’
‘The James Bond books in the bookcase in her sitting room,’ said Rob. ‘Did ye not see them?’
Thinking back, I had a memory of Rob bending to examine Margaret’s bookcase, and the vintage hardbacks with their garish covers. Her father’s books, she’d told us.
Turning round myself so that I faced him more directly, I asked, ‘What about them?’
‘Well,’ he said, in that calm, nonchalant tone that I knew by now was anything but innocent, ‘a first edition James Bond hardback sells for a fair bit at auction. First editions of the very first book sell for nearly £20,000. And she’s got the entire set, all signed by Ian Fleming.’
I was staring at him and he knew it. I could see the faint suggestion of a smile that he took care to straighten out again before I asked him, ‘Does she know this?’
‘Well, she will after you tell her.’
‘Rob.’
‘This place,’ he said, ‘is growing on me. I can see why it’s your favourite spot in all St Petersburg.’
‘Rob.’
‘Aye?’
‘You knew about the books before we left Dundee,’ I told him, ‘didn’t you? You knew she didn’t have to sell the Firebird to take that cruise.’ A little hurt, I asked, ‘Why did you never tell me?’
He looked back towards the fortress, so I couldn’t see his face. ‘And if I had,’ he said, ‘ye would have had a different journey, would ye not?’
I thought about it for a moment. Thought of all the paths I never would have taken, all the turnings I would never have discovered, all the things I would have missed. ‘I guess I would have.’
Quietly, Rob told me, ‘It just seemed a thing worth following, your Firebird.’
I watched his back, the way he held his shoulders, and I knew that like the heroes in the varied versions of the Russian fairy tale, the treasure I had ended up with when I’d chased the Firebird was not what I’d set out to find, nor what I had expected it to be, but something better, beyond price.