Shoreham-by-Sea, West Sussex —March 1824
Spring had come again in all its glory: blustering winds, lashing rains and always the peculiar English dampness that conspired to keep a person indoors far beyond the body’s patience for inactivity—at least his body’s. Stepan Shevchenko braced himself against the sea winds buffeting the bluffs. He peered through the eyepiece of his spyglass, searching the empty horizon.
Nothing yet.
He collapsed the spyglass with a frown. Still, it was far better to be out here amongst the elements than inside where he’d been for months. He had little tolerance for the indoors. He craved constant exercise, constant adventure, despite his efforts to tame himself to the more sedate rhythms of an Englishman’s life.
Two springs now he’d spent in Britain and yet in all that time he’d proved only that one could take the man out of Kuban, but one couldn’t take Kuban out of the man. The wildness of Kuban with its mountains and rivers called to the wildness within him, something he buried deep at his most primal self, something he’d been careful to suppress. It had become a secret identity, known only to him and those who knew him best: Nikolay, Ruslan, Illarion and Dimitri. Certainly, no one in London who did business with Prince Stepan Shevchenko would guess at it. To them, he was all that was proper. A boring word for someone whom many thought a boring man.
He preferred it that way. Proper was a very good cover. So good, in fact, he could even hide the wildness from himself. Sometimes, he almost believed the façade. But on days like today, when the wind blew through his hair, and the rain soaked his face, he knew better. He was still wild at heart; always running, always raging.
The horizon shimmered, the emptiness interrupted by the appearance of sails. Stepan smiled and lifted the spyglass again. It must be her—his ship, one of them. Through the eyepiece he sought out the name on the prow; the Lady Frances, a ship well known to be sponsored by Prince Stepan Shevchenko, bringing the latest Kubanian luxuries to London: lacquered trifle boxes with carefully painted scenes of Kubanian life on their lids, delicate birch wood carvings and the ever-entertaining Matryoshka dolls. A sense of tentative gratification rippled through him at the sight of the ship, followed by a clench of anticipation deep in his stomach. He moved his glass to take in the space behind the Lady Frances but the remainder of the horizon was empty.
Wait for it, he counselled himself. Impatience often bred unnecessary worry. He should not be concerned. Not yet. It was a good sign the Lady Frances was here. There was a satisfactory profit in her cargo once the duties were paid and a satisfaction of another sort, the sort that came from surrounding oneself with reminders of home. If he could not go to Kuban, he could bring Kuban to London. It was a type of cure for an odd homesickness for a place he’d not expected to miss, a place that didn’t hold good memories, but haunted him none the less now that he could never go back. But a man did not get rich, not like he had, on importing knick-knacks to decorate ladies’ parlours. No, the Lady Frances wasn’t the real prize. She was merely the decoy.
His anticipation growing, Stepan focused on the empty space left in the Lady Frances’s wake. Wait for it...wait for it...five minutes went by. Then ten. There was movement. His adventurer’s heart leapt. The thrill never got old. Slowly, a second ship came into view. It was here! The Razboynik held the true profit—casks of undiluted vodka straight from Ekaterinador and duty-free, thanks to his ingenuity and specially engineered barrels. Without the vodka there was no profit in it otherwise. No adventure, either, and no cause that justified the risk. For him there must be all three. Stepan reached into his pocket, trading his spyglass for a mirror and flashed a brief signal out across the water. That single flash meant: ‘All is safe, come in from the sea.’
Stepan heard his horse nicker from his picket and felt a presence behind him. He smiled without turning, knowing full well who it would be, his land-crew chief, Joseph Raleigh. ‘I swear, Joe, you can smell a ship a mile out to sea.’ He chuckled as Joseph came up beside him. Stepan passed the young man the spyglass.
‘It’s a beaut, milord.’ Joseph grinned, peering through the eyepiece. ‘What I can smell is profit. The boys are rarin’ to go.’
By ‘boys’, Joseph meant the crew that would gather to unload the Razboynik, all of them adolescents ranging from fourteen to seventeen, all of them orphans figuratively or literally. Growing up, Stepan had been both. Some were from London, gathered up during his visits, others were from the area. There were those in society who, if they knew, might condemn him for employing ‘children’ in illegal work. But these were boys who’d seen hardship, who lived with it every day, boys who’d been reduced to doing far worse than diluting vodka in caves before he’d found them. At their age, these boys needed guidance and help, but they also needed their pride. They wouldn’t take charity.
He knew, he’d been their age and in their situation