Inventing Wonders

Chapter 34: On My Wedding Day

The engineer was haunted by a single nightmare. The theater. Her piercing laughter. Pearly beads. You just needed to stay for tea. She falls down. Hatred. He must hate, and he does hate. But his heart drops when Lara is swallowed by the darkness of the endless hall.

He closed his eyes irritably. Better if she disappeared. Disappeared for good! Lara was a peculiar contagion, and the only way to get rid of her was to throw her into a bright fire... No, she wasn't a contagion; she was a carrier, a carrier of freedom! She needed to be isolated from society. Otherwise, she would infect everyone with this ailment. And those piercing cold eyes that looked right through you, that mocking smile as if this girl was wiser than everyone, as if she could see the future.

The countess was dangerous! She was proud and strong, and then: "Your hat, like sad ears... You are always sad, so the ears are sad too..." How could one person have so much strength and weakness? No, she was calculating; there were so many rumors about her card-playing talents... Playing cards! Why did he let her go? Why didn't he put her on trial? No, he couldn't have executed her, but how wonderful it would have been if she had vanished!

"How foolish..." the secretary shook his head, looking out of the carriage window.

Nikolai Pavlovich slowly turned his gaze to the street. He didn't want to part with the stream of tangled thoughts. This mess wouldn't let go. She wouldn't let go. She. She? The thin, elongated figure raised her hand with the wedding wreath ceremoniously. The transparent fabric fluttered in the cold wind. She held the symbol of marriage bravely, like a banner, standing alone against the whole world.

"Lara..." escaped from the engineer's lips.

Without realizing it, he didn't take his eyes off her. The countess didn't need to turn for him to know who was standing there. He flung open the carriage door, repeating her name in confusion, and the nagging thought in his head: Better if she disappeared!

"Lara!" he shouted, but there was no one on the embankment anymore.

Without thinking, he rushed to the railing, the black hole of water covered by the white shroud of the veil. He would have jumped into the abyss without hesitation, as he did in the spring, on the day she was attacked. But the sharp voice of reason:

"Sire!"

Kirill had lost his horse. Without remembering himself, he returned to the master's house.

"Did you find her?!" Pelageya ran out to the porch.

"I ordered them to send..." began Mark Nikolaevich, but Kirill interrupted him in an uncharacteristic manner.

"She didn't want to be found..." he said quietly.

"What do you mean you saw her and didn't bring her back? Our mistress has completely lost her peace! What if..." Liza fumed, tired of the mistress's antics.

People crowded in the yard, as if not noticing the cold.

"She doesn't want anything anymore! She's beyond that! She... She did it..."

"Did what?!"

"She couldn't..." Mark staggered. "Sin... You're lying! Sin!"

It had been nearly two years since the countess's death. Life in the house on the embankment had taken on a strange form. The master was the now considerably matured Kirill. He diligently didn't touch anything in her room, trying to preserve the memory of his beloved... He couldn't add a second word: Larisa Konstantinovna wasn't a mistress or a lady, but the cold "benefactor" seemed insufficient.

Kirill rarely understood her immediately. Even her departure seemed like a strange set of circumstances. Her actions, at first glance, didn't make sense, but in the end, everything she did had a specific purpose.