Love don't live here anymore
Just emptiness and memories
Of what we had before
You went away
Found another place to stay

18th June, 1888 — Sleptova Household, Wellingtonshire
Rosaline Bennett

The view from the window was approximately as dull as usual, fog or not, and Ustinya used magic less than most anyway, so all things considered she was not especially concerned about the current state of affairs in the village. She was concerned with the state of her own affairs though and now with summer allegedly upon them, and Nikolai home once again, she fully intended to improve her lot.

Ivan would always be her first child. Her heart panged just to think of him and sometimes, without even realising it, she felt tears slide off her chin without noticing that she had begun to cry, but she could keep him safely tucked inside her heart and still make space for another. The only thing she needed was Nikolai to be a husband to her again.

Judging by the fact that she had found herself in the sitting room with only Rosaline for company again it was going to be trickier than expected.

"Is it a good book?" She asked to get the other woman's attention, having already asked her thoughts on the new dress she was wearing, the cause of the unusual weather, and what dinners she ought to order for the next week. To put it delicately, she was anxious to talk about something very specific, but how no idea how to begin.

  

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Ustinya doesn't speak much English so unless otherwise stated she converses in Russian.

Ustinya wanted to talk to her about something, that much was obvious. She kept asking Rose questions, and Rose would answer them politely, and then go back to meandering through her book, which she had confiscated from a student in the last few weeks of school and was determined to make her way through whenever she had an absence of teenagers around her. (God forbid Archie get his hands on this!) After discussing the dress, the weather, and the dinners, the question about the book was enough to finally get Rose to engage with Ustinya. She dog-eared her page and smiled at the other woman.

"It's a bit much," Rose admitted in Russian, and did not elaborate. "What's on your mind, Ustinya?"

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For a moment her mouth ran dry as she contemplated what she was about to ask but nothing in Rose’s temperament in the years she’d known her suggested that she was especially prudish. Indeed her attitudes often shocked Ustinya, but that was going to work to her advantage today. It had to.

“Rose,” she said carefully, fidgeting from her armchair to another, slightly closer to the other woman. “Was yours a... happy marriage?”

  

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Ustinya doesn't speak much English so unless otherwise stated she converses in Russian.

"Most of the time, which is more than some," Rose said with a wry smile, "I loved my husband very much." Felix had been her first love, and theirs was a love that stuck until one of them died. She hoped she could be as lucky with Nikolai, although she could not share this with Ustinya.

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“And were things…” She blushed, quite unsure of how to broach the actual words though she hoped Rose would pick up her meaning before she died of embarrassment. “Loving?”

  

"Oh!" Rose said, eyebrows shooting upwards. Ustinya wanted to know about her sex life. Rose had a sudden thought of where this was going, and shifted in her seat. Her cheeks turned pink. Could Nikolai's wife suspect?

"Well," she said, "Yes. You could say that."

---

  

It was far from a ringing endorsement but Usti got the impression that Rose was holding something back and she wanted to know, quite desperately, what the great secret was to a relationship such as the Bennett’s has evidently enjoyed. Perhaps there was something…unusual she could learn…

“What kind of man was he?” She asked guilelessly. “Not like Nikolai?”

  

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Ustinya doesn't speak much English so unless otherwise stated she converses in Russian.

"They were very different," Rose said, and it was true, although Felix had also been tall and clever and charming. She smiled as she thought of her dead husband, who had a tendency to push his reading glasses up his nose when he was thinking, and who had more than once made love to her on the floor of his greenhouse.

"But you - Ustinya," Rose said. A blush colored her cheeks. "You are asking me of when a man visits his wife at night, are you not?"

Perhaps asking directly would shame Ustinya into silence; or perhaps this conversation would continue.

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Subtlety had never been her forte in life and Ustinya was unsurprised that her meaning had been rumbled with relative ease. Rose was so clever after all, and she was similarly nonplussed that her lodger had taken a direct approach: she knew full well she didn’t have such boldness in herself so she was grateful for the opening.

“I have not been visited in some time,” she admitted with a terrible blush and downcast eyes. “I…I think I might be doing something wrong.”

  

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Ustinya doesn't speak much English so unless otherwise stated she converses in Russian.

Rose knew why. Rose knew why, and it would be so simple to tell Ustinya, even though she absolutely could not. Sometimes she wished that she could just tell Ustinya and Petra, end the secrecy, and at least she and Nik could be open in the house. But of course it would never be that simple.

Rosaline, Nik's lover, wanted him to never touch his wife again. But Rosaline, the long-term lodger and ostensibly Ustinya's friend, had to offer advice.

"Sometimes a man needs a little bit of a - nudge," Rose said, "To encourage him to visit."

---

  

Could she nudge him more? She had been trying for months to regain his attention but short of presenting herself entirely naked in his study she wasn’t quite sure what else she could do. He had been so ardent once, so devoted to her that she had scarcely thought to question whether it was normal behaviour for a husband.

“I think he has lost interest in me,” she admitted morosely. “After Ivan…”

  

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Ustinya doesn't speak much English so unless otherwise stated she converses in Russian.

"I'm sure that's not true," Rose said, although it (hopefully) was and she (definitely) knew why.

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"It is though," Usti replied, obtuse to the last and feeling emotions begin to bubble in her. "I must repulse him," she managed to get out before she began to cry heartily on Rose's shoulder.

  

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Ustinya doesn't speak much English so unless otherwise stated she converses in Russian.

"No, no," Rose said, "You're beautiful, you couldn't." She felt extremely repulsed by herself. But - as she kept reminding herself for this whole, desperate conversation - it couldn't be avoided.

Eventually she was able to detach herself from Ustinya, retreat upstairs, and try to feel less terrible.

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