Chapter Text
When Ilya had first arrived at Ottowan Cottage, he had brought only necessities. Perhaps out of fear that Shane would send him away, he had brought only a few items of clothing, packed hastily in a bag that could fit on horseback. Now, with the purchase of Hawthorne Park only a few miles from Shane’s estate, he was having items brought over in earnest, with almost daily deliveries of crates, trunks and boxes, each labeled efficiently in Cyrillic and packed to the brim. Shane now understood why Ilya had insisted on a larger building than strictly required for a single man, for he had multitudes of personal effects, not all of which were suited for a British country house.
The first items to cause the staff to raise their eyebrows were the trunks filled with furs. Sable coats, fox fur caps, and even a wrap made out of a wolf pelt that fastened with a large fang. There were so many that the staff were not sure how to store so many pelts and Ilya had to designate a special room. Not to mention that it was entirely too warm for such attire, and the styles were much too formal for the English countryside. When Shane asked about them, Ilya shared that they had been in his family for many generations, some of which had been hunted, dispatched, and sewn by his relatives or even himself. Ilya had gleefully shown him a bearskin rug and reminded him, “You see, Hollander, I did indeed knock out a bear.”
Other clothing items included an entire collection of soft, felt valenki boots, which were entirely impractical in the mud and far too warm for the weather. There were thick, woolen undershirts meant for brutal winters, several of which Shane secreted away in Ottowan Cottage after feeling how soft they were, but they were far too informal for wearing anywhere outside the house. Finally, there were formal, knee-high military boots. Polished within an inch of their lives and so stiff that Shane was convinced Ilya could not navigate the walking paths safely. Those, Ilya allowed to be stored away.
The largest and most cumbersome item was a massive silver and enamel samovar. It was so large that it completely dominated whatever room it was in, required constant attention, and some of the staff were scared to go near it. Ilya loved it, as it had been his mother’s and commissioned a local woodworker to create a customized cabinet for it in the dining room at Hawthorne Park.
The carved, heavy, dark-stained furniture all seemed too large for airy English parlors and there was no need for the thick woolen carpets. They did find a use for the large tapered candles that were designed to burn for an absurd amount of time, but the large pickling barrels packed with dried fish, cartons of buckwheat, salted meats, and boxes of hard biscuits were puzzling. Ilya had ordered them to be stored in the cellar, as emergency rations, as if preparing for a siege.
Shane teased him lightly when he saw the barrels, asking if he planned to “survive when in fact, he was in England to live.” He refused to let Ilya fit the doors with extra locks and windows with insulating metal shutters and managed to find places for most of the most offensive furniture pieces in rooms that guests rarely entered. He became accustomed to drinking strong black tea from the samovar. Ilya taught him how to hold jam in his mouth and let the flavors of the tea and the sweetness from the jam mix on his tongue. And one memorable evening, Shane snuck into Hawthorne Park and waited for Ilya on his bed wearing nothing but the wolf pelt wrap.