The Wife of Blue Beard

They got married in 1910. The young Countess Arina Baryshnikova and the grandson of a burlak, merchant Egorov, who was no longer young, stout, gloomy, and unattractive. The pampered princess, raised in a palace, married someone whom the townsfolk called... Blue Beard. Egorov had already buried two wives and found himself a third. It wasn't a problem that her father squandered all his fortune – the merchant's money would be enough for everyone …
Egorov sincerely believed that he could keep his demons at bay in the new marriage. Arina hoped to eventually love her husband, about whose reputation daddy had kept silent. But both were wrong. On the very first wedding night, Countess Baryshnikova discovered what hell was like …