“Thanks for the offer, but I’m finished.” She began coiling the hose again, but this time she carried it outside and set it on the ground against the tent.
Heather came after her. “Would you—I know I’m just a kid; and everything, but since you don’t have any friends because of me, maybe we could do some stuff together.” She seemed to be searching her mind for a common interest that might overcome their troubled history as well as bridge the difference in their ages. “Sometime maybe we could get some pizza or something. Or do each other’s hair.”
Daisy couldn’t help but smile at the tentative note of hope in her voice. “That’d be nice.”
“I’m going to make it up to you, I promise.”
Some things could never be made up, but Daisy wouldn’t tell Heather that. She’d made her decision, and she wasn’t going to dangle guilt over the teenager’s head.
Brady Pepper interrupted, stalking into their midst like bad news. “What are you doing here, Heather? I’ve told you not to hang out around her.”
Heather flushed. “Daisy’s been really nice to me, and I wanted to help her.”
“Go find Sheba. She wants to work with you on your headstand.”
Heather looked increasingly miserable. “Daisy’s real nice, Dad. She’d not like you think. She’s good with the animals, and she treats me—”
“Right now, young lady.”
“Go on, Heather.” Daisy gave her a reassuring nod. “Thanks for offering to help.”
Reluctantly, Heather did as she was told.
Brady bristled with animosity—Sylvester Stallone on double testosterone. “You stay away from her, you hear me? Alex might have gone temporarily blind where you’re concerned, but the rest of us don’t forget so easy.”
“I’m not ashamed of anything I’ve done, Brady.”
“Wasn’t the crime big enough? If it’d been two thousand dollars you took instead of two hundred, would you be ashamed? Sorry, babe, but to my mind, a thief’s a thief.”
“Have you led such a blameless life that you’ve never done anything you regret?”
“I’ve never stolen anything, that’s for sure.”
“You’re stealing your daughter’s sense of security. Doesn’t that count?”
His lips thinned. “Don’t you dare lecture me on how to raise my daughter. You and Sheba. Neither one of you ever had a kid, so you can both just keep your damned mouths shut.”
He stalked away, muscles gleaming, tail feathers rumpled.
Daisy sighed. It was barely one o’clock. She’d argued with Alex and antagonized both Jack and Brady. What else could go wrong today?
She wistfully regarded the middle-aged woman who escorted them. Being a kindergarten teacher might not be everyone’s idea of bliss, but it was hers.
She watched how skillfully the teacher kept the children from running wild, and for a moment, she imagined herself doing the same. She didn’t linger over the fantasy for long. To be a teacher, she needed a college degree, and she was too old for that.
She couldn’t resist walking over to them as they approached Sinjun’s cage, which was roped off to keep the visitors from getting too close. After smiling at the teacher, she addressed a pudgy little cherub in pink overalls who was regarding the tiger with awe.
“His name is Sinjun, and he’s a Siberian tiger. Siberians are the largest of all tigers.”
“Does he eat people?” the cherub asked.
“Not people, but he is a carnivore. That means he eats meat.”
The little boy next to her perked up. “My gerbil eats gerbil food.”
Daisy laughed.
The teacher smiled. “I’ll bet you know a lot about tigers. Would you mind telling the children a little bit about Sinjun?”
A ripple of excitement passed through her. “I’d love to!” She quickly sorted through everything she’d learned about the animals in her recent library trips and picked out the details they were most likely to understand. “A hundred years ago, tigers roamed free in lots of parts of the world, but that isn’t true anymore. People moved into the tigers’ home lands . . .” She kept the explanation about the tiger’s gradual extinction simple and was gratified to see the children hanging on to her words.
“Can we pet him?” one of them asked.
“No. He’s old and not very friendly, and he wouldn’t understand that you don’t want to hurt him. He’s not like a cat or a dog.”
She answered a number of other questions, including several about Sinjun’s bathroom habits that elicited a chorus of giggles. She listened to one child’s story about a dog who died and another’s announcement that he’d just gotten over chicken pox. They were so darling she could have easily spent all day talking with them.
As the class got ready to move on, the teacher thanked her effusively, and the cherub in pink overalls hugged her. Daisy felt as if she were floating on a cloud.
She was still watching them as she made her way to the trailer to pick up a quick bite of lunch when a familiar figure clad in dark brown trousers and a pale yellow polo shirt came out of the red wagon. She stopped walking, hardly able to believe what she saw. At the same time, she was conscious of her dirty work clothes and untidy hair, rumpled from Glenna’s latest grooming.
“Hello, Theodosia.”
“Dad? What are you doing here?” Her father was such a powerful figure in her mind that she seldom noticed he was rather slight in build, only inches taller than herself. He bore all the accessories of wealth with ease: silver gray hair expertly trimmed by a barber who visited his office once a week, an expensive watch, conservative Italian loafers with a discreet gold snaffle across the vamp. It was hard for her to imagine him ever forgetting his dignity long enough to fall in love with a fashion model and father an illegitimate child, but she was living proof that at one time in his life, her father had been human.
“I drove over to visit Alex.”
“Oh.” She did her best to hide her hurt that he hadn’t come to see her.
“I also wanted to check on you.”
“You did?”
“I wanted to make certain you were still with him. That you hadn’t done anything foolish.”
For a moment she wondered if Alex had told him about the stolen money, but then she knew that he wouldn’t. That certainty filled her with warmth.
“As you can see, I’m still here. If you’d like to come to the trailer with me, I can get you something to drink. Or I’ll fix you a sandwich if you’re hungry.”
“A cup of tea would be nice.”
She led him toward the trailer. He stopped walking when he saw its battered exterior. “Good God. Don’t tell me you actually live in this place.”
She felt oddly protective of her little home. “It’s not so bad inside. I’ve fixed it up.”
She opened the door and let him in, but despite the changes she’d made, he was no more impressed with the interior than he’d been with the exterior. “Alex could certainly have done better than this.”
Strangely enough, his criticism made her defensive. “It’s fine for us.”
His gaze lingered for a moment on the trailer’s only bed. She hoped the sight made him uncomfortable, but she couldn’t read his expression.
As she went to the stove to boil water for tea, the gingerly way he sat on the couch made it obvious he was afraid he’d catch some disease. She took the chair next to him while the water heated.
An awkward silence followed, broken finally by her father. “How are you and Alex getting on?”
“We’re doing all right”
“He’s quite a man. Not everyone could overcome their upbringing as he has. Did he ever tell you how we met?”
“He said you saved his life.”
“I don’t know about that, but when I found him, his uncle had him on the ground behind one of the trucks. He was holding him down with his foot while he brutalized him with a stock whip.”
She winced. Alex had told her he’d been abused
, but hearing it from her father’s lips made it seem even more horrifying.
“Alex’s shirt was ripped. He had red welts across his back, some of them bleeding. His uncle was cursing him for a minor offense while he whipped him with all his strength.” She squeezed her eyes shut, willing her father to stop talking, but he went on. “The thing I most remember is that Alex was absolutely silent. He didn’t cry. He didn’t call out for help. He simply endured. It was the most tragic thing I’ve ever seen.”
Daisy felt sick. No wonder Alex couldn’t believe in love.
Her father leaned back on the couch. “Ironically, I had no idea who the child was at first. Sergey Markov was traveling with the old Curzon Circus at the time, and it was only a whim that made me decide to look him up when I learned he was going to be performing near Fort Lee. There’d been some rumors about the family connection. I’d been told it was authentic, but I’m always skeptical about stories like that, and I didn’t really believe it.”
Although she knew of her father’s passion for Russian history, she hadn’t known it extended to the circus. As the kettle began to whistle, she walked over to the stove. “The connection is authentic all right. The Markovs are one of the most famous circus families in history.”
He looked at her strangely as she began preparing the tea. “The Markovs?”
“For the most part they seem to trace their heritage through the women in the family. Don’t you think that’s unusual?”
“It’s hardly significant. The Markovs were peasants, Theodosia. Circus people.” His lips thinned with disdain. “I was only interested in looking up Sergey Markov because of the rumors about his sister Katya’s marriage—Alex’s mother.”
“What are you talking about?”
“It was Alex’s father’s family I was interested in. The family Katya Markov married into. For God’s sake, Theodosia, the Markovs are of no importance at all. Don’t you know anything about your husband?”
“Not much,” she conceded, carrying two earthenware mugs of tea over to the couch and handing him one. Her hands were tightly clenched around the mug as she took a seat at the other end of the couch.
“I thought he would have spoken about it, but he’s so secretive I suppose I should have known he wouldn’t tell you.”
“Tell me what?” She had been waiting for this, but now that the time had come, she wasn’t certain she wanted to know.
A distinct quiver of excitement ran through his voice. “Alex is a Romanov, Theodosia.”
“A Romanov?”
“On his father’s side.”
Her immediate reaction was amusement, but that faded as she realized her father was so obsessed with Russian history that he’d been taken in by circus hype. “Dad, that’s not true. Alex isn’t a Romanov. He’s Markov, through and through. The Romanov story is just part of his act, something he invented to make his performance more dramatic.”
“Credit me with some intelligence, Theodosia. I’d hardly be taken in by a show business stunt.” He crossed his legs. “You have no idea what I went through to verify Alex’s heritage. Once I’d done that, I had to get him away from Sergey Markov for good—the bastard didn’t die until ten years ago. Then there was the matter of arranging for Alex’s education, which had been abominable up to that point. I took care of his boarding school, but he insisted on putting himself through college, which made it impossible for me to keep him away from the circus. Do you think I would have put myself through all that if I hadn’t been absolutely certain who he was?”
A chill slithered along her spine. “Exactly who is he?”
Her father leaned back into the couch. “Alex is the great-grandson of Czar Nicholas II.”
16
Daisy stared at her father. “That’s impossible. I don’t believe you.”
“It’s true, Daisy. Alex’s grandfather was the czar’s only son, Alexei Romanov.”
Daisy knew all about Alexei Romanov, the young son of Nicholas II. In 1918, at the age of fourteen, Alexei, along with his parents and four sisters, had been herded by the Bolsheviks into the basement of a mansion in Yekaterinburg and executed. She said as much to her father.
“All of them were murdered. Czar Nicholas, his wife Alexandra, the children. They found the remains of the family in a pit in the Ural Mountains in 1993. They did DNA tests.”
He picked up his mug. “The DNA tests identified the czar, Alexandra, and three of the four daughters. One daughter was missing—some people think it was Anastasia. And they didn’t find Crown Prince Alexei’s remains.”
Daisy tried to take it in. Throughout the century, there had been a number of people who had claimed to be the czar’s murdered children, but most of them had been women presenting themselves as the princess Anastasia. Her father had contemptuously dismissed all of them as impostors. He was a careful man and she couldn’t imagine him being taken in by any sort of scam, so why did he now believe the crown prince had escaped? Had his obsession with Russian history grown to the point where he wanted to believe this story so much that he’d lost his judgment?
She spoke carefully. “I can’t imagine how the crown prince could have survived such a terrible massacre.”
“He was rescued by some monks who hid him with a family in southern Russia for several years until a group loyal to the czar smuggled him out of the country. That was in 1920. He’d seen firsthand how violent the Bolsheviks could be, so it’s understandable that he lived quietly after that. Eventually, he married and had one child, who was Alex’s father Vasily. Vasily met Katya Markov when she was performing in Munich and, like a fool, he eloped with her. He was only a teenager; his father had just died; he was rebellious and undisciplined. Otherwise, he would never have married so far beneath him. He was only twenty when Alex was born. A little over two years later, he and Katya were killed in a circus train accident.”
“I’m sorry, Dad. I don’t mean to doubt your word, but I simply can’t believe this.”
“Believe it, Theodosia. Alex is a Romanov. And not just any Romanov. The man who calls himself Alex Markov is the direct heir to the crown of Russia.”
She stared at her father with dismay. “Alex is a circus performer. That’s all.”
“Amelia warned me you’d react like this.” In an uncharacteristic gesture, he patted her knee. “You just need some time to get used to the idea, but I hope you know me well enough to realize that I would never make a claim like this if I weren’t absolutely certain it was true.”
“But—”
“I’ve told you many times about my family’s history, but you’ve obviously forgotten. Ever since the nineteenth century the Petroffs have served the Russian czars, all the way back to Alexander I. We’ve been linked through duty and custom, but never through marriage. Not until now.”
She heard the sound of a jet passing overhead, the roar of a truck’s diesel engine. Gradually comprehension seeped through her.
“You planned all this, didn’t you? You arranged my marriage to Alex because of this crazy idea you have about who he is.”
“It’s not even remotely crazy. Just ask Alex.”
“I’ll do that.” She rose to her feet. “I finally understand what all this is about. You’ve made me a pawn in some absurd dynastic dream of yours. You wanted to unite the two families, just like fathers used to do in the Middle Ages. This is so barbaric I can’t believe it.”
“I’d hardly call marrying you to a Romanov barbaric.”
She pressed her fingers to her temples. “Our marriage is only going to last five more months. How can you get any satisfaction out of that? A short-term marriage is hardly the beginning of a dynasty!”
He set down his mug and walked slowly over to her. “You and Alex don’t have to divorce. As a matter of fact, I’m hoping you won’t.”
“Oh, Dad . . .”
“You’re an attractive woman, Daisy. Perhaps not as beautiful as your mother, but still appealing. If you could learn to be less frivolous, you might
be able to hold on to Alex. There are certain secrets to being a good wife, you know. Cater first to your husband’s wishes. Be accommodating.” He frowned at her grubby jeans and T-shirt. “And you should be more careful about your appearance. I’ve never seen you look so sloppy. Do you know that you have hay in your hair? Maybe Alex won’t be so anxious to get rid of you if you try to be the sort of woman a man looks forward to coming home to.”
She regarded him with disgust. “Do you want me to meet him at the trailer door with his slippers?”
“That’s exactly the sort of flippant remark that will drive someone like Alex away. He’s a very serious man. If you don’t curb that inappropriate sense of humor, you won’t stand a chance of holding on to him.”
“Who says I want to?” Even as she spoke, something painful twisted inside her.
“I can see you’re going to be difficult about this, so I’ll go now.” He walked toward the door. “Just don’t cut off your nose to spite your face, Theodosia. Remember that you’re not a woman who does well alone. Setting aside the issue of Alex’s family lineage, he’s steady and reliable, and I can’t imagine a better man to take care of you.”
“I don’t need a man to take care of me!”
“Then why did you agree to the marriage in the first place?”
Without waiting for her reply, he opened the door of the trailer and stepped out into the sunshine. How could she explain the changes that had taken place inside her? She knew she was no longer the same person who’d left his house over a month ago, but he wouldn’t believe her.
Outside, the kindergartners she’d spoken with earlier were grouped around their teacher, prepared to return to the classroom. Over the past month she had grown accustomed to the sights and smells of Quest Brothers Circus, but now she looked at it all with fresh eyes.
Alex and Sheba stood near the big top arguing about something. The clowns were practicing a juggling trick while Heather attempted a handstand and Brady frowned at her form. Frankie played on the ground near Jill, who was working the dogs, little yippy things that made Daisy cringe. She smelled hamburgers sizzling on a charcoal grill the showgirls had lit, heard the ever-present hum of the generator, the snap of the pennants in the June breeze.