“I’m listening. Why?”
“You saw her last night in that strapless dress?”
“Yes. She was breathtaking in it.”
“I watched Anastasia Romanov get hit right in the chest with a bullet. Even if some surgeon worked a miracle and saved her life…there would be a scar.”
Sergei nodded thoughtfully, considering Ivan’s words. “You’re right,” he admitted. “There was no scar.”
“No scar,” Ivan echoed.
“That’s good, I suppose. At least now we are sure we really are perpetrating a most outrageous swindle,” Sergei said quietly. “There is nothing uncertain about it.”
“We never set out to hurt anyone,” Ivan argued. “Why should I feel badly about that?”
“Because it was dishonest right from the start.”
Ivan opened his mouth to protest, and then he slowly shut it as he felt the weight of Sergei’s words. Ivan settled thoughtfully into an armchair, tapping the tips of his fingers together and trying to reconcile his swirling emotions with the facts.
What was he feeling?
Guilt?
Guilt was an emotion he loathed, but it was undeniably there. He could rationalize his actions for a hundred years and still it would not erase the raw look of betrayal he’d seen in Nadya’s eyes.
Shame?
He was ashamed of having deceived her about his true intentions. There was no sense in denying it.
There was another emotion lurking just below those two. Ivan rubbed his face with both hands, frustrated that he could not name it.
“You’re afraid of losing her, aren’t you?” Sergei suggested gently. “She loves you too, you know.”
Ivan dropped his head in despair. “What should I do, Sergei?”
“It seems to me that you must be perfectly honest with her. Share your thoughts and your feelings with her.”
“No. I can’t. If Empress Marie believes she is Anastasia, how can I rob her of that future?”
“Would life with you be so terrible?” Sergei asked.
“I am not a rich man, even if I do collect a reward.”
“I believe that when I find my Elana, she will still love me, even though I am no longer a wealthy aristocrat.”
Ivan concentrated on keeping his face immobile. He didn’t want even the slightest facial expression to betray his true feelings about what Sergei had just said. The chances that Elana and Peter were still alive were very slim, in his estimation. Otherwise, why wouldn’t someone have heard from them? Ivan knew that Sergei would never give up the search for his wife and son, though. Ivan did not have the heart to convince his friend otherwise.
“That’s different,” Ivan said evenly. “You two are already a devoted couple. Nadya and I haven’t even really begun. Why start something that can’t be finished?”
“Because you love each other.”
Ivan stood and went back to the window. “Sergei, you’re a romantic fool,” he snapped, continuing to scowl.
“You should write her a letter. Tell her how you feel,” Sergei suggested.
Ivan considered this. Perhaps his friend was right. Then she would know his feelings for her had been real, and though it was not his desire for them to be kept apart, he knew he was helpless in the face of her grand destiny.
Ivan sighed. Whether she was Anastasia or not, he felt sure that somehow it was Nadya’s fate to live out her life as the grand duchess. Every bit of his gut intuition told him that the empress would believe Nadya really was her granddaughter. Somehow, he just knew it.
“Do you still have that ink?” he asked Sergei.
“Not much, most of it spilled. What’s left is in my bag. Help yourself.”
Sergei’s bag sat open on his bed. Rummaging through, Ivan pulled out Nadya’s ink-stained old white petticoat. “What’s this?” he asked, holding it up to Sergei.
“Nadya’s petticoat. We used it as a rag when the ink spilled,” Sergei replied. “When Count Dubinsky’s men came to get us, everything got tossed together.”
Ivan noticed the scorched bullet tears in the waistband. Turning over the fabric, he saw another hole in the bodice of the petticoat.
Suddenly his blood felt like ice. Gooseflesh rose on his arms. “Did you see this?” he asked.
“Yes, they look like bullet holes, don’t they?” Sergei answered. “They gave her that petticoat in the asylum.”
“What if they didn’t?” Ivan asked with mounting excitement.
“I don’t follow.”
“I’ve heard stories that there were jewels sewed into the petticoats that the grand duchesses wore.”
Sergei arose and came to Ivan’s side to reexamine the petticoat. “I didn’t know that,” he said.
“It wasn’t something the soldiers wanted generally known, because they stole the jewels. But they bragged about it to the other soldiers.”
Sergei visibly shuddered with repulsion.
“It’s unbelievable,” he murmured. “I saw her die. See this hole?” Ivan showed Sergei the tear in the bodice. “Anastasia was shot in the chest. But it’s impossible.”
Sergei put a hand on Ivan’s shoulder. “Apparently not.”
“It is impossible,” Ivan insisted. “Remember…Nadya has no scar.”
That evening, Ivan ate supper alone in an outdoor café on the Left Bank of the city. The weather was warm with a gentle breeze. The last light of the lengthening spring day threw a soft cast over the bustling city.
Filled with nervous energy, he absentmindedly tapped on the coffee cup in front of him. Had he really found Anastasia? Ivan laughed softly to himself, shaking his head and marveling at the sheer improbability of it.
How had she done it? She’d been utterly trapped there in the forest. He had seen them shoot her as she’d tried to escape.
That he couldn’t reconcile. He was sure the bullet had hit her squarely in the chest. It should have been a fatal shot to the heart.
That petticoat, though…not only was it bullet-ridden, but he’d seen it before. There had to be other petticoats like it…but still…Anastasia had been wearing just such an undergarment; he’d seen it beneath her torn dress.
From his pocket, Ivan took out her small rag doll. Sergei had found it with the petticoat. Ivan had it on him now with the intention of returning it to Nadya. He knew it was only an excuse to visit her. The truth was, he missed her already.
Ivan paid his bill, and then he hailed a cab to take him over a bridge, across the darkly flowing Seine River that ran through Paris, and to the wealthier Right Bank. He had the driver continue on until they were nearly out of the city, in the more suburban section. He got out at the empress’s gated estate.
He convinced the groundskeeper to admit him through the gates but, at the front door, the butler reported that Nadya would not see him. Ivan was turning to leave when a sudden intuition redirected him. He hurried along the side of the estate until he came to a well-manicured garden, with flowing fountains and paved paths.
As he’d hoped, Nadya was there. She sat on a bench beneath a row of flowering cherry trees, looking at a book. The slightest breeze sent a shower of pink blossoms raining down on her, catching in her hair and in the folds of her clothing. She was so engrossed in her reading that she didn’t appear to notice.
Ivan approached her quietly, thinking that she looked every inch a princess, but not even an earthly one. Sitting there, so utterly transported by her reading, with the cherry blossoms blowing around her and the last of the light outlining her short blond waves, she struck him as having the radiance and otherworldly beauty of a princess from a fairy tale.
A twig snapped under Ivan’s foot and Nadya looked up sharply, her head turning toward the sound. Her eyes narrowed with hostile suspicion when she saw him. “What do you want?” she demanded coldly.
“To explain.”
“Oh, I don’t think that’s necessary,” she scoffed with a cynical chuckle. “It’s all pretty clear to me.”
&nb
sp; “Maybe it’s not what you think,” he suggested as he sat beside her on the bench. He saw she had been perusing a photo album filled with photographs of the Romanovs.
“I think that you deceived me to con a rich old woman into giving you a reward. How’s that? Fairly accurate?”
“Completely accurate,” he admitted grimly. “At least that’s how it started, but along the way things changed.”
“What things?”
“My feelings for—”
“What feelings?” she cried, standing. “You have no feelings! If you mean the romantic charade you’ve been performing to entertain yourself and to pump up that huge male ego of yours, those aren’t feelings. I admit I fell for it at first but I see through it now, thank you very much!”
Ivan was at a turning point. He knew he could go one of two ways. He’d been on the verge of confessing his love for Nadya when she’d interrupted him. Her volatile outburst had presented him with another path, however.
If he had ever loved her, the feeling was never more overpowering than at this moment. She was so vulnerable, yet so strong in her anger. But if he loved her, he could not snatch away this new life from her. What kind of shallow, self-serving love would that be?
To confess his true feelings—as Ivan had almost done—would not be an act of love. He knew Nadya could be impulsive and emotional. He felt sure she loved him too, and so she would toss everything else aside for love. It was how she was—and he couldn’t let her do it.
“You’re right,” he said, ridding his voice of warmth. “It’s a hobby of mine; I like to see if I can get every girl I meet to fall for me. At first, you were such an ungodly mess I wasn’t interested, but as you got better-looking along the way, you began to pique my interest.”
Nadya’s mortified expression made Ivan inwardly cringe, but he kept on. It would be better if she hated him; it would give him less of a chance to lose his resolve and beg her to come away with him. “Now I can add you to the list of my successes,” he added.
Ivan’s head snapped back as she slapped him hard across the face.
Mission accomplished, he thought with bitter irony as he rubbed his fiery cheek.
Tears racing down her cheeks, Nadya grabbed the photograph album from the bench and ran toward the estate, disappearing through a back door.
Ivan fought the impulse to go after her.
Instead, he headed back to the front gate and got the groundskeeper to let him out. He’d given no thought to how he’d get back to his hotel, but it didn’t matter. He wanted to walk a while anyway.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The Story Unfolds
Nadya clutched the photo album to her heaving chest as she stood in a dimly lit back hallway and allowed her tears to flow freely. What a truly terrible day this had turned out to be. She had been betrayed; her beloved doll was gone; even her meeting with the empress had not been the warm reunion she had hoped for. And now these awful, cruel words from Ivan!
Only the night before, her future had seemed full of hope. She was dancing in Ivan’s arms, accepted by the guests and about to be reunited with her grandmother. How had things all gone wrong so quickly?
The empress stepped into a doorway at the end of the hall, leaning heavily on her cane. “I thought I heard something,” she said. Quickly looking Nadya up and down, she realized her miserable state. “Are you crying? What’s wrong?”
“I just fought with Ivan,” Nadya admitted.
“Are you two in love?” the empress asked with the bluntness that Nadya was coming to realize was a hallmark of her personality.
“I thought we were. But it seems I was the only one in love.”
Empress Marie nodded. “I see.”
“I’ve been so stupid,” Nadya said, wiping her eyes.
“Come closer so I can see you,” the empress demanded.
When Nadya was beside her, Empress Marie noticed the photo album tucked under Nadya’s arm. With a tightening brow, her eyes blazed angrily. “Where did you get that?”
Nadya reddened with embarrassment. “I’m sorry. It was open on your lap, and I started looking at it.”
“How dare you!” the empress cried. “What did you hope to do, use what you learned in here to trick me?”
“No! Really, no!” Nadya insisted. “You were asleep, so I took the book to see if the photos would awaken any memories.”
“And I suppose now you remember everything? Our life together in Russia, how lovely everything was, how you used to call me Granny,” the empress said, her voice dripping with sarcasm.
Nadya shook her head. “No. Nothing came to me. I only felt sad that such a lovely family should have met so tragic an end.”
The empress looked away sharply, as if studying something on the ceiling. When she turned back to Nadya, her eyes were rimmed in red. “Give me that book right now,” the elderly woman barked fiercely.
Nadya moved to comply but then held back. “I must ask you about one photograph. Please, I need to know.” Balancing the album on her hip, Nadya fumbled through to the page featuring the scarred man and held it up to the empress. “This man with the scar. Who is he?”
Empress Marie held her in an intense stare. “Why do you ask me that?”
“He was following me at the Trans-Siberian train station.”
The empress gasped. “You saw him?”
“Yes, at the station.”
“Then he’s alive!”
Nadya nodded. “Who is he?”
“He was Rasputin’s assistant, Lepski. Every bit as foul as his boss.”
“Why have you kept his picture?”
“Because my Niki and Alexandra are in it. But I should cut those other two scoundrels out,” she said. “You say he’s been following you?”
“It seems that way. Do you know why?”
“Come into the library with me,” she said with her hand held over her heart. “I need to sit. I will tell you what I know.”
Empress Marie sat on the library couch with the album on her lap. Nadya settled into an upholstered chair across from her.
“Your mother loved…” Stopping, she scrutinized Nadya with narrowed eyes, assessing how to continue. “The czarina Alexandra,” she amended, “loved her children very much, and she worried endlessly about Alexei’s health. I don’t know how he did it, but that devil Rasputin was the only one who seemed able to help him. This gave him tremendous influence with Alexandra. She gave him all sorts of gifts, but he was never satisfied.”
“But if Rasputin could help, who could blame her?” Nadya sympathized.
“I understand, but she went too far,” the empress said, shaking her head sadly. “Alexandra was a German princess, as was Marie Antoinette before she became the queen of France—another unfortunate victim of another bloody revolution. A priceless necklace that had once belonged to that ill-fated queen came to Alexandra through family lines. In a rash moment, when she was out of her mind with fear that Alexei would die, she promised it to Rasputin if he could cure the boy.”
Nadya’s hand crept to her throat as she listened in rapt silence. She did not fully remember her dreams, but she knew she had dreamed of a necklace of brilliant diamonds. “It was a diamond necklace?” she inquired quietly.
The empress was surprised. “How did you know?”
“I’ve dreamed of a diamond necklace. I think Rasputin and the czarina were in the dream.”
“You’ve dreamed it? At night, while you slept?”
“Yes.”
The empress’s face softened for a moment before she tugged it back into stern lines. “The story was leaked briefly in the Russian newspapers before Niki had it suppressed. Perhaps you saw it. It ran with a drawing of the necklace.”
“Perhaps I did,” Nadya allowed. “It would have been from before the time I can remember.”
“Well this insect, this Lepski, liked to drink, and when he was drunk he would brag that Rasputin was soon to come into possession of an invaluable heirloom. This s
tory got to Prince Yuperov, who hated Rasputin with a passion—as did many others. It was he who eventually orchestrated Rasputin’s execution. When he heard that Rasputin would get the necklace, he was outraged. He said it was state property, since Alexandra was the czarina of All the Russias. He intervened before Alexandra could hand over the necklace to Rasputin, and Niki took Yuperov’s side in the argument.”
As though jolted from her unconscious mind by Empress Marie’s recollections, the images of this scene—the men and Alexandra struggling for the necklace—returned to Nadya. It made her nearly dizzy with emotion as she realized that she knew exactly what the empress was telling her, as though she had seen the whole thing.
This was no dream concocted from a newspaper report.
She had seen this!
“My son sided with Prince Yuperov and Count Dubinksy, who aided the prince. He denied Rasputin the necklace. This fellow Lepski was more incensed over Niki’s decision than even Rasputin appeared to be. He swore revenge on the whole Romanov family if the necklace was not given over. Apparently Rasputin had promised him the diamonds from the bottom strand.”
“Why did Prince Yuperov spare his life?” Nadya asked.
“Before they attempted to execute Rasputin, they got him drunk. Lepski was there and became so inebriated that he fell under the table. He was roused by the commotion during the struggle with Rasputin, and he crawled away.”
“What became of the necklace?”
“No one knows,” Empress Marie replied, but Nadya was sure she had detected a small catch in the woman’s voice, a split second of hesitation. No one else knows, perhaps, she thought, but you know, don’t you? She decided not to press the subject, even though she was sure the empress was lying. What was the point in antagonizing her?
Empress Marie studied Nadya with a direct gaze. “I wish my eyesight were better and I could see you clearly,” she said. “But this Lepski obviously believes you are Anastasia. He saw the girl many times—to my great displeasure, let me add.”
“You think that’s why he’s been following me?”