Count Dubinsky crossed the room and opened the top drawer of an elaborately carved desk. Sergei and Ivan joined him to see a photo of the count in the company of the czar and czarina, their four daughters, and their son, Alexei. Off to the right of the smiling group stood the scowling Father Grigory Rasputin.
Ivan’s eyes immediately went to Anastasia, the youngest of the four girls all dressed in long, lacy white frocks. The three oldest had their hair swept up on the tops of their heads, but only Anastasia—probably because of her young age—kept her waves pulled up at the sides, gathered in a satin ribbon.
Ivan had been so right to select her! Those piercing, playful eyes burned into him from beneath straight brows. Nadya’s eyes were the same. In the last month, hard work, outdoor living, and simple food had driven the gaunt, heavy circles from under them, and she looked even more like the grand duchess now than when he’d first met her.
“Of course the grand duchess would never be as sunburned and freckled as your Nadya,” Count Dubinsky remarked. “The grand duchesses had the most flawless porcelain skin. The girls were always protected from the sun by a bonnet or a parasol.”
“Well, now that I have run into you and we are once again funded, hopefully Anastasia’s days of outdoor labor are over. She can regain her creamy complexion before we reach Paris,” Sergei commented.
“She will not have as much time for this as you think, for I insist on putting my car and driver at your disposal. With a car, it’s no more than a day’s drive to Paris,” Dubinsky said.
At this, Ivan and Sergei exchanged charged glances. Ivan knew they were thinking the same thing. This was a mixed blessing. A ride would be an incredible luxury, but it also advanced their timetable tremendously. They could, of course, linger in Paris until Nadya had been fully trained to act the part of Anastasia. On the other hand, time was of the essence. Who knew what impostors were approaching the empress Marie with girls trained to pose as her granddaughter? If the empress accepted one of them before Nadya arrived, it would be hard to change the woman’s mind.
Suddenly, the doors to the library swung open and in strode the countess Irina Dubinsky. The count’s short, dark-haired sister made a grand gesture of presentation, sweeping her arm wide. “Presenting the grand duchess of all the Russias, her Imperial Highness Anastasia Romanov.”
Ivan turned to the open door. They all did.
No one appeared.
“Anastasia…Nadya?” Irina inquired as she headed back to the doorway to look for her. “Oh there you are,” they heard her say as she disappeared into the hallway. Then there was some soft whispering before Irina drew Nadya reluctantly into the library, leading her by the wrist. “Doesn’t she look gorgeous?” Irina asked.
Ivan gasped. “No! It’s all wrong. I hate it!”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Controversy
Ivan’s outburst prompted three separate reactions within Nadya. The first was to try to figure out what he disliked and promise to change it. Was it the permanent wave they’d had put in her hair; the new dress that billowed out around the bottoms of her calves; the newly plucked, now slightly arched eyebrows? Was the lipstick too red? She’d comb out her hair, burn the dress, fill in her eyebrows with pencil, and wipe away the lip color. She didn’t want him to think she was shallow and silly.
But this lasted for only a moment. Nadya’s second inclination to Ivan’s unhappy, disapproving expression—and to her realization that it was in stark contrast to the smiles and admiration everyone else was showing—was to run from the room. To avoid the whole situation. The urge was strong, but she squelched it. Nadya realized this was something she did quite a bit, this running away when things became unpleasant. It was a habit she wanted to break. After all, she was not a child any longer and this new, more womanly look she’d put together with Irina’s guidance made her feel even more powerful and more like an adult.
She chose to follow her third reaction: haughty defiance. Nadya recognized that this was often her fallback plan, but she didn’t care. Unlike the running away, she wasn’t sure this was a behavior she wanted to change. “Well, I like it,” she said.
“You’re crazy!” Irina Dubinsky ranted at Ivan. “She looks beautiful, like a princess or, I should say, like a grand duchess.”
“She looks like a tart!” Ivan shot back.
Nadya stared at him, eyes wide and mouth agape. How dare he?
“The empress Marie will never think a girl dressed like…dressed like…” Ivan gestured at Nadya, his arm flailing as he struggled for the right word and failed to find it. “Like…that! She’ll never think this is her royal granddaughter.”
Wearing a disgusted expression, Irina waved him away. “Oh, you Russian men are all the same—old-fashioned prigs! You’ve been tied to the apron strings of stodgy Mother Russia for too long. You forget that the empress has been in Paris, the fashion capital of the world. She will know that this short hair with the Marcel Wave is the latest thing.”
“You even mentioned the hair before,” Sergei reminded Ivan.
“This dress is a Parisian designer original,” Irina continued, signaling for Nadya to turn and give the dress a spin. “The high-heeled shoe with an ankle strap is being shown in all the magazines. She has the look of a modern woman.”
“She is an aristocrat, not a flapper!” Ivan cried.
“Where did you learn that term?” Sergei asked.
“I can read magazines too, you know!” Ivan replied.
“You’ll get used to it,” Count Dubinsky told Ivan with a jovial air of conciliation. “You simply need to adjust to the change. You’re not in Russia anymore.”
Nadya pleadingly met Ivan’s eyes. For the first time that she could remember, she felt pretty. She wanted him to think she looked attractive.
Sergei stepped forward and circled her. “What happened to the bruise on your forehead?” he asked Nadya.
“Makeup,” Irina answered.
Sergei turned to Ivan. “I say she looks very pretty,” he decided. “You have to admit that, Ivan.”
Ivan’s expression softened, and his body seemed to melt toward Nadya. “You do look lovely, Nadya…really pretty.”
Her heart soared. She knew she must be beaming like a child, grinning like some simpleminded fool, but Nadya was helpless to stop.
“I’m just not convinced it’s the right look to win over the empress,” Ivan added.
Irina came alongside Nadya and wrapped her arm protectively around her waist. “Well, we bought many outfits. You may find some of them more to your liking than this dress—though I happen to think it is très chic.”
“I don’t have to wear so much makeup,” Nadya offered as a compromise.
Irina scowled at her. “Don’t let him bully you. You look fabulous just as you are.”
“You do,” Sergei agreed.
“Now whose side are you on?” Ivan chided him.
“I’m not on any side. The girl looks beautiful this way. Only an old stick-in-the-mud would think otherwise,” Sergei replied.
“I just said she looked pretty, didn’t I?” Ivan testily defended himself. “The look is just not appropriate.”
“I have an idea,” Count Dubinsky said. “Why don’t I throw a big party for you? There are a great number of White Russian exiles living in the area. We will introduce the once lost and now rediscovered Grand Duchess Anastasia, and we’ll see how they accept her. It will be a sort of trial for meeting the grand empress.”
“But there’s still so much I have to fill her in about,” Sergei objected. “She doesn’t remember anything about life at the palace.”
“Nor should she,” Count Dubinsky said. “She has been traumatized and has suffered amnesia.”
“But wouldn’t she have retained her aristocratic bearing even if her memory was lost?” Ivan questioned.
“Though Anastasia was a very natural girl even in her most splendid finery, she had an inherent elegance,” Count Dubinsky said, studying Na
dya as he spoke. “I see that innate grace in Nadya. I don’t think there’s much work left to be done.”
Nadya felt an urge to wrap up the skinny little count in a hug and kiss his cheek. In the last month she’d felt like she was being groomed and schooled for some big exhibition. The count now was saying she was fine as she was, and Nadya was grateful for his encouraging words.
“What do you say to that proposal?” the count asked them.
Everyone excitedly spoke at once, all saying it was a wonderful idea. But Ivan shouted above the others in disagreement. “She’s not ready!”
They all quieted and gazed at him. “She must be ready,” Sergei said in a matter-of-fact tone. “There’s no time left. She simply has to be ready.”
“Ready? What’s to be ready?” Irina cried, throwing up her hands in exasperation. “She’s beautiful. She’s young. What more do you need? They’ll adore her!”
“But will they think she’s Anastasia?” Ivan pressed.
Irina held him in a steely, meaningful gaze. “Do you think she’s Anastasia?”
“I do…yes…of course,” Ivan stammered.
Irina reeled on Nadya. “Do you think so?”
Nadya could feel herself coloring with embarrassment. “I’m…I’m not sure,” she admitted.
“Naturally she’s not sure,” Sergei blustered. “She’s been through so much. Her memory is gone. It’s perfectly normal that she would have blocked out so much of…of everything.”
Irina looked from Sergei to Ivan to Nadya and thoughtfully rubbed her chin with narrowed, suspicious eyes. Crossing to Nadya, she took ahold of her wrist. “Come with me,” she said, leading Nadya out of the library. “It’s time for a woman-to-woman chat.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Struggles
“Why are you so agitated?” Sergei demanded of Ivan once Nadya and Irina were gone. Count Dubinsky also had gone to consult with his chef about lunch, and the two were alone in the library.
“Are we really going to present her to the world as Anastasia at this party?” Ivan asked. “Don’t you think that’s dangerous? There will be Russian émigrés who knew the Imperial Family.”
“But Dubinsky is right. Don’t you see?” Sergei said. “We simply say she lost her memory. And it is true!” The moment the count had suggested it, Sergei had wondered why they hadn’t thought of it themselves. Here they were, about to embark on the arduous, nearly impossible task of training a common-born girl to behave like royalty when all they had to do was claim she had amnesia. Since Nadya really did have amnesia, the plan should have been obvious to them from the start.
“It won’t work,” Ivan insisted. “Even if Anastasia had lost her memory, she wouldn’t be as rough as Nadya.”
“I don’t find her to be all that rough,” Sergei disagreed. In fact, the more he got to know Nadya, the more he saw a natural refinement in her. “She has the most exquisite handwriting,” he recalled.
“But she doesn’t know royal things,” Ivan objected.
“Amnesia,” Sergei reminded him.
Ivan disgustedly waved him away as he turned. “What if she doesn’t fit in with this bunch of aristocrats Dubinsky is inviting, and they make her feel foolish? She might lose her confidence and refuse to go the rest of the way to meet the empress. Then all our efforts will have been for nothing. We’ll have wasted all this time, and we won’t get the reward money!”
Sergei watched his friend for a moment without speaking. What a complex fellow he was! Why did he insist on cloaking his decent, even sensitive, nature with a facade of put-on callousness? Sergei was almost certain Ivan had fallen in love with the girl, but here he was insisting, yet again, that all he cared about was the reward money.
“We’ll spoil everything if we rush her,” Ivan muttered.
“Are you afraid she won’t pass the test or are you trying to shield her from embarrassment?” Sergei probed. He suspected that Ivan was protecting Nadya—another possible way that this brewing romance was complicating things.
“Maybe a little of both,” he admitted, still staring into the fire.
“I thought so.” Sergei settled onto the leather couch. “Believe me, my friend, I feel just as protective of Nadya. I’ve had my second thoughts about all this, as you well know. One thing worried me in particular,” he said.
“What is that?” Ivan asked.
“By presenting Nadya to the empress, aren’t we stopping her from finding her real family? Maybe somewhere her true family is looking for her.” As Sergei spoke these words, a lump formed unexpectedly in his throat. What if somewhere his wife Elana still lived and was down on her luck, struggling to support their son on her own? Sergei imagined a scenario where she agreed to pose as Anastasia for two con men like themselves. If Elana succeeded, she might pay someone to raise Peter while she lived out the rest of her days posing as someone she was not. If Elana were to live life as Anastasia, he might never find her at all. “Maybe what we’re doing isn’t right,” Sergei suggested. “We’re not being honest with the empress or fair to Nadya or her family, if she has one.”
“You’ve picked a fine time to worry about all this!” Ivan exploded.
“Perhaps, but I had to mention it.”
“Sergei, you’re a dreamer! Anastasia is dead. Empress Marie is never going to find her because she is not alive. Nadya’s family has abandoned her. If they ever were looking for her, she wasn’t that difficult to find, working right there in a tavern in the middle of Yekaterinburg. And just because you’re about to be repaid a borrowed sum of money doesn’t mean your fortune has been restored to you. We still need that reward money; otherwise we have nothing!”
“But is it right?” Sergei asked, anguished.
“It’s right to unite the empress with her granddaughter. The empress is a lonely old woman, and she wants Anastasia back. Nadya was a girl living alone in squalor. She might have married some miner who wandered into the tavern, but now she’ll marry a prince, or a duke, or maybe a wealthy American captain of industry.”
“And you wouldn’t mind that?” Sergei questioned.
Ivan swung around to face him, apparently surprised by the question. “Me? Mind? Why would I mind?”
Sergei cast Ivan an impatient look. “Nothing happened the other night in the forest? There was no kiss?” Sergei pressed.
“No.”
He didn’t believe it. Something had happened. He could see it in both their faces. “You’re lying.”
“I’m not,” Ivan insisted.
“Why do you pretend to be so cold all the time?” Sergei cried, jumping impatiently to his feet. “It’s all right to have feelings!”
“No it’s not!” Ivan shouted back. “Not for me. I was friends with the soldiers I fought beside. I loved my country so much I lied about my age to enlist. I was battling Germans on the Eastern Front when I was only fifteen, and I saw my friends die in droves. I believed in Communism as the great hope of Russia until I saw the cold-blooded nature of my fellow Communists. No, sir! This life has knocked the ability to feel right out of me.”
“And to think that this morning I was sure you were happy,” Sergei said sadly.
“Maybe for a moment. But then I came here and remembered I would be giving Nadya up to the empress in a few days. I can’t afford to feel anything for her.”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you, you fool,” Sergei said emphatically. “What if we don’t bring her to the empress?”
“We have to!”
“Why?”
“Because it’s the right thing for Nadya,” Ivan said with resigned sadness. “You saw that photo Dubinsky showed us. She looks just like Anastasia. The empress is bound to accept her. What other chance does she have to live a life like that? If I hold onto her for my own selfish reasons, she will never have an opportunity like this again.”
Sergei sat again, folding his arms, certain that all his suspicions had been confirmed. “I see,” he said. “I don’t know if I?
??ve ever heard a truer declaration of love.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
An Explosion of Diamonds
Irina shut the door to her spacious bedroom. It was an elegant room with a canopied bed that matched the fabric of her smooth, glossy damask curtains. Irina indicated that Nadya should be seated on the cushioned chair at her vanity desk. “So, do you love him too?” she asked abruptly.
“Who?” Nadya asked cautiously.
“Ivan, of course! It’s clear enough that he’s in love with you.”
Nadya felt something light and fizzy rising from within her. She hadn’t ever felt this way before—she was almost giddy with the sensation. “Do you really think…I mean…Ivan is in love with me?”
“Oh, please. Don’t be thickheaded! What man who isn’t head over heels would be that overprotective and jealous?”
“Jealous of what? Of whom?”
“Of all the attention you’ll be getting when everyone sees what a beauty you are.”
“Me? No.” Nadya was not being modest or fishing for further compliments; she simply did not see herself as a beauty. Yes, she felt prettier than ever before, but beautiful?
“You are very beautiful, just like your mother and sisters. You’ve grown to look a great deal like them, in fact, though the last time anyone saw you, you were only on the brink of young womanhood.”
“Did you and I know each other?” Nadya asked.
“No. My brother liked life at the palace, but I preferred our country manor. I’ve seen pictures, though. Do you honestly remember nothing?”
“Nothing.”
“That may be just as well considering what…what happened.” Irina sat on the edge of her bed and gazed at Nadya with sympathy. Reaching forward, she took her hand. “Thank God the nuns took you in.”