The Property of a Lady (3 page)

But before she died she knew she would be called upon to explain the true story to the last person left who really loved her. The one who had sold the jewels and so innocently caused an international crisis.

Missie sighed as she remembered the night her old life had ended and her new life began. It was branded into her brain so clearly that even time had been unable to dim the memory of horror and a guilt so deep that she had wished she too could die and bury her memories with her.

If she closed her eyes now, she knew the scene would unfold again, perfect in every small terrible detail, just the way it always had every night of her long life.

Russia, 1917

The night was the blackest Missie ever remembered. The old wooden troika sped noiselessly along an invisible path that wound its way through thickets of birch toward the forest. After a while her eyes became accustomed to the darkness, and she could make out the rim of white frost edging each tree and the ice crystals forming on the fur rug pulled over her mouth to stop her breath from freezing. And then the birch trees merged into evergreens and they were in the forest and she could see nothing but blackness, as thick and tangible as frozen velvet.

The enormous borzoi, Viktor, was Prince Misha’s favorite dog, with the massive head and thick shaggy coat of a true old-fashioned Russian hound, bred not merely to course foxes but to hunt wolves. Viktor rarely left his master’s side, but now he loped along in front of the sled, guiding the team of dogs through the forest along an icy track only he could see.

No one spoke. There was only the hiss of the metal runners cutting through the ice and the labored breathing of the dogs. And the blackness.

Missie thought about her eighteenth birthday celebration yesterday. Varishnya, the Ivanoffs’ beautiful country estate, had been under a cloud of fear and gloom, and despite the champagne and Misha’s brave smile, she had known what he was thinking. That this would be the last celebration at his lovely home. It might even be the last
time they were together. They might never see Varishnya—or each other—again.

Most of the servants had already disappeared; only the chef and Princess Anouska’s maid, who were French and considered themselves above a “peasant revolt,” had remained. But yesterday they too, at Misha’s command, had taken the train to the Baltic port of Tallinn where they would find a berth on a ship bound for Europe. Missie had refused to go with them. She had no real home in England, now that her father was dead, and besides, she was hopelessly in love with Misha Ivanoff. And now she was running for her life, away from the Bolshevik revolutionaries who were storming the country, murdering and pillaging without mercy.

Xenia’s head drooped against her shoulder and Missie thanked heaven she was sleeping. Lost in her dreams, she would not feel their fear. Still, it was uncomfortable with the child’s weight pressing the great tiara against her ribs.

Princess Anouska had been determined not to leave her jewels behind. Her beautiful bedroom had been in chaos. Her fabulous Paris dresses were tossed carelessly across the bed and her sumptuous furs thrown impatiently onto the floor. All the gray suede drawers had been pulled from the jewel cupboard as Nyanya, the children’s old Russian nanny, hurriedly sewed the ruby rings and sapphire brooches, the diamond necklaces and ropes of pearls, into hems and bodices. Even the hem of Xenia’s little woolen pinafore had been stitched with diamonds. But it was Anouska herself who had prised apart the ends of the great tiara so that it fitted snugly against Missie’s small waist. It had been reset by Cartier years ago. Misha had ignored the jeweler’s advice to use platinum and insisted that they use the almost pure gold of the original setting. He had never realized that the gold’s softness would be so useful.

Anouska had tied the ends with ribbon around Missie’s back, “like a jeweled cummerbund,” she had exclaimed,
laughing. Her beautiful eyes had glittered as brightly as the jewels and her corn-gold hair tumbled about her shoulders in disarray, but Missie knew that Anouska Ivanoff walked a strange tightrope suspended between elation and despair. She glanced at her in the darkness, wondering what her thoughts were now.

Anouska was sitting quietly, her six-year-old son Alexei snuggled inside the soft sable cape she had insisted on wearing despite Misha’s protests that for safety, they must dress as peasant women and servants.

“Nonsense, Misha,” she had retorted, taking the bunch of the fragrant violets grown specially for her in Varishnya’s great greenhouses and pinning them at her shoulder. Tilting her chin arrogantly, she had stared at him with that strange, beautiful half smile that always seemed to Missie to be edged with steel. “After all,” she had said, “who would dare harm the wife of the greatest of the Russian princes?”

Wrapping her arms tighter around little Xenia, Missie prayed she was right.

Misha’s mother, the Dowager Princess Sofia, sighed as the ancient troika jolted over an icy rut. Missie glanced at her anxiously, but in the falling snow she could barely make out her face.

Sofia was seventy-five years old but no one ever thought of her as an old lady. Of course her thick black hair was streaked with white, but the beautiful bone structure was still the same. Her skin was still smooth and her luminous dark eyes, inherited from a gypsy ancestor, missed nothing. She had begged her son to let her stay at Varishnya, the beautiful country estate to which she had first come as a bride fifty-five years before, or in St. Petersburg where her beloved husband had been buried in the great cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul.

“I’m too old to leave now, Misha,” she had pleaded, admitting to her age for the first time. “Let me stay here with you and face whatever is to come.” But he had refused
to listen, telling her that he was staying simply to see that Varishnya was not destroyed. He said there was no danger and that he would join them in the Crimea, in the far south of Russia, within a few weeks. Both of them had known he was lying, but she had obeyed her son’s wishes.

The snow was getting heavier, changing the dense blackness to swirling white, but Viktor plunged onward, his long bushy tail waving an arc through the blizzard.

“We must have been traveling for over half an hour,” Sofia said at last. “We can’t be far from the railway at Ivanovsk now.”

Her voice changed to a gasp as a volley of shots suddenly crashed through the night and the sled dogs lunged upward, screaming in agony as the heavy troika slid out of control across the icy track. Missie glimpsed the dogs’ gaping mouths and lolling tongues and then the troika slammed into a tree and she was hurtled into a bank of snow with Xenia beneath her.

Fear filled her mouth with its bitter taste, choking her as she waited for the next volley of shots that would finish them as surely as they had finished the dogs. But there was no sound. Trembling, she raised her head the merest fraction and peered into the blizzard. Anouska lay twenty yards away, and even through the heavily falling snow she could see the blood matting her hair and staining the icy white carpet beneath her head. There was no sign of Alexei and Sofia.

From the forest came the sound of raucous voices raised in argument and the crunch of booted feet on the snow. And then the sudden flare of burning torches held aloft.

A shiver of terror ran the length of Missie’s spine as she peeked at them. They were not soldiers, but half a dozen bearded peasants in rough, stained clothing and thick felt boots. They carried bottles as well as rifles and some wore expensive fur hats. They had obviously been looting
and were now very drunk on the stolen potato vodka, whose pungent smell penetrated even the clean forest odor of pine. She shut her eyes tightly as they staggered toward her, hiding her face and praying they would not notice her trembling.

“A peasant woman,” one said scornfully in Russian, lifting her shabby padded servant’s coat in his grimy fingers, “you can tell from the smell of her.”

The others laughed raucously. “Dead too, I’ll bet,” said another. “There’s blood all over her … still, just to make sure …”

Missie’s ribs exploded into pain as his kick landed, but fear froze the scream in her throat.

Their footsteps crunched on the frozen snow as they walked away. Holding their blazing torches aloft, they crowded around Anouska. Her blond hair tumbled across the dark sable cape and huge pearls gleamed in her pretty ears and at her neck. Suddenly her eyes flew open and she stared at the half-dozen men surrounding her, her gold-brown velvet gaze taking in their rough looks and peasant attire.

“I recognize you,” Missie heard her say weakly, “you are foresters from the Ivanoff estate. You, Mikoyan, you came to Varishnya with your children for the Easter festivities … and you, Rubakoff, and your brother….”

“Enough!” the man Mikoyan cried. “There will be no more Easter festivals at the Ivanoff estate. It belongs to us now, to the people, the revolutionaries.” He grabbed her silken hair in his filthy callused hand. “And women like you will be for our heroes to enjoy!”

Missie caught the look of pain on Anouska’s face as Mikoyan lifted her head and put his coarse, bearded face close to hers.

“But not before we find out for ourselves what the prince has been enjoying all these years, eh, comrades?”

They laughed as they passed him another bottle, and he let Anouska’s head drop cruelly back into the snow, straddling
her, gulping back the fiery liquor until it was finished. After throwing back his head, he hawked the phlegm from his throat and spat it out. Anouska groaned, turning away her bloodied head. Mikoyan flung back her cape and her lovely eyes widened with fear as he slowly fitted the bayonet onto his rifle.

A thin high scream pierced the night as Alexei ran from the trees toward his mother. “No … no … no …” he screamed. “That’s Princess Maman, leave her alone, go away….”

They swung around, training their rifles on the small figure stumbling on the ice as he ran to his mother. Hot tears burned Missie’s eyes and she wished she dared move so she could cover her ears against their cruel laughter as they grabbed Alexei by the collar, holding him aloft like a squirming puppy while he pleaded frantically with them to leave his mother alone.

Mikoyan butted the end of his bayonet against the boy’s chest and Alexei’s slate-gray eyes grew black with fear.

“So, here’s the young princeling himself, shouting for his mama!”

“Leave my son alone,” Anouska commanded weakly, summoning her most regal voice, “or I swear to God my husband will have you horsewhipped. You will hang from the highest tree at Varishnya … all of you….”

Mikoyan flung back his head in a great roar of laughter. “Watch, Prince,” he yelled, thrusting Alexei closer to his mother. “You are going to learn something they would never teach you at home in your grand palaces! A lesson of the
real
world! A lesson about the world of men with a thousand years of anger in their hearts!”

Alexei trembled as Mikoyan lunged at Anouska with his bayonet and slit her pretty woolen dress swiftly from neck to hem.

Mikoyan fell silent, staring at her. He had never seen a woman like this, all smooth golden flesh clad in delicate silk and lace.

Anouska closed her eyes, shuddering as he stretched out his filthy hand and ran it the length of her body. The stink of him was in her nostrils as his hand closed cruelly over her breast and then, suddenly, he gave an angry roar.

“What do we have here?” he cried with a growl, ripping her silken camisole with his bayonet so that the hidden diamond rings and brooches tumbled onto the snow. There was silence for a second, and then they fell on their glittering prizes with loud obscenities of delight.

“Riches, riches …” they caroled, thrusting their trophies into their pockets and taking great swallows of vodka. They glanced craftily at each other again as they realized there must be more where this came from.

Laughing, they tore off the rest of Anouska’s clothing, snatching the pearls from her throat and ears, ripping the lining from the sable cape and scooping up handfuls of jewels. When they had finished, she lay on the remains of her sumptuous fur, naked and trembling with cold and fear and the pain of her wounds.

“Bring the boy closer,” Mikoyan commanded as they crowded around her, lust burning in their eyes. Tears coursed down Alexei’s tight little face as he stood silently, head down, in the grip of his captors. And then Mikoyan began to unfasten his clothing, and the hot tears burned Missie’s own eyelids as she shut out the horror of what was taking place. But she couldn’t shut out the sounds, the jeering laughter, the bestial grunts, and Anouska’s agonized cries. And the endless sound of the little boy screaming
“Princess Maman, oh, Maman, Maman …”
Missie knew that if she lived through this night, she would remember those sounds forever.

There were six of them, and before each had had his turn Anouska fell silent. Then suddenly she began to laugh, wild, frenzied insane laughter.

Missie knew that laughter. She had heard it before, many times. But this time she was glad, because she knew
it meant that Anouska had retreated to her own private world where no one could reach her and no one could harm her.