The Diamond Secret (Once Upon a Time)

by Suzanne Weyn

  The way Nadya leaned into Ivan’s arms moved Sergei to think of other dances long ago when he’d held his Elana in much the same way. The two of them had been deeply in love, and so when he saw Ivan and Nadya together, Sergei recognized the body language.

  With a pang of nerves, Sergei scanned the party’s sidelines in search of this mysterious scarred man. He saw no one who fit the description—nor anyone who looked like Rasputin’s assistant—and he gradually began to relax a little. The man had probably run off, realizing that Ivan had caught sight of him.

  Sergei seated himself on a velvet chair to consider their situation. What a success Nadya had made of this evening! After tonight, word would spread like a rampant wildfire that a member of the Romanov Imperial Family had miraculously survived.

  White Russians loyal to the Romanovs were scattered all over Scandinavia, Europe, and even Asia. Before this party even was over, word would most likely reach some of them via telegrams. By the morning, talk of counterrevolution—of reclaiming Imperial Russia with the czarina Anastasia on the throne—would probably be swirling. The excitement would be widespread. It was likely that the empress Marie would already be expecting them by the time they arrived in Paris.

  For the most part, this was all good. The more the world embraced Nadya as Anastasia, the more at ease she would become. This general acceptance would encourage the empress to see Nadya as her granddaughter as well.

  The immensity of what Ivan and he were doing impressed itself on Sergei for the first time, and he drew in a deep breath to calm himself. How had he not seen it before? Was he a fool? How had he not realized they were about to unleash a political whirlwind with tremendous consequences in Russia, possibly even the world?

  They hadn’t intended to start a counterrevolution!

  It hadn’t even occurred to them. But tonight, seeing the light of excited fervor that the sight of Anastasia had rekindled in the eyes of these exiled Russians, he knew they’d gotten themselves into something much bigger than they’d expected.

  The sudden notoriety that would surely follow made the man with the scarred face even more dangerous. It would be all the more difficult to slip past him now.

  Just how dangerous was he?

  Out on the dance floor, Ivan had his left hand planted on Nadya’s waist as he expertly steered her around the dance floor. He’d mentioned to Sergei that one of the many odd jobs he’d worked was as a ballroom dancing instructor’s assistant. It showed. But Nadya—where had she learned to dance with such fluid ease?

  Nadya must have been brought up and educated in a wealthy family. But then why had no one come looking for her when she went missing? Maybe her family was dead; the Bolsheviks had been merciless to the aristocracy and the upper classes.

  The poor girl; she’d been through so much. It was good to see her so radiantly happy, as she appeared to be, there on the dance floor in Ivan’s arms.

  Were they bringing her to a happy life or ushering her into a strange world of political intrigue? Or—and this sent a chill down Sergei’s spine—by having her pose as Anastasia were they as good as signing her death sentence?

  The music stopped. Though the other dancers left the dance floor, Ivan held Nadya in his embrace. Her head rested on his shoulder as they swayed together to a love song only they could hear.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Summoned to Paris

  The next morning Nadya lay in bed, still not asleep despite the fact that the first gray light of dawn had begun to seep through the curtained windows, lifting her bedroom from darkness. She’d lain there sleeplessly for no more than three hours. The party had lasted far into the night, and then they’d stayed up another hour more, sitting by the fire and gleefully rehashing the triumphant evening.

  What a night it had been! Life as Anastasia was so glamorous! The guests had plied her with eager questions all night. When they had asked if she recalled them from her palace days she’d simply apologized for her amnesia. Others had wanted to know about her life in exile. In this instance she’d simply concocted stories about her time with the nuns. It all had come so naturally to her. Not a single skeptical eyebrow had been raised.

  When Nadya had sat down to dinner and had to make sense of the wide assortment of dining utensils, she’d simply employed her common sense or had watched the other guests. It had worked too! Using the outside utensils and working inward with each new course turned out to be exactly the correct approach.

  Toward the end of the evening, Irina had linked her arm into Nadya’s and had whispered in her ear, “Guests who have met Anastasia are saying they have no doubt you are the grand duchess.”

  Now Irina’s words kept replaying in her mind. They had no doubt! These guests had known Anastasia and they were convinced that she, Nadya, was the youngest daughter of Nicholas Romanov, Czar of All the Russias.

  So then…was it true?

  Ivan and Sergei thought so; Count Dubinksy was positive she was the grand duchess.

  If only she could remember something of her former life. Of course, she’d read all about the Romanovs and had been moved by their tragic story. But how could a person not be moved? When she looked at photos of the family, all she saw was how brightly their affection for one another shone on their faces. Even when they were not smiling, their body language—the way they leaned toward one another or clasped hands—spoke volumes about their shared love.

  Nadya sat up in bed, resting her forehead on her bent knees. Think! she urged herself. There must be something you can remember from before the asylum. Think!

  Nothing. It was as though a wall existed in her mind, and behind it was everything she wanted to remember. She could almost feel the memories like flickering forms moving on the other side of the mental barrier, but she had no idea how to reach them.

  Maybe her dreams were the answer, were the way around or through the wall of amnesia. Nadya reviewed her most memorable dreams. What had she seen? A sea of ink, the Black Sea; she could not recall ever having been to the Black Sea, but perhaps she had. She’d dreamed of Rasputin, though that didn’t mean she’d met him; she might have seen his photo in a newspaper or book. The czarina Alexandra had appeared in her dreams. Here again, Nadya had seen her photograph, and it was natural enough to conjure these images from her more recent recollections.

  Nadya recalled the frightening dreams of the man with the scar. She’d dreamed of him twice now. Back at the train station, his greedy glare had terrified her. Maybe he simply leered at young women. It also was possible he had come to represent all that scared her.

  It was maddening not to know if her dreams were fabrications concocted from old newspaper stories and photographs or if they were a window into her old life.

  The rumble of a motorcar interrupted the stillness of the morning, growing ever louder as it traveled up the count’s long front drive. Why would someone be visiting this early?

  Curious, Nadya slid out of bed and parted the curtains. Her room faced the front of the estate, and she could see a luxurious black Rolls Royce pulling up to the front steps. A uniformed chauffeur emerged and went to the front door. Nadya didn’t hear a bell ring or a knocker bang. Was someone below expecting his arrival?

  Nadya still was gazing out the window, pondering the visitor, when someone knocked on her door. “Are you awake?” Irina asked.

  Nadya quickly opened the door to face Irina, who was wrapped in a thick robe. She was flushed with breathless excitement.

  “What’s going on?” Nadya asked her.

  “The empress Marie has heard about you all the way in Paris,” Irina reported. “She has sent her driver to bring you, Sergei, and Ivan to her. You must come right away.”

  “Right now?” Nadya questioned.

  Irina flew into the room and pulled a suitcase from the closet. “Yes! Yes! Take this bag and throw in all the new things we bought. Oh, it’s so lucky we went shopping! I suggest you put on the blue silk traveling suit. It’s divine on you! But no, maybe it’s
too warm. It wouldn’t be good to perspire; no doubt you’ll be nervous enough when you meet the empress. Try that darling emerald-green sheath with the cap sleeves instead.”

  Nadya felt oddly unable to move. They’d thought of nothing but this for so long, but now it seemed to be happening much too quickly. It wasn’t real somehow.

  Irina swirled around her like a cyclone, tossing all Nadya’s new things into the bag. “There, all packed!”

  Nadya grabbed her grimy pillowcase satchel and tossed its contents into the suitcase, on top of her new outfits.

  “Ah!” Irina cried. “Don’t do that! Don’t be offended, but those things are disgusting. Leave them here with me. I’ll have them burned!”

  As Nadya picked up the contents of the pillowcase, she noticed one of Sergei’s white shirts. Three men’s socks were in there also, each one a different color. “Oh dear,” she sighed, realizing she had other things of Sergei and Ivan’s as well. “We grabbed everything so fast when your brother’s men came that we just threw everything together. I can’t leave these things; they might need them.”

  Irina dumped one of the bed pillows from its case and laid the clean pillowcase on top of Nadya’s new clothing. “At least separate the new things from that mess,” she suggested kindly.

  “Thanks,” Nadya said, laying the old items on top.

  “Now get dressed! Dowager Grand Empress Marie Feodorovna Romanov is not a woman to keep waiting!”

  Nadya sat in the back of the Rolls Royce between Ivan and Sergei as they headed toward Paris. They’d been on the road for five hours and it was nearly noon. Ivan was talking to the driver, who also spoke Russian, explaining that none of them had the proper papers for entering France. The driver confidently told him not to worry. He knew what roads to take to avoid the government officials, and if they should be stopped, there were tried and true ways to get around even that. Nadya assumed these ways involved large sums of money.

  “You’re ready for this, you know,” Sergei assured her. “You were spectacular at the party.” He’d complimented her on her performance before, but he seemed to know she needed to hear it again.

  “If she does accept me as Anastasia, how will it be?” she asked.

  “It will be good,” Sergei replied, patting her hand. “I have heard from reliable sources that the empress favored Anastasia above all her other grandchildren. You will be reunited with someone who loves you dearly. You will live luxuriously.”

  “As I once lived,” she murmured.

  “Yes, before the Revolution.”

  “Is it right to live that way, with so much wealth, when others are struggling as we have been struggling?” she asked him, scowling reflectively.

  “That is a big question,” Sergei commented. “But think of it this way. If you have wealth at your command, you will be in a position to help others.”

  “Did the Romanovs use their wealth to help others?”

  “They had charities they contributed to and worked for,” he replied.

  “But did they do enough? Apparently the people of Russia didn’t think so, or else they wouldn’t have been overthrown, would they?”

  “I don’t know,” Sergei admitted.

  “Just take the money and don’t worry about it,” said Ivan, who had finished talking to the driver and had joined their conversation. “The old woman has enough of it, and she’ll be happy to spend it on you.”

  “You know, I’m not doing this for the money,” she said. “I have nobody in the world, no family, no friends. If I could recover my past and find my real grandmother, then maybe I could feel like I belonged, instead of like a piece of fluff being blown by every breeze.”

  “We’re your friends,” Ivan muttered, barely audible.

  Despite the low tone, Nadya heard him. To her surprise, his words brought tears to her eyes. “I know that’s true,” she agreed in a voice choked with emotion. “And I haven’t had friends before, not ones I can remember. Maybe we should turn back.”

  “Why?” Sergei asked.

  “I don’t know what’s going to happen and I’m frightened,” she told them.

  “It’s going to be all right,” Ivan said. “Really.”

  Nadya nodded to be agreeable but was not convinced. This formidable dowager empress was a stranger to her. Maybe she was as austere as her grand title implied. Why should she trade these two true friends, one of whom she was deeply in love with—despite her reluctance to admit it—for a strict old aristocrat?

  But Empress Marie could be her grandmother. A grandmother could fill in the blanks of her former life. A grandmother would be able to restore the memories that had once been hers. A grandmother could give her back her life. Nadya would no longer have that lingering sense that she was nobody at all, that she was a shadow or even a ghost.

  This was the awful emptiness that she hated. If anything could take away that terrible fear and pain, it would be worth the risk.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The Dowager Empress Marie

  Ivan’s stomach clenched as the driver stopped the car at the high iron gates surrounding the empress Marie’s estate on the outskirts of Paris. The motor idled while a groundskeeper unbolted the lock.

  This was it—the journey’s end, the culmination of months of planning, searching, and traveling. Nadya had fallen asleep with her head on Sergei’s shoulder. Sergei also slumbered, his head resting on the back of the seat.

  The groundskeeper pulled open the gate, and the automobile proceeded up the drive. The empress’s manor house was not a palace, but it possessed the same grandeur, only on a much smaller scale. More than a hundred years earlier, Ivan reflected, the French had revolted against this disparity between the starving lives of the poor and the lush lives of the rich. Yet what had it actually accomplished if places like this still existed?

  It doesn’t matter, he told himself harshly. He’d buried the idealist in himself, the one who was bothered by such things, and it was best if he stayed underground. There was no room for him in Ivan’s plans.

  Ivan’s focus now was on playing his cards right, on staying smart and not letting emotion knock him off his game.

  He reached across and jostled Nadya’s shoulder. “Wake up. We’re here.”

  Sergei sputtered awake, looking confused and then disappointed. “I dreamed I was home with Elana and my son, Peter.”

  Nadya rubbed his arm sympathetically.

  At the wide, curved front steps, the driver opened the car door for them to get out. A butler in tuxedo tails met them and led the way to the front door. Inside the elegant white foyer with its rich blue-and-pink Persian rugs and ornately golden-framed mirrors, the butler bid them wait while he announced their arrival to the empress. “Remember, your name is Anastasia,” Ivan whispered once the butler had gone.

  “Yes, but I’ll tell her I had forgotten it until recently,” Nadya whispered back. “Otherwise I know I’ll slip and forget.”

  “No,” Ivan objected.

  “Yes,” Sergei insisted. “It’s too late to switch her name now. It will look like we’re trying to fool the empress if Nadya hesitates over the name Anastasia.”

  Ivan shot Sergei a meaningful glance. They were trying to fool the empress, but they couldn’t say that in front of Nadya.

  “I’m so nervous,” Nadya said with a tremble in her voice.

  “You just be yourself and answer honestly,” said Sergei.

  “Let me do the talking,” Ivan advised. He realized he had been snapping his fingers and he stopped abruptly. This would be the big moment. He was more anxious about it than he wanted to admit, even to himself.

  The butler returned and gestured for them to follow him down the hall. He opened white doors with golden inlays, which led into a large room. A frail, elderly woman sat behind an impressive mahogany desk. Her still-thick white hair was piled high on her head, and what must have once been a pair of piercing blue eyes now cast a cataract-clouded gaze on them. “Come closer,” the woman sn
apped in a brittle tone.

  Ivan summoned the smooth charm he knew was his to command and made a sweeping bow. “Your Highness, it is an honor.”

  Sergei also bowed. But a sidelong glance told Ivan that Nadya simply was standing there as if dumbfounded. He fought the urge to poke her into a curtsy. Straightening, he smiled warmly at the empress. “Your Majesty, it is my great joy to introduce to you a young woman whom Count Kremnikov and I, Ivan Ivanovitch Navgorny, are convinced beyond all doubt to be your granddaughter, the grand duchess Anastasia Nicholaevna Romanov.”

  The empress hit her cane against the floor, and Ivan unintentionally jumped at the unexpected bang. Sergei and Nadya both flinched. “I know all that, you blathering fool!” she barked. “Did you not hear me? I said come closer! Let me see the girl.”

  Without Ivan’s prompting, Nadya crossed the room and stood before the old woman. “Do you recognize me?” she asked, in a touching tone throbbing with need.

  “My eyes are no longer sharp,” replied the empress. “Lean in. Let me smell you.”

  Alarm washed over Nadya’s face and for a second, Ivan was sure she would run. But she bent toward the empress, who inhaled and then waved her hand dismissively. “Nothing. Too much time has passed, perhaps. The scent of your skin is not familiar to me.”

  “Can you see me at all?” Nadya inquired.

  “You’re blurred,” the woman replied. “But there is a quality in your voice reminiscent of the czarina Alexandra.”

  Ivan realized he had never heard the grand duchess speak in his time at the castle, nor had he heard the czarina.

  “Tell me, were your mother and I close?” Empress Marie tested.

  “I don’t know,” Nadya replied without hesitating. “If I ever knew, I have forgotten everything that happened before the day I awoke in an insane asylum.”

  Alarms sounded in Ivan’s head. What was she doing? They had agreed not to mention that!