Lena stared at the patterns of gray wreaths on the mauve carpet. She’d received another letter from her mother. Anton’s friend had been released from jail, no further questions asked and no further suspects taken into custody. Alexandra was as good as her word, but Lena hadn’t thanked her directly. She sensed this wasn’t how these matters were best handled.
“I understand.” Alexandra tilted her long cigarette holder onto the edge of a crystal tray. “I would do anything for my brother, Ernest. I suppose you’ve heard. His fickle wife abandoned him for Nicky’s cousin, Kyril.”
Lena took a moment to recall the right words in English. “It is an unfortunate situation,” she said carefully.
“It’s shameful. Grandmama would never have stood for this. He can’t marry her. The fool and the adulteress deserve permanent exile.” Alexandra reached for Lena’s wrist and squeezed. “I won’t let the corruption of Saint Petersburg touch you. Terrible things happen in this city. You wouldn’t know, coming from the north where life is clean and simple.”
Most of the things Lena saw as a girl were neither clean nor simple. She’d once watched a bear, frenzied from baiting, tear half the scalp off a screaming child.
“As long as your brother is under your influence, I can’t imagine he will do anything but repent,” Alexandra said, releasing Lena’s hand.
Lena nodded and reached for Alexandra’s evening gown, a pale pink brocade studded with tiny diamonds. Alexandra stamped the remains of her cigarette into dust in the ashtray and stood so Lena could drape the gown over her head and shoulders. “This is my dilemma. I must remain vigilant and constantly on alert. I must know what people say about me. I notice, even when they think I don’t. Their voices draw to a sudden hush when I walk into the room. Servants. Guests. Nicky’s family. They’re the worst. I can’t trust my own husband’s family. I can’t sleep for worrying.”
That explained the dark semicircles shadowing Alexandra’s eyes and the thin lines that had appeared on her forehead, despite the heavy cream she applied faithfully every night. Lena smoothed the gown. Alexandra took a decanter of rose water and sprayed the scent about her neck. “I suppose there are some in Nicky’s family who pray I never bear an heir to the throne. I know Cousin Kyril hopes I’ll throw myself in the Neva River.” Alexandra’s gaze wandered to a sideboard, where one of Olga’s French dolls had been left out. “Sometimes I think my daughters are the only ones who love me.”
“The tsar loves you beyond reason,” Lena said.
“Yes.” A faint smile played on Alexandra’s lips. “But what good does it do me to be loved by my husband when the rest of the world is against me? Nicky will try to protect me, but I must help him as best I can. Delivering an heir will go a long way toward that end.”
Lena hesitated, brush in hand. Pavel and Masha both believed the real power in Saint Petersburg resided in Marie’s small frame. If she betrayed Marie’s confidence, Lena would face the dowager’s wrath. Yet she thought Alexandra had a right to know. “The dowager…”
Alexandra spun around and seized Lena by the shoulders. “What?”
“Dowager Empress Marie requested my presence in the birth room.”
“That’s wonderful news.” Alexandra’s long lashes beat furiously against her pale cheeks. “Mama knows how much I rely on you.”
Lena began to fidget. “I helped my mother sometimes.”
Alexandra delicately raised her eyebrows. When necessary, she could convey her power with precision. “Surely you did not mislead me regarding your credentials.”
“I did not mislead you. Only I’m afraid I’ll get in the doctors’ way.”
“Nonsense. You’ll see me through the ordeal. I think of you as a friend now.”
“The dowager fears you might not have a son,” Lena blurted.
Alexandra watched Lena in the mirror. “I confess. I sympathize with her anxiety. Who can blame her after four girls? She thinks I’m bad luck. I used to think this way myself. But not anymore. Faith will see me through this ordeal. If I believe in my son, then all will be well. Monsieur Vachot said as much.”
She patted her stomach gently. Lena’s heart melted. The empress looked so protective of her unborn child, and yet so vulnerable.
“But I don’t trust the court doctors,” Alexandra said. “Stay with me when I go into labor. Promise you won’t leave. No matter what.”
Lena nodded. “I promise. I’ll stay no matter what.”
PARIS
OCTOBER 1941
Early in the morning, Charlotte had raised the blackout shades drawn over the windows in the front room. Luc lurked under the sloping eaves of the building across the street, huddled into a raincoat. She watched what happened next with her heart in her throat. When the stranger came, he had the hood of his jacket pulled low over his head. Charlotte could not make out his face. She supposed that was the way most members of the Maquis made their way across the city. She watched Luc slip a crumpled wad of bills into the stranger’s hands. And then Luc walked in a little circle, waiting.
The car itself didn’t impress Charlotte. It was just a beat-up sedan with broken taillights and deflating tires. Still, she’d grown accustomed to squeaking bicycles and tired horses yanked out of retirement. Charlotte worried over this now. They’d thought a car necessary, but the vehicle might arouse suspicion. Luc wouldn’t tell her what the stranger had placed in the trunk of the car for them to smuggle across the border into Spain. At any moment, German soldiers in their drab green uniforms could have sprung out from behind the building and arrested Luc. She’d waited, clutching the cross around her neck, wondering what they would do if they caught him.
Fortunately, the soldiers hadn’t materialized. Now Luc turned the vehicle onto a narrow dirt highway heading south. They were finally leaving the city, and yet a bubble of tension kept growing inside of her, threatening to pop.
She craned her neck to check on her son, curled into a fetal position and asleep in the backseat. Before they left, Luc had given him medicine to make him drowsy. He’d mentioned something about valerian root. He’d failed to mention how helpless it would make the boy look. Laurent’s eyelids drooped and his head fell to his shoulder at an unnatural angle. “You’re sure the medicine won’t hurt him?” Charlotte asked.
“He’ll sleep. That’s all. Do you think I’d hurt…?” Luc took another puff on his cigarette and blew the smoke out the window. He didn’t have to complete the thought. Do you think I’d hurt my own son?
“Anyway, I thought you wanted to find out what happened to your friend Kshesinskaya,” he said. “You haven’t asked after her.”
Charlotte had been afraid to ask. “Did you learn anything?”
“She hasn’t been arrested. At least no one thinks she has. Other than that, I don’t know. I only had a minute with the courier, when he dropped off the car.”
Relief coursed through her. “I’ll write to her once we get to my parents’ house.”
“Don’t do that. She risked herself to protect you. We’ve done all we can for now. Try to relax so you’ll be ready at the checkpoint.” Luc’s lips twitched. If Charlotte didn’t know better, she would have thought he was suppressing a laugh. “Now say it again.”
“But I sound like a fool.” Charlotte’s fingers flexed with irritation. She held up the Spanish phrase book once more. “Le puedes repeterez, por favor.”
“Puedes repetir, por favor,” Luc insisted. “Please repeat that. Trust me. You’ll need to know that one.”
Charlotte lowered the book. “What’s the use? I can’t concentrate. I’ve lost my touch with languages. I guess I’m getting old. At least it will be easier for Laurent.”
She sighed and gazed out the window. Husks of barns and cottages dotted the low hills on either side of the road, victims of the Germans’ last bombing raid. Seeing the countryside this way tarnished the memories of better times, as if she had driven past the house in which she’d grown up only to find the current owners kept it in dis
repair. Charlotte thought then of everything else she missed: amaretto liqueur, imported Billie Holiday and Glenn Miller records, patent leather shoes dyed red. How had life become all dry potatoes and boorish Prussian military marches? She felt the weight of it pressing her chest, the sense that all her happiness was in the past.
Charlotte tried to focus on the route, not the landscape. She and Luc used to take this road when they went to Burgundy for the weekend, before they were married. They stayed in a cabin loaned to them by one of Luc’s journalist friends. Luc brought along plenty of red wine and baguettes. At night, he tried to shave with a dull razor and no mirror. She used to touch the blobs of red on his face where his hand had slipped and he’d punctured the skin.
“What are you thinking about?” The orange tip of Luc’s cigarette glowed in the dim daylight.
“Nothing.” A lump stuck in her throat and she forced it down.
“We traveled this way before,” Luc said, his voice warm as melted chocolate.
Charlotte tapped her fingers on the dashboard. It made a hollow sound. She hated the confinement of the car. She longed to be outside, moving.
Smoke curled around Luc’s face. He laughed. “Remember the old shrew that sold me baguettes before we left? She called me a hooligan because I always paid in change. She never let me leave the shop without counting every last coin. If she had enlisted, we would have driven the Huns back over the Rhine.”
“I remember.” Being near him, it all came rushing back. His scent, his gaze, even the way he held his cigarette. Charlotte stared out the window. Luc fell silent again. She supposed it was his way of declaring the subject off-limits. She was grateful they were in agreement on that much at least.
A dark Daimler-Mercedes passed them on the right, rattling their windows. She watched the little red flags with black swastikas bat back and forth in the wind. The brake lights illuminated. They hadn’t traveled but a few kilometers past the city limits and already they were approaching a checkpoint. The booth looked as sturdy as the German soldiers who’d erected it.
Luc pulled to a stop behind the Mercedes. In the booth ahead, a gendarme slid the thin glass window open and poked his head out. The men inside the vehicle cranked their window down and dutifully turned their travel passes over to him.
“You remember what to tell him if he asks?” Luc rolled the window down. It squeaked horribly. A blast of cold air made Charlotte shiver.
“Bonjour.” She heard the gendarme greet the car in front of them in a classic French singsong, so different from the staccato rhythm of the Germans.
“Is this why you took this route?” she said in a low voice. “He’s not German.”
Luc tossed his cigarette and rolled the window back up. “He’s a collaborator. That’s worse. Say as little as possible.”
Charlotte wished Luc had said something more reassuring. She only hoped her lips would part when needed. She turned to place a hand on Laurent’s shoulder.
“I know this guard, but I usually don’t bring along a woman and a child,” Luc said. “Hopefully he’s feeling pliable today, but you can’t arouse his suspicion. Do you understand?”
The Mercedes peeled out, spewing grimy exhaust fumes that irritated her throat, making her cough. Luc clutched the worn gearshift and pulled up to the booth.
The young gendarme had a pale complexion, ruddy cheeks, and merry green eyes at odds with the severity of his black uniform. His light brown hair had been shorn close to his skull, as the Germans preferred. “Ah, monsieur. Good to see you again.”
Luc shrugged, not in an unpleasant or disrespectful way, but no one could accuse him of fawning, either.
“And how are you, madame? This is your wife? Strange you have not mentioned her before.” The gendarme addressed Luc, but didn’t take his eyes off Charlotte.
“Sister,” Luc said.
“Sister? And this young fellow in the back belongs to which one of you? No, let me guess. He is your nephew. He belongs to the lady.”
“Correct,” Luc said.
The gendarme knocked on the back window. “Sleepy this morning, isn’t he?”
The gendarme’s cheerful voice shredded Charlotte’s last nerve. She’d expected harsh words, a probing stare, and careful examination of their documents. In the end, this friendly interest might prove more damning. It required more improvisation. “He stayed up late last night.” Charlotte tried not to stumble on the words. “He’s a sound sleeper.”
“Lucky you.” The gendarme winked. “Leaves your nights wide open, doesn’t it?”
In better times, she’d have had something cutting to say in reply. Now she only gave the gendarme a curt whisper of a smile.
“You have your papers?” he asked.
Luc brushed Charlotte’s arm as he reached into the glove compartment and fumbled with the crumpled travel passes. “Damn nuisance,” he muttered.
“Perhaps, but they’re deemed necessary.”
Luc handed his papers over. The gendarme squinted. “Where are you heading?”
“The Dordogne,” Luc replied. “We have family there. You can check.”
“No need. Still, you wouldn’t suppose so many people have family near the Spanish border.” He handed Luc his papers. “And for you and the boy, madame.”
Charlotte willed her hand not to shake as she passed her papers over. More than anything, the lack of control over her own body’s motions scared her.
The gendarme flipped through the papers. Luc had told her that the travel pass for the occupied zone belonged to a woman who died in an Allied bombing raid, along with her three-year-old son. “You’re thirty-nine?” The gendarme gave her the once-over, head to toe. “I’d never have guessed. Especially since you have such a young boy. And your birthday is in April, same as mine.”
She had memorized every word of that document, in case any soldiers asked. The woman’s birth date was closer to her own. “You misread. I was born in August.”
“So you were.” Still, he didn’t return the papers. He didn’t take his gaze off the picture. “Pardon me. I noticed the photograph … it is very strange. It may require more time on my part.” He grabbed a small phone inside the booth.
Charlotte pressed her feet hard against the floorboard. If the gendarme detained them, the Germans would send them east to nowhere. They’d chop off Laurent’s hands so he couldn’t fight them.
Luc placed his hand gently on her wrist. He reached again into the glove compartment and withdrew a second envelope, this one stuffed with bills. Luc’s tone grew exceedingly reasonable as he addressed the gendarme. “Not necessary.”
The gendarme cradled the phone back on the receiver. He took the envelope from Luc’s hands and made a show of counting the bills inside. “Times are difficult for the Maquis, I see.”
Luc’s voice remained steady. “The amount is fair.”
The gendarme stuffed the bills back in the envelope and extended his arm, returning them to Luc. “Not everyone’s resources are dwindling.”
Charlotte stared at the gendarme’s smooth, pale hand as it reached for the phone again. The movement seemed to happen in slow motion, like a film. She needed to do something, anything to stop the gendarme from making that call. She’d close her hands around his throat.
“I think it’s her,” she heard the gendarme say. “Very well.”
“Luc…” she began.
He stared straight ahead. He’d withdrawn into his own world, with his own worries, where other people were only a nuisance.
“Move,” she whispered. Charlotte reached down and shifted the gears.
That was enough. Luc slammed the accelerator down to the floor. Charlotte jolted out of her seat as the car sped forward.
Three shots fired. She screamed and put her hand on Laurent, who stirred in the backseat. Luc kept his hands on the wheel, trying to maintain control. Charlotte gripped the sides of her seat, feeling the rips in the leather and the bits of stuffing flaking around her legs. They might sti
ll make it. If she focused hard enough, if she pulled every reserve of strength and concentrated, she might will this into being. The engine would roar. They would speed off. The gendarme would choke and cough on the exhaust. They would finally be free of the soldiers, free of the soul-crushing paperwork, free of the officers’ questions about Charlotte and her family.
The car came to a shuddering halt. The acrid smell of burning rubber filled the air. The gendarme approached them, his gun drawn and pointed at Luc’s head.
Nine
NEW YORK CITY
PRESENT DAY
Rays of sunlight slashed through the slats in the window shades, promising a bright, chilly mid-Atlantic day. Veronica raised her arms high above her head, and then dropped them at her sides, safely cocooned from the outside world.
On the hotel room’s desk, she spotted her research notebook. A wave of guilt washed over her. She’d intended to get more work done on this trip, at least strategize her visit with Alexei Romanov in advance. Abuela was right. She had let Michael distract her from her work. The heavy scent of sex still clung to the bed. The previous night had been intense, better than she expected. Her skin felt pliable and sensitive to the touch.
“Wake up, sleepyhead,” Veronica said, and turned over, expecting to uncover Michael beneath the thick white comforter. She patted lumps on his side of the bed, but found only damp, twisted sheets. Her heart dropped to her stomach. Perhaps he’d packed up while she slept in. She would find a note on the door telling her he needed to return to Los Angeles unexpectedly. She pulled the comforter over her shoulders, trying to summon a shell to close around her heart.
The lock on the door unlatched. Michael walked in carrying a copy of The New York Times and a white paper bag. His hair was tousled and he wore the same rumpled shirt she remembered from the night before. He hadn’t shaved. He looked perfect. She wanted to drag him back into bed.
Michael kissed her forehead and handed her the bag. Grease stains and rainbow-colored sprinkles stuck to the bottom.
The Secret Daughter of the Tsar Page 13