by Sandra Heath
The innkeeper was at the door. “Miss Rutherford? Are you awake?”
Slowly, as if still asleep, she slipped from the bed and pulled on her rose muslin wrap. Her light brown curls were in too much of a tangle to waste time by brushing them now, and she could not see her little slippers. She was cold and trembling, riven with guilt. If only she’d gone into her father’s room, maybe she would have sensed his intentions and been able to prevent his suicide. If only. Maybe. But the deed was done now, and she had to face the world alone.
With a trembling hand she opened the door. Candlelight flickered in the passage, and she saw a number of other guests, as well as inn servants, all pale and shocked. The innkeeper’s eyes were gentle and sympathetic. “I have some terrible news to impart, Miss Rutherford.”
“My father?” she whispered.
“I fear so.”
She closed her eyes and leaned weakly against the door jamb. From nowhere came the echo of Athan’s voice. “I know I presume by asking this, but may I be of some assistance?”
Assistance? She longed for him to be with her now, but at the same time was filled with doubts about him. What exactly was his connection with the Unicorn Bank and the Forrester-Phipps family? If it was the last thing she did, she would see that everyone concerned in her father’s ruin was brought to justice, and if Athan was included in that number, then so be it.
Chapter Three
Far away in St. Petersburg that same night, the Winter Palace was in darkness as Prince Paul Dalmatsky, an elegant, cultured, and manipulative courtier with a predatory liking for handsome young men, conducted his twenty-three-year-old nephew, Prince Valentin Andreyev, across the great throne room of the Romanov czars. Paul had just returned to Russia after a year’s absence abroad. No one knew where he had been, not even Valentin, his only relative.
Valentin’s preferences lay solely with the fair sex, so that the only thing uniting him with his uncle was the tie of blood. They were both determined at all costs to protect and advance their family, and it was in this connection that Paul was conducting his sole kinsman to the nearby Diamond Salon to view the imperial jewels and regalia.
There were only servants to witness the men’s progress through the palace, and the few words Paul and Valentin uttered were in French, the language of the court; indeed, so little did either of them know of their native tongue that they could barely speak it.
Paul was seventeen years older than Valentin, but still surprisingly boyish and slender-waisted. He wasn’t afraid to show his sensuous, almost feline face to the world, but no one could see the identity of the man at his side. Valentin was careful to remain enveloped in a hooded cloak that completely concealed the splendid blue and gold uniform of a lifeguard officer in the Semeonovsky Regiment of the Imperial Guard.
He had been banished from court and his estates confiscated, and if this madness were to reach the ears of the czar, whose close friend and favorite aide-de-camp he had once been, the punishment would be severe. To be in the Imperial Guard at all was a great honor, but to be so close to the czar was the greatest prize of all; yet he had forfeited the latter privileges, and was in very real danger of being dishonorably discharged from his proud regiment, all because he had been idiot enough to try to seduce the czar’s beautiful Polish mistress, Maria Naryshkina. Valentin therefore glanced around continually, fearful that at any moment someone would apprehend them.
They had come by boat from Paul’s splendid palace on Dalmatsky Island, one of forty-two such islands that formed the delta of the River Neva, upon which the Russian capital was built. Snow was falling outside, the first of an unexpectedly early winter, and a thin cloak of white already lay over St. Petersburg.
Czar Alexander and the court had been delayed at Tsarskoe Selo, sixteen miles south of the capital, but would return the following day. Tonight, which also happened to be the feast of the Holy Guardian Angels, was therefore the last opportunity to show Valentin the diamond.
Paul’s candelabrum cast little glow over the vast throne room. Columns of Russian marble stood in ranks; vases, jars, tables, and consoles, made of porphyry, jasper, and malachite, loomed ghostly in the shadows. High overhead was an exquisitely painted ceiling, with magnificent lusters. The edges of the floor were decked with climbing plants and great arrangements of hothouse flowers that made it seem as if summer still lingered. The effect was enhanced by air as warm as July, heated by stoves concealed among draperies and banners.
There were sentries from Valentin’s regiment on duty outside the jewel salon, but at a word from Paul they moved away to a respectful distance. Once in the room, Paul placed the candlestick on an inlaid table. The swaying light caught upon countless gems in specially strengthened armoires that would surely require blowing up before they would surrender their priceless contents. Such was the twinkling radiance from thousands of facets that the room might have been filled with fireflies.
The grand imperial crown of Catherine the Great, which was encrusted with nearly five thousand diamonds, was the greatest item by far, and close to it lay the imperial scepter and orb. Coronets, tiaras, diadems, necklaces, brooches, rings, belts, and livery collars were everywhere, together with an astounding array of precious stones accumulated through centuries of Romanov rule.
The jeweled lights were reflected in Paul’s soft brown eyes as he looked at his nephew. “Today is the feast of the Holy Guardian Angels, my boy, and I am your guardian angel. Oh, yes, believe me, for I watch over your interests as best I can, and it was for you that I was absent from St. Petersburg for such a long time.” He beckoned Valentin over to one cabinet in particular, and then pointed. “What do you see?”
“See?” Valentin followed the angle of his uncle’s finger. “Well, a ruby the size of a walnut, I suppose.” He had a cultivated air of boredom, which it was his habit to emphasize by occasionally studying his long, highly polished fingernails, but his civilized veneer did not run very deep. He had never been known for his patience, charm, or sweet nature, and he was a hothead with a streak of cruelty that made him feared by his serfs.
Paul let the insolence pass for the moment. “No, boy, you see the diamond that was presented to Peter the Great in the year 1721.”
“Diamond? But it’s red!”
“Red diamonds are the most rare of all, and therefore the most precious, and this one is actually one of a pair of perfectly matched stones. They were stolen from a Hindu idol in southern India, but the thief, a loyal subject of Czar Peter, was himself robbed by the British, and only managed to hold on to one to present to Czar Peter. The other is now in the Tower of London, and will soon be incorporated into a new sword for the British royal regalia.”
Valentin could not have cared less about either diamond. There was a pretty dancer from the Imperial Ballet School waiting for him at his lodgings, and he’d much rather be enjoying her charms than inspecting the czar’s jewels. Finding the room warm and claustrophobic, he took off his cloak and let it fall to the floor. He wore his thick dark hair in a queue at the back, and in two side-plaits, a dashing style that he carried off with considerable verve, and that went well with the swaggering walk that no amount of misfortune seemed to check.
His uniform was a brave sight in the costly light around him, from his tight white breeches and gleaming Hessian boots, to his gaudily gilded blue dolman jacket and the fur-trimmed pelisse fixed over his left shoulder. Under his right arm he carried his white-plumed black shako, festooned with silver ropes and tassels. Such was the abundance of gold braiding on his dolman and pelisse that he shone almost as much as the imperial jewels. But what glittered most was the miniature icon of his patron saint, St. Valentine, set with pearls and sapphires, and worn on a gold chain around his throat.
He would have flung himself into a nearby chair while his elder remained standing, had not Paul reached out and given one of his side-plaits a painful tug. “Mind your manners, you boor! Does your generation know nothing of how to go on?”
; Valentin was equally incensed. “Lay hands upon me again, and I’ll—”
“You’ll what?” Paul breathed, suddenly producing a tiny jeweled dagger and pressing the blade to his nephew’s cheek. “I don’t think you’ll be doing anything, will you, my boy? Mm? I heard the other day of an officer who was thrown out of the Guards for loosening the top button of his uniform at dinner after a ball. Even the lowest peasant, had he a button to loosen, would not have sinned so greatly. You, however, seem capable of every sin there is. Why? Because your brain is in your breeches. You have so earned the czar’s displeasure, that if you aren’t careful you’ll be cashiered and banished forever to the furthest northern waste of Siberia! There you’ll be able to cool your rampant manhood in ice for twelve months of the year for the rest of your worthless life!”
Valentin’s brown eyes cooled. “I do not need reminding of my situation.”
“But I think you do, you charmless puppy! By all the saints in heaven, I cannot believe that you sprang forth from my dear sister! If someone told me you were a changeling, I would believe it! Not only have you attempted to bed Maria Naryshkina, but you’ve continued to promote the French cause, even when it’s become perfectly clear to all and sundry that Napoleon is Russia’s enemy, and that it is to Britain that we must now turn for an ally.”
“Napoleon is the greatest man alive!” Valentin cried passionately. “And with God’s will the czar will realize this again soon.”
“Perchance when the Corsican commandeers the imperial apartments here in the Winter Palace?” Paul suggested acidly, returning the dagger to its hiding place. “Oh, Alexander may once have tolerated your childish hero worship of a foreign tyrant. He may even have jested with you and called you Monsieur Valentin, but should you express such French views again now, believe me, you’d be speaking treason.”
Valentin looked away angrily. In his opinion Napoleon was and would remain the greatest leader the world had ever known; as for the British, they were only to be despised for the unremarkable creatures they were. Feeling the continuance of his uncle’s contemptuous gaze, he looked at him again. “Will you come to the point of all this? I have no business being in this place.”
“Then pay attention now, and take good note of the red diamond.”
“It’s just a diamond that happens to be red!”
“Show me respect, boy!”
“Respect?” Valentin cried. “You’ve been absent for well over a year, during which time I’ve had to exist as best I can, and now you’re back you expect me to be at your beck and call?”
“Yes, that is exactly what I expect, Valentin, and if you fail me in the slightest way, I’ll wash my hands of you. Is that what you want?”
Valentin would have liked to strike his uncle, but instead shook his head meekly.
“Very well. Look again at the diamond, for that precious red stone—or rather its twin—can be your salvation. Are you prepared to give my proposition intelligent consideration?”
“As God is my witness,” Valentin murmured, and crossed himself.
The older man looked at the diamond again. “You are my only living kinsman, Valentin, and before I die I wish to see you restored to what is rightfully yours. You alone can make certain that our proud family not only continues to a new generation, but does so in possession of all that belongs to it. In order to regain the czar’s favor, you must do something that pleases him, something that captures his delight and makes him regard you as his beloved friend again.”
Paul paused for dramatic effect. “I happen to know that Alexander fervently believes the two diamonds belong together in Russia, and that the British should return what they stole.” Then he gave a quiet laugh. “Alexander also desires a commemorative soup tureen made of the finest British porcelain.”
“A soup tureen?” Valentin gaped at him, for what had tureens to do with diamonds?
“You know how fond the czar was of his grandmother, and how fond she was of British porcelain? I have told him of someone who makes the most exquisite soft-paste porcelain in the whole of Britain, possibly in all Europe, and now nothing will do but that the czar possesses an example of this magnificent ware. He would especially like it if such ware were placed in his imperial hands in July on the feast day of Saints Peter and Paul, our great city’s patron saints, at a grand supper that is to be arranged at my palace.”
A clock chimed in the passage outside, and Paul automatically inspected his jewel-studded fob watch to check the time. A frown immediately darkened his brow, and he shook the costly timepiece. “By the bones of Saint Joseph, I wish I knew what was wrong with this cursed watch,” he muttered. “It has given me nothing but trouble ever since I went to that place, yet my watchmaker tells me there is nothing wrong!”
“Went to what place?” Valentin asked.
“Oh, it doesn’t matter.” Paul closed the watch and returned it to its place. Then he smiled coolly at his nephew. “Go to England, my boy, and solve your problems by bringing the soup tureen and the second diamond to Russia. Make Alexander’s dream of uniting the jewels come true. That is the way to regain everything that is at present lost to you.”
Valentin’s jaw dropped. “How in the name of all holy icons am I supposed to bring the second diamond here? It’s in the Tower of London, which is surely one of the most secure fortresses in the entire world! I may despise the British, but I think they know full well how to lock away precious jewels!”
“It should come as no surprise to you now to learn that my absence from here was spent in Britain. I believe not only that the other diamond can be easily removed from the Tower, but that it can also be smuggled here to St. Petersburg without anyone even knowing it has gone.”
“How?”
“Why, in the very fabric of the soup tureen, of course.”
Valentin stared, his imagination captured at last. “You really think it can be done?”
“Oh, yes, but it must be understood that my name is to be kept out of it.”
“Why?” Suspicion crept in.
“Don’t fear that I am preparing a trap for you, or that my motives are in any way unfriendly, for that is not the case.”
“Then what is your motive?” Valentin demanded. “I refuse to believe that it is simply to do with family honor.”
“My reason is between me and my Maker. All I will say is that in London I was able to engineer several encounters with a vain, overconfident young woman whose ambitions reach much farther than her undoubted charms. She was able to confirm the whereabouts and new identity of an Englishman I’ve been desperately seeking for the past four years.”
Valentin shivered, even though the room was hot. “Who are these people? The girl and the Englishman?”
“They are to do with a matter of the heart ... of my heart. Have you never heard the saying ‘as jealous as a Dalmatian’? Now then, do you wish to continue with this?”
Valentin’s tongue passed nervously over his lower lip; then he nodded.
Paul again put his hand into his coat, this time drawing out something wrapped in a soft cloth. Gently he folded the cloth back, and in the candlelight Valentin saw what appeared to be the second red diamond.
Seeing his nephew’s startled expression, the older man gave a low laugh. “No, boy, seeing is not believing. This is merely glass, a carefully cut bauble that will fool the British for long enough.” He wrapped the stone again and pressed it into Valentin’s hand, then looked at the younger man’s face in the twinkling light of the surrounding jewels.
“Now we will return to the island and I will explain everything in minute detail. Come the dawn, it will be as if you conceived the plan yourself.”
But as they retraced their steps through the palace, Paul’s voice rang ominously through Valentin’s head: All I will say is that it is a matter of the heart. Have you never heard the saying “as jealous as a Dalmatian”?
Common sense urged Valentin to draw back from the brink, because anything that involved his unc
le’s sexual tastes was bound to be dangerous in the extreme. But Valentin was always ambitious, seldom sensible, so the warning rang ever more faintly through his head.
By the time he and his uncle were being rowed back to Dalmatsky Island through the heavily falling snow, the final faint echo had disappeared.
Chapter Four
Josiah Rutherford was laid to rest on a bright autumn morning a week and a day after his death, at the burial ground of St. George’s, Hanover Square. For Ellie’s sake, the innkeeper at the Golden Lion had conspired with the amenable doctor summoned at the time of the tragedy, and Josiah’s death was registered as an accident caused by a faulty firearm. Thus he could be laid to rest alongside his beloved wife, who had chosen to be buried at the church where she and Josiah had been married all those years before.
The graveyard was nowhere near the fashionable Mayfair church, but lay on the Oxford road, directly opposite the northern boundary of Hyde Park. It had been summer, warm, green, and breathless, when Ellie’s mother died; now the air was fresh and cool, and the plane tree overhanging the Rutherford graves was bright with autumn foliage. High overhead, seagulls soared white against the heavens, and a light breeze sent wisps of smoke threading between gravestones and mausoleums as a gardener burned leaves he’d raked.
The clergyman and gravediggers had departed, leaving Ellie alone, clutching the posy of pink, purple, and red asters that she had purchased from the flower woman at the entrance to the burial ground. There were always asters at Rutherford Park at this time of the year, so it seemed the perfect flower to leave.
She was conscious of squabbling sparrows on the roof of a nearby mausoleum, and the scraping of another gardener’s wooden rake as he collected more leaves for the fire. Beyond the wrought iron perimeter fence the capital went about its business, unconcerned by her private sorrow, uninterested in what was to become of her now.