“No, no,” she assured him quickly, clinging to him tightly. “Oh, Drakar, help me, please—”
“Anything!” He held her away from him, gave her a gentle shake for she was near hysteria in her grief. “Just tell me what’s wrong…”
“I love him,” she said brokenly, miserably, her gaze meeting his in a silent plea for help. “I know it wasn’t supposed to turn out this way, but I love him…”
She crumpled against him, and Drake maneuvered her to the bed so they could sit down. Then he asked to hear the rest of the story.
Bitterly, she bit out the account of how Colt had told her of his feelings, that he felt he could love her, wanted to pursue those feelings…and would she be willing to come to Paris to live with his family for as long as it took them to come to terms with their relationship?
“I’m a member of the Imperial Ballet of Saint Petersburg, and this man thinks I’m an uneducated urchin. He even says he’ll help my family out financially so they won’t be upset when I leave Russia. Oh, Drakar,” she wailed, “what am I going to do? You said yourself Colt’s been hurt by women deceiving him. What do you think will happen when he hears how I’ve deceived him?”
Drake could no longer hold back his amusement. “You said you loved him. I don’t see a problem.”
Her voice rose in furious frustration. “Don’t you understand? I’ve lied to him—”
“But it was a nice lie, Jade, with no harm intended, and it’s turned out even better than I expected.”
She slumped against him, sobbing once more. He lay back across the bed, pulling her down with him to cradle her and hold her close, wanting to soothe, wanting to make her see that her world had not ended, that it was, by a quirk of fate, just beginning…and it was going to be wonderful.
Drake did not hear the door open.
He did not know that Dani had entered the room until he heard a gasp and looked up to see her standing there staring down, ashen-faced.
It was, he realized as bitter bile rose in his throat, like going back in time to that night in Paris.
And, just as she had done before, Dani looked at him with loathing before she turned and ran from the room.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Drake caught up with Dani as she reached the landing of the floor below. He grabbed her and swung her around to face him. “This time,” he hoarsely avowed, “you’re going to stay around long enough to hear my side, dammit!”
Rage was a snake, twisting and writhing through her body and soul. He had her arms pinned to her sides or she’d have struck him. “You lying bastard! You could never be true to one woman, could you?”
“Dani, listen to me—”
“No, listen to me, please…”
They both turned to Jade, who was leaning over the railing above.
“Don’t be angry with him. It’s all my fault. Come back upstairs and I’ll explain everything.”
Dani regarded her with contempt. “I don’t have any quarrel with you. You’re just part of his collection.” She struggled against Drake. Oh, how could she have been so blind? So stupid? Once more, she’d fallen into his trap, allowed him to manipulate her.
Jade shook her head vigorously. “No, you can’t believe that. You have to listen, Dani—”
“You know me?” Dani interrupted, incredulous and becoming even angrier that Drake could speak of her to one of his “harem”.
“Of course I do. He asked me to spy on you at the Imperial Ball and report back to him about everything you said and did.” She looked to Drake for approval, saw he appeared quite willing for her to tell all, so she rapidly continued. “I made it possible for him to slip into your suite at the embassy and surprise you.”
Dani was even angrier to hear that. What kind of pervert was this strange girl that she’d spy on another woman for her lover?
Jade sensed what she was thinking, rushed to explain. “Drakar and I aren’t lovers, Dani. We’re very dear friends. I was only helping him to get to you.”
Dani gave her head a reckless toss, fingers tightly gripping the frame she still held. “Just leave me alone,” she said with a sneer. “I don’t want to hear anything either of you has to say!”
“Dani, please listen to her,” Drake begged.
“Why should I?”
“Because then you’ll know the truth,” Jade softly responded. “I’m not in love with Drakar. I’ve been seeing your brother, Colt.”
Dani was stunned. She’d suspected Colt was seeing someone—but why all the mystery?
Drake released his hold, moved to put his arms around her as he urged, “Can’t we please go back upstairs to my room? We can talk this out without the other hotel guests hearing.” Irritably, he nodded to a door just down the hall, slightly ajar, with an eavesdropper obviously hovering on the other side.
Dani allowed him to lead her back upstairs, then sat in stony silence while he related his plan for Jade to pose as a poor girl to ultimately reject Colt so he’d come to a new awareness of women.
“Actually,” he finished with a wry grin, “Jade is probably as rich as Colt. She’s a member of the Romanov family.”
Dani knew of the prestige and wealth of the Romanovs but that was not what impressed her. She looked at Jade in awe and murmured, “You dance with the Imperial Ballet.”
Jade frowned, and gave Drake a disconsolate glance. “After this, who knows? I’m supposed to be recuperating from a sprained ankle, not posing as a servant girl at the French Embassy.”
Drake looked to Dani hopefully. “Now do you believe me?”
She laughed softly, gently chided that if he didn’t have such a notorious reputation with women he would not be suspect.
Jade chimed in to agree.
Drake shook his head in mock disgust, then turned from where they’d sat down on the divan and went to open a bottle of wine.
“So what happened between you and Colt?” Dani asked of Jade. “You look so unhappy.”
Jade regretfully told her that Drake’s scheme had backfired. “I thought, as Drakar did, that it would all be a lark, that it’d never get very far before I could make my little speech to him about how it didn’t matter if his wealth matched the Czar’s, I could only love for love’s sake.
“But,” she went on to dismally admit, “Colt was so wonderful that I found myself becoming more and more interested, and I knew he was sincere when he professed to be falling in love with me.”
Dani was listening to every word she spoke but was staring at Drake all the while in wonder. This was a side to him she’d never seen before—his capacity for tenderness and caring for others—and she liked that trait…liked it a lot. He walked over and set the wine bottle and glasses down on a table, and she reached out to take his hand, held it lovingly as she attempted to encourage Jade to make amends. “Go to Colt and tell him the whole story, just as you’ve told me. I don’t think he’ll be angry.”
Jade shuddered at the thought of confessing all to Colt. “I’m afraid he’ll be so humiliated he’ll hate me.”
They both looked at Drake reproachfully. After all, it had been his idea.
He threw up his hands. “Well, I’m not going to be the one to tell him. Not after Paris…and Lily. I never wanted him to know I had anything to do with this.”
“That’s true,” Jade told Dani. “He didn’t want you to know, either, because he was afraid you wouldn’t approve, yet he felt it was the only way to get Colt to stop being so cynical about women.”
“You didn’t say what you actually did when Colt let his feelings be known,” Dani said.
Jade blinked away fresh tears. “Nothing. I just ran away. I couldn’t go through with it, and I ran out and came here because I was so miserable and there was no one else I could talk to besides Drakar.”
“Tomorrow,” Dani said firmly, “you’ll talk to Colt and tell him the truth. If you really care about him, that’s the only way.”
Jade nodded, but not with enthusiasm. “He’ll never w
ant to see me again.”
Dani sighed, looked from one to the other as she shook her head and declared, “When are you going to learn you can’t go around playing with people’s lives? Even if you have the best of intentions, things have a way of backfiring.”
Drake shrugged. “I see no harm, as long as people are mature enough to realize the intentions were good.”
“It’s said the road to hell is paved with good intentions,” Dani countered.
“Enough!” Jade cut in, trying to sound cheerful. “Let’s stop talking about me. You’ve got enough problems of your own because you still haven’t found the secret of that painting.”
For the first time, Drake noticed the frame. “You got it.”
Dani gave it to him. “And Cyril was about as pleasant as you said he’d be.”
Drake left them to go to a far corner of the room and study the frame. The two young women chatted like old friends, when suddenly, Drake cried, “By God, I think I’ve got it!”
They leaped to their feet and ran to his side. He pointed excitedly to the frame. “That’s it. Russian olive! The wood of this frame is made from Russian olive! An obvious clue,” he rushed on, fascinated, “if someone is familiar with the palace. Otherwise, they’d never discover it.”
He went on to explain. “The grand staircase in the palace is made of Russian olive. The trees only grow in the southern regions of Europe, but when Catherine the Great commissioned the Italian Quarenghi to build the palace a hundred years ago, she insisted the railing of the grand staircase be made of Russian olive because the tree doesn’t grow in that region, and she wanted something unique, special.”
Recounting memories of his childhood, he told how Nicholas’s grandfather, Czar Alexander II, had scolded him and Nicholas one day for sliding down the banister. Then he proudly told them about the Russian olivewood, how the trees had been imported from Greece.
Looking happily from one woman to the other, he said, “Russian olive isn’t that easy to obtain, and Koryatovich sure as hell didn’t find any in Siberia. He must’ve had time to remove one of the balusters before he was caught. I remember they’re so close together you’d hardly notice one missing unless you were looking for it.
“The egg,” he predicted with firm conviction, “has to be hidden somewhere around those stairs because that’s the only structure anywhere in the palace made of Russian olive.”
Drake reverently looked at the painting. Zigmont Zoryatovich had certainly been clever, but now the nightmare of the past could end…and a possible glorious future with Dani could begin.
He turned, took her in his arms, oblivious to Jade’s presence. He kissed her, then asked, “Who wants to go with me to the Alexandrovsky Palace?”
Dani laughingly informed him he’d better not even think about leaving her behind, and then they turned to Jade, who declined, explaining that while she’d love to join them, to be there for the ultimate moment, she felt it was more important to see Colt.
“Drakar, you might have some problems getting inside the palace,” she reminded him. “Everyone knows you were banished from court, and you can’t just walk in there without some kind of permission.”
Arctic eyes narrowed in bitter remembrance. “Then I’ll just have to go to the Czar and get his permission.”
Jade was apprehensive. “You’re going to have to tell him why you want it, and he might think it’s a wild-goose chase and say no.”
Dani snapped her fingers as she suddenly remembered something. “No! He won’t, because you can go to Nicholas and ask him to help.” Quickly she recounted the night at the Winter Palace, when Nicholas was giving her a personal tour, and she’d seen the mural and ultimately confided to him the story of the Monaco Find.
Drake’s enthusiasm was strengthened. “Nicholas won’t be a bit surprised to hear I’m around. Despite everything, I believe he’s still my friend and would be willing to help.”
He instructed Dani to return to the embassy. “Dress warmly,” he urged. “It’s about twenty kilometers to Tsarskoye Selo, and we’ll be going by sleigh.”
To Jade, he was compassionately encouraging. “I really believe once you explain everything to Colt, he won’t be angry because he obviously cares for you. Just tell him if he wants to vent his rage on anybody, make it me, and I’ll try to make amends later.” He winked, attempting to brighten her spirits.
They left him and went outside into the twilight glow that did little more than brighten the snow. At such an hour, there were no izvoschchiks—carriages for hire—and would not be for some time. Fresh snow had fallen during the night, then frozen, leaving a crusty surface, and they walked cautiously toward the embassy.
Dani offered to go with Jade to talk to Colt but was not surprised when she declined. She wished her well and went to her suite to bathe and change into warm undergarments, a riding habit of wool, and leather boots that reached to her knees Next, she laid out a thick cape fashioned of wolf pelts and gloves of warm, silky rabbit.
She rang for her maid to bring steaming, spicy Russian tea, bread and butter sandwiches, then settled down to wait for Drake.
She was almost trembling with excitement. To be part of the culmination of something so important to Drake meant almost as much to her as it did to him, for she wanted to share everything in his life.
It had been almost three hours since her return to the embassy when there was a knock on the door. Thinking it had to be Drake, she rushed to answer…only to find Cyril Arpel staring at her, shame-faced, nervously twisting a thick fur cape in his hands.
He did not give her a chance to rebuke him. Quickly, he stuck his foot in the door to bar closing, then attempted to touch a nerve of sympathy in Dani. “I had to come and apologize, Dani, to tell you how sorry I am for everything. Can you forgive me?” he begged anxiously, hopefully. “Can we be friends?”
Dani had stiffened at the sight of him, and his woeful plea had not moved her. Firmly, she shook her head. “You’ve done too much, Cyril…gone too far. I just don’t see any way we can ever be friends. Now please leave.”
“No!” He shoved his weight against the door as she attempted to close it, his words coming out in a frenzied torrent as he made his plea. “You owe me a chance to make amends, Dani. After all, I brought you to Russia with me, showed you around, introduced you to people, did everything I could to make you happy. Again, I’m sorry for what I did, but I never meant to hurt anybody. Now let me try to make amends by helping you and Drakar search for the Fabergé egg. I don’t want to keep it. All I want is to be the one to get the credit for finding it, and the painting. Is that too much to ask?”
Dani furiously told him that if he’d been honorable in the beginning and confided in her, she might have been willing to cooperate—then. “Now it’s too late. So leave or I’m going to call security,” she wanted.
Their eyes met and held—his almost tearful with desperation; hers cold with resolution.
Cyril knew she was not going to change her mind and stepped away from the door. Promptly, she slammed it. He turned away dejectedly, head down, shoulders slumped. He’d made a mess of things. Pure and simple. It was over. He’d lost both the painting and Dani, and there seemed to be nothing he could do about it.
He was almost to the end of the corridor, about to open the outer door when, through the leaded-glass window, he saw Drakar getting out of a horse-drawn sleigh in the street.
Quickly, he leaped back to stand in an archway, pressed himself against the wall…and waited.
Drake opened the door, hurried toward Dani’s suite.
Cyril stayed where he was as everything began to come together: Drakar arriving with a sleigh, and he’d not missed the way Dani was warmly dressed, obviously ready to go out.
They were on their way to Tsarskoe Selo…and the palace…to look for the egg.
He did not have to wait long, for within minutes the two approached.
He heard Drakar’s voice.
“…it was as we
’d hoped. Once you told Nicholas about the painting, he figured something was going on, that I had to be around somewhere, so he was more than willing to go with me to see his father, and he was eager to cooperate. He said he’d be as glad as I would to have all of this over with so both his father and mine could rest in peace…”
His voice faded as he and Dani opened the door and closed it behind them.
Cyril stepped out to peer through the glass, waited till they disappeared from sight in the sleigh, then followed. He wasn’t exactly sure what he was going to do, did not have a specific plan in mind, but he was certain of one thing: when the coveted Fabergé egg was found, he was going to be there to claim the credit…and maybe even the egg, he thought with a resentful sneer.
Chapter Thirty-Four
It was late afternoon when they reached Tsarskoye Selo, and for many hours the world had been a gray sea of snow and ice. There was faint illumination from a moon somewhere beyond the gloomy pall, and they could see the outline of the high fence of the Imperial Park. Cossack horsemen, resplendent in black fur capes, boots, and shining sabers could be seen as they rode on patrol.
“There’s always security,” Drake explained, “but not as much as when the Czar is in residence. They have to constantly be on guard against the revolutionaries.”
They entered the park, and passing Yekaterinsky Palace, Drake pointed out that it contained over two hundred rooms.
Dani was appropriately impressed, but when they reached their ultimate destination—the Alexandrovsky Palace, she gasped. “I can only say Zigmont Koryatovich did not do it justice. It’s magnificent.”
A wary guard carrying a rifle came out of a stone gatehouse. Unexpected visitors at such an hour were unusual, but after examining the dispatch Drake handed down, he waved them on, not about to argue with the imperial seal of the Czar.
They drew up to the main façade, with its sweeping terrace and marble stairs.
“It looks absolutely deserted,” Dani murmured, clinging to Drake’s arm as they made their way up the steps. “There’s hardly any light at all from within.”
Love and Splendor: The Coltrane Saga, Book 5 Page 31