Dazzle The Complete Unabridged Trilogy (56 page)

Who knew his flock better than the local priest?

The unsteady pounding of her heart throbbed loudly in her
ears as she pulled wide the heavy door and stepped into the
church. Outside was Geneva, sunlight sprinkling silver dap
ples on windswept Lac Léman, but inside the church it was as
if a giant, invisible hand had somehow transported her back
in time, into the past, to Russia.

Tears welled in her eyes. This church looked like the
churches in Russia and even smelled the same—heavy and
oppressive, thickly fragrant with incense and the hot wax
emanating from the banks of flickering candles. Multitudes of
dark unmoving eyes stared down at her from icon-hung walls,
as though watching her every move and penetrating her very
being. There was a hauntingly beautiful quality about it, but
the overwhelming, even threatening, sense of déjà vu com
pelled her to forget her reason for coming, compelled her to back out into the world of sunshine. For it was in a church
much like this that she had renounced her Judaism, had turned
her back on all she had ever been and known, had vowed to
embrace and uphold the tenets of Russian Orthodoxy.

Painful memories swept over her, all the more painful
because her conversion had been the catalyst that had pried
apart the first menacing crack in what she had once been so certain was the stubborn, organic bedrock of the relationship
she and Schmarya had shared.

She wanted to flee in desperation.

'Can I help you?' a voice asked softly out of the gloom in
heavily accented French.

Startled, she whirled about and was confronted with an old white-bearded priest who had stepped from behind a marble
column. His slippers whispered on the stone floor and his
heavy dark vestments rustled mysteriously about him. There
was a gentleness in the sound of his baritone, and somehow
his voice soothed her.

'You are crying, my child.'

Abruptly she made to leave. 'Perhaps I should not have
come here,' she replied in Russian. She turned to go.

'Nonsense.' He caught her arm, and led her to a pew. He
sat beside her, folding his hands in his lap. He tilted his head
and regarded her curiously. 'I have not introduced myself. I
am Father Peter Moskvin.'

'Senda Bora.'

'A refugee.' It was a statement, not a question.

She nodded in silence.

'Can I be of assistance to you, Senda Bora?'

'Do you know my friends, Father?' Senda asked eagerly,
her pulse quickening. One part of her was desperate for the
reply; the other was afraid of what she might hear. 'The
Danilovs? Prince Vaslav and Princess Irina?'

The old man's eyes lit up. 'Yes, I do, and they are here,' he
said, smiling. 'But they never come into town to worship. They
have a private chapel on their estate, which I myself blessed
at their request.'

She looked at him directly. 'I must try and reach them. Can
you tell me where they live?'

He smiled. 'Of course,' he said, patting her hand reassur
ingly. 'It is the Château Gemini, on the far side of the lake.
Anyone can give you directions.'

Armed with the address of the Danilov lakefront estate,
she hurried back to the boarding house where she, Inge and
Tamara rented rooms, stopping at a stationery shop along the
way. She splurged on a creamy vellum envelope and several
sheets of thick rag paper.

As soon as she reached the boarding house, she hurried
from the foyer up the steep stairs, pausing at both landings to
catch her breath. Coughs racked her, and she hacked into her
handkerchief before balling it up and continuing her climb to
the three tiny rooms they shared under the sloping eaves.

Inge, apparently alerted by the coughing seizures, was hold
ing the door open. Breathlessly waving away her greetings, Senda headed for the little desk pushed against the dormer
window. She sat down and with trembling hands took pen,
inkwell, and blotting paper out of a drawer. She slipped the
precious sheets of vellum from the plain brown wrapper and
then stared, deep in thought, out past the lace curtains at the
thin slice of lake visible between the two buildings.

After several moments of deliberation, she dipped the pen
into the jar of ink, and then the nib swooped unhesitatingly
down on the paper, scratching its confident message in grace
ful letters.

Your Highness

Brows furrowing, she frowned at the salutation. How she despised this form of address when she wanted so badly to
scrawl 'Dear Vaslav' instead. After sharing his bed and affec
tions for so long, it seemed ludicrous to have to be so stiffly
formal, yet propriety required she keep the message distant
and polite. There was always the possibility, however remote,
that her message could be intercepted by carefully drilled ser
vants, misconstrued, and subsequently tossed out with the
day's garbage, thereby never reaching Vaslav's hands. Best it
be veiled and courteous, and that he received it.

It has been a long time since we last saw each other, but I
have finally reached Geneva. It would be marvellous
—
and to our mutual advantage
—
if we could meet and renew our
past acquaintance. I can be reached at 21 rue de Moillebeau,
number 6, and am waiting to hear from you.

Senda paused, as if too weary to compose the required clos
ing. The pen moved slowly now, each letter of each word
harder to form. Strange, now that the message was written she should feel so empty, so depleted, the pen so heavy, as if
it had been fashioned of gunmetal.

I
am, of course, available at your convenience. Mean
while, I remain, respectfully,

Your humble servant,
Senda Bora

She sealed the envelope, and for a long moment held it in
front of her, staring at the name and address. It was done. The
rest was up to him.

Then a sudden thought occurred to her. No, it was not quite
done.

She picked up the pen again and scrawled the word
'Personal' in both Russian and French on the front of the
envelope and underlined them with a single fluid slash.

Now
it was done.

Inge didn't need to be told what was up. Wordlessly she
took the envelope, glanced expressionlessly at it, and pulling on her coat, she trotted out to hand-deliver it to the Château
Gemini immediately.

Like a caged tiger, Senda prowled the rooms, anxiously
awaiting Inge's return. Her eyes flitted constantly to the clock.
The minute hand moved so slowly that at first she was certain
the clock had stopped. But it ticked on noisily, proof of her
own fraught nerves.

Darkness had fallen by the time Inge returned. Senda
rushed to her eagerly, eyes questioning, but Inge only
shrugged and sighed and went to hang up her coat. Senda
followed at her heels. 'Well?' she prompted, her eyes gleaming
with a mixture of fear and anticipation. 'What happened?'

'At the Château I knocked, and when he answered the door,
I handed the envelope to the majordomo. He took it.'

'And?' she demanded passionately.

'I was told not to wait for a reply.' Inge shrugged neglig
ibly. 'If there will be one—'

'There will!' Senda interrupted with an indignant hiss.
'There
has
to be!'

But no message arrived from Vaslav that day, or the next.
As day after day crept by and there was still no word from him, Senda became increasingly moody and cantankerous.
She was irritable toward Tamara and Inge, and actually had
to restrain herself from lashing out at them.

It was like living in a pressure cooker.

By the eighth day, Senda knew there was only one avenue
left open to her. She would have to go and see Vaslav unannounced. She had followed the rules of etiquette to the letter by sending the note first. Since that had failed, she now had
no other choice.

Chapter 24

Baroque in design, the gates were so intimidatingly lavish that they were a startling reminder of the mean circumstances she,
Inge, and Tamara had been reduced to. But how well she
knew that proud polished brass crest embellishing them! It
seemed a lifetime had passed since she had last seen it.
By reflex, she patted her hair, adjusted her felt hat, and
smoothed her plain, forest-green cloth coat. Two years earlier,
she would have been dressed in sumptuous furs and beautifully
tailored dresses, and would have arrived by car, or a carriage
with both a driver and a footman in attendance instead of
having to take public transportation and endure a long, seem
ingly endless walk. But times had changed, and she'd had to
change along with them, a rudimentary rule of survival. Were
it not for her adaptability, would she have survived this long
or gotten here at all? Wouldn't she have succumbed to her
disease instead of fighting for life? Still, the plain, ankle-length
dove grey dress was a painful reminder of how her fortunes
had changed.

But some things never changed. One look at the Château Gemini and it was obvious that the Danilovs still had a great
deal of their massive fortune intact—reason enough for her to
thank her lucky stars.

As she pressed the buzzer set into the nearest of the two
massive stone piers surmounted with carved pineapples,
Senda could hear a bell jangling somewhere behind the wall.
An elderly green-uniformed gatekeeper immediately shuffled
out to answer the summons.