The Diamond Secret (20 page)

Does she dare stand and run? Can she?

She tries. First she's on one knee, and then the other. Pushing forward like a sapling toward a shard of sunlight, she stretches until she is on her feet.

"Hey!"

A shot rings out. It hits her chest so hard her arm flies up involuntarily and her feet leave the ground.

She's thrown backward, and then she's tumbling down the hill that had been behind her. She hits the ground and bounces and is thrown farther down, tossed like a child's rubber ball.

There is more shooting, but she can't tell if it's directed at her. All she knows is that she is moving through space and is helpless to control her direction.

A final bounce hurls her into the rushing river. Facedown, all she can hear is water surging in her ears. The racing tide turns her, face upward, to the sky. She is aware of men shouting, but then the water flips her over once again, and she sees only the silver swirl and froth of the river.

She is carried like this, tossed back and forth, over and over for a thousand years, or at least that's how it seems. Finally the river expels her, shivering and dazed with pain, and washes her onto a dirty, garbage-strewn patch of dirt on the banks of a grimy city.

Coughing river water from her lungs, she climbs to her knees, and then collapses. She dreams deeply of lavish balls and melodic waltzes before falling down a long tunnel of self-protective forgetting.

It was a horrible memory, but Nadya's unconscious had mercifully held it back until she was strong enough to bear it. Now, looking down at Ivan's pale, still face, she recognized him as the soldier who had been so merciful there in the woods.

Back then she'd owed him her life. He'd helped her to survive, and now he'd plucked her up and brought her home to her grandmother.

It didn't matter to Nadya that she had been a grand duchess. What was a grand duchess--or a duke, or a baroness, or even a czar? They were merely titles. What mattered was that she was a young woman who'd had a family she loved and a life filled with happy memories that were hers to cherish once again.

Overwhelmed with emotion, Nadya threw herself on Ivan's chest. "Don't die," she pleaded. "You mustn't, you can't, not when I finally see you clearly. I love you, Ivan. Stay with me."

She was sobbing so hard into his chest that she was unaware of his right hand gently stroking her hair.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
  

Awake

Ivan opened his eyes and saw that he was lying in a four-poster bed with a lavender satin cover over him. It was certainly far too elegant to be a hospital, yet his torso was circled in bandages.

"Good morning, my friend!" Sergei was seated on an upholstered chair to the left of the bed. "Let me go tell everyone that you are finally awake."

"No, wait! First tell
me
what's happened," Ivan requested.

Sergei recounted how, two days earlier, Ivan had been taken by ambulance to a hospital where he'd undergone many hours of surgery to extract the bullet from his chest. As a result of Nadya's fervent request, the empress had supplied him with the finest doctors in Paris and had allowed him to be brought to her estate to recover.

"Then she's accepted Nadya as Anastasia?" Ivan inquired.

"She has," Sergei confirmed. "They fished that Lepski character that shot you from the river," Sergei went on. "Nadya was still at the police station when they hauled him in, and she identified him. They're holding him on pickpocketing and various other charges until you're able to confirm that he's the one who shot you."

"Where is Nadya now?" Ivan asked.

"Getting beautiful for a ball the empress is throwing in her honor."

"She's already beautiful," Ivan remarked, propping himself onto his elbows. "Come on, now help me up. We're getting out of here."

"No, you can't," Sergei protested. "You're not nearly well enough."

Someone knocked on the door, and Sergei bid them to enter. The maid jumped back slightly when she saw Ivan sitting up and awake.

"Yes, isn't it good news!" Sergei said.

"Very good news," the maid agreed.

"Will you tell the empress that we will be leaving immediately?" Ivan requested.

"Yes sir," the maid said as she left.

"Do you want to reopen your stitches?" Sergei scolded.

"They'll hold until we're back at our hotel room," Ivan argued.

"There's no room for you there."

Ivan looked at his friend incredulously. "What?"

"Elana and Peter are there."

"Are you joking? Of course not! You would never make a joke like that. Oh, Sergei! My friend! I'm so happy for you. How did it happen?"

Ivan settled back on his pillows to listen as Sergei told him of how Nadya had discovered their whereabouts. Ivan was smiling along with Sergei when another knock came at the door. "Come in," he called.

Empress Marie entered with Nadya behind her. "Then it's true, you're awake! Thank God!" Nadya cried. Although her hair and makeup were done for the ball, she wore a simple blue shirtwaist dress.

"I am awake," Ivan agreed, smiling at her, infused with happiness at the sight of her. How could he go on living without her? He couldn't! He knew it now as never before.

Nadya went to Ivan's side and took his hand. "I was so scared that you wouldn't wake up," she said.

"My maid says that you wish to leave?" asked the empress.

"No!" Nadya cried.

"I don't want to be a burden any longer, though I thank Your Highness for your incredible kindness in caring for me here."

"You are most welcome," Empress Marie replied. "You have brought me my granddaughter, a jewel beyond measure. Your care here is but a small token of gratitude."

The old woman's eyes glistened lovingly as she looked at Nadya. It was easy to see that she'd accepted Nadya as her granddaughter.

The butler entered, holding a polished wooden case that he placed on the dresser and unlocked with a small key. When he opened the case, it was impossible not to be dazzled by the spectacular diamond necklace inside. "Gentlemen, here is your reward for returning my Anastasia to me," the empress announced.

Ivan looked at Sergei, who seemed to have been rendered speechless by the enormity of their prize. It had to be worth much more than had been offered initially.

"This must be the necklace that maniac thought I was carrying," Ivan realized.

"This necklace once belonged to Marie Antoinette," Empress Marie told them. "At one point it was broken, but it has been repaired. I smuggled it out of Russia, along with other treasures, when I escaped from Siberia."

Nadya got off the bed and went to look at the necklace. "I know this necklace! I've been dreaming about it."

"This exact necklace?" the empress questioned.

"Yes," Nadya said. "I remember exactly the large blue diamond at the center."

"Well, it is the most valuable thing I own, so I believe it is fit payment for the return of my most valuable granddaughter. It is all yours with my thanks, gentlemen."

This was his moment for truth, and Ivan suddenly knew just what he needed to do. Spectacular as this necklace was, he could live without it. But he would be miserable if he let Nadya slip away from him.

"We can't take it," Ivan said. "We haven't earned it, because Nadya is not Anastasia!"

"How can you be certain?" the empress asked.

Ivan was surprised by her calmness. Why wasn't the empress more upset by this news? Maybe it was shock or disbelief.

Ivan turned to Nadya and took a breath to steady himself. He had to be completely honest. "Nadya, I was a soldier in the woods on the morning that Anastasia was shot."

"I know. I remember you now that my memory is back," she revealed.

"Your memory is--" Ivan looked at her, perplexed. What was she doing? What new game was this? Had she deluded herself into thinking she really was the grand duchess?

"No, Nadya, you can't remember that because you're not Anastasia," he insisted. "Anastasia was hit in the chest with a bullet, and you have no scar where she was hit."

Nadya gently moved aside the opening of her shirtwaist dress and touched the skin over her heart. "You're right, no scar."

"So you see? You can't be Anastasia." Ivan grabbed both her hands. "I'm sorry for everything that's happened. It was wrong to get your hopes up and to deceive you. The empress could have offered you a wonderful life, but if you don't hate me now, I'll do everything I can to give you a happy life."

"I don't hate you," she said passionately. "I love you."

"I love you, too. I can't be without you. I can never give you what the empress could have, but I swear you won't be sorry I revealed what I know to be true. I'll make up for it in love."

Nadya pulled Ivan to her and they kissed. Even though there were others in the room, while they kissed they existed in a world only they inhabited.

After another moment, the empress coughed, intending to break their embrace. "My dear girl, this might be a good time to show Mr. Navgorny what we found."

"The police gave me your jacket, and I found this in the pocket," Nadya recalled as she took her rag doll out of a pocket of her dress.

"It's your doll!" Ivan said. "Sergei picked it up mistakenly. I meant to return it to you, but obviously I forgot."

"Back in 1917, in the early hours of the morning when we were dressing to go to the basement, I was clowning with my sisters about how much better they looked in their petticoats than I did," Nadya recounted.

"I'm sure you looked just as lovely," Ivan said loyally.

"No, they were older and better endowed," she went on, blushing slightly, "so I equaled the score by stuffing a roll of socks and this rag doll into the bosom of my petticoat. The socks and doll were still there when my father demanded that we hurry. Everything happened so fast afterwards that I forgot all about it.

"The doll's head protected me from the bullet," Nadya continued. "It was sitting directly over my heart when I was shot."

Ivan examined the doll. No, this story couldn't be true. "The doll's head should be shattered, then," he said. "And besides, how can a rag doll protect from a bullet?"

Nadya looked to Empress Marie. "He's right. A plain doll couldn't have."

The empress reached out. "Hand me the doll."

She sees I'm right, Ivan thought.
It's a nice story, but that doll's head wouldn't have survived or protected her in any way.

Sergei took the doll from Ivan and handed it to Empress Marie. The empress wiggled her finger up under the seam where the doll's head had been sewn on, and she ripped upward. "I recognized this doll as soon as I saw it, because I was the one who gave it to my Anastasia. I knew immediately that it had been altered," the empress explained as she worked. "Now that Ivan has told his story, I understand why."

Empress Marie pulled a hoodlike cover off the doll's head. Beneath it was a bullet-blasted cloth circle--the doll's original head.

Nadya went to Empress Marie's side and touched the doll. "The nurse at the asylum must have repaired it," she realized. "But now I remember the night you gave it to me. You told me to always remember how much you loved me whenever I played with it."

Empress Marie patted her hand fondly. "That's right."

"Wait a minute," Ivan insisted. "How could that soft doll have protected her from a bullet?"

Empress Marie worked her fingers into the center of the doll's head and pulled out a rectangular yellow diamond.

"This is what saved her life."

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
  

The Diamond Secret

The doctor arrived to examine Ivan, so they had to leave the bedroom. Nadya accompanied Empress Marie back down to the library. The butler followed them in with the necklace, and then left after setting it down on a table.

Nadya absently turned the yellow diamond in her fingers, and then popped it back inside the rag doll before putting its replacement head back on. "There, just as it was," she said, showing the empress.