The Property of a Lady (46 page)

She was up early, waiting on deck as the
Majestic
docked at Cherbourg, and she stared at Eddie as he sauntered toward her. He was immaculately dressed as always, and she wondered how it was that his saturnine, freshly shaved face showed no marks of the previous night’s activities. Eddie, clothed and a gentleman, was a different man from Eddie, naked and brutal with passion.

He said abruptly, “I have decided that we shall not visit Paris after all. I have canceled our reservations at the Hotel Bristol and we shall go directly to Germany.”

Azaylee’s face fell and he put his arm around her shoulders. “Don’t you want to see Haus Arnhaldt?” he asked, smiling. “Your new home?”

“Oh, yes, yes, of course,” she replied excitedly.

He shrugged. “Then Paris will wait until you are a little older.”

The journey by train and automobile was a long one, and Missie was exhausted when the car finally turned into a long road that wound its way between dense, gloomy woodlands, emerging at last at a series of formal landscapes of box hedge and gravel, with not a flower in sight. She stared in dismay at the forbidding gray house. As she watched the big doors were flung open and a butler appeared on the steps, marshalling a troop of household servants into line to receive their master and his new bride.

The butler hurried to open the door, clicking his heels and bowing, introducing himself as Manfred, and Missie walked down the line of servants, smiling and saying hello as each girl bobbed a curtsey and each man bowed.

The tall, regal-looking woman waiting in the shadows of the hall watched the little charade taking place outside. Her glance took in Missie and then dismissed her and moved on to the child. She caught her breath. Eddie had been right after all; the resemblance to Anouska Ivanoff was uncanny. She smiled. Her son had done well. In one move he had accomplished what they had been hoping for for years. She had no doubt that this was the Ivanoffs’ missing daughter, left for dead by the Russians in the forest four years ago. But now she was also Eddie Arnhaldt’s “daughter.”

Their plan was long-term. After all, the child was only six. But it would be worth the wait. She would instruct her lawyers to prepare their case, and when the girl was eighteen, she would be revealed as the Ivanoff heiress and the legitimate owner of the Rajasthan mines.

The new bride, Verity, was important for the moment because she would be needed as a witness—and they would not hesitate to use force if necessary to get her to tell them the truth. Meanwhile, Eddie would be a dutiful and indulgent father and naturally, when she was of age,
Azaylee would assign the mines to him. By then she would be as true an Arnhaldt as they were. She would be married to her beloved grandson and Augie would inherit everything.

She swept forward to greet her new daughter-in-law, smiling coldly and offering her cheek for a kiss. “I hope you will be very happy here,” she said, her glance shifting quickly to Azaylee. “And you, child,” she said, allowing a little warmth to creep into her voice, “you have come to brighten up our days with your youth. Haus Arnhaldt welcomes you. And I want you to remember that from now on, this is your home.”

Düsseldorf

As each day dragged by Haus Arnhaldt felt more and more like a prison. Missie’s rooms were on the second floor opposite Eddie’s but he never came to see her. He was away most days at the Arnhaldt offices in Düsseldorf or at the plant at Essen and he was often away at weekends, hunting or attending parties without her. She suspected he was still seeing Gretel but she could not be sure, because she had not been out of Haus Arnhaldt and its grounds since they arrived two months ago. In fact, she had never seen him alone since that night on the
Majestic
, and she could not decide whether she was relieved or sad. After all, she was a bride. Even if things had started out badly because she was so ignorant, could they not at least make up and try again?

She decided to be as charming and sweet to Eddie as she could, dressing with great care every night for dinner in the vast, echoing gothic-paneled hall lighted by lugubrious antler’s-head sconces. But each night it was as if she were invisible. Manfred and a posse of servants served them silently, and Eddie and his mother, the Baroness Jutta, spoke only in German, of which she understood not a word. She might just as well have been a fly on the wall for all the notice either of them took of her. Aware of the curious glances of the servants, she ate her food quickly and excused herself as soon as possible.

She trailed up the wide oaken stairs and back down the
gloomy corridors to her rooms in despair. If it was not that Azaylee was enjoying herself so much, she would simply have told Eddie she was leaving and that would be that.

And where would she go? she asked herself, staring out of the window and seeing only the dark woods in the distance. She was in Germany, she had no money of her own, Eddie never gave her any. Things were simply “provided”: Rich people had no need for money.

It was different for Azaylee. She had a light, sunny suite on the first floor, with a cozy bedroom specially decorated for her in fresh green-and-white cotton chintz, and an enormous playroom stacked with new toys and games. There was a schoolroom where a governess gave her German lessons daily and a bedroom and sitting room for Beulah where Missie joined them each day for five o’clock tea. It was the highlight of her dreary life and she looked forward to it. Between Azaylee’s riding lessons on the new pony, the swimming lessons in the enormous indoor pool, the ballet lessons every day in Düsseldorf, and the endless German lessons, tea was almost the only time she saw her.

Beulah shook her head unhappily. “Ah don’t like it, Miss Verity,” she said in a loud stage whisper, “ah just don’t like what they’re doin’ to that child. Fillin’ her head with Arnhaldt talk, ‘bout how rich they all are, and telling her she should only speak German now she has a German daddy and is a little German girl. What about you, Miss Verity? You’re her sister, ain’t yuh? So why ain’t they giving you German lessons so you can talk to your German husband? No, there’s sump’n funny goin’ on here. Ah’m tellin’ you, Miss Verity, they’s takin’ that child away from you and me bit by bit. Soon all we’ll have left is a little German
fräulein
. Don’t ax me why, but that’s the way it’s goin’.”

Missie thought about her words, alone and sleepless in bed that night. It was true, they kept Azaylee deliberately
busy, they did keep her away from her, and they were teaching her to speak only German, praising her fluency even when she made mistakes. But why? She considered the possibility that it was because they really loved her, but then she remembered Eddie’s cold Prussian-blue eyes, so like his mother’s, and knew that was not true. It was no good, she thought desperately, it was time matters were straightened out between them. And if it meant it was the end and she had to return to New York and face up to the shame of her broken marriage, then so be it.

The next day was a Saturday and for once, Eddie was home. Deciding there was no time like the present, she dressed in a pretty blue woolen dress, put her hair neatly into a chignon in the hope that it made her look older and more commanding, and hurried downstairs to his study.

She tapped on the door, calling his name, waiting nervously. There was no reply and her heart sank as she realized he might have decided to go out. Now she had made up her mind she wanted action. Calling his name again, she opened the door and peered in. The study was empty but she could smell the pungent Turkish cigarettes he smoked and a book lay open on the desk. Thinking he had probably just gone out for a few minutes, she decided to wait. She had seen Eddie’s study only once before when his mother had taken her on a tour of the house, and she wandered around staring curiously at the objects on his desk. The massive silver lamp, three telephones, an enormous ugly brass ashtray, and silver models of various Arnhaldt guns. She thought disconsolately that everything in Haus Arnhaldt was grand and oversize. Even the books on the shelves were all fat, worthy leather-bound tomes.

She inspected each of the paintings, stopping suddenly at a small landscape. But she was not looking at the painting, she was looking at the open safe that it was meant to conceal. And there staring back at her was a familiar object, an object she had thought she had lost forever:
Misha’s brooch, which she had last seen at Cartier in New York.

She clutched her throat as the horrific memories crowded back, hearing Sofia’s warning voice telling her over and over again that it would never be safe to sell the jewels, that the Cheka never slept and never forgot, that sometime, somewhere in the world, someone would be waiting for the Ivanoff gems to surface. And then they would act.

But there was something else that looked vaguely familiar, a legal document with a red seal. She picked it up and read the heading: “Lease of the Ivanoff Rajasthan Mine to Arnhaldt by The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics,” dated January 1, 1918, signed and sealed by Michael Peter Alexander Ivanoff on this date. She stared at it, puzzled. It could not be true; Misha was already dead when this document was signed.

Panicked, she remembered the Arnhaldts’ wooing of Azaylee and realized they must know who she was. But what did they want from her? Were they in league with the Cheka? A million possibilities flooded through her head, each more terrible than the last, as she stared, frozen, at Misha’s brooch. Instinctively she reached out, took it, and slipped it into her pocket. She spun around horror-struck as she heard Eddie’s loud voice outside giving instructions to Manfred. She glanced around helplessly, but there was no escape.

She pushed the lease back into the safe, shutting the door with a clang she felt sure could be heard a mile away, and quickly thrust the painting back in place. Then, picking a book at random from the shelf, she ran back to the other side of the desk and sat in the big red-leather wing chair.

Her spine crawled as the door opened; she flicked through the pages, pretending not to have heard, and after a few seconds Eddie said, “Are you here for a reason? Or just curiosity?” He walked toward her and took the
book from her hands.
“A Study of Ballistics
—in German? Really, Verity, if you are looking for an excuse to spy on me, you can do better than that.”

“I did not come here to spy on you,” she said indignantly, “I came—” She stopped, remembering that she could no longer say what she had intended to say. She could not tell him they were leaving because now she knew he would never let them go. “I came to ask you why you don’t speak to me anymore,” she said instead.

He shrugged. “I thought it was decided on the
Majestic
that we had nothing to say to each other. I made a terrible mistake, Verity. You are not the girl I thought you were. But I will not divorce you. You may stay here at Haus Arnhaldt and live like a lady. The young Baroness Arnhaldt.” His thin lips twisted into a cruel smile as he added softly, “For the rest of your life.”

She gasped, wondering, terrified, what he meant. Did he intend to kill her and take Azaylee? All she knew was they must leave here as soon as possible, and in secret.

She stood up and walked past him to the door. Flinging back her head, she met his eyes across the room. “I am still hoping that we can work things out between us, Eddie,” she said quietly. “I will do my best to please you from now on.”

It took all her self-possession to walk and not run back through the hall and up the stairs to her room. All day she worried about how to escape from Haus Arnhaldt. The place was a fortress and twenty kilometers from the nearest town; she couldn’t just pack and ask the chauffeur to drive them to the station in Düsseldorf because he would never do anything without first asking Baroness Jutta. And even if they attempted to walk, she knew they would be missed and brought back. Besides, Beulah was too old for such an expedition and Azaylee too young. She groaned, holding her head in her hands despairingly. All she could do was watch and wait her opportunity, and
meanwhile she would tell Beulah to prepare for their flight.

The old woman was thrilled when she told her they were leaving. “It just cain’t come soon enough for me, Miss Verity,” she said, grinning. “Ah cain’t wait to git the hell outa here.”

The opportunity came sooner than she expected and in the most satisfactory way. The detested Baroness Jutta fell while walking in the park and broke her hip. A world-famous bone specialist was summoned from Paris and Eddie was told the fracture was a complicated one. The baroness would have to be taken by ambulance to the doctor’s private Paris clinic, where he could treat her personally. If not, he feared she might never walk again.

Eddie was white-faced and tense as he made the arrangements, and Verity saw her chance. “Your poor mother,” she said sympathetically. “She will be so lonely in Paris, away from her beloved Haus Arnhaldt. Why don’t you let Azaylee go along too, to cheer her up? You know how she adores her.”

His eyes were worried and she knew he had barely heard her. “She really does adore Azaylee. You know how she makes her laugh,” she persisted.