Zoya (16 page)

She stood up as her grandmother glared at her. “Where are you going now?”

“I have a rehearsal today.”

“I'm so tired of this!” She stood up and paced around the room as best she could, but she was still very spry. “Ballet, ballet, ballet! Enough!”

“Yes, Grandmama.”

She was going to sell a necklace again, an emerald one this time. Maybe Zoya would give up this nonsense then for a while. She had had enough of it. She was not a dancer. She was a child.

“What time will you be home tonight?”

“I should be back at four o'clock. Rehearsal starts at nine, and I don't have a performance tonight.”

“I want you to think about leaving them.” But Zoya enjoyed it too much, they both knew that, and the money did help, much as the Countess hated to think about it. She had bought her grandmother a pretty dress and a warm shawl the week before. And her wages helped pay for their food as well, although there were no little extra treats, except those Vladimir
still brought in the hopes of catching a glimpse of Zoya.

“Well go for a walk this afternoon when I come home.”

“What makes you think I'd be willing to go for a walk with you?” her grandmother growled, and Zoya laughed.

“Because you love me so much. And I love you too.” She kissed her cheek, and hurried out the door, like a schoolgirl late for class.

The old woman sighed and cleared away the breakfast plates. It was so difficult having her here. Things were so difficult, and the hardest part was that much as the old woman hated to admit it to herself, Zoya was no longer a child, and it wasn't easy to control her.

Zoya's rehearsal was at the Opéra again that day, in preparation for another performance the following night, and she danced and rehearsed and practiced at the barre for hours and when she finished shortly before four o'clock, she was tired after the late night at General Pershing's house. It was a sunny afternoon in the last week of June, and she walked out into the sunlight with a contented sigh.

“You sound tired, Miss Ossupov.” She wheeled in surprise at the sound of her name, and saw Clayton Andrews standing next to one of General Pershing's staff cars.

“Hello … you startled me.”

“I wish I could say the same. I've been waiting here for two hours.” He laughed and she looked at him with wide eyes.

“Have you been waiting for me all this time?”

“I have. I never got a chance to say good-bye to you last night.”

“I think you were busy when I left.”

“I know. You must have gone back on the first truck.” She nodded in answer, surprised that he had taken the trouble to find out. She hadn't thought she would see him again, but she was happy seeing him now. He was as handsome as she had thought him the night before, as tall and lean and graceful as he had seemed when they danced the waltz. “I was hoping you'd have lunch with me. But it's a little late now.”

“I have to go back to my grandmother anyway.” She smiled up at him, dallying like a schoolgirl just released from class. “She's dreadfully cross at me after last night.”

He looked puzzled by the remark. “Did you go home very late? I didn't notice the time when you left.” Then she was as young as he'd thought. She had the looks of a very young girl, the innocence … and yet, there was such wisdom in her eyes.

But Zoya laughed at the memory of sending Feodor away from the opera house. “My grandmother sent someone to chaperone me, and I sent him home. I suspect he was quite glad of it, though, and so was I.” She blushed slightly then and he laughed.

“In that case, mademoiselle, may I offer you my escort now? I could drive you home.” She hesitated, but he was so obviously a gentleman, there could be no harm in it, and who would know? She could leave him a block or two before the Palais Royal.

“Thank you very much.” He opened the door for her and she slid into the car. She told him where she lived, and he seemed perfectly at ease as he drove
her home. She had him stop a block away and he looked around.

“Is this where you live?”

“Not quite.” She smiled and blushed again. “I thought I'd spare my grandmother the agony of getting angry at me again so soon after last night.”

He laughed at her, his handsome face looking very young despite the silver hair. “Aren't you a naughty child! And if I ask you to join me for dinner tonight, mademoiselle? What then?”

She knit her brows as she thought of it, and then looked at him. “I'm not sure. Grandmama knows there is no performance tonight.” It would be the first time she had ever been dishonest with her and she herself wasn't sure why she felt she had to be now. But she knew how Evgenia felt about soldiers.

“Won't she let you go out with anyone?” He seemed both amused and surprised.

“I'm not sure,” Zoya confessed. “I never have.”

“Oh, dear … am I allowed to ask how old you are in that case?” Perhaps she was even younger than he thought, but he hoped not.

“Eighteen.” She said it almost defiantly, and once again he laughed.

“Does that seem very old to you?”

“Old enough.” He didn't dare ask for what. “Not long ago, she was encouraging me toward a friend of the family.” And when she said it, she blushed. It seemed stupid to tell him about Vladimir, but he didn't seem to mind.

“And how old is he? Twenty-one?”

“Oh, no!” Zoya was laughing now. “Much, much older than that. He's at least sixty years old!” This
time, Clayton Andrews looked both amused and startled.

“Is he? And what does your grandmother think of that?”

“It's too complicated to explain, besides, I don't like him anyway … he's an old man.”

He looked at her seriously for a moment as they sat in the car. “So am I. I'm forty-five years old.” He wanted to be honest with her, right from the start.

“And you're not married?” She seemed surprised, and then realized that perhaps he was.

“I'm divorced.” He had been married to one of the Vanderbilts, but it had ended ten years before. In New York, he was thought to be an enviable catch, but
in
the ten years since his divorce, and among the flocks of women he'd taken out, none of them had snagged his heart. “Are you shocked?”

“No.” She thought about it and then looked him in the eye, convinced more than ever that he was a decent man. “Why did you get divorced?”

“We fell out of love, I suppose … we were very different from the start. She's remarried and we're good friends, though I don't see her very often anymore. She lives in Washington now.”

“Where's that?” It all sounded far away and mysterious to her.

“It's near New York but not near enough. Rather like Paris and Bordeaux. Or Paris and London perhaps.” She nodded. That much made sense. But he glanced at his watch. He had spent hours waiting for her and now he had to get back. “What about dinner tonight?”

“I don't think I can.” She looked sadly up at him, and he smiled.

“Tomorrow then?”

“I have to dance tomorrow night”

“What about afterward?” He was persistent in any case, but having found her again, he was not going to let her slip past him.

“I'll try.”

“Good enough. I'll tomorrow night then.” He sprang from the car and helped her out. She thanked him politely for the ride, and he waved at her as he drove back toward the rue Constantine with a song in his heart as he thought of Zoya.

CHAPTER
15

For the first time in her life, she lied to her grandmother. It was the following day when she left for the Opora again. She felt guilty about it, but by the time she left the house, she had forgiven herself for what seemed like a harmless lie. She was sparing her worry about something that wasn't worth worrying about, she told herself. After all, what harm was there in one dinner with a nice man? She had told her that Diaghilev was giving a supper for them, and it was an obligation for the entire ballet troupe.

“Don't wait up for me!” she had called over her shoulder so Evgenia could not see her eyes.

“Are you sure you must go?”

“Absolutely, Grandmama!” And then she had hurried out the door for rehearsal.

And after the performance, Clayton was waiting for her, with another of General Pershing's cars. “All set?” He smiled at her and slid behind the wheel as he watched her eyes. They spoke volumes, far more than her words, and they were the color of emeralds full of fire. “How was it tonight?”

“It was all right. But Nijinsky didn't dance tonight. He's remarkable, don't you think?” And then with a giggle, she remembered that he didn't like the ballet. “Never mind, I forgot you don't like ballet.”

“Perhaps I can be taught.” They drove straight to Maxim's, and Zoya's
eyes
grew wide as they walked in the door. The rich velvet decor and crowds of elegant people and men in dress uniforms dining there made her catch her breath as she looked up at him. It all seemed so grown-up, and a little startling, and she thought instantly of how to describe her surroundings in her next letter to Marie. But Clayton Andrews was going to be difficult to explain, even to her closest friend. She herself wasn't quite sure why she was dining with him, except that he'd been so kind to her, and he seemed so happy and at ease. She found herself wanting to talk to him, just this once … or perhaps one more time after that. There was no harm in it. He was respectable, and there was a certain excitement to it. She tried not to act like an excited child as they sat down at the table. “Hungry?” He eyed her happily as he ordered champagne for them, but she just wanted to look around.

“Have you ever been here before?”

She shook her head, thinking of the apartment where they lived, and the hotel where they had stayed before that. They hadn't been to any restaurants at all since they'd arrived. She and her grandmother cooked simple meals at home, and Feodor sat down to dinner with them every evening.

“No.” She didn't explain. It would have been difficult to explain it all to him.

“It's pretty, isn't it? I used to come here before the war.”

“Do you travel a great deal? Usually, I mean.”

“Enough. Had you ever been to Paris before … I mean before you came here three months ago?” He had remembered that and she was touched.

“No. But my parents used to come here a lot. My mother was actually German, but she'd lived in St. Petersburg most of her life.” He found himself suddenly wanting to ask her what the revolution had been like, but sensed wisely how painful it had been for her, and refrained. And then, just to make conversation with her, he casually asked a question which made her laugh.

“Zoya, did you ever see the Tsar?” And at the look of amusement on her face, he began to laugh too. “Is there something funny about that?”

“Perhaps.” She felt so comfortable with him, she decided to open up a little bit. “We're cousins.” But her face grew serious then, remembering her last morning at Tsarskoe Selo. Clayton patted her hand, and poured her champagne.

“Never mind … we can talk about something else.” But as she looked at him, her eyes reached into his.

“It's all right … I just …” She fought back tears as she looked at him. “I just miss them so much. Sometimes I wonder if we'll ever see them again. They're still under house arrest now, at Tsarskoe Selo.”

“Do you hear from them?” He looked surprised.

“I get letters sometimes from the Grand Duchess Marie … she's my very dearest friend. She was very ill when we left.” And then she smiled sadly at the memory. “I caught the measles from her. They all had them before we left.” It all seemed remarkable
to him as he listened to her. The Tsar of Russia was a figure in history, not merely a cousin of this pretty young girl.

“And you grew up with all of them?”

She nodded and he smiled. He had been right after all. There was a great deal more to her than one would have thought at first sight. She wasn't just a pretty little ballerina. She was a girl from a fine family, a girl with a remarkable past. She began to tell him about it then, about the house where she'd grown up, about Nicolai … and the night he'd been shot, and staying at Tsarskoe Selo before they left Russia.

“I have such wonderful photographs of them. I'll show you sometime. We went to Livadia together in August every year. They're going this year again, or so Marie said when she last wrote. We always celebrated Alexis's birthday there, or on the yacht.”

Clayton Andrews watched her with fascinated eyes as they talked. She spoke of a magical world, at a rare time in history, and to her it was commonplace, cousins and friends, and children and tennis, and dogs. And now she was dancing with the Ballet Russe. No wonder her grandmother sent a chapter-one with her. She even explained Feodor to him. And by the end of the evening, he felt as though he knew them all, and his heart ached for the life she had lost in Russia.

“What will you do now?”

“I don't know.” She was honest with him. “When there is no more jewelry left to sell, I suppose I'll just go on dancing and we'll live on that. Grandmama is too old to work, and Feodor doesn't speak enough French to get a job, and he's also quite old.” And
when they died? He didn't even dare think of it. She was so open and innocent and fresh, and yet she had seen so much.

“Your father sounds like a nice man, Zoya.”

“He was.”

“It's hard to imagine losing all that. Harder still to imagine never going back.”

“Grandmama thinks things might change after the war. Uncle Nicky said as much before we left.” Uncle Nicky … the Tsar Nicholas … it still amazed him as he listened to her talk. “At least, for now, I can dance. I used to want to run away to the Maryinsky School when I was a little girl”—she laughed at the memory now—” this isn't so bad. I'd rather dance than teach English, or sew, or make hats.” He laughed at the look on her face as she listed the alternatives.

“I'd have to admit, I can't quite imagine you making hats.”

“I'd rather starve. But we won't. The Ballet Russe has been very good to me.” She told him about her first audition, and he silently marveled at her courage and ingenuity. Even having dinner with him was rather brave. And he had no intention of taking advantage of her. He liked her, even though she was barely more than a child. But he also saw her differently now than he had the other evening. She wasn't just a pretty face, or a member of the corps de ballet. She was a girl from a family even more illustrious than his own, and even though she had nothing left, she had breeding and dignity, and he had no desire to violate that. “I wish you could meet Grandmama,” she said as though reading his thoughts.