was doing. It was exquisite, something Charlotte would wear, a gorgeous midnight-blue watered silk gown with little puff sleeves and a draped bodice.
A note lay on the fabric, the white card stark against the shimmering blue.
Your lavender gown offends me, as it would anyone with a modicum of taste. Wear this.
The sloping copperplate undoubtedly belonged to Wolff, despite the absence of a signature. Anya didn’t know whether to be amused or annoyed by his high-handedness. Did he think she wore the grey dress because she liked it?
The new gown fit like a dream. Wolff was doubtless well-versed in calculating a woman’s measurements. Anya shivered in guilty pleasure as the silk chemise that had also been provided slid against her skin. She’d become so used to rough cotton, it felt as sensual as a caress. Every nerve ending quivered in happiness. Temptation, thy name is satin.
Her well-washed stockings had been replaced by a pair of embroidered silk ones, her practical, mud-covered boots replaced by a pair of highly impractical slippers. She put them on without a moment’s hesitation.
The only omission had been a corset. Anya wondered if it was deliberate, or whether Wolff had truly forgotten that women needed such things. Perhaps the women with whom he consorted didn’t bother to wear them.
The girl who stared back at her from the mirror was a foreign creature, someone she hadn’t seen for over a year. With a jolt, she felt like herself again, like Princess Denisova, poised and carefree. Able to go anywhere, do anything. It was a lie, of course. She was Anya Ivanov now, trapped in this cage of her own making. What good did it do to pine for what was gone?
Mickey rapped on the outer door. “There’s dinner downstairs, miss.”
“Will his lordship be eating with me?”
“Not tonight. He’s dining out.”
Anya quashed a feeling of pique. She shouldn’t want to see Wolff’s reaction to her in these clothes.
She followed the giant down the curved staircase and into a room with a gleaming mahogany sideboard and matching table. A single place setting had been arranged at one end, and she ate in solitary splendor.
The lack of company was made up for by the exquisite food: salmon, beef, almond syllabub. Mickey offered her wine, and Anya took two glasses of a wonderful French burgundy.
There was still no sign of Wolff, so she placed her napkin on the table and went exploring. He hadn’t expressly forbidden her to do so, after all.
She discovered a salon and a billiard room, and the stairs down to the kitchens, but her steps drew her down a long picture-hung corridor with a door at the far end. The murmur of conversation on the other side of the mahogany indicated this was a way into the club, but she had no desire to open it. Instead, she followed a narrow staircase up, up, and found herself on a kind of minstrel’s gallery overlooking the main gaming floor.
The air was warm up here, near the roof. A carved fretwork screen shielded her from sight while giving an excellent view of the comings and goings in the room below. The tsar had something similar in all the royal palaces; spy holes, places to see, but not be seen. Dark corners perfect for clandestine assignations.
The club was a riot of color and noise. Green baize-topped gaming tables, cream playing cards, the spinning red-and-black of the roulette wheels. Most of the men were clad in dark colors, but the women flitting between them were like exotic birds, some more gaudy than others. Most of them had chosen to preserve their anonymity by wearing masks.
The excited hum of conversation, broken by the occasional cheer or groan, filled the place with a lively energy that made Anya’s nerves tingle.
A movement behind her had her heart leaping to her throat, and she knew without looking that it was Wolff. She kept her face to the front as he stepped close behind her, felt the disturbance of the air as his legs brushed her skirts. The subtle scent of his cologne made her suck in an unsteady breath.
“Who gave you permission to be up here?”
“No one. But then, no one forbade me either.”
He rested his hand on the rail next to her hip and leaned forward to look at the scene below. Anya sneaked a glance at him from the corner of her eye. The glow from the lamps lit his features while the fretwork screen cast a pattern of shapes across his face. He