encounter with a wicked, predatory beast.
Anya wrinkled her nose. She’d always had a soft spot for the wolf in that tale. What if he were really a man trapped in the body of a beast? What if he fell under the spell of the beautiful girl? What if she tamed him? He’d be the very best protector. She let out a soft laugh at her own foolishness. Wasn’t that what every woman dreamed? That she’d be the one to gentle the beast? No doubt they believed it right up to the moment they were eaten up for dinner. She wasn’t such a fool.
After lunch, she made her way down to Wolff’s library. She tried to snoop through his desk, but most of the drawers were locked. Disappointed, she nevertheless found a small tin of watercolor paints, a pencil, and some blank sheets of paper and entertained herself by sketching instead.
Before long, she’d drawn a whole host of vignettes. There was her family’s dacha, their summer house in the country outside Moscow, complete with stables and orchard. A wave of nostalgia hit her as she remembered climbing the trees and picking fruit for vareniy, a kind of liquid jam, with Dmitri and her parents.
She sketched some of the dresses she’d worn in Paris, then Petya, her pet wolfhound who’d lived to the ripe age of fifteen before he’d succumbed to old age. She didn’t try to draw Dmitri or her parents. Already their familiar features seemed indistinct in her mind; to capture them on paper was more than her artistic ability allowed.
Lastly, she drew the tiara she’d destroyed. The design formed in her mind with guilty clarity. Two rows of graduated diamonds formed the top and bottom borders, kokoshnik style. More diamonds suspended like drops of rain within an open lattice of anthemion leaves, alongside sapphires the bottomless blue of a Russian lake.
She allowed herself a little artistic license. If she ever won a fortune at cards, she would take this drawing to a jeweler and ask him to remake it. Money would be no object, so she’d have the gems set in white gold or platinum instead of the original yellow gold. The silvery color would made the diamonds shimmer like sunlight on snow, the perfect diadem for the ice princess they’d once called her.
She shook her head at such fantasy. Of all the diamonds she and Elizaveta had hidden in their flight from Paris, only a handful remained. The rest had been used to pay for their passage from Ostend to Dover, for food and rent when they’d reached London. They’d received far less than the stones’ true worth on several occasions; there were always unscrupulous characters ready to take advantage, but they’d been desperate and unwilling to attract attention by making too much of a fuss.
The last time she’d been forced to sell a gem, she’d followed Charlotte’s suggestion and gone to the royal jewelers, Bridge & Rundell. The proprietor, the elderly Mr. Rundell, had treated her with the kind of polite disdain at which the English so excelled. He’d given her shabby dress and practical boots a knowing glance and accepted her story of being given them by her deceased employer with subtle incredulity and silent disapproval.
It was clear that he suspected her of being a demimondaine selling the favors given by a lover, or at the very least of having dubious associates, but his eyes had brightened when he’d realized the gems were of the highest quality, and he’d paid her a fair sum.
Anya had no doubt they’d end up around the wrist or neck of some man’s lady love. She liked to imagine they’d be bought by a doting husband, but life had taught her to be cynical. From what she’d seen of society, whether in Moscow, Paris, or London, most men barely tolerated their wives, let alone bought them expensive baubles. It was the mistresses who received the expensive trinkets.
She wondered how many pieces Wolff had bought for women over the years.
The sound of the back door opening and Mickey’s deep growl welcoming his master had her sitting straighter in her chair. The two men conversed for a few moments, too low for her to hear, but she heard Wolff’s inquiry after her whereabouts.
“Your study, sir,” Mickey said, and she braced herself as Wolff strolled down the hall and into the room.
He was dressed, as ever, in exceptionally well-fitting clothes. His dark jacket molded faithfully to his broad shoulders, his buff breeches outlined his