meant more money and more prestige, and allowed Axelle herself a little more leisure time. Zoya convinced Axelle to let Elsie de Wolfe redesign the shop, and business seemed to boom.
“God bless the day you walked in the door!” Axelle grinned at her over the heads of their excited customers the first day they reopened after it was redone. Even the mayor, Fiorello La Guardia, came and business was even better than before. She gave Zoya a mink coat as a gift, and Zoya gasped as she looked at it. It was made of ranch mink, and was intricately made, and it only added to her remarkable elegance as she took the bus home to her children every day, and by the following year she was able to move into a new apartment with them. It was only three blocks from Axelle's, and it was convenient for her, the children each had their own rooms now, Nicholas was twelve by then, almost thirteen, and he was relieved not to have Sasha constantly underfoot.
And two years later, on Sasha's eleventh birthday, Axelle invited Zoya to go to Paris with her, for her first buying trip. Nicholas went to stay with a friend, and she hired a baby-sitter to stay with Sasha for three weeks, and she and Axelle set sail on the Queen Mary in a flurry of excitement and champagne. As Zoya stood looking at the Statue of Liberty as they pulled slowly out of New York, she thought about how far she had come in the years since Clayton had died. It had been seven years. She was thirty-seven years old, and she felt as though she had already lived several lifetimes.
“What are you thinking about, Zoya?” Axelle had been watching her, standing quietly by the rail as they reached the open seas. She was beautifully dressed in an emerald-green suit, the color of her eyes, and a little fur hat set rakishly on her head, and as she turned to face her employer her eyes were almost the same color as the sea.
“I was thinking about the past.”
“You do too much of that, I suspect,” Axelle said quietly, she had great respect for her, and often wondered why she didn't go out more. She certainly had ample opportunity. Their clients were crazy about her, and there was always a stack of invitations on Zoya's desk, addressed simply to “Countess Zoya,” but she seldom went out, and always said she had “done all that before.” “Maybe Paris will put some new excitement in your life.” Zoya only laughed, and shook her head.
“I've had enough excitement in my life, thank you very much.” Revolutions and wars, and marriage to a man she had adored. She was still in love with Clayton after all those years, and she knew that seeing Paris again would be painful without him. He was the only man she had ever loved, and she knew there would never be another man like him … except her son perhaps … she smiled at the thought, and took a deep breath of the sea air. “I'm going to Paris to work,” she announced briskly to Axelle, and then laughed at the older woman's words.
“Don't be so sure, my dear.” They walked back to their stateroom then, as Zoya unpacked, and set the photographs of her children next to her bed. She didn't need anything more than that, and never would again. She went to bed with a new book that night, and made a list of the clothes they were going to order in Paris.
CHAPTER
35
Axelle had reserved rooms at the Ritz, conveniently located on the Place Vendome, and resplendent with all the luxury Zoya had all but forgotten. It had been years since she had taken a bath in a deep marble tub, just like the one she'd had in the house on Sutton Place. She closed her eyes, and lay luxuriating in the deep bathtub full of warm water. They were to begin their shopping the following morning, but that first afternoon, Zoya quietly left the hotel by herself for a walk, and was overcome by the memories as she wandered the streets and die boulevards and the parks she had once shared with Clayton. She went for a drink at the Cafe de Flore, and then, unable to stop herself, she took a cab to the Palais Royal, and stood silently in front of the building where she had lived with Evgenia. It had been seventeen