bed, but first you must rest and eat and get strong again.” She patted Zoya's hand, and Zoya smiled weakly up at her.
“Thank you, Grandmama.” Her eyes filled with tears as she pressed the once graceful gnarled hand to her cheek. Even that brought back painful memories of her childhood.
“For what, silly child? What have you to thank me for?”
“For bringing me here … for being so brave … and doing so much to save us.” It had only just dawned on her how far they had come, and how extraordinary her grandmother had been. Her mother could certainly never have done it. Zoya would have had to carry Natalya all the way out of Russia.
“We'll make a new life here, Zoya. You'll see. One day we'll be able to look back, and everything won't be so painful.”
“I can't imagine it … I can't imagine a time when the memories won't hurt like this.” She felt as though she were dying.
“Time is very kind, my dear. And it will be kind to us. I promise you. We'll have a good life here.” But not the life that they had known in Russia. Zoya tried not to think of it, but later that night as her grandmother slept, she crept softly out of bed and went to her own small bag and found the picture Nicholas had taken while they were clowning at Livadia the previous summer. She and Anastasia and Marie and Olga and Tatiana were leaning backward until they hung almost upside down, grinning after the game they'd played, while their father took the picture. It looked silly to her now … silly … and so sweet … even at that odd angle, they all looked so beautiful to her, even more so now … the girls she had grown up with and loved … Tatiana, Anastasia … Olga … and, of course, Mashka.
CHAPTER
9
The measles left Zoya painfully weak, but much to her grandmother's relief, she seemed to revive amidst the beauty of Paris in April. There was a seriousness about her now that hadn't been there before, and a slight cough that seemed to linger. But now and then there was laughter in her eyes almost the way there had been before, and it made her grandmother's heart a little lighter.
The hotel on the rue Marbeuf was becoming expensive for them, though, as simple as it was, and Evgenia knew they would soon have to find an apartment. They had already used a good part of the money Nicholas had given them, and she was anxious to safeguard their meager resources. It was clear to her by early May, that she was going to have to sell some of her jewelry.
On a sunny afternoon, she left Zoya with Feodor and went to see a jeweler the hotel referred her to on the rue Cambon, after carefully cutting a ruby necklace out of the lining of one of her black dresses. She put the necklace in her handbag, and then took the matching earrings out of their hiding place in two carefully covered and rather large buttons. The hiding places had definitely served their purpose. She called for a taxi before leaving the hotel, and when she gave the driver the address, he slowly turned and stared at her. He was a tall, distinguished-looking man with silver hair, and a perfectly groomed white moustache.
“It's not possible … Countess, is it you?”’ She looked at him carefully then, and suddenly felt her heart beat a little faster. It was Prince Vladimir Markovsky. She recognized him with amazement, he had been one of Konstantin's friends, and his eldest son had even offered to marry the Grand Duchess Tatiana, and had been summarily refused. Tatiana thought him far too frivolous. But he was a charming boy, as was his father.
“How did you get here?”
She laughed, shaking her head at how strange their life was these days. She had seen other familiar faces in Paris since they'd been there, and on two other occasions she had called for taxis and discovered that she knew the drivers. The Russian nobility seemed to have no other way to earn a living, skilled at nothing at all, handsome, well born and extremely charming, there remained little that they could do, except drive a motorcar, like Prince Vladimir as he gazed happily at her. It brought bittersweet memories of better days back to her, and she sighed as she began to explain to him how they had