The Property of a Lady - Elizabeth Adler [44]
“With you, Grandfather Pasha,” she had said, fixing him with a gaze he recognized as his own. “I want to go where you go when you are not with me.” So he took her to lunch at the Yacht Club, where she was treated with all the proper respect of a grown-up lady, and where she ordered her favorite lamb kebabs and ice cream. And Tariq knew he was prouder of his little great-granddaughter than of all his business successes and his fortune.
When Leyla was four years old, Ahmet and his wife decided to take her with them on a trip to Paris. When he heard the news Tariq said sternly, “You cannot take my granddaughter away from me. If she goes, I go.”
Ahmet had glanced at his wife, shrugging his shoulders, and she had sighed resignedly. She had learned long ago that no one ever said no to her grandfather-in-law.
He was sitting on a bench in the Luxembourg Gardens watching little Leyla chase a ball across the grass when a woman spoke to him.
“Tariq Kazahn?” she said wonderingly. “Can it really be you?”
He glanced up, frowning. It was a face he remembered from the past … but then it had been a younger face, and the violet eyes had been frightened, terrified of the shooting … she had been clutching a small child to her, and there was a great amber-colored dog….
“Missie?” His voice trembled as he rose to his feet, “Missie? Is it really you?” And then his arms were around her and they were laughing and crying together.
“I’ve never forgotten you, never,” she was saying. “How could I when you saved our lives, and at such risk to yourself?”
“The Princess Sofia?” he asked eagerly. “And Xenia?”
Missie shook her head, “The princess spoke of you often before she died,” she told him gently. “She said you were one of the bravest and most loyal men she had ever met, and that you were her son’s good friend.” She hesitated. “Like all of us, Xenia has a new identity. I doubt she even thinks about the Ivanoffs anymore.” He looked down in surprise as she drew forward the small girl standing beside her and said, “This is her daughter, Anna. She is ten years old.”
Tariq’s eyes filled with tears as he looked at the fair, slender child, the last of centuries of the great Ivanoff dynasty. After taking her small hand in his, he kissed it. “My humble greetings, Princess,” he said as she stared back at him, puzzled.
Calling to Leyla, he introduced his granddaughter proudly. “And now go play together,” he told them. “We grown-ups wish to talk.”
They watched as the two little girls hurried eagerly across the grass, and then he turned to look at Missie. There was no sign of gray in her smooth, seal-brown hair. She wore it fashionably shorter now, curling softly into her neck, and apart from a few lines of laughter—or tension—around her eyes, her skin was smooth. She was almost as tall as he and slender as a reed in her chic, cream-colored suit, and he thought admiringly that her long legs looked as perfect as those of a woman thirty years younger.
“Tell me,” he asked. “What happened?”
He listened in silence as she told him the story of a life that had left them struggling between poverty and success, and always, like a pall over everything, the fear.
“You need money?” he asked, concerned.
Missie shook her head, “It’s Anna I’m worried about. Her mother”—she shrugged—“is just like Anouska.”
Tariq nodded. He knew what she meant.
“Anna needs family,” Missie said, “and that’s something I can’t give her. I’m no companion for a child. I brought her to Paris for a change, a little holiday, but I know she’s lonely.