The Property of a Lady - Elizabeth Adler [74]
Missie sighed and Anna gripped her hand tighter. “Misha and I were growing closer, but it was a meeting of the minds, you understand. We never spoke of ‘love.’ That is, until my seventeenth birthday when he gave me a present, a jeweled brooch in the shape of the Ivanoff crest, and then he kissed me and said he loved me. How can I tell you what it felt like, to be in his arms? I can only say that I knew it was where I was meant to be. He told me he had not meant to say it, that he was married and anyway I was too young, but that if I went away his life would be empty.
“The war with Germany was going badly. Misha was an officer in the Chevalier Guards and he was often away at the front, and Anouska was away staying with friends; she spent more time at other people’s houses than at her own. I wrote every day to Misha and sometimes I would get a reply, short, quick notes telling me he was well and missed his children and Varishnya and me, and always signed just ‘Love, Misha.’
“I was alone in St. Petersburg with just the children and the servants for company. Of course by now I knew a lot of young people, but without Misha around somehow I felt as if I didn’t belong and, anyway, I was in no mood for parties when young men were being killed at the front. One day I took Alexei for a walk. St. Petersburg was like Venice, built on an estuary with lots of little bridges connecting the islands, and this day we went to Novoya Derenya, the gypsies’ island: It was Alexei’s favorite and mine too. All the famous gypsy families lived there, and many years before an ancestor of Princess Sofia’s had married a gypsy girl from the Shishken Tabor family. They were tall, good-looking people, with flashing dark eyes. All the men had big mustaches and the girls had long curly dark hair covered with gaily colored kerchiefs, and they wore huge earrings like gold circles. The men would play their balalaikas and guitars and sing and the girls would dance those wild stamping dances; they looked wonderful in their swirling skirts with scarlet sashes at their tiny waists, and we would toss a coin into the tambourine brought round by a swarthy, bold-eyed young gypsy.
“Alexei was a beautiful child, so blond in contrast to their darkness, and of course they knew who he was and always made a great fuss of him, inviting him into their houses and offering him syrupy drinks and little sweet cakes and fresh bread and their delicious jam. But this day one of the older women from the Massalsky Tabors beckoned to me to leave Alexei with her daughter and to come into her house alone. I was a little mystified, but I followed her into a back room.
“It was dark, just the light of a small red-shaded lamp; there was a round table with a red cloth and two chairs, and she motioned me to sit down. After going to a shelf, she took down a crystal ball. I remember smiling, thinking she wanted to make an extra ruble or two by pretending to tell my fortune.
“The light from the lamp flickered over her face as she gripped the ball in both hands and stared into its depths. I watched her silently. Her face was very lined and I guessed she must be more than seventy, but there was no trace of gray in her black hair and her hands were very beautiful, with long slender fingers and polished oval nails. When she finally looked up at me her eyes were mesmerizing, like dark pools, and I felt myself drawn to her. I leaned closer as she spoke, unable to take my eyes away.
“‘There has been sorrow in your life,’ she told me, ‘and