Romanov Succession Read Online Free PDF Page A

chair.
    â€œI’ve ordered dinner sent up at nine.”
    â€œHave you.”
    â€œWe’re having a tryst, aren’t we? It wouldn’t look quite right if we went out and mingled.”
    Her mouth curved into a posture of wry self-mockery. She brought him a glass of sherry and then slid back into the couch that faced his chair across the low glass coffee table. She smoothed her skirt under her thighs—the gesture had a strong sensuality. “You look awfully drab in that uniform.”
    â€œWhy don’t you tell me what game we’re meant to be playing?”
    â€œSo matter-of-fact. Where’s your dash?” She tucked one foot up under her on the couch.
    â€œI’d rather you didn’t try to be coquettish. It doesn’t suit you.”
    â€œOh dear.” She tossed her hair back, full of subtle mischief. “Now you’ve crushed me. Have I quite lost all my charms?” When she sipped the pale sherry her eyes mocked him over the rim of the glass.
    â€œNo.” It was an admission.
    â€œI’m sorry—I wasn’t really fishing for that.” But her eyes went on glittering with amusement; then she said in a different voice, “Very well. They want to see you.”
    â€œThey?”
    â€œYour brother. My father. Prince Leon. All of them.”
    â€œDo they.”
    â€œIs that all you can say?”
    He watched the way her muscles moved when she set her glass down. “What do you want me to say, Irina?”
    â€œI don’t know. I’ve no feverish desire to put words in your mouth. But some reaction—some hint of feeling. What will it take to provoke an emotion in you?”
    â€œThe fact that I don’t parade my feelings doesn’t mean that I don’t have them.”
    â€œYou used to burst with fires. That great Russian joie de vivre.”
    â€œWe were all children, weren’t we? And it was a different world.”
    â€œYou got fed up with seeing us all go on living in international luxury as if nothing had changed. The same old servants and horse races and hunts and chemin-de-fer— all our silly aristocratic posturings while Europe is falling down around our ankles. Isn’t that what you told Prince Leon the last time you saw him?”
    â€œSomething like that.”
    She uttered a bawdy bark of laughter. “Oh really, Alex. Sometimes you act like one of those grim dedicated adolescents who hang on Oleg Zimovoi’s Socialist coattails.”
    He had a disoriented sensation because the silent conversation between their eyes was separate and wholly different from the words: their voices spoke in dispute and accusation; their mute colloquy spoke of passions, regrets, remembered love.
    â€œYou’re a Russian. You were born in Kiev—you spent your childhood in St. Petersburg.” She spoke with surprising earnestness and heat: “You can’t deny yourself, Alex. You can’t put that behind you.”
    â€œI have.”
    â€œYour father died fighting for your country.” Her eyes challenged him.
    â€œIt was a long time ago,”

    His father had been a Marquis, a brigadier with Wrangel in the Ukraine in 1919 and the Red artillery had destroyed the bunker with five of them in it. Alex was twelve years old and the news broke him apart.
    They were living near Kiev just then, he and his mother in a rented dacha with only four servants.
    The day after the news reached them Alex ran away to Kiev and enlisted in a White recruiting office; he claimed he was sixteen. He was in training barracks resplendent in his new uniform when his mother’s emissaries found him and dragged him home.
    They found themselves under General Devenko’s protection when the terrible White retreat began after the collapse of Kolchak’s White armies. Ilya Devenko was a high staff officer in Deniken’s headquarters; he kept the mother and son from perishing in the chaotic horde of refugees