Zoya полностью

“Oh,” she laughed, feeling oddly at ease with him, and closer to Axelle than she had before, “by a long, hard road.” Her face grew serious then. “We lost everything in the Crash,” she said it honestly, and Axelle knew that much anyway. “Overnight, we were destitute, our two homes had to be sold, our furniture, my clothes and furs, even our china.” It was the first time she had actually spoken of it to Axelle, and she seemed at ease as she said it. “I had two children to support, and virtually no skills. I danced with the Ballet Russe here in Paris, during the war, and with another ballet company as well, but in 1929, I was thirty years old, and a little too old to join the ballet again.” She looked at them both with an amused smile, and Axelle was in no way prepared for what she heard next. “I applied to the Ziegfeld Follies, but I wasn't tall enough, so I got a job dancing in a burlesque hall.” Axelle's jaw almost dropped, and Simon Hirsch looked at her with intense respect. Not many women would have gone from riches to rags so courageously, or admitted that they'd worked in a dance hall. “That must surprise you, Axelle. No one knows that, not even my children. It was awful. I worked there for a year and a half, hating every minute of it, and one night,” her eyes still filled with tears at the memory, “there was a terrible fire when I was at work, and I almost lost my children. They are all that matters to me, and I knew I couldn't leave them alone at night anymore, so I packed up what was left in two boxes, moved to a hotel, borrowed a hundred dollars from a friend, and knocked on Axelle's door. I don't think she ever knew how desperate I was,” she looked gratefully at her friend, as Axelle tried to absorb what she had just heard, she wanted to cry just hearing it, “and I was very lucky, she hired me. And there I have been ever since, and always will be, I hope.” She smiled at the two listeners, unaware of how much she'd moved them both, especially Simon, “And they all lived happily ever after.”

“That's quite a story.” He stared at her in open amazement and Axelle delicately dabbed at her eyes with a lace hankie.

“Why didn't you tell me then?”

“I was afraid you wouldn't hire me. I would have done anything to get that job. I even came to you and flaunted my title, something I'd never done before.” She laughed good-humoredly then, “If I had, I'm sure they would have had me bumping and grinding as someone shouted from backstage, ‘And our very own Countess!’” All three of them laughed, but Zoya more easily than the others. The others were too impressed by the tale to laugh at her, and only Axelle knew how unkind people would have been if they had known Countess Ossupov had danced in a burlesque hall. “You do what you have to do in life. During the war here, some of our friends actually caught pigeons in the park and ate them.” Simon wondered at what else she had lived through. The revolution had to have been a brutal blow, with all of her family killed before she escaped. There was more to her than met the eye, in her pretty pink linen suit. A lot more. And he wanted to know all of it. He was sorry to see the lunch come to an end, and he dropped them off at the Ritz on his way to see the representative from a French mill, from whom he was ordering more fabric.

He shook hands with Zoya as she stood beside the cab, and he watched her long and hard as he drove away, thinking of what an incredible woman she was. He wanted to know everything about her now, how she had escaped, how she had survived, what her favorite color was, her dog's name, her worst fears when she'd been a child. It seemed crazy to him, but in the space of one short afternoon, he knew he had fallen in love with the woman of his dreams. It had taken him forty years, but on an afternoon in Paris, three thousand miles from home, he had found her.

CHAPTER

36

Zoya saw their trip come to an end with regret. They had had a good time, and on their last night, they had dinner at the Cordon Bleu, and strolled slowly back to the hotel, as Axelle urged her to get a good night's sleep, and thanked her for all her help in selecting the fall line for the shop. She was still stunned at the story Zoya had told at lunch at the George V with Simon Hirsch several days before. It gave her fresh respect for Zoya's courage.