“I'll do my best.” He glanced at his watch. He had to get back to the hotel for one of the endless meetings. He stood up and paid for the coffee, and thanked Vladimir on the way back to the hotel, wondering if she would let him in. In her eyes, he had deserted her, and he knew that she had not understood his reasons. He thought she hated him now, and perhaps that was for the best, for her sake. But he couldn't let her just sit there and die. The picture Vladimir painted was a nightmare.
He sat impatiently through his meetings that night and at ten o'clock, he went outside and hailed a taxi, and gave the driver her address. It was a relief to discover that for once the driver was French, and not one of the noble Russians.
The building looked painfully familiar when he arrived, and for a moment he hesitated, before walking slowly up the stairs. He didn't know what to say, maybe there was nothing to say. Maybe all he could do was just be there. The walk to the fourth-floor apartment seemed interminable, and the halls were even colder and darker and more fetid than he remembered. He had left her six weeks before, but in that short time, so much had changed, so much had happened. He stood outside her door for a long time, listening, wondering if she was asleep, and then he jumped as he heard footsteps.
He knocked softly once, and the footsteps stopped. They stopped for a long time, and when she was satisfied he'd gone away, he heard them again, and this time he heard Sava bark. It made his heart beat faster just thinking of her so near, but he couldn't think of himself now, he had to think of her. He had come here to help her, not to help himself, and he had to force himself to think of that as he knocked again, and spoke through the door.
“You should be more careful, mademoiselle.”
She gasped, and her face was deathly pale. He was shocked at how thin she was. The Prince was right. She looked terrible as she faced him with wide, frightened eyes. “What are you doing here?”
“I dropped by from New York to see how you are.” He tried to sound flip, but the way she looked told its own tale. She was beyond laughter, beyond love, beyond caring.
“Why did you come here?” She stood looking angry and very small, and it almost broke his heart. He wanted to take her in his arms again, but he didn't dare. He was afraid he might break her.
“I wanted to see you. I'm here for the peace treaty negotiations at Versailles.” They were still standing in the doorway, and he looked at her questioningly as Sava came to lick his hand. She hadn't forgotten, even if Zoya no longer cared to remember. “May I come in for a few minutes?”
“Why?” Her
And he couldn't lie to her anymore. “Because I still love you, Zoya, that's why.” It wasn't what he had planned to say, but he couldn't stop himself from saying the words to her.
“That's not important anymore.”
“It is to me.”
“It wasn't six weeks ago, when you left.”
“It was very important to me then too. I thought I was doing the right thing for you. I thought you had a right to more than I had to offer.” He could offer her everything materially, but he couldn't give her youth or the years he had wasted before he met her. And that had seemed important at the time, now he wasn't so sure, in the face of everything Vladimir had told him. “I left you here because I love you, not because I didn't.” But he knew, as he had then, that she hadn't understood it. “I didn't mean to abandon you. I had no idea that so much would happen after I left.”
“What do you mean?” She looked up at him sadly, and sensed that he knew, but she was not sure how much.
“I saw Vladimir this afternoon.”
“And what did he tell you?” She stood stiffly away from him, watching his eyes, as his heart went out to her. She had suffered so much. It wasn't fair. It should have happened to someone else. Not to her, or Evgenia, or the Romanovs … or even Vladimir. He felt sorry for all of them. But more than that, he loved her.
