She still thought about them sometimes, it would have been impossible not to. The figures of the past still lived on in her heart, but the memories were dimmer now, and sometimes she had to grope for their faces. There were framed photographs of Marie, and the other girls, in Fabergo frames on the mantel in their bedroom. The one where they all hung upside down was still the one she loved best, and little Nicholas knew their names and faces too. He loved to hear about what they had been like, what they had said and done, the mischief they'd gotten into as children, and it intrigued him that he and the Tsarevich shared the same birthday. He liked to hear about the “sad parts,” too, as he called them … the parts about Grandfather Nicolai, after whom he was named. She told him about their arguments and their jokes and their disappointments, and she assured him that she and Nicolai had fought almost as much as he and Sasha. At four, he thought she was becoming a terrible nuisance. And there were others in the house who shared his view. She was spoiled by her father, beyond what even Zoya liked, but there was no scolding the child in his presence.
“She's a baby, darling. Don't upset her.”
“Clayton, she'll be a monster when she's twelve if we don't discipline her now.”
“Discipline is for boys,” he told his wife, but he never had the heart to reprimand Nicholas either. He was kindhearted to all of them, and played with them endlessly
King George was healthy again in England by then and it always unnerved Zoya when she saw photographs of him. He looked so much like his first cousin, the Tsar, that it was always a shock to see his face gazing out from a picture. His own little granddaughter, Elizabeth, was only a year younger than Sasha.
The thing that impressed little Nicholas most that summer was a performance of Yehudi Menuhin's in New York. The child was a prodigy on the violin, and only three years older than Nicholas, who was fascinated by the way he played. He talked about it for weeks, which pleased Zoya.
Clayton was reading
“If it hadn't been for him letting me dance, we would have truly starved. There was nothing else I knew how to do,” she looked up at Clayton sadly, as he took her hand, remembering how hard her life had been then, the awful apartment near the Palais Royal, their almost nonexistent meals during the war, it had been a hard time, but it was long in the distant past, and she looked up at him with a smile. “And then there was you, my love….” She never forgot how he had saved her.
“Someone else would have come along.”
“Not someone I could have loved as I love you.” She spoke gently. He bent to kiss her, and they stood for a long time in the last fiery sunset of the summer. They were moving back to New York the next day. Nicholas had to go to school, and Sasha was going to begin kindergarten. Zoya thought it would do her good to be with other children, although Clayton wasn't as sure. But he always deferred to Zoya on matters of that nature.
They had dinner with the Roosevelts again almost as soon as they got back. They had also just returned from their summer home in Campobello. And a week later, the Andrews gave a party to celebrate the onset of a new social season. Prince Obolensky came of course, as he always did, and a glittering cast of hundreds.
The month seemed to fly by with parties, theater, balls, and it was October before they knew it. Clayton was worried that his stocks weren't doing well, and he called John Rockefeller to have lunch with him, but he had gone to Chicago for a few days, so he'd have to wait to see him. And two weeks later, Clayton was too upset to have lunch with anyone. His stocks were plummeting and he didn't want to upset Zoya by telling her, but he had put all their assets into the stock market months before. He had done so well, he was sure that he could triple his family fortune.
