Isaak gave a brief nod. He knew she was right, and all that they had agreed to. He tried to concentrate as Kate spoke on.
“His mother gave him the money and jewellery when he returned from two years serving in the army. He was twenty-two then. We think his real father must have died while Ivor was drafted.”
“Why?”
“Because despite a difficult life, she was always cheerful when she wrote to him, and Ivor looked forward to her letters while he served. He remembered there was a long gap between them at one point, and when she did resume writing, they were melancholy.”
“Perhaps from the beatings,” Isaak suggested, “Or perhaps because she missed her son.”
“Possibly, but it was the most we had to go on,” Kate said. “We looked through death records around that time for anyone prominent anyone who might have had access to such exquisite jewels.”
“Any luck?”
“There were a few names that we were going to chase and some paintings we were going to examine more closely.”
“Your work really is interesting,” Isaak said. “I can see why you don’t want to give it up.”
“It’s different when it’s personal though,” Kate said and Isaak nodded.
“I’ve been having dreams,” he admitted.
“It happens.”
“Remember that crib?” he asked. “The one in the elevator?”
Kate nodded.
“I feel as if I’ve seen it before.”
“Could you have?” Kate asked. “You said you’ve stayed here before. Maybe you saw it in an elevator or being moved through the foyer.”
“Perhaps,” Isaak said, liking that practical answer. “I must have seen it then.”
He took a call from the jeweller who had a couple of names of jewellers that they might want to look up.
“We could go to the library,” Kate suggested.
“If you had told me a month ago I would be married, I would not have believed you, and if you had told me I would be spending half my honeymoon in a library…”
“We can go out for coffee then.” Kate smiled, but she knew that the library had won.
*
Here she was in her element and Isaak watched as she pored through old books, making notes, barely looking up and he knew it would be almost an impossible ask to find out who his babushka’s lover had been without her here.
“What?” Kate looked up from a book and smiled.
“Did you find anything?”
“If you ask me that again….” Kate rolled her eyes and got back to work but then frowned in irritation as Isaak broke a universal rule when his phone went off.
Kate wasn’t the only one frowning.
“Pardon,” Isaak said, but he did not turn his phone off, instead he answered it as he walked out.
“Hey,” Isaak said to his brother, “How are you?”
“Freezing,” Roman said. “Hungover.”
“So, you are good then,” Isaak smiled.
“No.”
Isaak stood in the hallway outside the reference section and leaned against the wall, closing his eyes as Roman shared the reason he was ringing.
“I know that there have been a few false alarms,” Roman said. “But I really don’t think that he has much time, he’s asking for you.”
“I see.”
“You need to see him.”
“No, Roman, I don’t.”
“Isaak, listen to me. I was so angry with Ava, I still am. But when she was in intensive care, a nurse told me to try and put it aside, and it is the one thing, out of this whole sorry mess, that I am glad I did.”
“You haven’t forgiven her though.”
“I doubt I shall,” Roman said “But she died thinking I had. She had some peace.”
“I don’t want him to have peace,” Isaak retorted. “What peace did he bring to our mother? What peace did he bring to our lives? I have nothing that I wish to say to the man.”
He ended the call and looked up to see Kate walking out.
“We’re being thrown out.”
“Because of a phone call?”
“No, because it’s 9 p.m.”
They had both been so immersed they had completely lost track of the time.
“Wow,” Isaak said putting his arm around her shoulders as they stepped out into the night. “You could lose years of your life with this.”
“I have!” Kate said.
“Not lost.” Isaak kissed the top of her head. He was trying to speak normally but his heart was hammering. The thought of his father lying there old, feeble, and ill and asking for him had guilt tugging at his heart even as his mind insisted he owed that man nothing.
“We could climb it,” Isaak said pointing to the Eiffel Tower.
“No thanks,” Kate said. “I like my views from the ground up.” She looked at his pensive face. “What did Roman want?”
Isaak was not used to answering to anyone, and certainly this was news that he would prefer to process alone, but he pushed through it and answered. “My father is asking to see me.”
“If you want to cut short our time here…” Kate offered.
Isaak let out a breath of tension for a part of him was thinking the same thing and no, he did not want some tender deathbed reunion with a brute, who had made life hell.
“Maybe you should think about seeing him,” Kate persisted.
“And maybe you should stop trying to run my life,” Isaak snapped, but he regretted his harsh tone straight away. “Kate, you don’t know what it was like.”
“I know that I don’t.”
“And if you did, you would understand why I am not hopping on a plane.”
He did not want to think about his father. “These letters to Ivor when he was in the army, do you have them?”
“They’re in the safe in my office but I have copies on my computer. Ivor’s been over and over them. There are no clues there, just that she seemed very flat.”
“Can you send me them?”
“Of course, or just go on my computer,” Kate offered.
“Just send them.” Isaak gave a wry smile. She was just so open. He could not imagine anyone else inviting him to snoop on their computer. “You really don’t have anything to hide, do you?”
Oh but she did, Kate thought. She had so much to hide, not just her fears about last night having consequences, or that she wasn’t on the pill but the fact that she’d fallen in love with him. They stood facing each other on Pont des Arts, the bridge of lovers, her heart fluttering in her chest.
“I’ll take your silence to mean I’m mistaken,” Isaak said pulling her into his arms. “So what else is Kate hiding?”
“I’m quite sure you don’t want to know.”
“You know this is the bridge of lovers…”
“I do.”
Soon they would be lovers—Kate knew that. If she stayed even another night, they would be lovers, and she glimpsed her hopeless future then, in love with a man who’d paid for the pleasure.
“I can’t wait to find out more with you,” Isaak said, holding her hips, “I have my own personal genealogist.” He nuzzled her ear, though his mind was still fractured and in many places. His father and uncle would die within weeks of the other. He was worried about Roman, but somehow it felt easier with Kate in his arms. “We’re going to have an amazing year.”
With those words, he reminded her of the contract’s terms when it was three other little words that she so desperately wanted to hear.
“So, what are you saying?” Kate snapped her head back. “I do your research and you get to screw me for a year…”
“Kate…” He had not been thinking. In that moment, between kisses, he had simply forgotten how vulnerable she was, and the words had been delivered without thought, though he got a very good chance to examine them now.
“Do you know how that just made me—” She could not finish; for she could not explain because Kate had only just worked out herself that she
was in love.
“Kate, what do you want me to say here?”
“There’s nothing you can say.” She shook her head. “Sorry, I forget sometimes that this isn’t about feelings.”
“You’re overreacting,” Isaak said. “Nobody is saying there are no feelings, but I told you right from the start that I don’t get involved. I said upfront this would go nowhere.”
“You did,” Kate answered, and she started to walk briskly. “I don’t know that I can do this, Isaak.”
“Do what?”
She simply didn’t know how to explain it, how to tell him that with every step she took she was falling in love with him. No, neither of them had signed up for that, but more and more, it was how she felt.
“Why are you walking so fast,” Isaak asked, “Let’s go and eat.”
“I want to walk,” Kate said, and she looked around to get her bearings, and then started to walk more quickly.
She knew where she was headed now.
“Kate.” Isaak was losing patience as she led them through the night. “Is this because I suggested you give up work, because if it is—” He looked around. “Where are we going?” Isaak scowled as they took a turn into a street that possibly might be best avoided if you valued your wallet. “Kate we need to go this way…”
Only she wasn’t listening and Kate walked faster, turning down another street, remembering being lost here all those years ago.
“Kate, we are in—”
“Pigalle,” Kate said. She knew very well that they were in the red light district.
Near naked women were in shop windows flouting their wares, there were XXX clubs and bouncers inviting them in, drunks on the street and sex workers too just as it had been all those years ago except she felt different now.
“Every time you mention the contract that’s what you make me.”
“You really do have an issue with—”
“No,” Kate furiously interrupted. “I have an issue with my being one, with being your whore, and I’m not going to be her,” Kate said. “When I got lost here, I’d never been more scared in my life. My father had died, and I knew I couldn’t rely on my mother…”
“Kate,” Isaak said, “this is not the place for a row.”
“Oh, it’s a very good place for a row,” Kate shouted. “Because I’m not scared anymore.” It felt good to shout it, and so she did it again. “Isaak, I’m not scared anymore. I’m strong, so do what you’re going to do. Sue me, freeze the family assets, humiliate me in court, but I’m done being your pretend wife. I’m done pretending I don’t have feelings for you, and that in a year’s time, I’ll simply be able to switch them off…” She could see some men pouring out of a taxi, and Kate put up her hand and walked swiftly towards it.
“Kate…”
“I’m going back to the hotel, why don’t you stay and have some fun?”
“For fuck’s sake!”
“Don’t you swear at me,” Kate responded in fury. “I’m going back to the hotel and I’m checking out first thing—I’ll make my own way back to London. If you choose to return tonight, then this time you’ll be a gentleman and take the sofa…”
“I never said I was a gentleman,” Isaak hurled as she got into the taxi, but as she drove off Isaak was smiling.
Kate wasn’t scared any more.
And neither was he.
He’d never hurt her.
She could scream at him, slap him, refuse to sleep with him, run away from him, and he would not harm a hair on her head.
He knew that. He always had, but he knew it on a level so deep now, that all he could do was stand there in sleazy surrounds and smile at his own revelation.
He knew as he looked around Pigalle that he was a gentleman.
He walked towards the basilica, and when he arrived there, Isaak sat on the steps watching Paris at night and wondered what time it was in Russia, and if his father was still alive.
“What do you see, Isaak?” He heard that voice again and looked out to the night.
The city of love.
And he’d just found it.
Isaak sat through the night on the steps at Montmartre, weighing up his decision. He was a deep thinker at the best of times and for both their sakes, he would not rush. This had to be right. As the sun started to rise and he witnessed the slow awakening of this magical city, the answer though was still the same.
Isaak had found love.
As he made a call to the jeweller, Isaak was more certain than he had ever been in his life that his decision was the right one.
Even if it unnerved him a little.
Even if patience might be required for the rest of his life.
Now he just had to convince Kate he was right.
He stood as his new friend, the jeweller, approached just before dawn. “You need a shave like I need to retire.”
Isaak laughed.
“Rough night?”
“Yes,” Isaak replied but when the jeweller pulled from his pocket a small velvet pouch and handed over his life’s masterpiece, Isaak qualified. “Which makes for a better morning.”
Chapter 14
Kate packed her case and knew she was making the right decision.
She loved him, which was why she had to leave.
Somehow, he had freed her. Somehow, she could now make her own choices and sleeping with a man who had paid for her, however amazing he might be, was something that she’d never be comfortable with.
There was a surprising calm that descended upon her then. Her family would just have to take care of themselves—in the ten years since her father’s death, they’d eroded his legacy.
Kate hadn’t.
She left the ring in the safe, the earrings though she was keeping. Ivor had gifted them to her, and she’d bloody well wear them in court if Isaak sued her.
The Last English Virgin she would remain.
She pulled out her laptop and looked up the morning after pill—even if she was overreacting she was getting it, but she saw that she had enough time to wait and do that in England. Instead of closing the computer, Kate decided to send him all the files she had now. She would simply get it over with and then fly back to London in the morning.
She pulled up the images of the paintings she and Ivor had discovered in Russia and attached them, making little notes as she went, listing all the possibilities she had considered, giving Isaak the leads she would have followed.
Yes, she was right to step away from this. Kate knew because every image, every letter, every moment spent with Isaak, he crept further into her heart.
It took hours.
Kate glanced at the time and saw that it was five, and she gave a bitter smile. Clearly Isaak was having a good time.
She attached the letters from Isaak’s babushka to Ivor and as she flicked through the files, Kate actually froze, enlarging a letter that was written in Russian and zooming in on an image.
Surely not?
She headed to a large dresser and took the stationary out, and yes, it was the hotel crest that was on the paper.
The door opened and in walked Isaak, looking possibly a little the worse for wear, but carrying flowers.
He saw the suitcase by the door and Kate’s pale features.
“I know it’s a bit late in our relationship to give you flowers,” Isaak said. “I should have done that before.”
She looked at the roses, and swallowed; she did not want to be romanced, did not want to fall further in love with him. “Eleven?” Kate said. He couldn’t even get that right. “It’s supposed to be a dozen.”
“No,” Isaak said because this was all with thought. “In Russia you have an odd number of flowers for a happy occasion, and you consider thirteen bad luck.”
“I’ve found something,” Kate interrupted. “Something that you need to see.”
“In a moment.”
“No, now.” She held up the blank piece of hotel paper and Isaak frowned. “There’s a letter on my computer.
Ivor said it held nothing of interest, but it’s got the same crest on it. I don’t think he was telling me the truth.”
“Let me see,” Isaak said and he put the flowers down. Kate had a flurry in her stomach, but it was a familiar one now, the one you got when the history gods aligned and offered you a teasing clue, and Isaak felt it too because the flowers were forgotten; everything was as he stared at their newest clue in confusion.
“It is the hotel crest.” He gasped. “And it’s my uncle’s writing.”
“What does it say?”
Annika,
I have given you the weekend I have dreamed of, I have never been more happy with the woman I love and my children by my bedside here in the city of love…
“Annika is my mother’s name.” Isaak’s voice cracked. He looked around the room that had somehow, from the moment he had stepped inside, felt familiar.
“That crib!” Isaak said. “I can remember Roman in it over there.” He pointed to the French windows and then screwed his eyes closed as bleary images danced like clouds before his eyes and then slowly merged into an image. “We were all here, together. Ivor, my mother, Roman, and I.”
He went back to the letter.
Yet still, after all he has done, you insist on going back to him when he comes out of prison.
Annika, you leave me powerless. I will take this secret to my grave as I have promised you but even if I cannot reveal that I am their father, I tell you this much, when they are older, I shall take care of my sons.
“Ivor was our father.” Isaak sat staring at the letter, looking at the date. “I would have been nearly two. He must have brought her here to try and persuade her to leave. I remember Roman in his cot. I can remember walking to the basilica and my legs were tired, so we took a bus up the hill.”
“You had seen that view then.”
“Yes,” Isaak said. “We had chocolate crepes on the stairs, and I remember my mother looking happy.”
“And he did take care of his sons,” Kate said, tears filling her eyes as she remembered her lovely friend. “Did you ever suspect that Ivor was your father?”
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