She turned at the melodic sound of the bell as the front door opened.
Drake stepped inside, smiling fondly at the sight of her walking toward him. “As beautiful as I remembered,” he murmured. “I was afraid you were only a dream.”
Dani fleetingly wondered how many other women had heard such a greeting from the stunning Russian, then said, “Welcome to my shop and gallery.”
“Thank you for allowing me a private showing.”
“You may not be so appreciative when you have seen my modest offerings. I’m not fully stocked yet, as you can see, but I think there are some interesting pieces.”
He followed her around as she showed him what was being offered for sale, and all the while he was burning silently with the anticipation of viewing the Monaco discoveries. So long, he had searched. Each time he heard there was a painting of a landscape in Russia, he tried, when viewing it, to display as little interest as possible, lest he arouse suspicion. But this was the first time anyone had discovered a painting of the palace…and that, according to what he had managed to find out, was what he was seeking.
“And here,” Dani was saying with a flourish, for she had deliberately saved the gallery for the last, knowing these were the most intriguing offerings of her modest little shop, “we have the great discovery from the wine cellar of Count deBonnett’s château in Monaco!” She gave him a sweeping bow, then stepped to one side.
Drake moved forward, quietly drawing in his breath and pretending absolute nonchalance. He went from left to right, slowly, studying each painting carefully, trying to hold back, to appear in no hurry whatsoever. He knew, instinctively, that the palace painting would be the very last one displayed.
Then, he was before it and he knew.
A quick, sweeping look told him what he had prepared himself for—that if, indeed, this was the painting he had been seeking for over a decade, the answer would not leap out at him. The puzzle would not be solved in the blinking of an eye. Meticulous examination would be required…just as the pseudo-artist had intended.
Dani spoke. He heard the sound, not the words. He tore his gaze from the painting, forced a smile, muttered, “Excuse me, what did you say?”
“I don’t know why everyone finds this painting so fascinating,” she repeated.
A chill of foreboding danced over him, but he managed to hold rein on his composure. “Everyone?” he echoed mildly, then feigned disappointment. “I thought I was being given a privileged showing.”
Dani was quick to explain. “Oh, I shouldn’t make such a broad statement. There was only Cyril Arpel. He and Kitty have known each other for a while, and when he asked her for a private viewing, I saw no harm. But I was really surprised when he said he’d like to buy this one. After all, it’s not even a good effort by an amateur, but…” She paused to study the painting once more, then declared, “There’s just something inexplicably captivating about it.”
Drake frowned, turned away lest she see, for it was becoming increasingly difficult to appear complacent when there was a great, nagging roar building within. Why would a renowned connoisseur such as Cyril Arpel be interested in buying a dilettantish offering such as this?
Why, indeed!
He knew that, somehow, Cyril had discovered the secret. How he found out was not as important as whether others knew as well. Then he decided that was not really a factor. Cyril would tell no one, had probably heard by accident. The Czar would keep his word, Drake was sure.
Lost in thought, he did not hear the sound of the bell as the front door of the shop opened and closed, nor was he aware that Dani hurried to respond…nor did he hear her speak when she returned to where he stood, transfixed, before the painting.
“Drake!” She tugged at his sleeve, slightly agitated, for she had called his name several times without response. “Drake, I’m speaking to you…”
He turned, looked down at her without really seeing her, then gave himself a mental shake as he silently cursed for allowing his mind to drift. “I was absorbed in the art, I’m afraid. Forgive me.”
She smiled tolerantly, then offered an apology of her own as she explained she would have to leave him for a few moments. One of the tenants wished to show her something he wanted repaired. Would he mind her going?
He shook his head, eager to be alone, to scrutinize each detail of the Alexandrovsky Palace as closely as possible.
Then, once mere, he allowed himself to drift…back in time…back to the painful memories that would haunt him until the day he returned honor to his family’s name.
Dolskoi Mikhailonov enjoyed a few drops of royal blood flowing through his veins. Two hundred years before him, from 1645 to 1676, a Mikhailonov ancestor had served Russia as Czar Alexei I. Due to the family blood—and money—Dolskoi had been brought up in the Imperial Russian Court amid a life of luxury and devotion to the reigning Czar and his family.
Dolskoi’s father, Serge Mikhailonov, had faithfully served Alexander I during the waning years of his rule, then went on to devote himself to his successor, Nicholas I. Serge was killed in the Crimean War with England, France, and Turkey. But, during the time Serge served his Czar, Dolskoi was growing up looking to the Czar’s son, Alexander II, as an older brother. Despite the thirteen years’ difference in their ages, the two were inseparable, and Dolskoi called the Winter and Summer Palaces of the royal family home.
The Czar ruled Russia from the Baltic city of Saint Petersburg, situated on a river marsh in a northernmost corner of his empire. So great was the imperium that dawn came to the Pacific coast while the sun set on the western borders. Scattered throughout one sixth of the land surface of the globe were the Czar’s thirty million subjects—Slays, Baits, Georgians, Jews, Germans, Uzbeks, Tar-tars, and Armenians.
The Czar, it was said, could do no wrong. He was called the Batiushka-Tsar, the Father of the Russian people, and a Russian proverb decreed: “It is very high up to God! It is very far to the Tsar!” The Czar was considered to live in a place nearer heaven than Earth.
The royal family favored Saint Petersburg, called the Venice of the North. It was considered European not Russian. The architecture, morals, and styles were thought to be of Western influence. Italian architects, brought over by Peter the Great over a hundred years before, had left their mark in huge baroque palaces, situating them between sweeping and broad boulevards.
Saint Petersburg was a northern city where Arctic latitudes played tricks with light and time. Over baroque spires and frozen canals in winter the strange fires of the aurora borealis danced. Summers were as light as winters were dark, with nearly twenty-two hours of daylight.
But it was not in Saint Petersburg that young Dolskoi Serge Mikhailonov and the next Czar of Russia dreamed of spending their time. The Alexandrovsky Palace was where they loved to be. Built by Quarenghi in the years 1792 to 1796 by Catherine II for her grandson, Alexander I, Dolskoi and his mentor spent every moment possible there.
Alexander II ascended to the throne in 1855, upon the death of his father, Nicholas I. He was then thirty-seven; the man considered his closest confidant, Dolskoi Serge Mikhailonov, was only twenty-four.
It was six years later, in 1861, that Czar Alexander earned the title of Liberator when he emancipated the serfs. Freedom, however, did not produce food, and when the black earth cracked and burst open with drought, and famine came with the withering of grain while still on the stalk, the peasants grumbled and unrest began in the kingdom.
Meanwhile, Dolskoi was enjoying his position of prestigious servitude to his Czar and found himself eagerly pursued by eligible young ladies of court. However, it was not blue blood that won his heart…but blue eyes.
Annine Beaumonde was a seventeen-year-old ballerina who had come from France to study at the Imperial Ballet School in Saint Petersburg. She was small, vivacious, with a full bosom, arched neck, supple body, silky-dark hair…and the bluest eyes Dolskoi had ever seen.
One look, and he fell hopelessly in love.
But only for a short while.
Once the excitement of a wedding so large and lavish as to be the social event of the season faded, Annine quickly became bored. She was an orphan, had been raised in poverty, working her way through the ranks of ballet through sheer drive and God-given talent. One might think that she would have loved the luxury of being married to so wealthy a man as Dolskoi Mikhailonov. She had servants to answer to her every whim. The best dressmakers came to make for her the finest of gowns. She had furs and jewels. She could sleep until noon, receive her hairdresser, then languish all afternoon sipping tea, vodka, or doing anything she pleased. She could attend the Imperial Ballet at the magnificent blue-and-gold Maryinsky Theater every night, then bundle herself in furs and ride in bright red sleighs noiselessly through the glistening white snow to the Restaurant Cuba for refreshment and dancing.
Yet, Annine was miserable. She felt that such an ostentatious lifestyle was sinful in light of so many starving peasants. Restless, bored, she complained constantly to Dolskoi, who became concerned that her nagging tongue would wag at royal functions, within hearing of his Czar. He begged her to watch what she said and did, not to make statements in public that were critical of the Czar and his government.
Headstrong, willful, Annine did as she pleased. She delighted in shocking those she considered despotic. The years passed slowly. Dolskoi continued to love Annine fiercely, but she turned him from their bed, refusing any intimacy. She swore she would never bear a child to be brought up in such an environment. Eventually, he began having affairs, but they were empty, meaningless, for it was to his precious Annine that he longed to give his love.
Annine, meanwhile, discovered the world of Russian folk dancing. There were few parts for a woman, but she was young, energetic, vivacious, and the village people adored her.
She joined a troupe that traveled rural Russia, much to Dolskoi’s distress, and the gossips wagged voraciously about her gypsy lifestyle, the way she had unofficially abandoned her husband and marriage.
An accident brought her home. During a frenzied dance routine, she had slipped, fallen, and broken her arm. Secretly, Dolskoi was delighted, for he wanted to take advantage of her convalescence at home to attempt to revive their marriage. Despite their problems, she was, to Dolskoi, the most ravishingly beautiful woman he had ever known, and he adored her to a fault.
Annine reluctantly gave in to a single night of lovemaking, more out of boredom than any other reason. She was insanely furious later to discover that she was pregnant!
Dolskoi was delighted. Now his wife would have to stay at home and give up her ridiculous lifestyle of flitting about the country dancing with a band of gypsies. The baby would change everything. They would be a real family, have a real home. There would, no doubt, be other babies, as well, once Annine experienced such a joy.
Annine spent the duration of her pregnancy hating her husband, his Czar, the Imperial Court of Russia, and the baby growing inside her. She would leave, she vowed, and join her beloved friends and say goodbye forever to such a despised patrician lifestyle.
Annine suffered a difficult delivery, however, and was left weakened and ill for over a year afterward. By then, despite her displeasure with her marriage, she grew to love her son, who was christened in the Russian way with three names—his Christian name; the name of his father, with vich added, which meant son of, and his family name. Thus he was called Drakar Dolskoivich Mikhailonov.
Annine truly endeavored to be a good mother. She was always kind and loving to little Drakar but remained restless and unhappy with her life. She found no joy in the pomp and circumstance of, the royal circle, had to be cajoled by her husband to attend any function.
Annine attempted to keep Drakar away from the world of the Imperial Court. More and more, she was resenting the Czar, Alexander II, said to be the most liberal of all rulers of Russia. She shared the thoughts of the restless peasants who rebuked the theory that a Czar who did not rule as an undisputed autocrat was shirking his duty to God. Dolskoi accused her of sounding like one of the revolutionaries who were causing so many grumbles and rumbles of late.
When Dolskoi insisted that Drakar be taken to the palace at Gatchina to study with the Czar’s grandson, Nicholas, Annine went into a rage. No matter that there was a difference of six years between the two boys; he wanted his son raised as he had been, close to royalty, to grow into the same coveted position as he had. Further, he wanted to exemplify to his Czar that he did not condone his wife’s increasingly revolutionary leanings.
Annine was beside herself. Dolskoi pointed out that there would be the finest of tutors, and then later, he would study at Oxford, in England.
Infuriated, Annine left her husband. Fired by her hatred for the Czar and his policies, she became a part of the “University Youth”, who were influenced by a variety of socialist ideas taken from Europe but adapted to conditions in Russia. These radical intellectuals saw in the restless peasantry the potential for revolution. They gathered forces and went out into the countryside to stir people up with speeches they did not understand.
Annine joined them, and Dolskoi knew untold shame and humiliation. When Russia declared war on Turkey, he went off to battle, not caring whether he returned or not. Death, he was beginning to feel, was better than life married to a woman he worshipped, who obviously did not return the emotion…and seemed to be doing everything she could to cause him to suffer the vilest of debasements.
Drakar heard the rumors about his mother and was hurt and embarrassed. When she would come to the palace to visit him, he would beg her to keep away from her radical friends, to go home to his father and behave as a wife should. She would merely shake her head sadly and tell him he did not understand. He would persist, and finally she would become angry and leave in a huff.
The Czar, of course, knew of Annine Mikhailonov’s sympathy with the revolutionaries, and his heart went out to his lifelong friend Dolskoi. To reward him for his courageous service in the war with Turkey, and also in an attempt to lift his spirits in general, Czar Alexander II summoned a young goldsmith named Peter Carl Fabergé and commissioned him to design something suitable for presentation.
To Peter Carl Fabergé, gold was never just gold—it could be green or red or white, and he could fashion delightful effects by contrasting the colors. He knew how to transform exquisitely even the humblest pieces of hard stone—agate, chalcedony, and quartz. And when he used glittering precious stones in his stunning creations, he knew how to use them for the decorative quality, and not for their value alone.
The Czar’s only direction to Fabergé was that the piece be exquisite and have something to do with the Alexandrovsky Palace, where he and Dolskoi had shared so many good times.
The result was the creation of the Alexandrovsky Palace Egg. Surmounted by a beautifully cut triangular diamond, the Siberian nephrite egg was decorated with yellow and green gold mounts with a setting of cabochon rubies and diamonds. There were three miniature portraits in a pearl-crusted belt around the egg—one depicted Dolskoi as a boy of twelve, another, Alexander at the same age, and the last was of the two together.
There were also four oyster-enameled roses among foliage, set with rose diamonds and hung with pearl swags.
Concealed within was a colored gold model of the Palace, its roof enameled in pale translucent green, the grounds decorated with bushes of spun green gold wire. The palace sat upon a miniature gold table with five legs.
The Czar gasped aloud when he saw it; his hands trembled when he grasped it. He had pronounced in a voice husky with emotion, “Never have my eyes feasted on anything more beautiful or precious!”
There was an emotional ceremony of presentation to Dolskoi. Drakar, then a student at Oxford Uni
versity, journeyed from England to attend. He, like his father, tried to ignore the fact that Annine was not present. She had, in the past year, refused to attend any function of state or court.
Meanwhile, the militant party officially organized itself and took the title of Land and Freedom. However, within two years, in 1878, the party had split due to dissension within. One faction advocated assassination of government officials in reprisal for maltreatment of their comrades—hundreds had been sentenced to prison, countless numbers deported to Siberia. Breaking away, the terrorist wing took the name People’s Will.
When Dolskoi heard that his wife had joined the new radical terrorist wing, he went into a rage, forbidding her to have anything to do with her comrades. He threatened to tie her, gag her, lock her in a closet. The Czar was promising severe punishment to anyone found to have ties with the group.
Annine herself exploded and declared she was leaving him permanently, ending their marriage. Further, she admitted to being in love with one of the radical leaders, a painter named Zigmont Koryatovich. Dolskoi had suspected something like that for a long time. But apprehension was one thing—he could hide from that; reality, he could not deal with. He was shattered.
When Annine officially left Dolskoi, ending their marriage, the Czar called him in and berated him for not being able to control his wife. Long ago, he thundered, Dolskoi should have reined her in, taken any measures necessary to stop her. Now it was too late, and the Czar felt that his best friend and confidant had caused him embarrassment.
Dolskoi sank to even lower depths of despair.
The climax came when the assassins of the People’s Will made an attempt on the Czar’s life…and went to extraordinary lengths to do so. In Moscow, they bought a building near the railway track, then dug a tunnel from the building directly under the track, where they planted a mine. The Czar was saved when his train took a different direction upon leaving Moscow. However, some of the would-be assassins were captured, among them, Zigmont Koryatovich…and Annine Mikhailonov!
Love and Splendor: The Coltrane Saga, Book 5 Page 10
