by Nora Roberts
Though the boredom in his tone was heavy as a brick, she beamed. “You’re so good to me. As soon as we get back home, I’ll be good to you. Why don’t we—”
She broke off as a section of the wall opened. Hidden door, she realized, cleverly concealed with molding.
She got her first look at Nicholas Vasin.
Gaunt was her first thought. Remnants of the film-star handsome remained, but had been hollowed out to a husk. He wore his hair in a white mane, too thick and full for his emaciated face so it seemed the weight of it should bend the thin neck to breaking. The eyes above the sunken cheeks burned black, a hard light against skin so pale it nearly glowed.
Like Ash, he wore a suit, his in a buff color, with a vest and tie all exactly the same hue.
The result was colorless, but for the black shards of his eyes—and, Lila thought, very deliberate.
A griffin pin accented with diamonds sparkled on the lapel. A gold watch circled his thin, bony wrist.
“Ms. Emerson, Mr. Archer, welcome. Forgive me for not shaking hands.”
His voice, like the whisper of spider legs over silk, sent a chill up Lila’s spine.
Yes, all very deliberate.
He sat, laid his hands on the thick arms of his chair. “Our cook always made pryaniki for tea when I was a child.”
“They’re delicious.” Lila lifted the plate. “Would you like one?”
He waved it away. “For myself, I use a macrobiotic diet. Guests, of course, should be indulged.”
“Thank you,” Lila responded when Ash sat in stony silence. “You have an incredible home, and so many beautiful things, even in just the little of it we’ve seen. You collect nesting dolls. They’re so charming.”
“Matryoshki,” he corrected. “An old tradition. We must always honor our roots.”
“I love things that open up into something else. Finding out what the something else is.”
“I started the collection as a child. These and the lacquer boxes are the first of my collections, so I keep them in my private sitting room.”
“They’re the most personal. Am I allowed a closer look?”
He gestured magnanimously.
She rose, walked closer. “I’ve never seen . . . matryoshki so intricately made. Of course, most of what I’ve seen have been in souvenir shops, but . . . Oh!” She glanced back, pointed, being careful not to touch the glass. “Is it the royal family? Nicholas, Alexandra, the children?”
“Yes. You have an intelligent eye.”
“Such a terrible thing. So brutal, especially the children. I had the impression they’d all been lined up and shot, which is horrible enough, but after Ash found . . . That is, recently I read more about what happened. I don’t understand how anyone could have been so cruel and brutal to children.”
“Their blood was royal. That was enough for the Bolsheviks.”
“They might have played with dolls like these—the children. Collected them as you did. It’s another bond between you.”
“That’s correct. For you it’s stones.”
“I’m sorry?”
“A stone from everywhere you travel, since childhood. A pebble?”
“I . . . yes. It was my way of taking something with me when we had to move again. My mother keeps them in a jar now. How did you know?”
“I make it my business to know my guests and their interests. For you,” he said to Ash, “it’s always been art. Perhaps the cars and dolls boys play with as a child, but these things aren’t worth the keeping. But art—your own, or others that draw a response from you—that’s worth the collecting to you.”
He laced his long, bony fingers together for a moment as Ash remained silent.
“I have some of your work in my collection. An early piece called The Storm. A cityscape, with a tower rising high above the rest, and in the topmost window stands a woman.”
He tapped his fingers together, a precise steeple, as he spoke. “The storm rages—I found the colors extraordinary in violence and depth, clouds illuminated by lightning so it became alien, unearthly. Such movement. At first look you might think the woman, a great beauty in virgin white, is trapped in that tower, a victim of the storm. Then, look closer, you see she rules the storm.”
“No. She is the storm.”
“Ah.” A smile flitted around Vasin’s mouth. “Your appreciation of the female form—body, mind, spirit—fascinates me. I have a second piece, more recently acquired. A charcoal, with a mood that strikes as joyful—a joy in power as a woman stands in a moonstruck field playing a violin. Who—or what—I wonder, will her music call?”
The portrait from Oliver’s apartment, Lila thought, and went very still.
“Only she knows,” Ash said coolly. “That’s the point. Discussing my work won’t get you what you want.”
“Yet it’s entertaining. I have few visitors, fewer yet who truly share my interests.”
“A mutual interest is a different thing.”
“A subtle distinction. But we also share an understanding of the importance of bloodlines, how they must be honored, revered, preserved.”
“Families and bloodlines are different things.”
Vasin spread his hands. “You have a unique familial . . . situation. For many of us, for me, family is bloodline. We understand tragedy, loss, the need to balance the scales, you could say. My family was murdered simply for being superior. For being born into power. Power and privilege will always be attacked by smaller men who claim they have a cause. But the cause is always avarice. Whatever lofty excuse men use for war or revolution, it’s always because they want the power another holds.”
“So you lock yourself in this fortress to protect yourself from avaricious men?”
“Your woman was wise to stay in her tower.”
“But lonely,” Lila put in. “To be removed from the world? To see it, but not be part of it? It would be crushingly lonely.”
“You’re a romantic under it all,” Vasin decided. “There is so much more than people for companionship. As I said, I have few visitors. I’ll show you some of my most treasured companions. Then we can discuss business.”
He rose, then held up a hand. “A moment, please.”
He stepped back to the hidden door. Another iris scan, Lila realized. She hadn’t noticed it within the molding.
“Few visitors,” Vasin said, “and fewer still who ever step beyond this door. But I think we’ll understand each other, and the business at hand, much better when you do.” He stepped to the side of the door, gestured.
“Please, after you.”
Ash walked to the door, carefully blocking Lila from going through until he saw what lay beyond. Then with a glance at Vasin’s satisfied face, Ash took Lila’s arm, went in with her.
Tinted windows let in gold light. A rich and liquid light to serve his collection. Inside glass islands, towers and walls the glitter and gleam and glow of Fabergé lived.
Cases for clocks, others for boxes, for jewelry, for bowls, for flasks. Each meticulously arranged according to category.
She saw no door but the one they’d come through, and though the ceilings were high, the floors a brilliantly white marble, she saw it as a gilded and soulless Aladdin’s cave.
“Of all my collections, this is my biggest triumph. If not for the Romanovs, Fabergé might have remained limited to creating for the highborn or wealthy, even the hoi polloi. The artist, of course—Fabergé himself—and the great workmaster Perchin deserve all credit for vision, for skill, even for the risks taken to turn a reasonably successful jewelry business into an empire of art. But without the patronage of the tsars, the Romanovs, so much of this would never have been created. Much that was would be a mere footnote in the art world.”
Hundreds of pieces—hundreds of hundreds, Lila thought. From the tiny, festive jelly bean eggs to an elaborate tea service, what she realized was a picnic set, presentation trophies, vases, another case that held only animal figurines.
�
�This is amazing. I see the scope of vision and craftsmanship—so much variety in one place. It’s amazing,” Lila repeated. “It must have taken years to collect so many pieces.”
“Since childhood,” Vasin agreed. “You enjoy the clocks,” he commented. He crossed to her, but kept a full arm span between them. “This fan shape, so suited to a desk or mantel, and the translucence of the enamel, the soft yet rich orange color. The details—the gold rosettes in the lower corners, the rose cut of the diamond border. And here, the same workmaster—Perchin—the exquisitely simple circular clock, pale blue with reed-and-tie rim.”
“They’re all beautiful.” And trapped, she thought, as art should never be, for his eyes alone—or those he allowed into his sanctum.
“Are they all antiques? Some look so contemporary.”
“All are old. I’ve no wish to own here what any man can have by offering a credit card.”
“They’re all set to midnight.”
“Midnight, when the assassins gathered the royal family together. What would have been the end, if not for Anastasia’s escape.”
She gave him wide eyes. “But I thought they’d proven she died, too, with her family. DNA tests, and—”
“They lie.” He sliced a hand through the air like an ax. “As the Bolsheviks lied. I’m the last of the Romanovs—the last to carry the blood of Nicholas and Alexandra, through their daughter, to my father, and last to me. And what belonged to them is mine by right.”
“Why here?” Ash demanded. “Why not house your collection in Russia?”
“Russia isn’t what it was, and will never be what it was. I create my world, and live in it as I choose.”
He walked on. “Here is what I think of as practical luxuries. These, gold and diamond opera glasses, or the jasper match holder chased in gold, the enameled bookmark—perfection in its shape, the deep green enamel. And of course the perfume bottles here. Each one a feast of art.”
“You know each piece?” Lila wondered. “With so many, I’d lose track.”
“I know what’s mine,” he said coldly. “A man can own with ignorance, but can’t possess without knowledge. I know what’s mine.”
He turned abruptly, walked to the center of the room and a freestanding glass case. Inside stood eight white pedestals. One held what Lila recognized from the descriptions as the Nécessaire. Gold, sparkling, exquisite—and opened to reveal the diamond-encrusted manicure set inside.
She reached for Ash’s hand, curled her fingers into his as she looked over into Vasin’s eyes. “The lost Imperial eggs. You have three.”
“Soon I’ll have four. One day, I’ll have all.”
Twenty-nine
The Hen with Sapphire Pendant,” Vasin began. Like a prayer, worship whispered through his voice. “From 1886. The gold hen, decorated with rose-cut diamonds, holds the sapphire egg—the pendant—in her beak, just taken, it appears, from the nest. The surprise, as you see, is a small gold-and-diamond chick, freshly hatched.”
“It’s stunning.” Easy to say, Lila thought, as she meant it. “Down to the tiniest detail.”
“The egg itself,” he said, his dark eyes riveted on his treasure. “Not merely a shape, but a symbol. Of life, of rebirth.”
“So the tradition of decorating eggs for Easter, to celebrate the Resurrection.”
“Charming, true, but this anyone can do. It was the Romanovs—my blood—who turned this simple tradition into great art.”
“You leave out the artist,” Ash pointed out.
“No, no. But as I said, it required the vision and the patronage of the tsars for the artist to create. This, all of this, is owed to my family.”
“Every piece is amazing. Even the hinges are perfect. Which is this?” Lila asked, carefully gesturing to the second egg. “I don’t recognize it.”
“The Mauve, from the following year. Again rose-cut diamonds, pearls along with emeralds and rubies. This to accent the surprise, the heart-shaped frame in red, green and white enamel accented with pearls and more rose-cut diamonds. You see it open here into its three-leaf-clover shape. Each leaf with a miniature watercolor portrait on ivory. Nicholas, Alexandra and Olga, their first child.”
“And the Nécessaire. I studied up,” Lila said. “It is a manicure set. Everything I read was just speculation. But . . . nothing you can read comes close to the reality.”
“Who did you kill to get them?” Ash demanded.
Vasin only smiled. “I’ve never found it necessary to kill. The hen was stolen, then used to secure passage out of Poland, a bribe to escape Hitler’s holocaust. But the family of the thief was still sent to the camps, and died there.”
“That’s horrible,” Lila said softly.
“History is written in blood,” Vasin said simply. “The man who took it and betrayed them was persuaded to sell it to me rather than be exposed.
“The Mauve, more thieves. Fortune had blessed them, but the generations that passed couldn’t wash the thievery away. Bloodlines,” he said. “Their fortunes changed when their only son met with a tragic accident, and they were persuaded to sell the egg to me, to rid themselves of the stain.”
“You had him killed,” Ash said. “It’s no different than killing yourself.”
Vasin’s face remained impassive, perhaps faintly amused. “One pays for a meal in a fine restaurant, but isn’t responsible for the dish.”
Lila laid a hand on Ash’s arm, as if to soothe away any spike of temper. In reality she needed the contact.
“The Nécessaire, stolen, was bought by a man who recognized beauty, then was lost through carelessness to another. I acquired it through persuasion again, and fair payment.”
He studied the eggs, shifted to scan the room with a look of hot satisfaction. “We’ll go back, and discuss fair payment.”
“I don’t want your money.”
“Even a wealthy man has room for more.”
“My brother’s dead.”
“It’s unfortunate,” Vasin said, and took a step back. “Please understand if you approach me, make any threatening moves?” He drew a small Taser from his pocket. “I’ll protect myself. More, this room is under surveillance. Men armed with more . . . permanent weapons will move in at any perceived threat.”
“I’m not here to threaten you. I’m not here for money.”
“Let’s sit, like civilized men, and discuss what you are here for.”
“Come on, Ash, let’s go sit down.” Crooning a little, Lila stroked a hand on Ash’s arm. “It doesn’t do any good to get upset. We’ll go talk. It’s why we’re here. You and me and Bali, okay? Okay?”
For a moment she thought he meant to jerk away from her, turn on Vasin and be done with it. Then he nodded, went with her.
She let out a breath of relief as they passed back into the sitting room.
Someone had cleared the tea, the trays. In their place was an opened bottle of Barolo and two glasses.
“Please, help yourself.” Vasin sat again as the door to the collection room closed. “You may or may not be aware that your brother—or half brother, to be accurate—sat where you are now a few months ago. We talked extensively, and came to what I believed was an understanding.”
With his hands on his knees, Vasin leaned forward, cold fury twisting his face. “We had an agreement.”
Then he sat back again, his face smoothed out. “I made him the offer I’ll make to you now—and at that time he accepted it. It was a serious disappointment to me when he attempted to extort a larger payment from me. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise to me, I admit that. He wasn’t the most reliable of men, you must agree. But I was enthusiastic, perhaps overly so, at the prospect of acquiring the Cherub with Chariot.”
“And the Nécessaire,” Ash said. “He told you he could get you both. He changed the deal, Vasin, but so did you when you used Capelli to get the Nécessaire.”
Sitting back, Vasin steepled his fingers again. Tap, tap, tap as his raven’s eyes stared ahead. “Th
e information on the Nécessaire came shortly after our meeting. I saw no reason to use a middleman when I could arrange the deal myself. The payment for the Cherub remained firm.”
“You cut him out, so he upped the ante. And the woman? His woman? Collateral damage?”
