Gypsy Jewel (33 page)

“Wait,” April said, and crossed the room to the vanity where she had thrown the emerald choker earlier after clawing it off her neck. Picking up the heavy necklace, she returned to show it to Zofia. The woman recognized the piece instantly.

“That is the Ivanov family heirloom. By tradition it goes to the bride of the eldest son.”

“But you, Zofia, are an Ivanov too,” April said. “You have as much right to this necklace as anyone else now. The count has not married and I will not wear it again willingly. What would you say to exchanging our prizes? After all, the diamond is all I have left of my heritage, and these emeralds are all you have of yours.”

Damien admired April’s quick thinking. As Zofia stared fascinated at the firelight winking off of the costly stones, he added, “Emeralds are more valuable than diamonds anyway. And the necklace could be easily broken up and sold a stone at a time as you need the money. Hadn’t you ever considered how difficult it would be to find a buyer for a diamond so large? Most jewelers would shy away from something obviously gotten by ill-means.”

It was apparent that Zofia had not thought that far ahead. Without further ado, she reached down and promptly pulled off one of her ankle-high winter boots. The gem had been rolled in layers of soft hide to cushion her sole.

But she did not surrender it immediately. She demanded that April give her the necklace first, and once that was safely clasped around her own neck and hidden beneath her overcoat, only then did she grudgingly unwrap and hand over the jewel.

Taking it with new reverence, April gazed for a moment down into the icy fires of the diamond. In the firelight it threw off a rainbow of colors, the perfectly cut facets scattering tiny pinpoints of light across the ceiling.

“Put it somewhere safe,” Damien advised her. He saw the conflict playing across April’s features, and he knew she had not fully accepted her heritage yet. With a shivery little breath, she extended it to him instead.

“Please,” she said. “I-I want you to keep it safe.”

Her complete trust after all that had occurred moved him deeply. Nodding, Damien accepted the stone and tucked it carefully in an inside pocket of his coat. “We’d best be leaving now,” he announced. “I don’t care to find out what will happen should Ivanov find me up here.”

Zofia unconsciously touched her own neck where the weight of the emeralds lay. “I can’t go with you. My place is here. If you don’t betray me to Vasili, I will tell him nothing. It is best that you, like Katya, disappear forever from his life. He would have been furious had he known I had taken the jewel. Anything of Katya’s was precious to him. After you go, I will tell him that you stole the emerald necklace too. He will be angry, yes … but not at me.”

April agreed. She said gently, “I know your life must have been a hard one, Zofia. I’m sorry you had so much unhappiness. You deserve the necklace, though I don’t know if I can ever forgive you for playing a part in my parent’s deaths. But I won’t betray you. You spared my own life once and only because of that small mercy am I alive now.”

For the first time, they saw genuine tears sparkling in the woman’s eyes. Suddenly, Zofia looked very old and tired.

“Go,” she said gruffly, to mask her emotions. “The sooner you are gone from here, the better.” She made no move to get up from the floor. “I will tell Vasili you attacked me and escaped.” She pointed to the large bruise on her forehead. “I don’t think he will doubt
this
. Now go.”

A
PRIL TOOK ONLY ENOUGH
time to don horsehair petticoats under the blue velvet gown, and a heavy wool coat and snow boots. Together she and Damien edged to the door of the Gold Room and peered out into the dark hall. The coast was clear.

Motioning April out first, Damien followed closely on her heels, directing her back to the servant’s stairs that he and Zofia had used earlier. But before they could slip out unseen, a macabre chuckle echoed across the wide hall.

“Pavel!” April exclaimed, an involuntary cry of horror remembering how he had locked her in the cellar earlier.

Damien turned and saw a shadow headed for the stairs. Instinct told him the dwarf was running to warn his master.

“I have to stop him. You keep going,” he told April.

She shook her head. “Not without you.” There was no time to waste on arguing. Grabbing her by the wrist, Damien sprinted for the stairs. They had three landings in which to catch Pavel before the little villain reached Ivanov.

To Damien’s relief, April could keep up, having removed the cumbersome hoops from beneath her dress sometime earlier. Just ahead he could make out the dwarf jumping stairs two at a time in his haste to escape them. Already Pavel regretted giving himself away, but it had been just too delicious to see the stark fear in the girl’s eyes when she realized he was there. The surge of power it had given him was incredible. Pavel felt as if he could do anything. Now he outsprinted a full-grown man who was in excellent shape.

Only one floor to go. Pavel heard the desperate gasps of the couple behind him and it gave him a spurt of over-confidence, so that he leapt in a brash effort to take three stairs rather than two.

But Pavel had forgotten one critical thing. The harlequin costume of which he was so proud was sewn in a single piece. Thus his feet were also encased in the material. And without shoes on the highly polished stairs, he was bound to meet with disaster.

A moment after he hurled a vicious laugh back at the pair who followed at a more careful pace, he tumbled head over heels down the last flight, striking his knobby head with a sickening crack upon the last stair. His scream echoed through Samarin House, and Damien and April halted uncertainly on the lower landing. Below them, Pavel lay sprawled like a clown doll broken in a child’s temper tantrum.

There was no time to run back upstairs. The awful death screech brought Count Ivanov running from his study, where he looked from the unmoving dwarf to the couple who clutched each other now.

“So,” Ivanov said with chill dignity, glaring furiously at them. “It is not enough that you steal my bride-to-be, Petrovna, but you also murder my servants in cold blood. Do you think your title will protect you now? I vow that it shall not.”

“Hear me out, Ivanov.” Damien shot back as he thrust April bodily behind him for protection. “We’ve both had enough of your sordid games in this house. Enough is enough. I know you arranged for the murder of Prince Andrei and his wife Ekaterina seventeen years ago. It will not save you to plead insanity. Let us by peacefully and we shall be quickly gone from here. But I will not let you molest my wife any further.”

“Wife!” Ivanov shrieked, as if he had picked out only that much from all that Damien had said. “Is it true, Katya? Did you wed the prince?”

April pressed her face against the collar of Damien’s coat. She peeked over his shoulder, tense with consternation and fear. She knew how pointless it was to try to reason with the count, so she merely nodded and confirmed the man’s irrational outrage.

“Betrayal.” Ivanov’s face mottled with rage, and he screamed the word at them like a curse. “But you will not take my fiancée without a fair fight, Andrei. I shall take you down where you stand if you do not give me one last chance for honor.”

When Ivanov reached into his smoking jacket to remove what appeared to be a cigar case, Damien tensed. He had seen such paraphernalia before. Inside the cleverly designee case, he knew, was a small but effective pistol.

“Get down,” he ordered April, and when she obediently sank down on the stairs, Damien stepped slowly toward Ivanov, suddenly speaking congenially to the count.

“You are right, of course. Honor dictates a fair course of action at this point. But what do you propose?”

Ivanov hesitated in opening the case and gave Damien a cold smile. It seemed he had been hoping for just such a chance.

“I have been called old-fashioned, by you in particular, Petrovna. But I have the blood of a dozen czars flowing in my veins, and they cry out for vengeance now. While I could shoot you down — and I see by your eyes that you know what I hold in my hand here — I am prone to be nostalgic, and also, you might say, gallant. The nobility has settled scores for centuries by an effective means.”

“You speak of the duel, naturally.” Damien refused to let Ivanov intimidate him. “I understand it is outlawed in every modern country now.”

“Country?” Ivanov laughed. “You speak as if someone rules Samarin House besides me, which is certainly not the case. Here I make the law, and I decide what is permitted. And you know as well as I that duels continue to happen behind closed doors among the
boyar
.”

The same was true in England and France, though laws had been in effect for years to try to halt such practices. Conceding the fact, Damien noted, “However, the weather would seem to negate the attempt this evening. And I doubt you wish your — humiliation — to become public knowledge.”

Ivanov’s brows furrowed darkly at that. He gritted out, “I am not speaking of dueling with pistols, which would not be appropriate in any case. No, I challenge you this night to a far more amusing sport — fencing.”

Damien arched an eyebrow back at the count. “Indoors?”

“Why not? I have several antechambers which will serve. But you understand, this is not merely for satisfaction. It is for honor, and shall be to the death.”

“No!” April’s cry rang out behind them. She would not allow such madness to take place, for what could Damien possibly know of sword-fighting? She had seen the outcome on occasion when the gypsies had strayed across a body run through and left to rot where it fell. The crazy ideas men had about honor made her furious.

But both of them ignored her protests. Ivanov put his case away and shrugged out of his silk jacket, setting it carefully aside on the banister. “You will follow me,” he said cordially to the man who still appeared in his tortured mind to be Prince Andrei. “The ballroom, though unused for years, has the best floor and the space necessary.”

Ivanov rolled up his shirtsleeves, and after stepping over the small body of the dwarf at the bottom of the stairs, Damien removed his coat and did likewise.

April flew down the stairs beside him. “How can you be such a fool? It was bad enough with Nicky, and your arm is still sore from that. You know nothing about fencing.”

“On the contrary, little girl,” Damien returned with a regretful smile, “I know more than I should like about it.”

“What do you mean? Why are you looking at me so strangely?”

Damien waited for another moment until the count was out of range. Ivanov walked away and was not listening to them in any case, wholly concentrating instead upon murdering his old enemy and the satisfaction it would bring him.

Finally Damien said, “Now is not the time or place, April, but if worse comes to worse, you will need to know that I, too, am not entirely who I seem to be.”

She gazed up at him, puzzled. “I already know you aren’t Romany. You said you had turned your back on the
gaje
world. Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”

“Yes and no,” he continued in a low voice. “Listen to me and don’t interrupt. If I am killed, you shall need to find refuge. Whatever it takes, you must make your way to the north of France. Go to Chateau de Villette —”

“Where?” April cried, stalling him with a frantic hand before he could turn to follow Ivanov who had thrown open the great double-doors to the ballroom.

“Just ask anywhere. It is well-known. You must go to my mother, Marcelle Cross, the Countess of —”

“Mother? You told me your mother was dead.”

“I lied.” Damien spoke curtly, adding, “Time is so short,
ma chere
. Don’t keep cutting me off. I hate for it to come out like this, but my full name is Damien Cross. It also so happens that I am the Earl of Devonshire. It is a long story how I came to be here. But listen, my love. Get to France. Marcelle will take you in. Tell her you are my wife —”

The stunned look on April’s face pained Damien, but he was forced to go on. “— and if the worst happens, tell her I died in battle. Not a word of the truth, do you hear? Nobody must ever question your right to Mistgrove.” For a moment his blue eyes visibly softened at the memory of his English home. “You need not lie, April, in telling my mother that you are of royal Russian descent. She will take care of you, I promise.”

“But why?” April drew away and her voice, though a whisper, carried volumes of reproach. “Why did you marry me then, Damien? You could have had any woman you wanted.”

“I discovered that I wanted you,” he said gently, looking more handsome than ever she remembered as he gazed tenderly down into her upturned face. “I will explain it all to you, soon. You must trust me one last time, little girl. Trust me now as you never have before. I have told lies, but it was never a lie that I love you.”

Her lips trembled and he could not read beyond the anguish in her beautiful green eyes. Would April desert him now? Because if she did, he would still fight to the death for her, and without regret. Suddenly, not knowing if these last moments they shared were their last, Damien took her by the shoulders and kissed her fiercely and desperately.