Alex was approaching and she smiled when a dowager buttonholed him. Then a mutter ran through the crowd and the guests were turning in waves to stare toward the wide gallery doors. She heard the murmured name Devenko and felt several sudden glances whip toward her and slide away; then the doors parted and Vassily was there with his high austere eyes and stunning white mane. His handsome head dipped regally in acknowledgment of something someone said to him; he lifted one hard long hand as if in benediction to them all.
He had aged. Not the hair; that had been white since his twenties. But she saw deep vertical lines between his eyebrows and he looked tired.
She felt weight beside her. She didn’t have to look that way to know it was Alex. She found his arm and gripped it gently—pointedly.
Vassily’s hard grey stare struck her. He blinked, looked away, looked directly and expressionlessly at Alex and then returned his stare to Irina—and she thought she sensed an appeal.
He walked forward through the crowd ignoring all the rest: he still behaved with people he didn’t have time for as if they weren’t there at all.
He glanced again at Alex. Then he thrust out both arms.
Irina had a moment’s terror when Alex didn’t stir. But it was so brief an instant that she doubted anyone else detected the hesitation—then the two men were locked in the ritual masculine bear hug of Russia and Vassily’s deep voice was rumbling: “My brother—my good brother.”
Vassily turned and surprised her with a nicker of a smile. In a lower voice he said, “Surprise becomes you, Irina. It makes your eyes grow.”
She reached again for Alex’s arm. The Chopin continued in the back; around them some of the couples resumed dancing but she felt the continuing pressure of curious eyes.
Vassily had returned to Alex. “You look very well.”
“And you.”
“No, do not bother with that. I am old, aren’t I?” Vassily was forty-seven. Irina was fourteen years his junior; there had been a time when it hadn’t mattered.
“Vassily…”
“How is it in America?”—to Alex; he had cut her off deliberately. She became aware of the vivid gowns around them; she felt herself close up, become more guarded.
“… learning about twentieth century war,” Alex was replying, “but maybe not fast enough.”
“Really?” Vassily answered in an indifferent way. “Perhaps they need reprimanding by real soldiers, eh?” And back to Irina: “Has he looked after you properly? It is my duty as his brother to inquire.” He said it with dry scorn and she saw he forgave neither of them.
“They’re waiting for you both upstairs,” she said, very cool.
“Yes. Be kind enough to show us the way, would you?”
It was a little cruel of him but she had known far worse. “Come along then.” She led them away, threading the perimeter of the ballroom. Everyone watched and made way. Vassily’s commanding austerity kept them all at bay—even princes and the nephews of dukes. Vassily had no title whatever: he was a commoner. But there wasn’t a White Russian in the villa who didn’t owe Vassily his life.
They were watched with awe by eyes unused to awe—down the long gallery, the central corridor, the vast and opulent rooms in which Bourbon monarchs had entertained crowned guests. Vassily walked between them and a half-pace ahead now; out of the marbled turnings into the vast foyer. The sweeping stair made an elegant curve to the railed balcony above; the last of the day’s sun beamed down through the stained panels of the lofty domed ceiling.
Vassily laid his hand on the bannister and glanced back the way they’d come. His look was almost furtive. He knows fear after all. She touched Alex’s hand. “I’ll leave you here. They’re in the Grand Duke’s drawing room.”
Vassily said, “Walk up with us.”
“I don’t think I’d care to.” She turned away gracefully. There was the slight pressure of Alex’s reassuring fingers, then she was moving across the foyer, her face a study in composure. She did not hurry; nor did she look back to watch them climb the great stair. She didn’t need to. Their ascent was mirrored in the upturned faces of the people watching, like members of an audience awaiting a denouement.
The bald man appeared in the doorway, slipping past the edge of the crowd. It disturbed her: she couldn’t place him but there was something in the back of her mind, a sense that made her glide to one side in order to interpose herself between the bald man and the stairs. He tried to sidestep but a fat woman was in the way. She couldn’t explain it to herself. But she was sure the bald man’s eyes flashed bitterly—so briefly it might never have happened at all.
Very likely her imagination was betraying her. She went on along the gallery, greeting a few people—the ones who didn’t bore her. In the ballroom she accepted an old Kiev duke’s invitation to dance because he was her father’s cousin and had a good laugh which he hadn’t forgotten how to use. She whirled onto the floor holding the skirt of her long red gown.
6.
Heavy drapes were looped back from the long gallery of windows. The inner wall of the upstairs corridor was hung museumlike with pictures darkened by age from which several generations of Romanovs brooded upon the scene. Vassily Devenko strode past them without a glance.
Alex kept pace with him, recognizing the dark formal portraits: Alexander II, Alexander III, Vladimir, Alexis, Serge, Paul, Cyril, Boris, Andrei, Dimitri; then the late Grand Dukes George and Michael and finally Nicholas II and Alexandra Fedorovna…. The physical strength and magnetism of the family was evident in them all.
No one was in sight in the long wide hall. Vassily stopped abruptly. “A word with you.”
Through the bank of high windows the setting sun fanned the cloud bellies with marbled streaks of crimson and pink. A warm hint of cologne and tobacco smoke drifted under the tall arch-buttressed ceiling. Alex said, “Go on,” reserving a great deal.
Vassily shook his head. It emphasized the weary cast of his deep-lined features. “Doesn’t it strike you the way they all go on as if nothing’s changed? Living on the international scale, perpetuating this idiotic love affair with deluxe pleasures and genteel pastimes. And half the world’s blowing up just over the horizon.”
“You can’t change them.”
“I am not condemning them for it. If they gave it all up and put on sackcloth and ashes it would not make a bit of difference to the world. But the unreality of the way they can just go on and on like this—how hard it will be to persuade them to set aside their illusions.”
In jodhpurs and belted grey jacket Vassily had the look of a Prussian martinet; it struck Alex that all it would take to complete the image would be a riding crop slapping into his open palm.
Vassily said, “I asked them to bring you into this.” He put the emphasis on the first person pronoun and it startled Alex as it had been meant to. “I did it for several reasons. First because you are patently the best for the job—best qualified and best situated. Second because you once forced me to make a very careful reexamination of my own impetuosity—and it may be useful to have you in a position where you can do that again if the events call for it.”
Vassily was offering an olive branch but it didn’t have a pure color of truth.
Alex didn’t answer. Vassily nodded as if Alex’s silence confirmed a suspicion. “It is important we find some way to reconcile our quarrel.”
“I don’t carry grudges.”
“No. But you are certain I cannot be trusted. I must find a way to earn your trust back. If you cannot have confidence in my judgment none of this is going to work.”