Page 48

48

LUCIA

“ W hat about this one?” I hold up a cream silk evening gown that perfectly complements Ofelia’s skin. For a girl with classic Russian coloring, she tans like a Mediterranean beauty, her skin turning a lush buttery caramel in barely ten minutes’ exposure. I spend half my time running after her with sunscreen and a hat.

“I don’t know.” She eyes it doubtfully. “Mama might not like it.”

“Would you rather wait until she’s here to choose? She might like to take you dress shopping herself.”

“No.” She goes quite pale. “No, I don’t like shopping with her.” Something about her swift answer, and the way she turns back to the rack of dresses to hide her face, sets off alarm bells. I hesitate, eyeing her stiff shoulders. Anything to do with Inger is dangerous ground, particularly where Ofelia is concerned.

“Well, the Russian ball is still a week away, and your exams are over. We’ve got time. We can look again tomorrow, okay?”

“’Kay.” Ofelia gives me a small smile, but her eyes slide away from mine. My unease ratchets up a notch.

“How about we go for coffee and piononos ?” I tuck my arm through hers. Masha’s pre-school doesn’t finish up for another week, so Ofelia and I have a rare gap of time to be alone together. We both love piononos , syrupy sponge cakes rolled around rich fillings, but since our favorites are those soaked in almond liqueur, we don’t tend to have them when Masha is around.

Her eyes light up. “Yum.”

We wander through the cobblestoned alleys of Malaga’s old historic center, our security detail keeping a respectful distance, and take outdoor seats at one of the specialty pastelerias .

“Are you looking forward to the ball?” I ask after our cakes and coffee arrive.

Ofelia shrugs. “I guess.” Her eyes are opaque, expression carefully neutral. When I first met the children, it was the default mask she presented to the world. These days, however, the only time I see it is when Inger comes up in conversation.

Hence the alarm bells.

“A lot of your friends will be there, too,” I say encouragingly.

“Ha.” Her laugh is completely humorless, with a slightly bitter edge. “Because that will help.” She looks away, stirring her coffee mindlessly, not touching her pionono.

Figuring that’s the best opening I’m likely to get, I go in. “Have you had a falling out with your friends, Ofelia? Is that what this is about?”

“No.” She shakes her head. “No, my friends are cool. But I doubt they will be after the ball.”

I frown. “Why is that?”

Her eyes flicker to me then away again. “You don’t get it,” she mutters. “You don’t know what those things are like.”

It’s my turn to laugh without humor. “Actually,” I say quietly, “yes, I do.”

Her skeptical gaze rests on me, her coffee stirring becoming more determined. “Oh, you do, huh?”

Oh, baby. You have no idea.

Some of my worst nightmares stem from public events exactly like the one she’s dreading.

“Do I know what it’s like,” I say, trying hard to keep my voice even, “to be paraded before a media scrum, forced to smile and describe what designer I’m wearing, with camera bulbs clicking in my face? Yes.”

Ofelia’s eyes narrow.

“Do I know what it’s like to have a hand pressing into the base of my spine, prodding me sharply in a painful reminder to say exactly what I’m expected to and nothing more?” I close my eyes briefly, the memory of Vilnus’s spiteful eyes, insidious whispers, and sharp fingers sending a chill through my body. When I open them, Ofelia has stopped stirring her coffee and is staring at me. “Do I know what it’s like,” I say softly, “to dread getting into the limo when it’s all over, only to be... punished, for what I got wrong?” I cover her hand with my own. “Then yes, Ofelia. I know exactly what those events are like.”

Her eyes glisten with sudden tears. She blinks furiously and swallows, dropping her gaze. “I hate them, Luce,” she whispers. “And if Mama stayed away, most of the press wouldn’t even care. But she wants them there. She has journalists on speed dial, and she expects me to... to...”

“Perform for them,” I say gently.

Ofelia nods. “She gets so angry if I get it wrong. I know she won’t like my friends. They’ll all be in, like, normal dresses. But Mama will want me to look like her.”

“You mean like a . . . model?”

She snorts. “You don’t have to be polite, Luce. I know what she looks like.”

I keep a diplomatic silence. I’m not going to lie—I might have cyberstalked the kids’ mother once or twice. Inger’s fashion sense is bratva chic, tacky luxury at its most ostentatious. The girls Ofelia has befriended in Spain belong to the far more settled Russian elite, who either stopped flaunting their wealth long ago, or, like my father, never did in the first place.

Until Vilnus Orlov came into my family’s life, I’d never been paraded in front of paparazzi. Quite the opposite.

Like Roman, my father had taken every precaution to keep his children out of the limelight. The events we attended were quiet afternoon teas at the Russian club, private gallery showings, or invitation-only lunches and dinners with the grandchildren of exiled Russian aristocrats. Most at those events came from impoverished families who’d lost everything when they escaped the revolution. But lack of fortune had never affected their cultural inheritance.

Everyone at those tables spoke multiple languages. They read Tolstoy in the original and knew their Rachmaninoff from their Tchaikovsky. In fact, some of the attendees of those lunches were the descendants of the intellectuals we discussed.

Every person in those rooms, no matter how dire their financial circumstances, knew exactly how to dress.

Some had scoured every thrift store in the city to rescue a classic Chanel piece or a vintage Yves Saint Laurent. If they wore expensive jewelry, it would be one piece, worn with quiet pride, that had survived the family’s flight from Russia.

Even three, sometimes four, generations after the fall of the Russian aristocracy, there remained among the exiles a fierce intellectual pride. I ate lunch with the daughters of poets and political activists, princesses and counts. I learned how to serve tea correctly, and the fine subtleties of language that distinguished the old, lost Russia from the ostentatious new one rapidly emerging from the fall of the Soviet Union.

Entry to those rooms could not be bought, no matter the wealth of the new oligarchs who tried. It was gained by quiet conversations between those who recognized each other. My father was born after the revolution and raised in a gulag, and yet he belonged utterly among those exiles in a way a hundred newly made oligarchs never could, as did Alexei and I.

Vilnus Orlov never will.

Neither, I know, will Inger. And unfortunately, Ofelia knows it too.

I come back from the past to the present, and to Ofelia’s brimming eyes. I squeeze her hand. “We can choose a dress together, darling. And I can talk to Roman, if you like.”

“Do you think he’d listen?” She rubs her eyes and looks at me hopefully.

He damned well better.

“I can try, Ofelia.”

She sniffs, giving me a watery smile. “I wish you could come with us.”

I feel a sudden, unpleasant shock, even as I return her smile. The fact that she doesn’t even consider my attendance at the ball a possibility is like a bucket of cold water in the face of the fantasy I’ve been living these past months.

It’s a stark reminder of my place in Roman’s household.

We finish our cakes and wander through the streets in companionable silence, but my inner self is in turmoil.

Roman avoids my father.

He hardly ever takes me to public events, other than those that are part of my role.

Only days ago, at the fiesta, I was thinking of how it felt to be part of a family.

But regardless of how many nights I spend in his bed, how close I am to his children, or how many times he tells me he loves me, that single line from Ofelia has made one difficult truth brutally clear.

I’m not part of Roman’s family. I’m not his partner. I’m a secret, something to be hidden away behind closed doors.

And I have no idea where that leaves me.

I think of the unboxed pregnancy test stuffed in the bottom of my drawer. With a cold shock, I imagine running again, but this time with a baby in my arms as well as a crippled old man.

And despite all that Roman has said to me, the many reassurances he’s given, I can’t help but wonder if what that journalist said was right.

Am I trusting the wrong people?