Danielle Steel - Zoya

Fancy-dress balls were the rage, and Clayton particularly enjoyed them. He was fifty-seven years old, and he was madly in love with his wife, although he teased her mercilessly that year, telling her that she was finally old enough to be married to him, now that she had turned thirty.

Hoover had been elected president, defeating Governor Al Smith of New York. Calvin Coolidge had decided not to run again. And the governor of New York was Franklin Roosevelt, an interesting man, with an intelligent wife, although she was not very pretty. But Zoya enjoyed her company, and the conversations they shared, and she was always pleased when the Roosevelts invited them to dinner. They saw the play Caprice with them, and although Clayton was bored, Zoya and Eleanor loved it. They saw Street Scene after that, which won the Pulitzer. But Clayton confessed he had a much better time at the movies. He was crazy about Colleen Moore and Clara Bow. And Zoya was equally fond of Greta Garbo.

“You just like those foreign types,” he teased, but she didn't seem foreign to anyone anymore. Zoya had become totally integrated in the life of New York after ten years. She adored the theater and the ballet and the opera, and had taken little Nicky to see Rosenkavalier with them in January, but he was shocked to see a woman playing a man's role.

“But that's a gir/!” he had whispered loudly as the people in the next box smiled. Zoya held his small hand gently in her own, and whispered a suitable explanation, that it had to do with the quality of their voices. “That's disgusting,” he announced and sank into his seat as Clayton smiled, not sure he didn't agree with him.

Nicholas was far more interested in Lindbergh's flights. And Clayton and Zoya went to Lindbergh's wedding to Ambassador Morrow's daughter Anne, in June, shortly before they moved to Long Island for the summer.

The children were happy there, and Zoya herself loved to take long walks along the beach, talking to Clayton or their friends, or just being alone sometimes, thinking of the summers of her youth, at Livadia, on the Crimea.

She still thought about them sometimes, it would have been impossible not to. The figures of the past still lived on in her heart, but the memories were dimmer now, and sometimes she had to grope for their faces. There were framed photographs of Marie, and the other girls, in Fabergo frames on the mantel in their bedroom. The one where they all hung upside down was still the one she loved best, and little Nicholas knew their names and faces too. He loved to hear about what they had been like, what they had said and done, the mischief they'd gotten into as children, and it intrigued him that he and the Tsarevich shared the same birthday. He liked to hear about the “sad parts,” too, as he called them … the parts about Grandfather Nicolai, after whom he was named. She told him about their arguments and their jokes and their disappointments, and she assured him that she and Nicolai had fought almost as much as he and Sasha. At four, he thought she was becoming a terrible nuisance. And there were others in the house who shared his view. She was spoiled by her father, beyond what even Zoya liked, but there was no scolding the child in his presence.

“She's a baby, darling. Don't upset her.”

“Clayton, she'll be a monster when she's twelve if we don't discipline her now.”

“Discipline is for boys,” he told his wife, but he never had the heart to reprimand Nicholas either. He was kindhearted to all of them, and played with them endlessly on the beach that summer.

King George was healthy again in England by then and it always unnerved Zoya when she saw photographs of him. He looked so much like his first cousin, the Tsar, that it was always a shock to see his face gazing out from a picture. His own little granddaughter, Elizabeth, was only a year younger than Sasha.

The thing that impressed little Nicholas most that summer was a performance of Yehudi Menuhin's in New York. The child was a prodigy on the violin, and only three years older than Nicholas, who was fascinated by the way he played. He talked about it for weeks, which pleased Zoya.

Clayton was reading All Quiet on the Western Front on the beach, and he was amusing himself that summer with the stock market. It had been dancing up and down since March, and people were making absolute fortunes. Clayton had bought Zoya two diamond necklaces in the past two months, with just a fraction of his profits. But she was distracted by the sad news that Diaghilev had died in Venice in August. It seemed to close another chapter of history for her, and she talked about him to Clayton as they walked on the beach after she had heard the news.

“If it hadn't been for him letting me dance, we would have truly starved. There was nothing else I knew how to do,” she looked up at Clayton sadly, as he took her hand, remembering how hard her life had been then, the awful apartment near the Palais Royal, their almost nonexistent meals during the war, it had been a hard time, but it was long in the distant past, and she looked up at him with a smile. “And then there was you, my love….” She never forgot how he had saved her.

“Someone else would have come along.”

“Not someone I could have loved as I love you.” She spoke gently. He bent to kiss her, and they stood for a long time in the last fiery sunset of the summer. They were moving back to New York the next day. Nicholas had to go to school, and Sasha was going to begin kindergarten. Zoya thought it would do her good to be with other children, although Clayton wasn't as sure. But he always deferred to Zoya on matters of that nature.

They had dinner with the Roosevelts again almost as soon as they got back. They had also just returned from their summer home in Campobello. And a week later, the Andrews gave a party to celebrate the onset of a new social season. Prince Obolensky came of course, as he always did, and a glittering cast of hundreds.

The month seemed to fly by with parties, theater, balls, and it was October before they knew it. Clayton was worried that his stocks weren't doing well, and he called John Rockefeller to have lunch with him, but he had gone to Chicago for a few days, so he'd have to wait to see him. And two weeks later, Clayton was too upset to have lunch with anyone. His stocks were plummeting and he didn't want to upset Zoya by telling her, but he had put all their assets into the stock market months before. He had done so well, he was sure that he could triple his family fortune.

By Thursday the twenty-fourth, everyone was dumping shares, and everyone Clayton knew seemed to be in a panic. But none more than he, as he went to the stock market himself. He came home in terror that afternoon, and things were worse the next day. And Monday was a day of fresh disaster. Over sixteen million shares were dumped, and by nightfall, Clayton knew he was ruined. The stock market closed at one o'clock, in a vain effort to stop the frantic selling of shares, but for Clayton it was too late. The Exchange was to remain closed for the rest of the week, but he had already lost everything they had. All they had left were their homes, and everything in them. The rest was gone. Clayton walked all the way home, and he felt a weight on his chest like a stone. He could barely face Zoya as he walked into their bedroom.

“Darling? … what is it? …” His face was gray, as she turned to face him. She had been brushing her hair which she had grown long again because he hated the fashionable bobs so much, but he barely seemed to notice her as he walked into the room and stared into the fireplace with bleak eyes, and then slowly he turned to face her. “What's wrong?” Her brush clattered on the floor and she ran to his side. “Clayton … Clayton, what is it?”