Danielle Steel - Zoya

“Zoya! What are you doing here?”

“Keeping amused.” She said nothing about the brutally hard two years she had survived.

“How silly of you! But rather fun perhaps, too, I suppose. You must come to dinner with us.” But she always declined. She no longer had the clothes, or the time, or even the energy to run with his crowd. That was over for her. She went home to her children every night, waiting for her in the apartment on Thirty-ninth Street, near the East River, that she had been able to move into in time for Christmas. They were both in decent schools, and the regular raises and commissions Axelle had been giving her did not allow them room for luxuries, but it was enough to keep them comfortable, which was a vast improvement over the previous two years when she was dancing at Fitzhugh's Dance Hall.

She had been working for Axelle when the Lindbergh baby was found killed in May of 1932, and she read with surprise that Florenz Ziegfeld had died in July of the same year. She wondered what it would have been like to work for him and not Fitzhugh's Dance Hall. She wondered too what had happened to Jimmy by then. She had long since sent him the hundred dollars he had slipped into her bag when she was so desperate, but she had never heard from him again. He was part of another life, another chapter closed, as she went on working as the Countess at Axelle's. And she was particularly touched when Eleanor Roosevelt came to see her to buy some clothes during the campaign. She remembered Clayton's old friends with warmth, and sent them a telegram when Franklin won, and she sent Eleanor a lovely fur hat, which she said she would wear at the inauguration in March, and Axelle was thrilled with her.

“You certainly have a way with them, ma chire. ” The elegant Frenchwoman beamed at her. She was fond of the girl, and she was enchanted by little Nicholas. He had the gentle ways of a young prince, and the stories Obolensky had told her one afternoon, of Zoya and the daughters of the Tsar were easy to believe now. She was an unusual woman, born at an unfortunate time. Had things happened otherwise, she might have been married to a prince of her own, and living in one of the palaces she had frequented as a child. It seemed so unfair, but no more so than the crushing depression that raged on. All except Axelle's customers seemed to be starving that year.

At Christmastime, Zoya took Nicholas to see the movie Tarzan , and he was thrilled, and afterward she took him out to tea. He was going to the Trinity School and doing well there. He was a good student and a bright child, and at eleven years of age, he said he wanted to be a businessman one day, like his Daddy had been. Sasha wanted to be a movie star. Zoya had bought her a Shirley Temple doll, and she always carried it with her, along with Annabelle, who had survived the fire. They were happy children, in spite of the difficult times that had happened to them. In the spring, Zoya became the assistant manager of Axelle's. It meant more money and more prestige, and allowed Axelle herself a little more leisure time. Zoya convinced Axelle to let Elsie de Wolfe redesign the shop, and business seemed to boom.

“God bless the day you walked in the door!” Axelle grinned at her over the heads of their excited customers the first day they reopened after it was redone. Even the mayor, Fiorello La Guardia, came and business was even better than before. She gave Zoya a mink coat as a gift, and Zoya gasped as she looked at it. It was made of ranch mink, and was intricately made, and it only added to her remarkable elegance as she took the bus home to her children every day, and by the following year she was able to move into a new apartment with them. It was only three blocks from Axelle's, and it was convenient for her, the children each had their own rooms now, Nicholas was twelve by then, almost thirteen, and he was relieved not to have Sasha constantly underfoot.

And two years later, on Sasha's eleventh birthday, Axelle invited Zoya to go to Paris with her, for her first buying trip. Nicholas went to stay with a friend, and she hired a baby-sitter to stay with Sasha for three weeks, and she and Axelle set sail on the Queen Mary in a flurry of excitement and champagne. As Zoya stood looking at the Statue of Liberty as they pulled slowly out of New York, she thought about how far she had come in the years since Clayton had died. It had been seven years. She was thirty-seven years old, and she felt as though she had already lived several lifetimes.

“What are you thinking about, Zoya?” Axelle had been watching her, standing quietly by the rail as they reached the open seas. She was beautifully dressed in an emerald-green suit, the color of her eyes, and a little fur hat set rakishly on her head, and as she turned to face her employer her eyes were almost the same color as the sea.

“I was thinking about the past.”

“You do too much of that, I suspect,” Axelle said quietly, she had great respect for her, and often wondered why she didn't go out more. She certainly had ample opportunity. Their clients were crazy about her, and there was always a stack of invitations on Zoya's desk, addressed simply to “Countess Zoya,” but she seldom went out, and always said she had “done all that before.” “Maybe Paris will put some new excitement in your life.” Zoya only laughed, and shook her head.

“I've had enough excitement in my life, thank you very much.” Revolutions and wars, and marriage to a man she had adored. She was still in love with Clayton after all those years, and she knew that seeing Paris again would be painful without him. He was the only man she had ever loved, and she knew there would never be another man like him … except her son perhaps … she smiled at the thought, and took a deep breath of the sea air. “I'm going to Paris to work,” she announced briskly to Axelle, and then laughed at the older woman's words.

“Don't be so sure, my dear.” They walked back to their stateroom then, as Zoya unpacked, and set the photographs of her children next to her bed. She didn't need anything more than that, and never would again. She went to bed with a new book that night, and made a list of the clothes they were going to order in Paris.

CHAPTER

35

Axelle had reserved rooms at the Ritz, conveniently located on the Place Vendome, and resplendent with all the luxury Zoya had all but forgotten. It had been years since she had taken a bath in a deep marble tub, just like the one she'd had in the house on Sutton Place. She closed her eyes, and lay luxuriating in the deep bathtub full of warm water. They were to begin their shopping the following morning, but that first afternoon, Zoya quietly left the hotel by herself for a walk, and was overcome by the memories as she wandered the streets and die boulevards and the parks she had once shared with Clayton. She went for a drink at the Cafe de Flore, and then, unable to stop herself, she took a cab to the Palais Royal, and stood silently in front of the building where she had lived with Evgenia. It had been seventeen years since she died, seventeen years of good times and bad ones, and hard work, and her beloved children. The tears rolled slowly down her cheeks as the memories of her grandmother and her late husband overtook her. It was almost as though she was waiting for him to tap her on the shoulder as he had the night they met. She could still hear his voice as though he had spoken to her hours before. The memories were overwhelming as she stood there, and then, turning slowly, she walked to the Tuileries and sat on a bench, lost in thought, watching the children playing in the distance. She wondered what it would have been like to bring Nicholas and Sasha up here, easier in some ways than it was in New York, but there her life moved at a brisk pace, and her work at Axelle's had given her life new purpose. She had been with Axelle for five years by then, and it was exciting to be on the buying end, instead of just waiting on endless hordes of spoiled, demanding women. She knew the women so well. They were women she handled well, women she understood, and had known all her life. More than once, she was reminded of her own mother. And the men liked Zoya too, she was just as capable of dressing their wives, as she was of discreetly outfitting the mistresses they brought there. No word of gossip ever escaped her lips, no unkind critique, merely good taste and interesting suggestions. Without her, Axelle knew the success of her shop would never have been as great. “The Countess,” as everyone called her, added an unmistakable air of aristocratic chic to the lives of wealthy New Yorkers. But now, suddenly, she felt far, far from there. She felt young again, and at the same time sad, thinking of the new life that had begun for her when last she was in Paris.