Danielle Steel - Zoya

As she took a taxi back to the hotel, her heart gave a little leap as she wondered if she might meet Vladimir Markovsky. She looked for him in the phone book that night at the hotel, but his name wasn't there. She suspected that he might have died by then. He would have been almost eighty.

Axelle invited her to dinner at Maxim's that night, but with a nostalgic look in her eyes, she declined and said that she was tired and wanted to get a good rest before they began their tour of the collections. She didn't explain to Axelle that her memories of Clayton taking her to dinner there would be too painful Here, she constantly had to close the doors to the past. It seemed only a step from St. Petersburg. All of it was so close now. She wasn't half a world away anymore. She was right there, in the places she had discovered with Evgenia and Vladimir, the places Clayton had taken her to. It was almost too painful to be there, and she longed to get to work, so that she could forget the past, and delve into the present.

She called Nicholas that night, at his friend's, and told him all about Paris. She promised to take him there one day. It was such a beautiful city, and it had played an important role in her life. He told her to take care of herself, and that he loved her. Even at fourteen, almost fifteen now, he wasn't afraid to show his emotions. “It's the Russian in you,” Zoya teased him sometimes, lately thinking of how much like Nicolai he was at times, particularly when she heard him tease Sasha. Her call to her daughter was equally typical, Sasha had given her a shopping list of everything she wanted in Paris, which included a red dress and several pairs of French shoes. In her own way, she was as spoiled as Natalya had been, and almost as demanding. She wondered what Mashka would have thought of them, or what her own children would have been like, if she had lived to marry.

It was a relief to go to sleep that night, and escape the memories. The trip to Paris was far more difficult than she had thought it would be, and she dreamed of Alexis, and Marie, and Tatiana, and the others that night, waking at four in the morning, and unable to go back to sleep again until almost six. The next morning, she was tired when she ordered croissants and steaming black coffee.

“ Alors , are we ready?” Axelle asked when she appeared at the door in a beautiful red Chanel suit, her white hair perfectly groomed, her Hermos bag over her shoulder. She looked suddenly very French again, and Zoya wore a blue silk dress and matching coat, made by Lanvin. It was the color of the sky, and her red hair was tied in a chic knot. They looked very Parisian, as the doorman assisted them into a cab, and Zoya smiled as she recognized the driver's accent. He was one of the countless elderly Russians who were still driving taxis in Paris, but when she asked him if he knew Vladimir, he only shook his head. He didn't remember hearing the name, or ever meeting him. It was the first time in years that Zoya had spoken Russian. Even with Serge Obolensky, she spoke French. And Axelle listened to the musical lilt of the words, as they drew up outside Schiaparelli's studios on the rue de la Paix. They had agreed to make it their first stop, and Zoya and Axelle went wild there. They ordered dozens of different sweaters for the shop, and had a long conversation with the designer herself, explaining the needs and preferences of their clientele. She was an interesting woman, and they were intrigued to find that she was only three years older than Zoya. She was enjoying a remarkable success at the time, almost as great as Gabrielle Chanel, still on the rue Cambon. They went there next, and later that day to the house of Balenciaga, where Zoya selected several evening gowns, and tried them on herself to see how they moved, how they worked, how they felt, as Axelle watched her.

“You should have been a designer yourself,” Axelle smiled at her, “you have an amazing feeling for the clothes.”

“I've always loved pretty clothes,” she confessed as she whirled in the intricately made creations of the Spanish genius. “Even as children, Marie and I used to look at the clothes our mothers and their friends wore,” she laughed at the memory, “we were very nasty about the ones we thought had awful taste.”

Axelle had been looking at the faraway look in her eyes, and asked gently, “Was she your sister?”

“No,” Zoya quickly turned away, it was rare that she opened the doors of the past to anyone, least of all Axelle, with whom she maintained an air of business almost always, but this was all so close to home for her, almost too much so. “She was my cousin.”

“One of the Grand Duchesses?” Axelle looked instantly impressed, as Zoya nodded. “What a terrible thing all that.” They went back to business then, and the next morning they went to see Dior's sketches after dining in their rooms that night, and poring over the lists of what they had ordered, what they had liked, and what they still thought they needed. Some of it Axelle wasn't going to buy, but only wanted to see so that she could draw sketches for the dressmaker they used occasionally to copy someone else's designs. She was very skillful, and it allowed Axelle greater profit.

They met Christian Dior himself, a charming man, and Axelle introduced Zoya with her full title. Lady Mendl was there that day, previously Elsie de Wolfe, and after they had left, she filled Dior in on the details of Zoya's life with Clayton.

“It's a terrible shame, they lost everything in twenty-nine,” she explained, as Wally Simpson came in. Dior was a great fan of hers, and she arrived with her two pug dogs.

That afternoon, Zoya and Axelle went back to see Elsa Schiaparelli again, this time at her more luxurious showroom, built two years before on the Place Vendome, and Zoya laughed at the amusing couch Salvador Dali had designed for her in the shape of a pair of lips. They talked about the sweaters again, and several coats that Axelle wanted to order. But they were rapidly reaching the limits of their budget. It all went too quickly, Axelle complained, and it was all so lovely. It was an exciting time to be involved in fashion in Paris.

Schiaparelli left them then, she had an appointment with an American coat manufacturer. Like Axelle, he was one of her better foreign clients, she explained, as one of Schiaparelli's assistants came and whispered to her in Italian.

“Will you excuse me, ladies? My assistant will show you the fabrics the coat can be ordered in, Mr. Hirsch is waiting in my office.” She said good-bye to Zoya too, and the two women conferred at length with the assistant, and ordered the coat in red, black, and a dove gray that Zoya particularly liked. She always seemed to favor the more muted colors, just as she did in her own clothes. She was wearing a delicate mauve dress designed by Madame Gros that Axelle had let her buy at an enormous discount.

As they left the shop an hour later, they were followed by a tall, rugged-looking man with a shock of dark hair, and a face that looked as though it had been carved from marble by a master. They saw him again in the elevator of their hotel.

“I'm not following you. I live here too,” he said, smiling at Zoya with a boyish look on his face. Then he reached out and offered a hand to Axelle. “I think you've bought a few things from my line. I'm Simon Hirsch.”

“Of course,” she smiled, seeming very French again now that she was here. Her accent even seemed to have gotten thicker. “I'm Axelle Dupuis,” and she quickly remembered Zoya. “May I introduce the Countess Ossupov, my assistant.” It was the first time in a long time that Zoya had been embarrassed by her title. He looked like such a straightforward, pleasant man that she felt foolish putting on airs as she shook his hand. He had the powerful handshake of a man who ran an empire of his own, and he looked straight into Zoya's green eyes with gentle brown ones.