She also scrawled a brief note to Elizaveta, and another to Charlotte, telling them not to worry, but that she was being personally protected by the dowager duchess’s great-nephew, and would be staying at the Tricorn Club for an indefinite period.
She smiled as she imagined their different reactions to readingthat. Elizaveta would be scandalized at the impropriety and worried for both her safety and her morals. Charlotte was far more likely to crack one of her saucy, speculative smiles and pour a drink in her honor.
Anya folded both sheets together and directed them to Haye’s. Vasili had somehow managed to learn that she worked for the dowager duchess. It wasn’t impossible that he might also discover her home address and set someone to intercept the mail. Since Haye’s received a great number of missives every day, from gentlemen making“arrangements,” one more note would hopefully not attract any undue attention.
At lunchtime, Mickey brought in a tray of stew and crusty bread and agreed to have the stable lad deliver the letters for her. The baguette was as good as the ones Anya had eaten every morning on the Rue de Passy in Paris; Wolff clearly had a talented chef.
It was a pleasure to enjoy even simple soup when it was made with gristle-free steak and more than one vegetable. Elizaveta was a competent cook, but their straitened circumstances meant they’d rarely bought the best cuts of meat or the freshest produce. Desserts had become a distant memory.
She went back to the translations. They were frustratingly difficult to decipher, thanks to some truly appalling handwriting, and all were exceedingly dull, concerned mainly with rations and supplies, troop movements and ammunition requests.
By dinnertime, she was thoroughly bored and no closer to discovering anything useful than she had been that morning. She pushed back from the desk and tried to ease the aching muscles in her neck. As if on cue, Mickey appeared, hunching his giant shoulders in what she assumed was his way of trying to appear less intimidating.
“’Is lordship thought you’d like a bath.” He gestured to a door just across the hallway. “There’s one of ’em new-fangled bathing rooms in there. Linens too.”
Anya almost did a little dance of delight when she discovered the large copper tub filled with water. It was big enough to immerse her whole body in, double the size of the miserable tin hip-bath she and Elizaveta shared back at their lodgings.
She stripped with unseemly haste, piled her hair in a haphazard coil on the top of her head, and sank into thesteaming water with a sigh of bliss. Tension leeched out of her as she luxuriated in the warmth. She let down her hair and washed it thoroughly, noting that the soap was a feminine jasmine scent. She raised a brow. Did Wolff have such a regular supply of women who bathed here that his household kept a supply of floral soap? Or had he somehow guessed it was her favorite? Probably the former.
When the water finally cooled enough to be unpleasant, and her fingers and toes resembled wizened prunes, she dried herself off and ducked across the corridor to her own rooms. The idea of putting her dirty dress back on was depressing, but she stopped short on the threshold of the bedroom when she saw what lay across the bed—a dress, one that certainly didn’t belong to her.
She stepped closer, reaching out to touch it before she even realized what she was doing. It was exquisite, something Charlotte would wear, a gorgeous midnight-blue watered silk gown with little puff sleeves and a draped bodice.
A note lay on the fabric, the white card stark against the shimmering blue.
Your lavender gown offends me, as it would anyone with a modicum of taste. Wear this.
The sloping copperplate undoubtedly belonged to Wolff, despite the absence of a signature. Anya didn’t know whether to be amused or annoyed by his high-handedness. Did he think she wore the grey dress because shelikedit?
The new gown fit like a dream. Wolff was doubtless well-versed in calculating a woman’s measurements. Anya shivered in guilty pleasure as the silk chemise that had also been provided slid against her skin. She’d become so used to rough cotton, it felt as sensual as acaress. Every nerve ending quivered in happiness.Temptation, thy name is satin.
Her well-washed stockings had been replaced by a pair of embroidered silk ones, her practical, mud-covered boots replaced by a pair of highly impractical slippers. She put them on without a moment’s hesitation.
The only omission had been a corset. Anya wondered if it was deliberate, or whether Wolff had truly forgotten that women needed such things. Perhaps the women with whom he consorted didn’t bother to wear them.
The girl who stared back at her from the mirror was a foreign creature, someone she hadn’t seen for over a year. With a jolt, she felt like herself again, like Princess Denisova, poised and carefree. Able to go anywhere, do anything. It was a lie, of course. She was Anya Ivanov now, trapped in this cage of her own making. What good did it do to pine for what was gone?
Mickey rapped on the outer door. “There’s dinner downstairs, miss.”
“Will his lordship be eating with me?”
“Not tonight. He’s dining out.”
Anya quashed a feeling of pique. She shouldn’t want to see Wolff’s reaction to her in these clothes.
She followed the giant down the curved staircase and into a room with a gleaming mahogany sideboard and matching table. A single place setting had been arranged at one end, and she ate in solitary splendor.
The lack of company was made up for by the exquisite food: salmon, beef, almond syllabub. Mickey offered her wine, and Anya took two glasses of a wonderful French burgundy.
There was still no sign of Wolff, so she placed her napkin on the table and went exploring. He hadn’t expressly forbidden her to do so, after all.
She discovered a salon and a billiard room, and the stairs down to the kitchens, but her steps drew her down a long picture-hung corridor with a door at the far end. The murmur of conversation on the other side of the mahogany indicated this was a way into the club, but she had no desire to open it. Instead, she followed a narrow staircase up, up, and found herself on a kind of minstrel’s gallery overlooking the main gaming floor.
The air was warm up here, near the roof. A carved fretwork screen shielded her from sight while giving an excellent view of the comings and goings in the room below. The tsar had something similar in all the royal palaces; spy holes, places to see, but not be seen. Dark corners perfect for clandestine assignations.
The club was a riot of color and noise. Green baize-topped gaming tables, cream playing cards, the spinning red-and-black of the roulette wheels. Most of the men were clad in dark colors, but the women flitting between them were like exotic birds, some more gaudy than others. Most of them had chosen to preserve their anonymity by wearing masks.
The excited hum of conversation, broken by the occasional cheer or groan, filled the place with a lively energy that made Anya’s nerves tingle.
