She was wearing a pearl-gray woolen dress with silver embroidered leaves on the sleeves and a high-necked fur collar. Her hair, bright gold and pulled high off a smooth, luminous forehead, was wound in a thick coil, as heavy as a ship’s rope. She wore high-heeled shoes, with long narrow toes like serpents’ tongues. As she paced the scuffed parquet floor, there was a flash of bright red sole.
“I can’t go in.”
“Go on, Sophie, please,” Marianne whispered. “I don’t like it when you’re scared. It makes me scared, too.”
Sophie was going to explain that she wasn’t scared, but overwhelmed. It was Delphine who came back from weekends away and described how she had met acomtesseat lunch or a cabinet minister at tea. Sophie never met anyone, let alone a princess, and she felt this lack of confidence as surely as Marianne would miss her glasses.
She felt Marianne’s damp hand grab hers and yank her into the wrecked beauty of the empty ballroom.
All around them, gilt mirrors, and above them, enormous chandeliers, great ropes of crystal strung in extravagant loops, dazzled. Sophie looked up into one as they passed beneath. The way each crystal held the entire room made her feel dizzy.
She must have faltered, because Marianne’s grip became tighter. Ivan led them toward the woman, who stopped pacing now and turned to face them. Her dark gray eyes settled on each of them in turn — then, without warning, the cold expression broke into a devastating smile. It was as if someone had opened the curtains too quickly on a sunny day.
“If you only knew how I’ve been waiting for this moment …” She closed her eyes. “It has been impossible for me to concentrate on anything else. My work has suffered.” Eyes open, brighter now. “But that is nothing now that you are here safely, all three of you. It’s almost more than I can bear.”
Sophie realized she was holding her breath. There was an energy, a brilliance about the princess … a sense that she could explode at any moment, like a firework, in a shower of glittering sparks.
Sophie caught their reflection in the mirrors. Delphine stood very straight, shaking her hair back from her face. She did look remarkable in the silver tunic. Marianne was flustered and ill at ease, tugging at the sleeve of her wine-coloredsarafan. And was that really her in green, all eyebrows and mouth, her face as white as the moon? Sophie stopped looking.
The princess clasped her hands together under her beautiful cleft chin. Thin white fingers painted with mother-of-pearl polish were covered in a mass of intricately set diamond rings. A heavy scent of tuberose coiled around Sophie’s face as the princess drew nearer. The perfume was intensely sweet, with a velvet denseness that made Sophie’s head spin.
The princess stopped in front of Delphine. “You are so pretty! I had no idea you would be so pretty!” She put out her hand as if she would touch Delphine’s face, but then checked herself and took a step back. “I like you already,” she declared. “I was nervous that I wouldn’t …” She sighed and the smile broadened. “How silly of me. I should have known.”
Sophie saw Delphine smooth the beautiful silversarafan. If only she hadn’t let Delphine wear it! Before she knew what she was doing, she said, “You reallywereexpecting us after all?”
It was a stupid thing to say, but something made her want the princess to stop staring at Delphine, to look atherinstead.
The princess turned her gray eyes on Sophie. “Of course!” she replied.
“It’s just, we thought there had been some sort of misunderstanding.”
Sophie could have kicked herself. She stuck her teeth deep into her tongue. Why had she said that? She was usually good at being invisible, knowing it was better to stay quiet, not to let anyone notice her. But there was something so mesmerizing about the princess … she wanted to grasp the woman’s full attention and have it only for herself.
“Is it my dreadful English?” The princess put her head to one side, clearly amused. Her English was perfect, with only the trace of a Russian accent.
“No. It’s not about not understanding what you’re saying.” Why didn’t she keep quiet? But it was so wonderful to have the princess take her eyes from Delphine and look at her, only at her … “It’s just that we don’t understand …”
The princess’s eyes were on Delphine again. She looked the girl up and down, and her mouth tipped up in a lazy smile, as if she liked what she saw. Delphine blushed.
Sophie saw all this and felt suddenly shy. Should she speak again? It was clear the princess had no interest in her. But then the woman looked at Sophie once more, as if wanting to hear what she had to say.
Sophie swallowed hard, stared at her fingers, which were gripping each other for courage, and said far too quickly, “You see, we are here on a school trip. We were supposed to be staying with Dr. Starova in Stary Beloostrov … that’s a suburb of Saint Petersburg, I think … but there was some sort of mix-up. And we got left on the train. We had the wrong tickets and we were made to get off … and our teacher, Miss Ellis … well, I’m not sure she knows where we are …”
“Or our parents,” said Delphine.
The princess was nodding slowly, still smiling at Delphine.
Marianne added, “And we are meant to be at School 59 on Monday morning.”
The princess raised an eyebrow, as if this was all news to her.
“It’s just that no one told us about coming here,” Sophie finished.
“I can see that you are a little confused,” the princess said, although Sophie didn’t feel confused at all. They had explained everything just how it had happened, hadn’t they? The only thing she hadn’t said was that she was sure that Dr. Starova was the woman who had visited her school and taken her photograph in the playground. But perhaps she was not so sure about that anymore. Marianne hadn’t been convinced when she had told her.
The princess continued, “Ivan Ivanovich has explained everything to you.”
Ivan nodded, but the princess had spoken as if there were no need for him to confirm anything, as if what Ivan had told them had explained their being left on the train, thrown off onto an isolated platform, and brought here to this forgotten palace.
