“I take them to warm room,” Masha said. “I give them tea?”
Ivan smiled too, although he still looked sad. “They are in need of warmth and friendship … You will give them that, I know.”
Masha smiled proudly. “And the princess?” she said shyly. “I will make tea for princess?”
“You will make tea for the princess,” Ivan said. “But not just yet.” He turned to Sophie. “There is something I must show you.”
“Where are we going, Ivan?”
Ivan shrugged off hisshubaand hung it on a passing statue. “I believed her when she told me who she was. I never questioned it.” He hit the side of his head with his fist. “I was such a fool!”
“Why wouldn’t you believe her?” Sophie burst out. “She waslikea princess! She saved you, brought you here.”
“I didn’t understand what she wanted,” Ivan continued. “I believed her when she said she wanted some young friends in the palace.” He laughed, a sound more like a bark. “She said she had plans for you. But all she wanted was information to help her find the diamonds.”
They had been walking up the stairs of a remote tower. Sophie had never been in this part of the palace. Ivan threw open a door to reveal a surprisingly warm and cozy room. A gilt clock ticked on a marble mantelpiece; fur rugs were draped over gilt furniture.
“When we came to the palace, she asked me to bring the least damaged furniture here.” Ivan sighed. “There was something secretive in her manner I didn’t understand. I kept a key to the room and, although I’m sorry to admit I did that, I see now it was better that I did.”
He put his hand on Sophie’s back and gently guided her inside. “When she told me to get out of the ballroom, I came here. Then I truly understood what she wanted,” he said slowly. “That was why I tried to stop her from leaving.”
He pulled a key from behind a gilt clock and unlocked a large marquetry cabinet. Papers slid out all over the floor: photographs of faces, which were followed by more images, charts, maps.
He was quiet for a second. “I never believed that she would harm you. But the wolf hunt … I knew then. She was a perfect shot — and I saw in that moment she was not aiming for the wolf. She was aiming for you.”
“So you saved my life?”
“She thought you knew nothing. The general had ordered it …”
“She really wanted me dead?”
“In that moment,” Ivan spoke quietly, “yes.”
Sophie’s mouth was dry. She bent down and picked up a photograph. A girl in a school uniform standing in a playground. “But … this is me!” She held the photograph out toward Ivan. “At my school in London.”
“Anna Feodorovna did her research.” Ivan took the blurred picture of Sophie and looked at it. “The general sent his secretary to be sure. He needed to know that there would be no more Volkonskys alive to dispute her claim on the diamonds. No one to come forward and call themselves a prince or a princess when she had taken that title for herself. When she found you, it must have made her desperate,” he whispered. “She had thought she could have all of this without anyone knowing she had stolen it. But in the course of finding out the forgotten story of the Volkonskys, she found a forgotten child. A schoolgirl with a lost family history.”
“But I knew nothing of this.” Sophie blinked back the tears. “No one had told me anything.” She folded her photographed face in four and absentmindedly pushed the photograph into her pocket.
“But she didn’t know that,” Ivan sighed. “And if she had found you, if she had made the link, perhaps someone else could, too. She had to be sure that she wouldn’t be discovered.”
“So, is it really true?” Sophie said. “Am I really a Volkonsky?”
Ivan found another photograph, very old and grainy. It showed a girl, not much older than Sophie. “This is your great-grandmother Sofya.” Ivan smiled sadly. “You look very like her.”
Sophie looked into the grains of the photograph of the wolf princess. There was something of her own face, she could see that now. The straight eyebrows. The pale skin. But the expression! How many more years would that open, bright, curious face have before she perished in the woods?
“Her child was safe,” Sophie whispered. And then she thought about Xenia. An old lady. The daughter of a forgotten Russian princess who had been brought to England. And for what? She died alone. It was so sad. Would her father, Prince Vladimir, have been happy for her to end her days like that? Would her own father be happy for Sophie to live so alone?
“Xenia was rescued, perhaps by a peasant. Probably sold for bread.” Ivan found more papers. “Sofya was traveling to Arkhangelsk. There had been reports of the British navy waiting there to help the Tsar escape from the Revolution.” He smiled sadly. “But the Tsar never came. Instead, the boat took other travelers … and Xenia Volkonsky must have been one of them.”
Sophie sighed. “I’m sure my parents had no idea about this,” she said. “My guardian would have told me if they’d known anything.”
“Anna Feodorovna was meticulous,” Ivan said, shaking his head. “She would not have embarked on such a course of action if she had not been sure. Your guardian will have papers somewhere that relate to your family.”
Sophie thought of the box of files in her bedroom in Rosemary’s flat. She had once looked inside, hoping to find photographs of her parents, or perhaps letters, but Rosemary had found her and become angry. There had been a particularly vicious argument and, soon after, the files disappeared. Did Rosemary still have them? Would they hold any answers?
She sank into a chair. “There’s so much to take in,” she said. “It feels so strange. When you think you’re one person … and then … suddenly, you’re another!”
