“You are still the same person,” Ivan said. “It’s just that now you know a little more about where you came from.” He put his arm around Sophie. “But this is how life surprises us,” he said. “I thought I knew one person very well indeed … and I was wrong.”
“I’m sorry,” Sophie murmured.
“She was so clever!” Ivan said, struggling to keep his voice calm. “She could have made any life she wanted for herself. She didn’t need to rob someone else of theirs.” He turned away. Sophie glimpsed tears in his eyes.
After a second, he straightened his shoulders and said, “Let us go and find the others. There are things we must discuss. Plans we must make. We must get you back to Saint Petersburg and Miss Ellis. I think you have lessons at a real Russian school tomorrow!”
Sophie nodded, but knew that the only lessons she needed to learn would not happen in a Saint Petersburg school. Or any school.
She swallowed. “Do I have to go back?”
Ivan looked surprised.
She said again, more forcefully, “I wish I didn’t have to go back so soon, Ivan. There’s so much I want to find out about, so much I need to learn.”
Ivan considered this. “We would have to speak to your guardian,” he said gravely. “She is the only person who can decide at this time.”
“She doesn’t even know I’m here!”
Ivan frowned, not comprehending.
Sophie explained, “I really wanted to come to Russia. Isn’t that odd? I always dreamed of snow and a forest … I didn’t know I was dreaming my own history … if such a thing is even possible. But I knew my guardian wouldn’t let me come … I’m afraid you wouldn’t be pleased if I told you what Delphine and I did …”
“You did what you had to do … But” — Ivan’s mouth crinkled up at one side — “it would be hard to imagine that your guardian would be happy to let you stay here once she has been told. You have no money, the palace is sinking into the snow …” He shook his head. “It would be hard to convince anyone that this was a suitable home for a young girl.”
Sophie supposed he was right.
“What willyoudo, Ivan?” she asked. “I mean, now that the princess, I mean, Anna Feodorovna …”
“I will settle everything here — for you — if you would allow me to.”
“But I can’t pay you.” Sophie felt embarrassed. “Like you said, I’ve no money … unless you want to take some paintings!”
“It would be an honor to serve you.” He bowed his head. “I have no need of paintings.”
“But what then?”
Ivan frowned again. “I will return to my home in Nizhny Novgorod,” he said. “My mother is old. When I was a little boy, she gave everything to me, the meat from her bowl, the vegetables from her garden. She asked for nothing in return. She deserves to be cared for by someone she loves …”
“I wish you could stay,” Sophie whispered. “Is there any way you can stay? You could bring your mother here and look after her in the palace!”
He shook his head sadly. “It is true that I have been happier in the few months I have been at the palace than at any other time, in any other place in my life. I even allowed myself to imagine that I could call it my home one day, if home is that place that you never want to leave … and if you leave it, you look for all your life.” He sighed.
Sophie put her hand on Ivan’s arm.
“I am not a prince, Sophie. I was stupid to think that this magical world, forgotten and broken as it is, would make any space for me.”
“I think you should stay,” Sophie whispered. “I’d like you to stay. It would make it easier for me to go back to London if I knew you were here.”
He smiled at her, but his eyes were sad. “This is not a fairy tale, Sophie. How would I live? How would anyone live here without millions of rubles? The princess …” He shook his head. “I will always think of her that way, I think … Anna Feodorovna took money from the general on the understanding that she would find the diamonds … Without the diamonds, the palace cannot survive.”
Sophie felt faint. “I had them,” she whispered. “I found them. I gave them to her. For the general. He was threatening her. They were in the chandelier.”
For the first time, Ivan looked angry. He controlled his face, but Sophie could see his jaw clench. His words, when they came, were calm, but Sophie could hear that at any second his emotion could break through. “He won’t be able to do anything with them.” He was speaking to himself. “I will make sure that the world knows that she got the diamonds by lying and that he is a common bully and a thief.” He said something else in Russian that Sophie didn’t understand.
“But it won’t help, will it, Ivan?” she said sadly. “I mean, it won’t make it possible for us to stay.”
“Nyet.”He spoke sternly. “You will have to grow up to become even more beautiful and marry an oligarch!”
