The Property of a Lady Read Free

had demanded furiously.
    “That’s just it,” he’d replied with an irritating grin that just made her want to kick him. “The rumor is that Washington is interested, and so is Russia.” He had forestalled her next question, saying he didn’t know why, but she should get moving and find out.
    And so, three days on, there she was in Geneva at Christie’s jewelry sale at the Hotel Richemond. Her crew had filmed the customers arriving: discreet, tight-lipped men in business suits studying their catalogs and smart socialites in Chanel suits checking their profiles in the long mirrors and gossiping wickedly.
    Now it was all over and they were filming her outside the hotel. The wind blowing fresh from the lake caught her blond hair and she tossed her head impatiently, squinting her blue eyes in the glare of the lights.
    “So,” she began, “in a surprise move, the emerald—’the Property of a Lady’—was withdrawn from the sale only moments before the auction was to begin. Rumor has it that it was expected to sell for at least seven million, but so much more was offered in a private bid that the seller decided to accept. The sum is said to be over nine million dollars. But why so much? The experts tell us that the stone is flawless, and that itself is unique. But the rumors around town say that it may be one half of the Ivanoff emerald, last seen in the court tiara of Princess Anouska, wife of one of the richest princes in tsarist Russia … and let me tell you, there were more than two hundred of those princely families and all of them
seriously
rich. But Prince Michael—
Misha
Ivanoff—was reputed to be even richer than the tsar himself. The story was often told inSt. Petersburg that because of the upkeep of the tsar’s great estates, his dozens of palaces and his many servants and retainers—as well as all their families—there were times when the tsar was short of a ruble or two. But not Misha Ivanoff.
And
he had a beautiful wife who spent money like water. Anouska Ivanoff was an acquisitive magpie: Anything that glittered she had to have. In her time, she was known as Cartier’s biggest customer.
    “The story of the emerald in question is that it was given to an earlier Ivanoff prince by a maharaja when he was traveling through India. The prince had taken a dinner service of pure gold to present to his host, from whom he was negotiating the purchase of tracts of land thought to contain valuable minerals and ores. Not wanting to be outdone by his guest, the maharaja plucked an immense emerald from the jeweled headdress of his favorite and most adored”—she paused, laughing—“his favorite and most adored
elephant!
It seems the maharaja loved the creature more than all his many wives, and it was to Prince Ivanoff’s credit that he recognized the value of the gift; not merely the precious stone, but the esteem in which the elephant was held. Apparently he was a shrewd businessman and managed to add even more millions to the Ivanoff coffers. There was so much that not even a generation or two of gamblers and wastrel Ivanoffs could dissipate it. However lavishly they spent, there was always more.
    “Later, the great emerald was set by Cartier in Paris into the princess’s court tiara, a sunburst of twenty-one rays of large diamonds that was so heavy it gave her a headache on the official occasions she had to wear it.
    “Did the Ivanoffs live too ostentatiously? It would seem so, because when the day of the revolution dawned, their flamboyant life-style and extravagant possessions earmarked the family for a tragic end. The prince was reported burned to death in his country estate. The princess fled with her mother-in-law and two children, six-year-oldAlexei and three-year-old Xenia, but they were overtaken in the frozen winter forest. All were reported slain and their bodies left to the wolves. The princess’s famous collection of jewels disappeared, among them the great court tiara—and the