The Property of a Lady Read Free Page A

maharaja’s emerald.
    “So, was this a little bit of history that was sold at Christie’s here in Geneva today? Is the rumor true that several governments were after it? And if so, why? All we know is that the jewel was sold privately, but was it to Russia? Or the U.S.A.? The anonymous seller, identifiable only as ‘a Lady’ in this catalog and protected by the secrecy that shrouds the Swiss banking system, is the only person who might be able to unlock the secret to the Ivanoff fortune—a fortune that rumor now says has been safely locked away in the bank vaults, gaining interest each year until it amounts to one of the richest in the world. Billions and billions of dollars, we are told. But whoever knows the answer is not telling. The ‘Lady,’ who is today reputedly more than nine million dollars richer, is as elusive as the ghost of Princess Anouska Ivanoff. May she rest in peace.”
    Genie put down her mike wearily. “That’s it, guys,” she told her crew. “I’ll edit it back at the station, but right now I’m going to buy you all a drink. Because I’m tired, and I’m bored with these goddamned jewels and rumors, and I’d rather be anywhere else in the world than right here, right now.”
    Maryland
    The old lady imprisoned in her large chair by the window reached a fragile, blue-veined hand to the table beside her. She pressed the remote button to switch off the television set and leaned back wearily. So, she thought, it had finally happened. All the years of hiding, all the years of fighting to keep her promise—in one day they had cometo nothing. She had warned them but this time her warnings had gone unheeded. And she knew it had been done to keep her, a tired old lady, in luxury. The sale of the Ivanoff emerald was an act of love, but it was one that she no longer needed.
    She coughed, gasping air into her failing lungs, an act so habitual now she scarcely heeded it. She thought of the girl she had just seen on television, talking of the Ivanoffs as impersonally as if they had been pawns in a Russian chess game. But it hadn’t been like that at all. She knew because she had been there. And she knew what it was, besides the billions of dollars and the ransom in jewels, that great nations wanted. They were on the trail of a secret to which only she, Missie O’Bryan, knew the answer, she and a Russian gypsy who had prophesied many years ago that a great responsibility would fall on her shoulders. A responsibility that could change the world.
    After pulling open a drawer in the little table beside her, she took out an elaborate silver frame bordered in rich enamels. At the top was the Ivanoff crest of a wolf’s head and five diamond plumes banded with rubies on a sapphire ground. In tiny gold Russian lettering was the family’s motto, “Upholders of Truth and Honor.” She peered closely at the fading sepia photograph of Prince Michael Alexandrovich Ivanoff, whose forebears had served at all the Russian Imperial courts since Peter the Great, remembering the first time she had seen him in the vast hall of the St. Petersburg mansion. She had hesitated by the door, awed by its grandeur. Her eyes had been drawn like a magnet to the tall, blond, handsome man standing at the top of the marble stairs, his hand resting on the collar of a great amber-colored dog. And she was to wonder ever after if time really did stand still as their eyes met.
    With a sigh she replaced the photograph in the drawer. She had never, in all her long, eventful life, been free todisplay it. Misha’s face, along with her secrets, had been locked away for over seventy years.
    Then, of course, she had still been Verity Byron, but the prince had always called her “Missie,” with that special touch of tenderness in his deep voice that had sent a thrill down her spine. She had loved him then, and she loved him now, more than any other man in her tangled life. And one day soon, if heaven was the reality she believed it to be, they