If I Had You (5 page)

“Satisfied?” he asked.

“Yes, sir.” It seemed her adventure would scarcely be worth writing to Sadie about.

He nodded. “I'll just gather the owner then. Wait 'ere a minute.” He disappeared behind a curtain waving in the wall.

* * *

“Did any new seventy-eights come in today?” Ivan asked Boris Grinberg, his best friend in London.

Boris, a florid-faced forty-nine-year-old who had left his Jewish faith for atheism, put down the polishing cloth he'd been using on a delicate samovar. “No, none of your bubkes today.” He softened the insult with a smile.

“Keep an eye out. Vera's birthday is coming up.” Ivan took a battered iron kettle off Boris's spirit burner and poured water over the tea leaves in Boris's own silver-plated teapot. Despite his secondhand business, Boris liked modern things.

“This must be new,” Ivan commented.

Boris touched the ornate cream jug with a blunt-tipped finger. “Lovely work, isn't it? A Christmas gift to myself.”

“If you don't believe in religion, why do you give yourself holiday gifts?”

Boris shrugged. “Why not?” He leaned forward and rubbed the space between Ivan's eyebrows.

“What are you doing?” Ivan flinched.

“Ah, boychick, you came in with a line between your brows. I think you are having some trouble.”

“With Vera and Sergei.”

“Nothing you can't fix over the samovar.”

“Dear samovar,” Ivan said sarcastically. A time-honored tradition had disputes being settled over a cup of tea, using the family samovar as an intermediary. “Not much good, when we couldn't possibly have a samovar in our flat.”

“This just came in,” a clerk said, pushing his way through the curtain. “I thought you might want it, Ivan.”

“Thank you.” Ivan took the record and read the label. “Bebe, a fox-trot, from Victor Talking Machine. Yes, this is exactly what I want. It's quite new.”

“Mr. Grinberg, a young lady is out front with an expensive brooch she wants to pawn for her employers, so she says.”

“I'll be out in a bit. Let her stew. If she's dishonest, she'll probably leave.” Boris leaned back in his chair.

The clerk nodded and went back through the curtain.

Boris stared at the record and put his hand to his heart in dramatic fashion. “A rejected holiday present. Did a swain present this as a gift to his lady love, and now she has spurned him?”

“You and your fantasies,” Ivan said. He held up the record. “What do you want for it?”

Boris tilted his head. “For you, my gonif, two shillings.”

“Now who is the thief? This wouldn't sell for three, new.”

Boris lifted his hands to the sky. “How would I know this? Very well. One and six, but you are robbing me blind.”

Ivan fished in his pocket and tossed him the coins. “There, we are both happy now.” He set his new find aside and poured the tea.

“What is the problem with your sister and her swain?” Boris chose a lemon slice to squeeze into his tea.

“They want to kill Georgy Ovolensky when he comes to London.”

Boris's fist convulsed, spraying lemon juice all over the table. Ivan snatched up his new record and wiped it carefully.

Boris pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and tidied his hand and the table, then squeezed what was left of the lemon into his cup. “Kill, you say?”

“I'm afraid so.”

“I thought only your sister Catherine was involved in that sort of thing.”

“Yes, until our family was murdered. Vera understands hatred all too well.”

“Ah. This is the cousin of yours who turned them in.”

“Yes.” Ivan dropped a sugar lump into his tea and watched it dissolve.

“I thought Sergei was White Army?”

“Yes, but he's willing to do this for Vera. Besides, Georgy has betrayed his aristocratic past to become a Bolshevik. He wouldn't be worth protecting from a White perspective any longer.”

Boris rubbed his chin. “Why don't you want him dead?”

Ivan clenched his jaw until his cheeks hurt. “Oh, I want him dead, I just can't be a part of it. I was out of work. I'm just getting back on my feet again. Vera doesn't make much. And Ovolensky is going to be at my hotel. There is no way I'll keep my job in the aftermath. Given the hotel's shady reputation, it might not even survive another murder.”

Boris lifted his cup and regarded Ivan over the rim. “So you choose money over family honor?”

“I have no room in my life for family honor,” Ivan said. “I miss Catherine and my parents dreadfully, but killing Ovolensky won't bring them back. It might, however, destroy our lives now.”

“How old were you when your family died?”

“Nineteen. They were executed by firing squad, all of them. Vera and I were out of town, visiting former neighbors who had moved to Narva, when our parents and sister were taken. A servant came with the news and such portable valuables as she could carry. When we heard the news, I insisted we head for Finland, to escape Russia. While Narva was going to be part of the independent Estonia, Russia still controlled the area at that time. I thought it was my duty to keep Vera safe as best as I could. I was afraid we'd be executed too, if we returned.” Ivan's hand shook slightly. Tea sloshed over the rim of his cup.

“Will Ovolensky recognize you at the hotel? Can he do anything to you?”

It was an unanswerable question. “I would prefer he not see me, not recognize me. We've committed no crimes, and Lenin is dead now. Why would Stalin care about me or Vera?”

“He'll care about you if Ovolensky dies.” With a flourish, Boris lifted his cup and poured the contents down his throat.

Ivan pounded his fist on the table, rattling the tea set. “Exactly. You see why we cannot do this.”

“Do you have any revolutionary ties back in Russia? Someone who could end the threat there?”

“No. No contact with Mother Russia since the day we left,” Ivan said. “Georgy used my family's deaths to rise in the party. We lost everything. Friends, family, possessions. All we had was some jewelry of Mother's that she had lent Vera because we were attending a wedding, and what the servant brought. We worked our way across Europe to land here.”

“What do you have to lose now?”

Ivan flexed his fingers, stared at the worn cuffs poking out from his coat sleeves. “Not much in material possessions. But our lives, our freedom. Any chance we have to continue our family line. Vera should be married, having a baby, not planning death.”

“Is Sergei the wrong man for her?”

“I did not think so until now.” Ivan frowned. Such thoughts made his head hurt.

In contrast, Boris looked benevolent. “Instead of trying to talk them out of this emotional crime, you might best work on your sister.”

Ivan smiled. “I like how you are thinking, Boris. It is wise counsel.”

“She might be best off marrying an Englishman,” Boris said.

“I could introduce her to one of my fellow employees,” Ivan said, rubbing his chin.

“Give it a try. Try everything. The less she is with Sergei, the less they can plan.”

“Very well.” Ivan drained his teacup. “Thank you for the hospitality.”

Boris rose. “I should see to the young lady with the brooch.”

“I'll walk out with you.”

Boris tucked Ivan's record money into a cash box on top of his safe, and they both went through the curtain into the main part of the shop.

* * *

Alecia's feet hurt in her cheap, heeled shoes, and she was pretty sure she had a ladder on the foot of her stocking. Her first excursion in London had not amounted to much. She'd enjoyed the taxicab from the hotel to Poplar High Street, but she'd come to London searching for music and color and the high life, not poverty. And sleep, it had continued to elude her. It seemed every time she closed her eyes the four funnel stacks of the
Lusitania
came into view, just like they had for nearly a decade now.

She lifted one foot and rubbed the back of her other calf with it. Her muscles were cramping, unused to standing in heeled shoes. Her grandfather didn't hold with anything fashionable. She stared at the brooch, shining and glamorous amidst the relative squalor of the shop.

Then, finally, the curtains parted. A rotund middle-aged man came out, followed by a tall, handsome fellow with soft-looking black hair that fell around his face. The brooding expression reminded her of someone, and then it hit her. It was Ivan Salter, in the back of an East End pawnshop.

“Mr. Salter,” she said, delighted to see a familiar face.

His expression remained impassive, not matching her smile. “Miss Loudon.”

“What a treat to see you outside of the hotel,” she said. Her nerves jangled uneasily amid his continuing unfriendliness. Had she offended him somehow? “Russell told me to come here.”

He didn't respond.

“The concierge?”

Mr. Salter looked at the little man behind the counter. He shrugged, then took a loupe out of his pocket and bent to examine the brooch.

Alecia noticed the record under Ivan's arm. “Are you a music lover?”

“Not like you,” he replied dryly. “This is for my sister.”

He spoke! “How nice. Is it a dance record?”

“A fox-trot, yes.”

“I know how to do that, at least.” She lifted her arms. “I want to learn some of the other dances, like the Charleston.”

“I don't dance,” he said.

She didn't like to see his beautifully molded lips thinning, those lips that had once kissed her so generously. “I see.”

“I'm not supposed to be speaking to you,” he said.

His words startled her. “Why not?”

He looked above her head instead of at her face. “Mr. Eyre sent out a notice.”

She remembered his familiarity earlier. Was he laying a claim to her? How shocking. She'd read of such things in novels. “Not to speak to me?”

“Not to be familiar with the residents,” he explained. “Not just you.”

“I see.” Not so glamorous then. “Well, better that than something against me specifically.” She worried at her lip. “I was afraid I had hurt your feelings somehow, the way you so pointedly cut me on the stairs.”

“I must do my job,” he said in a stiff tone.

“We aren't at work now. We could even have a cup of tea together.” Her daring thrilled her.

“There are no nice little tea shops in this part of town,” he said blandly. “Just public houses.”

“A glass of ale, then,” she suggested.

“You aren't meant to be sitting around sailors and traders and hopeless drunks,” he said. “You shouldn't even be in the East End.”

She wanted to shake the smile back into him and then kiss that sensual mouth. “You don't know anything about me.”

“I don't need to. You are a woman with no past.”

She stepped back involuntarily, stung deeply by his remark. “That's no longer true, as you well know.”

“Was that kiss so important to you?” He leaned forward, voice low, and brushed her lower lip with his thumb.

“Ivan!” shouted the little man with an air of command. He spoke rapidly in a language that Alecia didn't understand.

Ivan stepped away from her. “You needn't worry. She's just a secretary.”

“I thought she was from the hotel,” the pawnshop owner said.

“I live in a valet's room,” Alecia said, feeling the humiliation acutely. “I work for a married couple who reside at the hotel.”

“And this is their brooch?” the man said.

Ivan glanced at the brooch. Alecia saw his eyes widen, his face pale.

“Yes,” she said, frowning. “They want the money for a project, then they want to retrieve the brooch.”

“That's what everyone says,” the man murmured.

“I'll be going,” Ivan announced unexpectedly.

“No,” the owner said. “You will wait and escort this young lady back to the Grand Russe. She shouldn't be in this neighborhood alone, especially with money.”

Alecia saw Ivan's jaw shift. He was probably grinding his teeth, and no wonder. She must be ruining his day off. “I'm sorry.”

He shrugged. “I'm in no hurry to return home.”

She felt a traitorous thrill. “Do you live nearby?”

“Yes, above the greengrocer's down the block.”

This wasn't a peaceful neighborhood. “How do you get any sleep?” she asked.

“I have dark curtains. And no one to kiss me awake.” He was still pale, but his mouth twisted into a slight smile after he spoke.

Her mouth dropped open just as the little man put his loupe away and wrote a number on a piece of paper. “It's a good piece. I'll give you this for it, since you are a friend of Ivan's.”

The amount was better than she'd been told to expect. “I accept.”

He nodded and picked up the brooch. “I'll write you a ticket and get you the money. Look sharp, boy.”

“Keep that brooch handy, will you?” Ivan asked. “It looks familiar.”

The man nodded and went behind the curtain. “Boris, Mr. Grinberg, is a good man,” Ivan said.

“It doesn't seem like the sort of shop that can handle nice jewelry.”

“Looks can be deceiving. But he doesn't keep such things here.”

“Why did you ask him to then?”

“It looked familiar, like something my mother used to own.”