Zoya

“I was bored,” Sasha shrugged, “and going to an all-girl school is stupid.” Simon had paid the tuition at Marymount for her, and Zoya had been so pleased to see her in a better school than the one Zoya had been able to pay for. Nicholas had stayed on at Trinity, as he had before they were married, and he loved it there. He had two more years to finish before he went to Princeton, like his father before him. Sasha had lasted six months at Marymount and now she was out on her ear, and she didn't even have the grace to look embarrassed. There had been only two male teachers in the entire school, the music teacher and the dance master, the rest were nuns, and even then Sasha was able to make trouble. Zoya wondered if it was Sasha's way of punishing her for going away for so long, and being so excited about her new business. For the first time, she had second thoughts but it was too late now. She had ordered all her American lines before she left, and now she had bought and paid for the rest of it in Paris. She had to open, no matter what. And it was a hell of a time for Sasha to be making trouble. But Sasha wasn't the only thing on her mind now.

“Doesn't this embarrass you at all?” Zoya asked, “Think of how kind Simon was to send you there in the first place.” But the girl only shrugged, and Zoya sensed that she hadn't gotten through to her, as she went back to their bedroom and found Simon unpacking. “I'm so sorry, Simon. It seems so incredibly ungrateful of her to have done this.”

“What did she say?” Simon turned worried eyes to his wife. There was something in Sasha that had troubled him in the last few months. She had looked at him hungrily more than once, in a way that would have inspired a less decent man to treat her as a woman and not a child, but he never said anything about it to Zoya. He simply went on treating her like a little girl, which egged her on more. But she was only twelve years old after all, and incredibly pretty. She had her maternal grandmother's icy Germanic beauty, and her mother's Russian fire. Together, it was a fearsome combination. “Is she upset?” he asked, as Zoya shook her head in dismay.

“If only she were.” She had seemed totally without contrition.

“What are you going to do now?”

“Look for another school, I guess. It's a little late in the year for that.” It was already mid-April. “I could have her tutored until the fall, but I'm not sure that would be good for her.”

But Simon liked the idea. “Maybe you should, for now. It would take the pressure off her.” As long as the tutor was a woman. But the only one Zoya found was a nervous young man, who assured her that he could handle Sasha without any problem. He lasted exactly a month and then fled in terror, without explaining to Zoya that she had greeted him the previous day in a nightgown that was obviously her mother's, and after that had told him that she wanted him to kiss her.

“You're a brat,” Nicholas still accused her night and day. At nearly sixteen, he was a great deal more perceptive about her than her own mother. And she fought with Nicholas like a cat, scratching his face when she grew angry. Even Simon was concerned about the child, but just when he'd almost given up hope, she would become submissive and surprisingly charming.

The construction at the store was going unbelievably well, and by July it looked as though they would be open in September. They celebrated their anniversary at a rented house on Long Island that year, two days after Amelia Earhart disappeared over the Pacific. Nicholas was fascinated by her, and he told Simon secretly that one day he wanted to learn how to fly. Charles Lindbergh was his childhood hero. He had been equally fascinated by the Hindenburg, the dirigible that had exploded over New Jersey in early May. Fortunately, when he had tried to convince Zoya and Simon to travel to Europe on it, Zoya had been leery of it, and they had wanted to travel by ship anyway, in memory of their crossing the year before on the Queen Mary

.

“Well, Mrs. Hirsch, what do you think of it?” Simon stood in the shoe department of the women's floor in her new store in early September. “Is it everything you wanted it to be?”

Tears filled her eyes as she looked around her in silent wonder. Elsie de Wolfe had created an atmosphere of beauty and elegance in pale gray silk with pink marble floors. There were soft lights, and vast arrangements of silk flowers on beautiful Louis XV tables. “It looks like a palace!”

“Nothing less than you deserve, my love.” He kissed her and that night they celebrated with champagne. The shop was to open the following week with a glittering party attended by the cream of New York.

Zoya had bought her own dress for the opening at Axelle's. “This will be good for business! I might just have to say in my next ad that Countess Zoya shops here!” The two women had become fast friends, and they both knew now that nothing would change that.