A Longer Fall (Gunnie Rose #2)(51)

“Well, shit,” I said.

“That sums it up.” Eli threw himself on the bed. He lay his head back against his laced fingers. “We should have asked where the Ballard house is.”

“Phone book,” I said, looking in the shallow drawer of the bedside table. It was only a few pages long. Though Ballard was a common name for businesses and public buildings, I found only two private individuals with that name: one senior and one junior, same phone number. Looked to me, from the map, that if we hadn’t turned onto Bergen Road we would have gone past the place.

There was no way we could drop in on these people. We were strangers, and Eli was clearly what he was. I couldn’t think of a single story that sounded believable. Even if we could talk our way into the house, there wasn’t any reason on earth we could give to ask if we could see what was in their attic.

“I’ll tell you about the Ballard family,” Eli said.

I loved it when he volunteered information. “I’ve seen the name on a lot of buildings here,” I said, to grease the conversational wheel. “I’ve read about them in the papers, I’m sure. But it’s been a long time.”

“The Ballard family owns huge amounts of farmland in this area, and several businesses, too,” Eli said. “They also have a sugarcane plantation in Cuba. They control part of an import firm in New Orleans. But they’re based here. Tsar Nicholas was impressed with their wealth when he met the previous head of the family at a reception in Cuba.”

“So he was open to the marriage of Amanda Ballard to Alexei. Pretty ambitious marriage on the part of the Ballards,” I said. “Considering Alexei is real royalty.”

“Yes, it was.” Eli looked grim. “If Tsar Nicholas had been well, and not so anxious to find some financial backing for his new kingship, he would not have agreed when Samuel Ballard proposed it.”

“I don’t see why he would consider it at all. Considering royalty marries other royalty—at least that’s what I’ve always heard.” Not that I had thought much about it one way or another.

“You have to remember, this was some years ago. We were new to the continent and trying to make connections to all parts of it.”

Connections that had lots of money. But I didn’t need to point that out. The Russian court had hurried onto rescue boats with what they could carry, but jewels and silver wouldn’t last forever, not after the long dreary period of sailing from country to country in search of asylum. When Nicholas was invited to stay at San Simeon, and afterward asked to set up a new government when the American system failed, there’d been a lot of hasty marriages. All the grand duchesses had more or less been auctioned off, the Texoma papers had said. Alexei had been the biggest prize, saved until last. “All right,” I said. “What happened?”

My lip curled. This was awful.

“Alexei agreed to marry Amanda Ballard. He had always been sickly, as you know, and everyone was anxious for him to try to beget a son as soon as possible.”

No pressure there. “I understand,” I said.

“It was a really good thing when he and Amanda fell in love. They had more in common than anyone suspected.”

“What?”

“They both had dark childhoods. Alexei had been held prisoner by the Bolsheviks and was living in the shadow of execution every day. He saw his whole family abused and mistreated, and he suffered great pain because of his illness. They kept him separated from Rasputin unless he was on the verge of dying.”

Alexei, who had the bleeding disease, had been kept alive by Rasputin, a deeply religious grigori, founder of the order.

“And Amanda had her story about her poor nanny,” I said.

Eli looked at me in rebuke. “Yes,” he said, and I felt cheap. “Amanda told him the story of her upbringing, of the cruelty she witnessed almost every day of her life.”

“Okay.” I wasn’t going to say that Amanda didn’t seem to have lodged any protests until she was free and clear, and she hadn’t asked her husband to effect any change until she was on her way out of the world. When she didn’t have to bear any consequences.

“She grew up at the family mansion? The one here? The one where the chest is in the attic?”

Eli said, very heavily, “Yes. With her violent brother Holden, who once threw a boy down the stairs for scuffing his boots.”

Okay, Amanda had had some bad times. “So I’m guessing the Ballard house is really big? Full of servants who are deathly afraid of the Ballard family?”

“Yes,” he said again. “Amanda said so. Of course, some of them wish their employers ill. But a few others, the ones in favor, they will back whatever move the family makes.”

I thought about the Fielders, who had helped a black woman in trouble… trouble that she’d gotten into through losing her temper.

“By the way,” I said. “How come you called the tsarina by her first name? That doesn’t seem very Russian court to me.”

Eli flushed. “It’s too familiar. But we sat together many nights when the tsar was doing badly. He fell on the stairs once. He was very, very ill. We talked as we waited.”

There was a knock at the door, and we both sat up. The world was suddenly coming to our door.

I had my gun in my hand and I was standing to one side of the door when I said, “Who is it?”