Chapter 8: In a Crowd of Thousands

Phoebe Althea, the Grand Duchess of all Imperial Russia, stared down at the missive in her shaking hand, her lip curling into a sneer of disgust. The latest letter from another young woman claiming to be her long-lost missing granddaughter was so incorrect on details, she was shocked that her lady-in-waiting, Reychel, had screened it to her for study.

Who were all these young women who were so willing to debase themselves and try to fool, prey, on a grieving old woman? Frustrated and appalled at the commoner's ability to committ such sin, Phoebe crumpled up the latest letter and threw it in the fire.

"Your Majesty?"

Phoebe turned. Reychel was standing in the doorway, biting her lip. The Grand Duchess was unsure how long her trusted confidant had been there, watching her.

"I do not mean to disturb you, but there is another young lady..."

"No," Phoebe snapped, resting a palm to her temple, staving off a headache. "No more letters from wicked young girls trying to take advantage of my poor heart."

Reychel's frown only deepened further. "But this young lady is requesting an in-person audience."

"I will NOT see her," Phoebe countered firmly.

Reychel grimaced. "Please, Your Majesty, surely you can withstand seeing just one more?"

"No, I can't! My heart can't take much more of this..." Phoebe sank into an armchair by the fire. "I will see no more girls claiming to be Monica. No more, Reychel - ever."

She conveyed through her tone how long she meant by 'no more - ever.' Nodding mutely, Reychel curtsied and backed out of the Grand Duchess's chambers.


The moment she was relieved of duty for the evening, Reychel headed out into the bustling Paris thoroughfares. She had sent the people she was to meet on ahead to one of the City of Love's most elegant nightclubs, promising to report back with word on her progress with the Grand Duchess. Reychel bit her lip again. They wouldn't like what she would have to tell them, but if she knew them - and knew them she did, one in particular...

Reychel entered the Neva Club, a French salon that held an ambience more befitting of a beatnik dive bar with its dim and intimate lighting. Her heart skipped into palpitations, in spite of itself, when she spotted one of the men she was supposed to meet from across the room and he waved her over.

Reychel plopped down at the table where the trio - two men and the beautiful young woman they had introduced her to that morning in the garden - were chatting in low tones.

"She has refused to meet or receive correspondence from any potential Monicas," Reychel recounted.

As predicted, the young one - Chandler - looked taken aback and dismayed. Ross, slightly less so, and it was he who immediately tried searching for a new end-around the Grand Duchess's moratorium. This strategy, of course, involved appealing to Reychel's... special fondness for the faux nobleman.

"Reychel... Josephina... my delicate Russian flower..." Taking her hand, Ross pressed earnest kisses to it, then began working his way up Reychel's forearm.

Reychel squirmed and not entirely in discomfort. She was momentarily turned on, in fact, enough that she only managed to get ahold of herself by the time Ross's lips had nearly reached the curve of her neck. "No!" she chirped, twisting away coyly.

"But my love..."

"No, no, no!" Reychel snipped, and she bopped Ross on the nose. "I've been burnt by you before!"

"Reychel," Chandler took over the persuasion, sending Ross a chastising look to control himself. Next to the younger man, Mona was barely able to mask her amusement. "Isn't there someway you can allow us to at least get close to the Grand Duchess - without requesting an audience?"

Reychel thought for a moment. Finally, she procured three tickets from the folds of her dress. "These were meant for the other servants in the house, but they have to stay behind to clean and prepare the manor. Her Majesty is a frequent patron of the Russian ballet - we never miss it!" And she sent a pointed wink in Ross's direction.

Ross took one look at the tickets and became so excited and exuberant that he leapt from his chair, pulled Reychel close and gave her a deep kiss of gratitude on the mouth. Chandler and Mona shared bemused looks as the Duchess's lady's maid actually melted into the kiss and returned it; when Reychel drew away, she seemed a little dazed. She shook her head as though she was waterlogged, suddenly seeming to remember herself.

"Ross..." she pleaded. "Don't do this..."

"I happen to think you make a fine couple," Mona voiced her opinion, now allowing herself that mirthful smirk.

"Oh, no we aren't! Wouldn't be!" Reychel caught herself, blushing, flustered.

Ross smiled. "She thinks that I absconded with some of her jewelry when we were together..."

"I don't think Ross Popov! I know!" Reychel upturned her nose.

Ross dared to kiss her hand. "Reychel, my sweet: save me a seat in the theatre bar tomorrow night?"

After a long moment, Reychel finally smiled. "... All right!" she giggled. Daring to peck Ross on the cheek, she waved to the other two and scampered away.

Ross rubbed his hands together with glee. "Tomorrow night, Mona, you shall do away with all of Her Majesty's woes!"

Mona smiled weakly. "I hope so. And hopefully, she'll have answers for me."

"Do you really think Reychel will be able to get us into the private box?" Chandler asked Ross.

Ross nodded. Given the last time Chandler had trusted Ross with anything, particular when it had involved tickets, they had been shot at and nearly arrested before being forced to jump off a moving train. Hopefully, the ballet wouldn't cause them nearly so many troubles.

Scanning the near-darkness of this Parisian nightclub, Chandler thought he saw something flash in the gloom and he tensed. Speaking of trouble...

"Come on," he took Mona's arm. "Time to a do a little bar-hopping." He and Ross shared a meaningful look in which both understood why they were really changing venues. But they needn't worry Mona unneccessarily.

Ross quickly gathered up his effects to follow his friends out. In his haste, he left the ballet tickets behind on the small bistro table.

A few moments later, a figure emerged from out of the gloom, fingering and eventually picking up the tickets. Studying them curiously, he allowed himself the barest hint of a smile even as his eyes grew ever colder with determination.

He had his Russian beauty. Right where he wanted her.


Back at their Parisian hotel later that night, Mona awoke with a start from a nightmare that left her screaming. Her cries of distress summoned Chandler from all the way down the hall. It took her a moment or two to let him in, her entire body was trembling so badly from the sights foisted on her by her subconscious: a dark and dank cellar. Booted feet descending the stair, backlit by a flood of light. The shadowy glint of a rifle barrel, lifting up and poised to fire...

Chandler only just managed to absorb all of this from amidst Mona's hysterical babbling, as he held her and rocked her and stroked her hair. "It's all right..." he murmured, unnerved by how... right it felt, to hold her like this. "You're safe now..."

Stepping back out of his arms, Mona sniffled and wiped at her eyes. "Everyone thinks that I am her, everyone is so convinced I am her... and yet I kind of wish that I had known her." She smiled weakly. "Weird, right?"

Chandler shook his head. "It's not weird," he insisted. "The royals were... viewed as being removed from the people. Aloof. They were seen as these entities that existed far above us all. That's part of the reason, I think, why the people rose up." He chewed on his bottom lip. Taking Mona's hands in his, he guided her back over to her bed and then, suddenly feeling awkward about sitting down beside her, opted to sit on the floor instead. "What I'm trying to say is that no one really knew them, or Monica. Hell, I didn't know her." He bit his lip again. "... But I did meet her once."

He watched as Mona's eyes expanded. "You did?"

OK, maybe meet was too strong a word. "I saw her once," he amended.

"When?" Mona asked, strangely breathless, eager to hear the story.

Chandler clumsily cleared his throat. He had never told anyone this story before - not even Ross. For some reason, it had felt intensely personal, like it should belong to him and him alone. For a thief with nothing, laying claim on anything to call your own was a rare feat indeed, and whatever you could lay claim on, you guarded covetously. Still, trapped in Mona's shining sapphire eyes, Chandler haltingly began:

"It was June. I was still small - maybe 10." A beat and a small and wistful smile escaped onto his face. "I still think of that day now and then. A parade... and a girl... and a crowd of thousands." He became more animated in his raconteur, as he painted a picture of the memory. "She sat straight, as a Queen. Only eight, but so proud and serene. How they cheered... how I stared... in that crowd of thousands. And I started to run, and to call out her name, as the crowd on the road went wild. I reached out with my hand and looked up... and then she smiled... The parade traveled on. With the sun in my eyes, she was gone. But if I were still ten... in that crowd of thousands... I'd find her again..." Lost in the recollection, he flushed when he caught how softly Mona was staring at him.

"You make me feel like I was there too."

Chandler chuckled, smiling kindly at her praise. "Maybe you were. Make it part of your story." After all, any little thing that could convince the Grand Duchess tomorrow would help. Chandler didn't even mind if Mona co-opted his story - it would only add to the believability.

Mona's full and bow lips squirmed thoughtfully, and then she began to adapt the tale for her own purposes:

"A parade... passing by... It was hot, not a cloud in the sky... Then a boy... caught my eye..." She smirked at Chandler fondly. "In that crowd of thousands. He was thin." Her smirk broadened mischievously. "Not too clean. There were guards but he dodged in between... Yes, he made himself seen... In that crowd of thousands..." A trance-like look came over her face just then, as if she was... "Then he started to run and to call out my name in the sun and the heat and crowd. And I tried not to smile, but I smiled... and then..." Mona gasped; abruptly looking near tears. "He bowed..."

Chandler smiled and nodded along for a moment, until he did an auditory double take. Wait a minute: he had bowed to the princess, that day, only...

"I didn't tell you that."

"You didn't have to," Mona breathed in a hoarse whisper, turning to him by slow degrees. "... I remember!..."

Stumbling up off the floor, Chandler gawped at her as it dawned on him: pretty much completely by accident, he had found the long-lost princess of all Imperial Russia. She was... she was...

"The parade traveled on. With the sun in my eyes, you were gone," they finished telling the story - their story - together. "But I knew... even then... in that crowd of thousands... I'd find you... again..."

Reverently, Chandler knelt before her, now knowing he was truly in the presence of royalty. "... Your Highness..."

"Please don't," Mona whispered hoarsely, taking him by the arms and helping him to his feet.

She suddenly noted how she was holding him and shyly lifting her head, the pair gazed into each other's eyes. Slowly, Chandler bent towards her, and Mona felt herself pucker her lips slightly, knowing that if he kissed her, she would let him. That poor street urchin boy who had made such an impression on her, even made a cameo appearance in her dreams sometimes... turns out it was this handsome man in her arms.

Before their lips could touch, Chandler reluctantly stepped away. "... I should go," he mumbled.

And he staggered from the hotel room, the beautiful Princess Monica staring after him.


Chandler slapped a palm onto the wall's varnished wood, out in the hall. He could feel himself shaking; he had chills, even as a warmth he most definitely should not be feeling was threatening to overtake his chest.

"Just come from Mona's room?"

He glanced up and turned to see Ross striding down the hall towards him; he was still in his day clothes, now noticeably disheveled.

"Where were you?" Chandler grunted, not taking kindly to whatever Ross was insinuating at all. He smirked, though it was half-hearted, at how Ross tellingly flushed.

"It's not important," the fake nobleman waved away. He nodded towards Mona's door. "A last little bit of coaching can't hurt. She'll need every bit of it if she's going to convince Phoebe Althea that she's the princess..."

"Don't you get it, Ross?!" Chandler hollered, seizing the man by his arms and shaking him. "Ross - she is the princess!"

Ross just nodded. "Good. Half of convincing someone else is convincing herself."

"No, you don't understand - Mona really is the Princess Monica! Monichivna!"

A long beat. Then:

"... You drank too much schnaps, didn't you?"

Chandler growled. "Ross, we actually found and brought true royalty to Paris. Mona - Monica - won't need to convince anyone of anything because she actually is who we were trying to pass her off as!" And he told Ross about meeting the princess as a boy, then Monica's - Mona's - version, and how the stories lined up. When he had finished, Ross was staring in wonder.

"We're going to get the reward money..." he breathed, elation stealing onto his features.

"And we won't even have tricked anybody!" Chandler crowed. He felt himself oddly bristle at how...good it felt to say that.

There was a long silence.

"So... what now?" Chandler glanced up to see Ross searching his face, almost too knowingly and with far too much sympathy.

Ignoring the aching pang in his own chest, the young con artist waved the question away.

"Nothing has changed. We bring Monica to the Grand Duchess, reunite them, and then..." He faltered.

"And then...?" Ross prompted after a moment.

Chandler shook his head. "And then nothing." A pause. "And then we continue on." Whether that was together or not, or even to where, he didn't know. There could be no going back to Russia, after all. It would be a life on the run, constantly looking over his shoulder, but that was all right. Chandler was used to that life.

And Monica would be with her family. That damn locket of hers had been right all along.

Paris holds the key to her past... Now, princess, I've found you at last... No more pretend - you'll be gone: that's the end...

At what should have been his greatest moment of triumph, Chandler stumbled back to his hotel room, feeling and fearing the worst.