He had to win her back and make her forgive the ugly words he'd spoken. He had been blind and arrogant, so enmeshed in the past that he had turned away from the future. He had betrayed her in a manner no ordinary person would ever forgive.

But Daisy wasn't ordinary. Loving was as natural to her as breathing. She was no more capable of withholding her love than she was of deliberately hurting someone. He'd throw himself on the mercy of her sweetness and generosity. He'd take advantage of her tender, loving heart. There would be no more secrets from her. He'd tell her everything he felt, and if that didn't soften her to him, he'd remind her of those sacred vows they'd spoken. He'd play upon her sympathies, bully her, make love to her until she no longer remembered that he'd betrayed her. He'd remind her that she was a Markov now, and Markov women stuck by their men, even when those men didn't deserve it.

The window of the trailer was still dark. He decided he'd better let her sleep for now and give her time to recover, but when morning came, he'd do whatever was necessary to win her back.

The crowd left the big top, and he set to work. As the top came down, he wanted to prove his love to her, give her some tangible sign that everything would be different between them. He glanced at the darkened trailer window, then raced for his truck. Ten minutes later, he found an all-night convenience store.

The selection was limited, but he filled his arms with everything he could find: a child's box of animal crackers, a blue plastic rattle and fluffy yellow duck, a paperback copy of Dr. Spock, a plastic bib printed with a lop-eared rabbit, fruit juice, and a box of oatmeal because she had to eat well.

He sped back to the circus with his offerings, and the sack tore as he snatched it from the front seat. He held it together in his big hands and ran toward the trailer. When she saw all this she'd understand what she meant to him. What their baby meant. She'd know how much he loved her.

He dropped the rattle as he twisted the knob on the door. The plastic bounced once on the metal step and then rolled into the grass. He rushed inside.

She was gone.

22.

Max Petroff glared at Alex. "Why are you wasting your time looking for her here? I told you I'd get in touch with you if she contacted us."

Alex stared blindly out the window that overlooked Central Park and searched for a good answer. He couldn't remember her the last time he'd had a decent meal or slept more than a few hours without jolting awake. His stomach was giving him trouble, he'd lost weight, and he knew he looked like hell.

It had been a month since Daisy had run away, and he was no closer to locating her today than he'd been that night she'd fled. As he'd chased one lead after another, he'd missed more performances than he could count, but neither he nor the detective he'd hired had come up with anything.

Max had given him a list of the names of everyone he knew that Daisy might contact, and Alex had spoken with each of them, but it was as if she'd slipped off the edge of the earth. He only prayed her angel's wings were keeping her aloft.

He turned slowly to face Max. "I thought you might have missed something. She didn't have more than a hundred dollars on her when she left."

Amelia spoke from the couch. "Really, Alex. Do you think Max would keep information from you after all the work he did to get the two of you together?"

Amelia's arch manner always set his teeth on edge, and with his nerves stretched so taut they were ready to snap, he couldn't conceal his dislike. "The fact is, my wife has disappeared, and nobody seems to know a damned thing about it."

"Calm down, Alex. We're just as worried as you are."

"If you ask me," Amelia said, "you should question that worker who saw her last."

Alex had cross-examined Al Porter until he was convinced the old man had nothing more to tell him. While Alex had been making his foolish trip to the convenience store, Al had seen Daisy standing on the side of the highway flagging down an eighteen-wheeler. She'd been wearing jeans and carrying Alex's small valise.

"I can't believe she hitchhiked," Max said. "She could have been murdered."

That terrifying possibility had kept Alex dry-mouthed with fear for three days until Jack had come rushing out of the red wagon one afternoon with the news that he'd just spoken with Daisy on the telephone. She had called to make certain the menagerie animals were all right. When Jack pressed her to tell him where she was, she'd hung up on him. She hadn't asked about Alex.

He'd cursed the circumstances that had kept him from being in the red wagon when she called. Then he'd remembered the half dozen times he'd answered the telephone only to hear a click at the other end. It must have been her. She'd been waiting for someone else to answer so she didn't have to talk to him.

Max had begun to pace. "I can't understand why the police aren't taking this more seriously."

"Because she disappeared voluntarily."

"But anything could have happened to her since then. She's totally incapable of taking care of herself."

"That's not true. Daisy's smart, and she's not afraid of hard work."

Max dismissed his comments. Despite the incident he'd witnessed with Sinjun, he still saw his daughter as incompetent and frivolous. "I have friends in the FBI, and it's high time I contacted a few of them."

"Hundreds of witnesses saw what happened in the ring that night. The police believe she had ample reason for disappearing."

"That was an accident, and for all her faults, Daisy isn't vindictive. She'd never hold it against you. No, Alex. There has to be foul play involved, and I'm not letting you talk me out of this any longer. I'm calling the FBI today."

Alex had never told Max the entire truth, and now he understood why he'd felt compelled to come here today. By holding back the whole story, he was leaving out information that might give either Max or Amelia some additional idea about where Daisy could have gone. He hated the idea of revealing something so ugly about himself, but his pride wasn't nearly as important as Daisy's safety and the well-being of his child.

As he faced the older man, he saw how Max had aged in the past month. Some of the starch had left his diplomat's spine. His movements seemed slower, his voice a bit less firm. In his own way, narrow and judgmental as Alex believed it to be, Max did love Daisy, and he was suffering.

Alex gazed for a moment at the silver samovar he'd located for Max in a Paris gallery. It had been designed by Peter Carl Faberge for Czar Alexander III and was imprinted with the two-headed Russian imperial eagle. The dealer had told Alex it was made in 1886, but the detail in the work made Alex place it closer to 1890.

Contemplating the genius of Faberge was easier than thinking about what he needed to tell Max. He shoved his hands in the pockets of his slacks, then drew them out. He cleared his throat. "Daisy had more to be upset about than what I did to her with the whip."

The older man grew instantly alert. "Oh?"

"She's pregnant."

"I told you so," Amelia said from the couch.

Max and Amelia shared a conspiratorial look that made Alex instantly alert. Max regarded her fondly. "You did tell me, didn't you, my dear."

"And Alex behaved badly when he heard the news."

Amelia was annoying, but she wasn't stupid, and the old pain struck, strong and sharp. "I behaved badly," he agreed.

Amelia regarded her husband smugly. "I told you that that would happen, too." would happen, too."

Alex swallowed hard before he forced out the ugly words. "I ordered her to have an abortion."

Max's lips pinched. "You didn't."

"You can't say anything to me I haven't already said to myself."

"Do you still feel that way, about it?"

"Of course, he doesn't," Amelia said. "You only have to look at him to see that. Guilt's hanging over him like a bad hairdo." She rose from the couch. "I'm late for my facial. You two will have to sort this out for yourselves. Congratulations, Max."

Alex noted both Amelia's final words and the telling smile she gave Max. He stared at her as she left the room and knew that something important had passed between them.

"Is Amelia right?" Max demanded. "Have you changed your mind?"

"I didn't mean it when I said it. She'd scared the hell out of me, and I was running on adrenaline." He studied Max. "Amelia wasn't surprised to hear about Daisy's pregnancy, yet she knew she was taking birth control pills. Why is that?"

Max walked over to a walnut cabinet where he gazed through the glass doors at his porcelain collection. "We were both hoping, that's all."

"You're lying, damn it! Daisy told me Amelia filled the prescription for her. Tell me the truth."

"It was-we did what we thought was best."

A great stillness fell over Alex. He thought of the small compartmentalized compacts that held Daisy's pills. As if he were seeing them for the first time, he remembered that the pills had been unprotected. In an age when so many medications were in blister packs, these pills hadn't been covered by anything more than the lid of the compact.

The ever-present constriction in his chest tightened. Once again he had failed to trust his wife, and once again he'd been wrong. "You planned this, didn't you; just like you planned everything else. Somehow you substituted pills."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"The hell you don't. The truth, Max. I want it now."

The older man seemed to collapse. His knees bent, and he slumped down into the chair nearest him. "Don't you see? It was my duty."

"Your duty. Of course that's how you'd see it. I can't believe I was so stupid. I've always known how obsessed you were with family history, but it never occurred to me that you'd do something like this." Bitterness welled in his stomach. From the beginning, he and Daisy had been nothing but puppets serving Max's obsession with the past.

"Something like what? By God, you should be grateful." Max erupted from the chair. His finger shook as he pointed it toward Alex. "For a man who's an historian, you have no sense of your own lineage. You're the great-grandson of the czar!"

"I'm a Markov. That's the only family history that means anything to me."

"A worthless band of vagabonds. Vagabonds, do you hear me? You're a Romanov, and it's your duty to have a child. But you wanted no part of it, did you?"

"It was my decision, not yours!"

"This is bigger than some selfish whim."

"When she told me she was pregnant, I thought she'd done it deliberately. I accused her of lying, you bastard!"

Max winced, and he lost some of his righteous indignation. "Look at it from my viewpoint. I only had six months, and I had to act quickly. As much as I might wish that you'd fall in love with her, I could hardly expect a man with your intellectual gifts to be interested in a scatterbrain like my daughter in any way except sexually."

Alex felt sick. What must it have been like for his gentle, intelligent wife to have been shackled with a father who had so little respect for her? "That scatterbrain is smarter than both of us."

"There's no need to be polite."

"I'm not. You don't know your daughter at all."

"I know that I couldn't let this marriage end without doing my best to make sure there was a Romanov heir."

"It wasn't your decision."

"That's not exactly true. Throughout history, the Petroffs have always dedicated themselves to the greater good of the Romanovs, even when the Romanovs might disagree."

As Alex looked at Max, he realized Daisy's father wasn't quite sane on the subject. Max might be a reasonable man in all other aspects of his life, but not in this one.

"You were going to let the line die," Max said. "I couldn't allow that."

There was no point in arguing this particular topic any further. To Max, the child Daisy carried was a pawn, but the baby meant something far different to Alex, and he felt a father's instincts to protect it.

"What pills was she taking? What did you give her?"

"Nothing that would harm the baby. A child's fluoride pill, that's all." Max collapsed in the chair. "You have to find her before she does something stupid. What if she's gotten rid of it?"

Alex stared at the old man. Gradually, pity took the place of bitterness as he thought of all the years Max had wasted, all the chances he'd passed by to get to know his remarkable daughter.

"Nothing could make her do that. She has guts, Max. And she'll do whatever it takes to keep that baby safe."

Alex met the circus the next morning just as the first trucks were pulling into a lot in Chattanooga. As the days grew shorter and summer drew to an end, the circus was winding its way back south toward its winter quarters near Tampa, where they would play their last date during the final week of October. His sabbatical from the university wasn't up until January, and he'd planned to do some research in Ukraine before then. Now he didn't know what he'd do. Without Daisy, he didn't much care.

He automatically scanned the new lot and saw that it was hilly, with barely enough level space to put up the top. He was bleary-eyed from fatigue, but he welcomed the challenge of a bad lot. He knew it wouldn't take his mind off her-nothing could-but at least it would help the time pass.

Trey was driving his trailer on the morning jump, but he hadn't arrived yet, so Alex headed over to the cook tent for some of the bitterly potent coffee that would eat a hole in his already burning stomach. Before he could fill his cup, he heard a shrill, demanding trumpet. He cursed softly under his breath and headed for the elephants.

When he got there, he wasn't surprised to see that Neeco looked peeved. "Give me the hot shot back, Alex. Just one jab, and we can put an end to this bullshit."

Despite Neeco's bluster, Alex knew the elephant trainer had last his taste for the prod after his encounter with Sinjun. He liked to think that Daisy's ways with the animals had opened Neeco's eyes, because he was gentler with the elephants than he had been, and they were working better for him. Still, he needed to make sure Neeco understood that he couldn't go back to his old ways.

"As long as I'm boss, you're not using the prod again."

"Then get that little prick out of here."

Alex walked over to Tater and suffered the baby's embrace. The tip of the elephant's trunk poked beneath his shirt collar to sniff his neck, just as he'd done with Daisy. Alex untethered him and headed toward the spool truck, with Tater trotting behind.

When Daisy had disappeared, Tater had stopped eating, but Alex had been too entangled in his own private hell to notice. It was only as the small elephant's condition deteriorated that Neeco forced him to pay attention.

It didn't take him long to discover that the elephant found comfort in his presence, not because of anything Alex did, but because the baby associated him with Daisy. He started to eat again, and before long, he was following Alex around the lot as he'd once followed her.

The two of them made their way toward the spool truck, where the nylon was ready to be unrolled as soon as the location for the top was decided on. Brady had arrived there ahead of him, but he stepped aside as Alex approached. Alex didn't know what he'd have done without Brady. Along with Jack, Brady had helped take up the slack from his frequent absences and kept things running.

For the next few hours, Alex labored alongside the workers as they erected the top on the difficult terrain. He was still in the clothes he'd worn on the plane, but he didn't stop to change when Trey arrived with his trailer. Sweat soaked his blue oxford-cloth shirt, and he managed to rip his gray dress slacks, but he didn't care. The mind-numbing labor kept him from thinking.

When he could avoid it no longer, he headed to the trailer, with Tater close behind. He tethered the animal near the hay Digger had left, then hesitated as he approached the door. The trailer was filled with her scent, her touch, everything but her presence, and he hated going inside.

He did it anyway, and as he changed clothes, he was tortured with images of the way she'd looked as she'd rushed through the door with dirt-smeared cheeks, grubby clothes, straw clinging to her hair, and the gleam of accomplishment in her eyes. He wandered over to the refrigerator, but all he could find was a can of beer and a carton of yogurt Daisy had bought for herself. It had expired two weeks ago, but he couldn't bring himself to throw it away.

He grabbed the beer and carried it outside, popping the top as he walked over to Tater. The baby was keeping himself cool by sprinkling hay on his back. He picked up a fresh batch and, as a gesture of friendship, dusted Alex with it instead. It hadn't taken Alex long to figure out why Daisy'd always had hay stuck in her hair.

"I'll bet she misses you, fella," he said softly as he rubbed the elephant's trunk.

She would be missing Sinjun even more. There had been a strange bond between Daisy and the tiger, one he'd never understood. She'd loved working with the animals no one else had the patience to pay attention to: the troublesome baby elephant, the shy gorilla, the old, regal tiger. It must be hard for her not being around any of the animals she loved.

At that moment everything inside him went still. His skin crawled with gooseflesh, and he forgot to breathe. What made him think she wasn't with one of those animals?