Copyright

AVON

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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2016

Copyright © Gill Paul 2016

Gill Paul asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

Image of the Romanov family used in the Historical Afterward courtesy of the Library of Congress

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008102142

Ebook Edition © June 2016 ISBN: 9780008102159

Version: 2018-06-05

Praise for The Secret Wife

‘Meticulously researched and evocatively written, this sweeping story will keep a tight hold on your heartstrings until the final page’ Iona Grey

‘A marvellous story: gripping, romantic and evocative of a turbulent and fascinating time’ Lulu Taylor

‘Just magical. At the last line, tears rolled down my cheeks. Highly recommended’ Louise Beech

‘A heart-warming affirmation of the tenacity of human love’ Liz Trenow

‘Gill Paul has clearly done her research in this absorbing story that cleverly blends imagination with historical fact. The closeted and ultimately doomed Romanov family have always fascinated, especially the four grand duchesses, and the older strand of this dual narrative story is told by one of the girls’ secret loves. Tragic, touching and authentic-feeling’ Kate Riordan

‘This is an intriguing and involving book that explores a really fascinating period in time in a clever and highly enjoyable way. I was hooked into both timelines from the start’ Joanna Courtney

‘A beautiful and moving story, beautifully and movingly told. I read it in just two sittings … I enjoyed every page’ John Julius Norwich

Praise for Gill Paul’s other novels

‘A marvellous moving adventure, full of vivid colour and atmospheric detail’ Lulu Taylor

‘A stunning epic’ Claudia Carroll

‘A terrific adventure story, full of romance and atmospheric detail – a great escapist read’ Liz Trenow

‘A gripping historical read … with an ending which is at once uplifting and heartbreaking. I couldn’t put it down’ Julia Williams

‘A wonderful story of love, romance, bravery’ One More Page

‘A love story that will squeeze your heart tight – this is the perfect all-consuming summer read’ Random Things Through My Letterbox

‘I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book … Brilliantly written, with great descriptions about places and events’ Boon’s Bookshelf

‘It is full of emotions and so many details, but the details are described in a wonderfully colourful, engaging way … Brutally honest, and I can only imagine how much thorough research went into writing this book’ I Heart Chick Lit

‘A wonderfully imagined peek into the fabulous excesses of the Burton-Taylor relationship, from booze-fuelled spats to their intoxicating chemistry’ Hello magazine

‘A stunning new voice – I was hooked from the first sentence of the prologue. With beautifully drawn characters and sensitive detail – The Affair draws you in and you won’t want it to end. An accomplished, energetic, original new voice in fiction’ Kate Kerrigan

‘Loved Women and Children First. Interestingly it deals with the aftermath/guilt/angst of surviving Titanic – gripping read’ Chrissy Iley

‘A warm-hearted and engaging novel that breathes fresh life into the well-known tragedy of the Titanic’ Amanda Brookfield

‘Paul keeps the narrative up, making a virtue of pace’ Guardian

‘A sexy, pacy, thoroughly modern novel’ Ham & High

‘Enough twists and turns to keep even the most devious plotmaster turning the pages as rapidly as possible’ Middlesborough Evening Gazette

Dedication

For Richard, with love

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise for The Secret Wife

Dedication

The Romanov Family’s Connections

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four

Chapter Forty-Five

Chapter Forty-Six

Chapter Forty-Seven

Chapter Forty-Eight

Chapter Forty-Nine

Chapter Fifty

Chapter Fifty-One

Chapter Fifty-Two

Chapter Fifty-Three

Chapter Fifty-Four

Chapter Fifty-Five

Chapter Fifty-Six

Chapter Fifty-Seven

Chapter Fifty-Eight

Chapter Fifty-Nine

Chapter Sixty

Chapter Sixty-One

Chapter Sixty-Two

Chapter Sixty-Three

Chapter Sixty-Four

Chapter Sixty-Five

Chapter Sixty-Six

Chapter Sixty-Seven

Chapter Sixty-Eight

Historical Afterword

Sources

Acknowledgements

Enjoyed This Book? Read on for the Start of Gill Paul’s New Novel, Another Woman’s Husband.

About the Author

By the Same Author

About the Publisher

Prologue
Lake Akanabee, New York State, 19th July 2016

It was twenty-nine hours since Kitty Fisher had left her husband and in that time she had travelled 3,713 miles. The in-flight magazine had said there were 3,461 miles between London and New York, and the hire car’s Sat Nav told her she had driven 252 miles since leaving the airport. A whole ocean and half a state lay between her and Tom. She should have been upset but instead she felt numb.

Back in the UK it was four-thirty on a Sunday afternoon and she wondered what Tom was doing, then grimaced as she pictured him pottering around the house in his jogging bottoms and t-shirt. He would no doubt have called her closest friends, all innocence, asking if they knew where she was. How long would it take him to work out she had flown to America to look for the lakeside cabin she’d inherited from her great-grandfather?

She had been careful not to leave any paperwork behind so he didn’t have the address. Let him stew for a while. It served him right for his infidelity. She shuddered at the word, an involuntary image of the messages on his phone flashing into her brain. She was still in shock. Nothing felt real. Don’t think about it; stop thinking.

The woman on the Sat Nav was comfortingly sure of herself: ‘In two hundred yards take a left onto Big Brook Road.’ It felt nice to be told what to do; that’s what she needed when the rest of her life was falling apart. But a few minutes later the voice-lady seemed to get it wrong. ‘You have reached your destination’ she said, but all Kitty could see was dense forest lining the road on either side. She drove further but the voice urged her to ‘Turn around’.

Kitty got out of the car to explore on foot and, peering through the trees, discovered a track overgrown with waist-high grass and hanging branches. She consulted the map that had been sent with the cabin’s ownership documents and decided this must be it. The car’s paintwork would get scratched if she tried to drive down so she set off on foot, pushing her way through the thicket. There was a droning of insects and a strong smell of greenness, like lawn cuttings after rain. Before long she could see the steely glint of Lake Akanabee, with pinpricks of light dancing on the surface. When she reached the shore she looked around, squinting at her map. The cabin should have been right there.

And then she noticed a mound about twelve feet tall, camouflaged by creeping plants. It was thirty years since anyone had lived there and Kitty was prepared for the cabin to be reduced to a pile of rubble. Instead it was as if the forest had created a cocoon to protect it from the elements. Weeds wrapped themselves around the foundations, pushed in through broken windows and formed a carpet over the roof. The entrance was barely visible through a mass of twisted greenery. But the cabin’s location, nestled on a gentle slope just yards from the pebbly shore, was stunning.

She walked over to look more closely. A jetty sticking out into the lake had long since collapsed, leaving a few forlorn struts. A sapling had grown up through the four or five steps to the cabin’s porch, causing them to buckle and snap, and its roots tangled through the fractured wood like a nest of snakes. But the corrugated steel roof appeared to have stayed watertight, protecting the walls beneath. ‘Concrete foundations,’ she noted.

Treading with care, Kitty climbed onto the porch, where rusty chains hanging from the ceiling and some fractured planks on the floor indicated there had once been a swing seat. She imagined her great-grandfather sitting there, looking out at the view, perhaps with a beer in his hand. Pushing aside the foliage, she reached the cabin door and found it wasn’t locked. Inside it was dim and musty, with a smell of damp mushrooms and old wood. Dust motes danced in shafts of light pouring through gaps in the creepers. When her eyes adjusted, Kitty saw there was one large room with a rusty stove, an old iron bed topped by a mouldy mattress, a wooden desk, and heaps of rubbish everywhere: yellowed newspapers, ancient cans of food and a pair of perished rubber galoshes.

She stepped carefully across the room. Through a doorway there was a bathroom with a stained tub, basin and toilet; a cobweb-covered shaving brush nestled on a shelf. To her astonishment, the toilet flushed when she pulled the handle, and after a low creaking sound dark water came out of the tap. She guessed they must be hooked up to a water source on the hill behind and that there was a below-ground septic tank, but it must be at least thirty years since that tank was last emptied.

She turned back into the bed-cum-sitting room and walked around, checking the condition of the walls and ceiling. Thankfully the floor held firm underfoot. She reckoned she could even stay the night once she’d cleared the rubble and torn back the jungle to let in some air.

Out on the porch she took in the view. A couple of silver birch trees stood between her and the beach, which was lapped by tiny waves. No signs of human habitation were visible, and no traffic sound intruded; the opposite shore about a mile away was thick with forest. It was just her and the trees and the lake, and it was glorious.

Kitty walked back to the car to retrieve her bags and drag them down the track, flattening the grass in her wake. She ate a salt beef and gherkin sandwich from the selection she had bought at the airport, drank a can of Seven-Up, then donned some sturdy gloves to start tearing at the creepers that smothered her cabin. Already it felt like hers, she noted. Already she was falling in love with it.

One of the plants was what she and her school friends called ‘sticky willy’. They used to try and stick it on each other’s backs without being noticed. Another type of creeper filled the air with spores that tickled the back of her throat. She was careful not to let any leaves touch her skin because she knew they had poison ivy in America but she wasn’t sure what it looked like. A swarm of tiny black flies rose into the air and floated away in the breeze. She worked with grim determination, hoping that by totally exhausting her muscles she could quell the panicky thoughts that clamoured in her brain. Don’t think about Tom. Stop thinking. She had brought her mobile phone and laptop through force of twenty-first-century habit, but both were switched off. She couldn’t bear to listen to his excuses and self-justifications, simply didn’t want to deal with any of it.

When she had yanked back most of the overgrowth, she saw that the weathered wooden slats made the cabin look like an organic part of the wooded landscape. Despite having just one room it was big, perhaps twenty feet long, with windows all around, and the sloping roof had a little chimney sticking out. She went inside again and loaded debris into some heavy-duty bin bags she’d brought along, stopping to read a few yellowed news headlines: the accident at the Chernobyl power plant in Russia; the explosion of the Challenger space shuttle. The springs on the bed had long gone, so she hauled it outside to dispose of later then unrolled the sleeping bag she had brought and spread it in one corner.

By the time she finished, the sun was lowering over the lake and birds were squawking loudly, expending their final burst of energy for the day. She went to sit on the porch to listen. A whip-poor-will called, and it sounded for all the world like a wolf whistle. Shadowy bats zipped by, and frogs croaked in the distance.

Suddenly she saw something glint under the fractured wood of the steps, nestled amongst the tree roots. She lay down full length stretching her arm to grasp it and was immediately surprised by the weight of the object. She pulled it out and saw it was a golden oval, less than an inch long, studded with tiny coloured jewels – blue, pink and amber – set within swirls of gold tendrils, like flowers on a vine. It looked expensive. On the back she could make out some scratched engraving but it had been rubbed away over the years. There was a hole in the top and she assumed it had been threaded on a chain. Someone must have been upset to lose such a stunning pendant. She’d never seen anything quite like it.

Kitty slipped it deep into the pocket of her jeans and opened another airport sandwich, turkey and salad this time. She ate it for supper, washed down with a miniature bottle of Chenin Blanc she’d brought from the plane, as she sat with her legs dangling off the edge of the porch. In front of her, the trees swayed in a slight breeze and the smooth surface of the lake reflected the dramatic colours of the sky, changing from pale pink to mauve to gold and then bronze, as vivid and surreal as the painted opening title shots of a Hollywood movie.

Chapter One
Tsarskoe Selo, Russia, September 1914

Dmitri Malama drifted to consciousness from a deep slumber, vaguely aware of murmuring voices and the whisper of a cool breeze on his face. He had a filthy headache, a nagging, gnawing pain behind the temples, which was aggravated by the brightness of the light. Suddenly he remembered he was in a hospital ward. He’d been brought there the previous evening and the last thing he recalled was a nurse giving him laudanum swirled in water.

And then he remembered his leg: had they amputated it in the night? Ever since he’d been injured at the front he’d lived in fear that infection would set in and he would lose it. He opened his eyes and raised himself onto his elbows to look: there were two shapes. He flicked back the sheet and was hugely relieved to see his left leg encased in bandages but still very much present. He wiggled his toes to check then sank onto the pillow again, trying to ignore the different kinds of pain from his leg, his head and his gut.

At least he had two legs. Without them he could no longer have served his country. He’d have been sent home to live with his mother and father, fit for nothing, a pitiful creature hobbling along on a wooden stump.

‘You’re awake. Would you like something to eat?’ A dumpy nurse with the shadow of a moustache sat by his bed and, without waiting for an answer, offered a spoonful of gruel. His stomach heaved and he turned his head away. ‘Very well, I’ll come back later,’ she said, touching his forehead briefly with cool fingers.

He closed his eyes and drifted into a half dream state. He could hear sounds in the ward around him but his head was heavy as lead, his thoughts a jumble of images: of the war, of his friend Malevich shot and bleeding on the grass, of his sisters, of home.

In the background he heard the tinkle of girlish laughter. It didn’t sound like the plain nurse who had tended him earlier. He opened his eyes slightly and saw the tall, slender shapes of two young nurses in glowing white headdresses and long shapeless gowns. If he’d just awoken for the first time in that place, he might have feared he had died and was seeing angels.

‘I know you,’ one of the angels said, gliding over to his bedside. ‘You were in the imperial guard at the Peterhof Palace. Weren’t you the one who dived into the sea to rescue a dog?’

Her voice was low and pretty. As she came closer, he realised with a start that she was Grand Duchess Tatiana, the second daughter of Tsar Nicholas. While Olga, the eldest, looked like her father, Tatiana had her mother’s faintly oriental bone structure. She was gazing at him with intense grey-violet eyes, waiting for an answer.

‘Yes, I’m afraid that was me. My uniform was ruined, my captain was furious, and the dog was a stray who shook himself down and ran off without so much as a thank-you.’ He smiled. ‘I’m surprised you heard about it, Your Imperial Highness.’

She returned his smile. ‘I heard some guards discussing it and asked them to point you out. You must be a dog lover.’

‘Very much so. I have two at home, a Borzoi and a Laika. They’re scamps but I miss them terribly.’

‘My father is fond of Borzois. He had one he said was more intelligent than most human beings, and he was grief-stricken when it died.’ She wrinkled her nose prettily. ‘But the ones we keep in the kennels bark constantly. I’d love to have a dog of my own in the palace but it would have to be quieter. Perhaps you could advise?’

He felt honoured that a grand duchess was conversing with him in this natural, everyday fashion. ‘Of course, Your Imperial Highness. Do you prefer small or large dogs?’

‘I think small. And there’s no need to call me “Your Imperial Highness”. I am a nurse here, not a royal. Mama, my sister Olga and I are all training as nurses to help the war effort. These days I am known as “Nurse Romanova Three”, while they are One and Two.’

He chuckled at the impersonal moniker. ‘Do you like Terriers, Nurse Romanova Three? The Black Russian Terrier is a clever dog and not too boisterous. Spaniels are also popular with ladies for their silky coats. And then there are small breeds of Bulldog. I rather like French Bulldogs.’

She clapped her hands. “Oh yes! I love those serious wrinkled faces, as if they have the cares of the world on their shoulders.”

Her sister Olga, the other angel in white, called to say she was going through to the next ward. Dmitri expected Tatiana to follow but instead she lingered.

‘I see you have a leg wound,’ she said. ‘Is it terribly painful? Can I get you anything?’

He shook his head. ‘Thank you, I’m fine. I’m just annoyed that I was careless enough to get myself wounded in the first week of war.’

‘Is it a bullet wound?’

He thought back to the moment when he ran out to collect Malevich from the field, dragging him by his collar. In retrospect he’d felt a blow on his thigh but thought nothing of it as he concentrated on saving his friend. ‘Yes. I didn’t realise I’d been hit until we got back to base. It was odd because the pain and bleeding didn’t start until then.’ All of a sudden the blood had begun to gush and he’d collapsed on the grass. It was a mystery why it hadn’t bled earlier, out on the field – as if one of the saints was looking after him. After his collapse he remembered feeling very hot and starting to shiver, his teeth clenched, and they’d ripped off his trousers to see a ragged hole going all the way through his left thigh and grazing the right. Fortunately the bullet had not lodged inside. Perhaps that’s what had enabled surgeons to save the leg. Over the last weeks he’d been transported back from the front at Gumbinnen, East Prussia, via various medical stations, to the Catherine Palace in St Petersburg, where the grand staterooms had been converted into wards.

Tatiana asked his regiment and exclaimed when she heard he was in the 8th Voznesensk Uhlans: ‘You are one of my own men! I must take especially good care of you.’ Both Olga and Tatiana had been given honorary command of their own regiments on their fourteenth birthdays.

‘It’s a great honour to be nursed by my colonel.’ He grinned. ‘But I suppose I will have to behave myself with you around.’

They chatted for a while about the war, triggered only a few weeks earlier by the German Kaiser’s rampant militarism. It was still a shock to Dmitri, and Tatiana told him it was even more shocking to them as they had so many German relatives, their mother having been born there. She called the Kaiser a swine. Olga glanced in to look for her sister and made a brief, impatient gesture with outspread hands.

‘I must get to work,’ Tatiana said. ‘I am supposed to accompany a more experienced nurse and she will be waiting. But tell me, is there anything I can do to make your stay more comfortable?’

‘I don’t suppose you could lend me a book? Any book at all. I love to read.’ He hoped he wasn’t being presumptuous. ‘I would return it, of course.’

She seemed delighted. ‘I too love reading. Who are your favourite authors?’

He hesitated. So many good writers these days were anti-tsarist: Alexander Kuprin, Maxim Gorky, Ivan Bunin … he must choose from an earlier era: ‘Tolstoy, of course. And Chekhov.’

‘I agree with you,’ she said. ‘I much prefer the classics to the modern writers. My absolute favourite is Turgenev. Have you read Fathers and Sons?’

Dmitri was surprised, as the novel dealt with the younger generation rejecting the values of the old aristocratic order. ‘Not since I was a boy. I love the poetry of Turgenev’s language. He conjures images that stir the soul.’

She was amused: ‘You sound like a writer yourself.’

He made a face. ‘I used to keep a journal as a youth but not for a long while now. It was rather whining and self-indulgent.’

‘Really? I keep a journal. I try to describe events of the day truthfully. I like the challenge of finding exactly the right words and often they come to me when I am doing something completely different: working here in the hospital, or doing my embroidery, or …’ She stopped, colouring slightly.

He liked the way she spoke, slowly, considering her words, and the intelligence he could see in her eyes. ‘In that case you have the instincts of a writer.’

She laughed. ‘Oh, I could hardly pretend … no one reads my journal but me.’

‘Without an audience, you can express your truest feelings. I used to find writing very useful for understanding myself. You know how sometimes you react instinctively in ways that puzzle you? You think: why am I angry? Why does that make me sad? It’s fascinating to unravel the tiny spark that provoked the reaction, perhaps just an unintended nuance, something that struck a chord and triggered the emotion of a much earlier experience … human nature is the most compelling study of all.’ He stopped, feeling he was talking too much and perhaps boring her, but she seemed to be listening intently.

‘I know exactly what you mean,’ she said, biting her lip as if some example were flitting unseen through her mind.

Dmitri watched, thinking what an open, natural girl she appeared to be. He had expected the tsar’s daughters to be haughty and sophisticated, like the grandest ladies of the St Petersburg aristocracy, but Tatiana did not seem to have any airs. She spoke to him as if to an equal.

‘Nurse Romanova Three,’ a woman called from the doorway.

‘I’m coming, Sister Chebotareva.’ She gave Dmitri a quick, warm smile, said, ‘Till tomorrow,’ then hurried from the ward.

Dmitri watched her go with a smile on his lips, having completely forgotten his pain. He wondered what age Tatiana must be, then worked out that she was seventeen, six years younger than him. In her manner she seemed younger still. And she was much more beautiful than he had ever imagined when he’d seen her from a distance. Her skin was creamy perfection, her eyes like deep pools, her lips stained as if by wild berries … If she had not been a Romanov, Dmitri would have flirted with her. Over his years in the imperial guard he had made a number of conquests amongst the young titled ladies of St Petersburg, although none had captured his interest for long. But here, he thought, here was a girl he could easily fall in love with.

Chapter Two

Next morning, Dmitri opened his eyes and gazed up at the ceiling, where cupids, griffins, and other mythological creatures danced in cornflower-blue semicircles. A vast chandelier of multiple tiers glinted in the sunlight. The walls were of white silk with delicately painted blue flowers. He was in the Blue Drawing Room of the Catherine Palace, a place he had sometimes glanced into when serving in the imperial guard. His neighbour in the next bed, a man named Stepanov, told him that the staterooms of the Winter Palace had also been converted into makeshift wards for wounded officers. Surfaces had been cleared of ornament and the priceless furniture replaced by hospital beds, but the andirons and fireguard were gilded bronze, and the elaborate clock on the mantel showed the Greek gods Bacchus and Momus in marble and bronze. The wealth of the Romanovs was unfathomable.

The royal family no longer lived in the Catherine Palace, preferring the relative intimacy of the nearby Alexander Palace in winter, the Peterhof in summer, and the extravagant luxury of the royal yacht, Standart, or their Crimean palace at Livadia for holidays. Most of the stately palaces lining the Baltic shores in St Petersburg, where Dmitri had worked, were kept for ceremonial purposes: to entertain visiting dignitaries, and as the setting for state occasions.

What must it be like to grow up with such limitless wealth, Dmitri wondered? To have an elephant house and Chinese theatre in your garden, to be driven around in shiny new automobiles by uniformed chauffeurs, to be able to buy whatever your heart desired? Tatiana seemed an unspoiled girl, but the sheer grandeur of her upbringing must set her apart. He knew her clothes were made by French couturiers and her hats shipped from a fashionable store in London; that her perfume came from Brocard & Co and her shoes from Henry Weiss. He had often noticed deliveries arriving by special messenger. Although he was the son of an army general, a member of a well-connected upper-class family, surely he couldn’t ever hope to become close to Tatiana? It was impossible, wasn’t it?

He watched the clock, wondering what time she would arrive. The previous day it had been mid morning when she stopped by his bed. He managed to eat some breakfast and had his dressing changed by the moustached nurse. She brought him a bowl of water and a razor and he shaved then combed his hair, keen to look presentable for Tatiana’s visit.

She bounced in at ten, her cheeks flushed from hurrying, three books tucked under her arm.

‘I hope I didn’t keep you waiting. I had lessons to attend, then I had to go to the Znamenie Church to pray for our soldiers. Here – would any of these interest you?’ She placed the books on the bedcover then pulled up a chair and sat by his bed.

‘How kind of you, Nurse Romanova Three.’ Dmitri smiled. He picked up the first book: Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons. ‘I will enjoy re-visiting this to see if it lives up to memory.’ She watched eagerly as he examined the others. ‘I’ve never read Tolstoy’s Kreutzer Sonata so I look forward to that. And Gorky’s short stories are perfect: I remember one about the cutting of a tunnel through a mountain – have you read it?’

‘Ah, that was so haunting. Do you think it can be true that mountains have a spirit that can harm those who damage them?’ Her eyes looked grey today, with flecks of violet round the edge of the irises. A tendril of auburn hair had slipped from the side of her white headdress.

‘I remember seeing such a tunnel being dug and thinking that it looked like an offence against nature. Gorky has captured that sense of a wound being inflicted. Thank you for the books. I will stop being such a disruptive, demanding patient now I am so well occupied.’ He stroked the expensive Morocco leather binding.

She glanced around, unsure whether to believe him, then realised he was pulling her leg. ‘Perhaps we might discuss them when you finish. I love to talk about books. I often write critiques of them in my journal.’

‘I can’t imagine when you find time to write your journal. It sounds as though your days are fully occupied: nurse, grand duchess, colonel …’ He was fishing, eager to know more about her life.

‘I write every evening before bedtime. In fact, I wrote about you last night.’ She coloured. ‘Mama tells me you are a hero, that you rescued a wounded officer while under enemy fire. She is going to award you the Golden Arms sword.’

Dmitri was surprised: ‘It’s an insurance policy all soldiers follow. If you see a chance, you slip out to bring back the wounded, hoping that one day someone will do the same for you.’ He didn’t tell her the officer was a friend, and that he still had no word about whether Malevich had survived his wounds. He knew he would choke up if he spoke of it.

‘Nevertheless, I’m sure they don’t give bravery awards to just anyone. I suspect you are being modest. You have a heroic air.’ Her eyes were sparkling.

Now he laughed. ‘I’m not sure what a heroic air is! My father was a genuine hero. He was a cavalry general in Tsar Alexander’s army, who served in many campaigns, and in 1904 became Viceroy of Georgia. He has so many decorations pinned on his jacket it is heavy as a suit of armour. I’m just a simple cavalryman following orders.’

‘Does your father fight in the present war?’

‘No, he has retired to my home town of Lozovatka, in Evkaterinskaya Province.’

‘I have never been there. Is it beautiful?’

Dmitri wrinkled his nose. ‘It’s a very small town, set on a pretty river not far from the Sea of Azov, but Your Imperial Highness would have no reason to go there. They have no society to speak of. In my childhood it was rural, but they have started mining for minerals and great slashes are being torn through the landscape, just like Gorky’s tunnel.’

‘Do you come from a large family?’ She was regarding him intently. ‘What kind of childhood did you have?’

‘Not as large as Your Imperial Highness’s. I have two elder sisters, Vera and Valerina, but no brothers. The girls were always trying to rope me in to their games, dressing me in costumes and making me perform in their plays. You have no idea how character-forming it is for a young boy to be forced to wear a wig and gown and have his cheeks rouged! I escaped around the age of nine after I befriended one of the groundsmen on our family’s estate. He taught me how to hunt and fish, since my father was often away from home. All in all, it was a fairly average childhood.’ He did not tell her about the fierce rows when his irascible father came back, and the vicious beatings he had endured, sometimes with a horsewhip.

‘Tell me, are your sisters married now?’

‘Vera is married to Prince Alexander Eristavi-Ksani of Georgia, but Valerina still lives at home with our parents. She is twenty-six years old and I hope she will yet find a husband, but she is the quieter of the two, a little shy perhaps. I’m very close to her.’

‘I would love to meet them!’ Tatiana exclaimed. ‘I know hardly any women outside our family. Mama had just begun to allow Olga and me to attend the occasional ball or soirée when war broke out. We used to hear music floating up to the windows, and see fine ladies ice-skating on the Baltic, but no matter how hard we pleaded we were scarcely ever allowed to join them. Aunt Olga – Papa’s sister – would occasionally invite us, but I think the ladies felt awkward about introducing themselves to us. I should probably never have met you, Cornet Malama, had it not been for this war, and your injury.’

‘I am very glad we met, Nurse Romanova Three. Our conversation is helping to relieve my frustration at being stuck in bed, my ears assailed by the grunting and snoring of my fellow officers.’ Her hand rested on the covers not far from his, and he longed to touch it, or even raise it to his lips. He might have done so with another woman, but dared not attempt it with a Romanov grand duchess.

Her sister Olga came into the room and approached them. She was shorter than Tatiana and not nearly as pretty, with coarser features and plain blue eyes. ‘Who is this patient who occupies all your time?’ she asked, her eyes merry. ‘Could it be Cornet Malama, the officer about whom you regaled us all last evening?’Tatiana blushed scarlet, and Dmitri bowed his head, saying ‘A votre service.’

‘I beg pardon for interrupting,’ Olga continued, ‘but Sister Chebotareva has asked if we will go to the annex and change dressings.’

Tatiana rose.

‘Thank you again for the books,’ Dmitri said. ‘I will begin the Turgenev immediately.’

‘I’ll stop by later to check how much you have read,’ Tatiana promised.

The girls scurried out of the room and Dmitri lay in a daze. She seemed to like him. At least she enjoyed chatting with him, and she had mentioned him to her mother and sister. Did that mean there might be a chance of a match between them? His family owned a large estate but their wealth was nothing compared to the immense riches of the Romanovs. Would he be considered too lowly? Were they hoping to find foreign princes for all four Romanov girls, or might a Russian general’s son suffice?

Stepanov called over: ‘Congratulations! I heard her say you are to be awarded the Golden Arms!’

Dmitri frowned, wondering how much of the conversation Stepanov had heard. He did not feel like talking. He wanted to close his eyes and remember the sweet jasmine scent of Tatiana’s skin, the directness of her gaze, the soft tone of her voice, the way her emotions flickered across her face for any who cared to read them. He opened the cover of the Turgenev novel and saw that she had written her name on the frontispiece, in both Russian and English, her lettering neat and evenly spaced. He ran his finger over it lightly, then lifted the book and breathed in the smell of the pages. Should he try to stop himself falling in love with her? Already he suspected it might be too late.

Chapter Three

‘Did you hear the news of Tannenburg?’ Stepanov called, interrupting Dmitri’s reverie. ‘It’s catastrophic: 78,000 killed or wounded, 92,000 captured, and General Samsonov dead by his own hand.’ He was reading the figures from a newspaper.

Dmitri already knew that the Russian Second Army had been encircled by the Germans but hadn’t heard the casualty figures till now. He felt sick to his stomach at the enormity of the slaughter. ‘How could it have happened? Why is German intelligence so much better than our own? It seems they intercept all our messages, yet we are in the dark about their plans.’

Stepanov grimaced. ‘They are better equipped too. Their guns have longer ranges, more explosive power. Our superior numbers count for nothing when we are sent into battle with nineteenth-century weapons.’

Dmitri thought of the friends he had left behind at the front: were any still alive, or had they been struck down by the indiscriminate big guns? The Russian army was the largest in the world, but the German foe was nimbler, more flexible. ‘This war will be lost within months if we don’t get modern equipment and become faster in the field. Our chain of command is too slow and dithery. Changes in orders take so long to be implemented, the enemy has moved on.’

Stepanov was gloomy. ‘According to this newspaper’s editor, we can’t compete with the rail network supporting the German army. We’re still riding around on horseback but the days of using cavalry in battle are numbered. A horse presents a large target, and the big guns terrify them.’

Dmitri agreed, but it meant everything he had learned at the prestigious imperial Corps de Page and then in the Uhlan Lancer Guard Regiment was out of date. He was a skilled horseman but knew nothing about the positioning, loading and firing of the big artillery shells now in use. He had achieved distinction in his examinations in science, military history and mathematics but had virtually no experience of the devastating new military technology.

At ten o’clock the following morning, Tatiana bounded into the ward full of excitement: ‘Malama, why did you not tell me you won the Stoverstny?’

Dmitri had led the field from the start of the previous year’s prestigious horserace on Ortipo, his cognac mare. ‘That was many moons ago,’ he said. ‘I’m flattered that you have been researching me.’

‘Well, of course I have,’ she said, sitting on the edge of his bed since there was no chair in sight. In any other girl he would have thought it a flirtatious gesture, but Tatiana did it naturally, without guile. ‘I am trying to discover what makes you tick.’

‘I fear I will prove a very dull study.’ He smiled. ‘I am an army officer and keen to return to my regiment as soon as I can, to fight for my country. I’m so predictable, I make myself yawn.’

‘I shan’t allow you to leave,’ Tatiana said playfully. ‘As your colonel, I order you to stay.’

He looked further down the ward to where Olga was sitting on the bed of an officer called Karangozov before replying: ‘I cannot disobey a direct order. Perhaps you think the army will fare better without me?’

She giggled: ‘Rushing out and getting yourself shot is a drain on manpower. You must stay here to keep me entertained.’

‘But you are the one doing the entertaining, while I lie here like a useless lump. Life on the ward would be insufferably tedious without your visits to look forward to.’

‘Perhaps you will soon be able to walk in the grounds with me? The temperature is mild and the leaves are turning to brilliant reds and yellows.’

He glanced out of the tall windows at the clouds scudding past. Every time Tatiana said something personal, his heart leapt. Did she speak to other patients so kindly? Certainly, on their ward, she stopped by his bed far longer than at the others.

‘I’d like that, my colonel,’ he replied, a little hoarse.

Her mother, Tsarina Alexandra, swept into the room, and Olga and Tatiana leapt off the officers’ beds. ‘Why don’t you change Cornet Malama’s dressing?’ the Tsarina instructed Tatiana, giving Dmitri a quick nod of acknowledgement. ‘Olga, come with me to the annex.’

Tatiana went to fetch water, scissors and lint, and Dmitri cringed at the thought of her seeing the ugliness of his wound. He knew he was not a bad-looking man, with his dark-blond hair and chestnut eyes, but his left leg was scored by deep gashes on either side that were healing with hideous colours: jagged plum-purple lines surrounded by grey and orange swelling, the skin bald where the hairs had been shaved. At least the wounds no longer bled or oozed pus, but they were imperfections he would rather have hidden.

He couldn’t watch as her cool fingers cleaned around the wounds. Her touch was causing his manhood to stiffen and he wriggled to rumple the bedcovers over the spot so she would not notice. It was agonising and wonderful at the same time. They didn’t talk, didn’t look at each other, and he wondered if perhaps she was embarrassed too.

‘You’re not bad,’ he told her as she tied the last knot on the dressing and began to collect her instruments. ‘There could be a career in nursing for you, if you get bored of being a grand duchess.’

‘Why thank you, sir.’ She bowed with mock politeness. ‘I aim to please. I shall be back later to check you are not being disruptive.’

She gazed straight into his eyes as she spoke and he felt a jolt, for all the world as if he had been shot by Cupid’s arrow. The words of poets through the generations, words he had previously thought trite and clichéd, suddenly made sense to him. He felt deliriously happy and wildly anxious at the same time. Did Tatiana have romantic feelings for him or did she simply enjoy his company? How could he let her know he had fallen in love without causing embarrassment or spoiling the intimacy that was developing between them?

During the interminable hours of bed rest, Dmitri pondered ways of ascertaining her feelings, then decided that he should give her a gift: something personal, something she would treasure. A book? He had no way of knowing what she had or had not read, and it felt rather a staid present. Jewellery? The family had more ostentatious gold and precious stones than he could ever afford. And then he thought back to the subject of their first-ever conversation and the answer came to him: he would get her a puppy.

He knew a St Petersburg breeder who had some gorgeous French Bulldogs. One of them would be perfect, but how would he get it to Tatiana? He wanted to watch her reaction on receiving the gift so he couldn’t simply have it delivered to the Alexander Palace.

That evening, the Tsarina’s lady-in-waiting Anna Vyrubova came by to straighten his pillows. She was a plump-faced kindly type, a friend with whom his mother often stayed when she came to St Petersburg for the social season, and she enquired after his family. Dmitri decided to ask her advice. Did she think it would be acceptable for him to buy a gift of a puppy for Grand Duchess Tatiana? He explained that he wished to surprise her.

Anna’s face lit up with pleasure. ‘How adorable!’ she exclaimed. ‘I’m sure she would love it. What can I do to help?’

Dmitri told her the whereabouts of the breeder and detailed the type of animal he wanted: not the runt of the litter, but a pup that was confident around people and did not scare easily. ‘Choose the one that comes over to sniff an outstretched hand and squints at you sideways. Avoid any that stand back and bark or bare their teeth. I want a pup who is playful but does not use his teeth. We can’t risk him biting the grand duchess.’

Anna agreed she would help with the choice, following Dmitri’s advice. She seemed thrilled to be part of the secret.

Two days later, she stopped by his bed to whisper that the breeder had a perfect pup and she had placed the order but that it would be another week before it would be ready to be taken from its mother. Dmitri was frustrated by the delay. He saw Tatiana every day and as well as their morning visits, she and Olga now came back in the evenings. They had a lesson with Dr Vera Gedroits at six o’clock, after which they sterilised the instruments for the following day. If there was time after that, Olga would play piano and they would sing along to some well-known songs, like the Latvian favourite ‘Kaut Kur’. Tatiana sang quietly, but Dmitri could hear she had a pure, tuneful voice.

On the day the puppy was ready to be handed over, Dmitri gave Anna Vyrubova his final instructions about purchasing a basket in which to transport it, a collar, some food, a water bowl and a litter tray, and he gave her the money to pay for it. When she returned an hour later with the precious cargo in a box, Dmitri glanced in and grinned: it was perfect. Anna went to find Tatiana, who was in the annex.

Soon she arrived in the ward, looking flustered. ‘Anna Vyrubova said you needed to see me.’ She noticed the box. ‘What is this?’

He held it out: ‘A gift, to thank you for your patience with me.’ Snuffly panting sounds were coming from within.

Tatiana took the box and opened it warily. A tiny black face leaned out to lick her hand and she squealed in delight. The dog fitted easily into her cupped palms and she examined the pointy ears, the frown line between the eyes, the wrinkled snout, then bent and kissed the top of its velvety head.

‘Malama …’ she began, looking up at him, but could say no more. She was overwhelmed, virtually speechless, but it didn’t matter because Dmitri could see it written in her eyes that she loved him. And now she must know that he loved her too. His heart swelled with such profound happiness he could scarcely breathe.

Chapter Four

October brought chill winds from the Arctic, along with showers of blustery rain. One day, when the rain had eased off, Tatiana found a wheelchair and pushed Dmitri into the beautifully manicured formal gardens of the Catherine Palace so they could start training the little Bulldog she had named Ortipo, after Dmitri’s cavalry horse. Dmitri showed Ortipo a titbit of chicken then held out his palm, loudly instructing the dog to ‘sit’, while Tatiana pushed on her backside to demonstrate. But as soon as she removed her hand Ortipo leapt at the wheelchair, trying to grab the chicken. Tatiana tried again, only for the pup to jump up and leave muddy paw prints on her white nurse’s uniform.

‘I think we have an untrainable one here,’ she laughed, brushing at the marks.

‘No dog is untrainable,’ he replied. ‘But this one seems more of a challenge than most. I suspect you are spoiling her when I am not around.’

At least Ortipo had mastered the art of waiting till she got outdoors before relieving herself, which proved a level of obedience – but not much. Despite their efforts she jumped up at every passerby, barked furiously at the gardeners, and refused to come when called unless food was offered. They laughed till their sides ached as she cavorted around the lawn trying to catch leaves blowing in the wind, or chased huge seagulls, who took off into the air when she was just a few feet away.

‘What do you think she would do if she caught one?’ Tatiana asked.

‘She’d get the fright of her life. These giant gulls can be fierce.’ He felt as though they were proud parents and was delighted the dog gave them a pretext to spend time together without anyone questioning it. They didn’t even have a chaperone.

Tatiana had pushed his wheelchair as far as the limestone grotto at the edge of the Great Pond when a few spots of rain fell so they hurried into the grotto to shelter. The exterior walls were decorated with seashells, and the watery theme continued inside with masks of Neptune on the windows, and dolphins and tritons carved on the pillars that supported the domed ceiling. Ortipo scooted around sniffing corners while Dmitri and Tatiana waited by the door for the rainclouds to pass.

‘Aunt Ella was asking about you yesterday evening,’ she said, glancing at him shyly. ‘She joked that we seem to be having a romance. She teased me about it.’

He hesitated. ‘Do you think she disapproved?’

‘No, not at all,’ Tatiana said quickly. ‘She said she knows your mother and that you come from a good family. Olga is sweet on an officer called Mitya – do you know him?’ Dmitri nodded and bit back a retort; he found Mitya rather crass. ‘She talks about him all the time. Even little Alexei teases her, but I suspect she enjoys being teased.’

‘And you do not?’

Tatiana hesitated. ‘I am a private person and prefer to keep my feelings for my journal instead of being the subject of gossip.’

‘How I would love to read that journal,’ Dmitri twinkled. ‘Could you bring it to the ward later?’

‘Never!’ she exclaimed vehemently, making him laugh. ‘Do you think this rain will pass soon or should we dash back and risk a soaking?’

‘Let’s linger a while. I might try walking a few steps, if you will lend me your arm.’

He pushed down on the arms of the wheelchair to raise himself then swung the injured leg to the ground, wincing slightly as it took his weight. Tatiana steadied him, and for a moment they were so close he could feel the warmth of her body and hear her breathing. He longed to put his arms around her. If only he dared!

She stayed close as he hobbled a few steps to the opposite window then paused to recover.

‘I don’t want you to get better so quickly,’ she cried mournfully. ‘They will send you back to the front and then you will forget you ever knew me.’

He spoke with passion: ‘Tatiana, I will never forget you. Never. If I should be mortally wounded on some foreign battlefield, I swear your name will be the last word on my lips and your face the last image in my head.’

Tears sprang to her eyes and she blinked them away, turning her head to the side. ‘But might the story have a happy ending?’ she asked quietly.

‘I will do all I can to make sure it does,’ he breathed. Her face was so close that he could have kissed her by leaning forward just a few inches, but it would be presuming too much. He was sure she could hear how hard his heart was hammering in his chest, because he was certain he could hear hers too.

By mid November, Dmitri could walk across the ward unaided and he wasn’t surprised when he received a letter informing him that he had been passed fit for duty and must report to his regiment by the 12th of December. He kept the news from Tatiana for a while, not wanting to distress her. The thought of causing her pain made his chest tighten and a lump form in his throat, but at the same time he hated to keep such an important communication from her. When there were just two weeks to go, he took her for a walk through the park, past the pyramid where tiny gravestones marked the burial places of Catherine II’s three dogs. Ortipo nosed the frozen earth as if she could detect something, most likely the scent of a fox.

‘I knew this day must be close,’ she said bravely and turned her head away, but he could hear that she was choking back tears. ‘I have some gifts for you. You will be surprised how busy I have been.’

‘Really? What kind of gifts?’ He glowed at the thought.

‘I have knitted you a muffler, gloves and several pairs of thick socks. I don’t want to think of you freezing in some bleak, windswept tent.’

He was so touched he could barely speak. Was this the moment to kiss her? He hesitated too long and she had turned to call Ortipo, who was chasing a squirrel.

‘We must take some photographs,’ she said. ‘I’ll bring my Box Brownie to the ward this evening.’

‘You have hundreds of photographs of me already–’ he smiled ‘–and I look ugly in all of them.’ She and Olga were keen photographers.

‘Will you write to me?’ she asked, her tone a little plaintive.

‘Of course! You shall have a letter every week, which is at least ten times more than my mother gets.’

‘I shall write to you every day,’ she declared, her eyes glassy.

Impulsively he took her slender hand and pressed it to his lips, lingering to savour the sensation and inhale her precious scent. She did not pull it away.

Dmitri dressed in his navy and yellow uniform and set off early on the morning of the 12th of December, along with two other officers and a dozen soldiers all heading for Poland, where the remnants of the Russian First Army were attempting to hold the German Ninth at bay. Dawn had only just broken but Tatiana appeared in the palace driveway, looking pale in the wintry sunshine, and stood by the gate to wave. As their truck passed Dmitri saw her eyes were red with crying and his heart felt as though it were breaking in two.

Chapter Five
London, April 2016

At first Kitty thought the letter was junk mail and was about to toss it in the bin. It was written on expensive-looking watermarked paper from a company called Inheritance Trackers Inc., and as she skimmed the first paragraph her eye was caught by the name Yakovlevich. She was pretty sure that had been her Grandma Marta’s maiden name, so she went back to read it properly. It said that she was the great-granddaughter and only living descendant of Dmitri Yakovlevich, who had died in America in 1986, and that his estate had not been claimed. Should she wish Inheritance Trackers to reunite her with this fortune, they would handle all the legal work and would take a fee of only fifteen per cent. There was a thirty-year deadline for claiming lost estates and if she did not act soon, the property would be forfeited to the government.

Kitty was instantly suspicious: this was an era of scams, when you were offered millions of pounds if you would only advance a couple of thousand to help get someone through customs in an African country; when boiler rooms located in the Bahamas claimed they could quadruple any investment within a year. Besides, Grandma Marta had been alive in 1986, so why had she not inherited Dmitri Yakovlevich’s money? Why had Kitty never even heard of him?

Marta had been a fun grandmother, who kept delicious sweets in her pottery rabbit candy jar, and was always happy to get down on the floor and play Hungry Hippos or Mouse Trap. Kitty couldn’t recall her mentioning her father, but then Marta had died when Kitty was eight. She would probably find pictures of him in the old suitcase of family photos she had stowed in the bedroom closet after her parents passed away. She must take a look some time.

She rang the number on the company’s letterhead and was put through to someone called Mark, who told her that the inheritance concerned was worth over fifty thousand dollars in cash. There was also a cabin on Lake Akanabee in the Adirondack Mountains of northern New York state, which had been uninhabited since her great-grandfather’s death, and royalties for some books he had written. He was an author! How intriguing.

‘So what do I have to do to claim it?’ she asked carefully, picking up a pen.

‘We’ll send you some forms to fill out,’ explained Mark, ‘and you return them to us, along with a copy of your birth certificate – and a marriage certificate if you’re married – and we’ll do the rest.’

‘Do I have to pay anything upfront?’ she asked suspiciously. ‘Legal fees or anything?’

‘No, we take our cut when the money and the ownership papers for the cabin come through,’ Mark told her. ‘Do you want me to send you the information?’

‘Why not?’ she agreed.

She forgot to tell Tom that evening, but when the paperwork arrived confirming the totals, she showed it to him. He didn’t seem particularly impressed.

‘Fifty K minus fifteen per cent is forty-two and a half thousand dollars and at today’s exchange rate that’s about twenty-seven thousand quid. Better than a poke in the eye. Do you want me to give you the number of a financial advisor who can give you some ideas on investing it?’

She looked at him across the table and wondered about this stranger she had married. The Tom she had known back in college would have suggested blowing the windfall on a round-the-world trip for two, or perhaps buying a yacht and learning to sail. They were only in their mid-thirties, they had paid off the mortgage thanks to the inheritance when her parents died, neither of them wanted to have children, and now all Tom could think of was saving for the future? She felt she was seeing him through different eyes than she had a decade ago; or maybe she was the same person and he was the one who had changed. It was hard to tell.

Back then he’d wanted to be a composer and had spent most days writing songs on his keyboard and sending demos to record companies. After they failed to leap at the chance of buying his creations, he chucked it all in, took an accountancy course and was now working as an auditor for the City Council. He had become serious and precise, leaving home at the same time every morning in a neat predictable suit, the kind of outfit no one would ever notice. If he committed a crime and witnesses were asked to describe him they’d struggle to come up with anything because he was so nondescript: short brown hair, hazel eyes, medium height, grey-blue suit, no unusual features.

Kitty made fun of him for his plain ties that were always in the same shade as his plain socks, for his trousers that were hung in a trouser press overnight so the crease fell in exactly the right place. It made her want to raid his drawer and leave only mismatching socks; or to get him drunk and drag him to a tattoo parlour to have a gothic emblem etched on his forearm. She found it irritating that he drank sensible decaf coffee and brushed his teeth for exactly two minutes; she was bored with the weekend sex routine of an orgasm for her, one for him, invariably achieved the same way.

He was a good provider – they were lucky not to have money worries – but at some point they had stopped having fun and she couldn’t think when that had happened. The holiday in Costa Rica the previous autumn had been glorious; Christmas with his extended family had been nice. But since then life had felt monotonous, with nothing interesting on the horizon.

It didn’t help that her own career had stalled. She’d studied journalism at college and always imagined herself flying first-class to LA to interview celebrities for Vanity Fair, or breaking the story that David Cameron had a secret lover in a Guardian exclusive, but instead she reviewed theatre for the local paper in their part of north London. She earned a pittance and had to sit through dire shows at least three evenings a week then churn out five hundred words of lively copy that didn’t betray how deeply disenchanted she was with theatre as an art form.

Her mother’s oft-repeated view that writing was a hobby, not a reliable way to earn a living, kept echoing in her head. She’d wanted Kitty to study law, but memorising all those endless judgements sounded unbearably tedious. Should she have listened? Or should she push herself harder to succeed as a writer? There seemed no urgency when Tom earned enough for them both. She kept planning to write a book but changed her mind about the subject before managing more than a few thousand words. If she couldn’t maintain an interest, how could she expect to hold her readers’ attention?

‘You’ve always had a lazy streak,’ her mum used to say. ‘You get it from your dad’s side.’ Perhaps it was true.

She wondered what kind of books Dmitri Yakovlevich had written. She vaguely remembered that Grandma Marta had Russian roots; the surname certainly sounded Russian: perhaps his work was all in his native language. She’d find out when the royalty statements came through.

There was nothing that seemed suspicious in the Inheritance Tracker forms so she signed on the dotted line and sent them back with the required certificates. She and Tom vaguely discussed what to do with the cabin in upstate New York, and he was in favour of selling it.

‘After it’s lain empty for thirty-odd years, the level of repairs needed to make it habitable would cost more than the thing is worth,’ he said with his business head.

‘It might be a good investment,’ Kitty maintained. ‘We could renovate then rent it out through a local agency.’ She had a flair for DIY. Her father had taught her carpentry skills and she had already done up three properties in London: two she sold on at a profit and one in which they still lived.

‘We’d only be able to rent it three months of the year,’ Tom said. ‘No one wants to holiday in the Adirondacks in winter, and it wouldn’t cover its annual costs on the summer rental alone.’

Kitty yawned. He didn’t seem to see the romance of owning a cabin in the American wilderness. Why had Dmitri bought it? She imagined it must be very beautiful. And then it slipped to the back of her mind over the next few weeks as she wrote her theatre reviews, had lunch or an early-evening drink with friends, took her yoga classes and ran the household she shared with her sensible, risk-averse husband.

Chapter Six
London, 18th July 2016

Kitty could not put her finger on what made her pick up Tom’s mobile phone when he went for a run one Saturday morning, leaving it on the hall table. She’d never done that in all the years they’d been together, even though she knew his password and he knew hers. It wasn’t a conscious decision to check his texts but the phone was lying there, she was standing looking at it, and somehow she found herself flicking through his messages. Almost immediately she found a photo of a naked woman with huge breasts and a message that read ‘Want more of this, baby? How about my place, 11 on Saturday morning.’ It finished with a heart emoji.

Kitty’s throat seemed to close up and she could feel the blood pumping in her temples. The sender of the text was called ‘Karren’, with two ‘r’s, and when she scrolled down she found several more texts, telling Tom he was the hottest lover she’d ever had, and making arrangements for other trysts. It appeared they’d been having an affair for at least two months; he hadn’t even bothered to delete the evidence.

She glanced at the clock: ten to eleven. He would be at Karren’s any moment now. What should she do?

Her closest friend, Amber, lived two streets away so Kitty jumped in the car, revving the engine as she raced round there. Amber was breastfeeding her youngest, only six weeks old, while her husband played with their two toddlers in the garden. Kitty didn’t bother with any preamble, simply handing her the phone with Karren’s nude photo on the screen.

‘Can you believe it? Look what Tom’s been up to behind my back! The utter bastard!’

She expected Amber to be shocked or perhaps try to think of innocent reasons why he might have such a picture on his phone. Instead she hesitated a fraction too long, not meeting Kitty’s eye, and the penny dropped.

‘You knew about this?’

Amber looked up miserably, and handed back the phone. ‘I’m so sorry. I thought I had persuaded him to knock it on the head without you finding out. I didn’t want you to be hurt.’

‘You knew!’ Kitty repeated. She couldn’t believe it. This was the woman with whom she shared her innermost secrets. They discussed everything from their most embarrassing sexual experiences to their fake-tan disasters, from their career dissatisfactions to their secret celebrity crushes. She was the one who had said the right things after Kitty’s parents’ deaths, the only person she could bear to discuss them with. Amber’s face was a study in guilt.

‘Kitty, I …’ she began, but Kitty shook her head, mouth open in astonishment and held up a hand to stop her. There was nothing to say. Amber had known and hadn’t told her. She turned and rushed from the house, knowing that Amber would never catch up with a baby in her arms.

She got back in the car and drove home, ignoring the persistent ringing of her phone on the passenger seat. Tom would be back soon, with a false smile and another woman’s scent clinging to him. The thought made her stomach heave. She didn’t want to be there, couldn’t face confronting him and all that would entail. The life she thought she was leading had fallen apart in an instant. Every plan she had made for the future, every dream assumed that Tom would love her forever and now it was clear he didn’t and wouldn’t. It felt like a double betrayal that Amber had known and not told her. She had to get out of the marital home, but where could she go that he wouldn’t find her?

And then it came to her: the documents making her the owner of the cabin on Lake Akanabee had come through just a few days earlier and the cheque had cleared in her current account. Why not fly out to see it? It felt like a suitably dramatic gesture in response to such a huge betrayal.

She grabbed a suitcase and threw in whatever came to hand: outdoor clothing, a sleeping bag, some toiletries, a few basic tools, all the paperwork relating to the cabin. Tom would never remember the name of the lake. Now she thought about it, he’d been distracted these last few months. Perhaps he was in love with Karren. Tears pricked her eyes and she shook herself, before picking up her laptop and mobile phone, leaving Tom’s phone in the middle of the kitchen table. She debated leaving a note but decided against it. Let him work it out for himself.

She drove to Heathrow, parked the car in a long-stay car park then went to the British Airways desk and booked a ticket on a six o’clock flight, which would land in New York at nine o’clock the same evening, due to the five-hour time difference.

‘You need a return ticket within ninety days if you don’t have a visa,’ the carefully made-up saleswoman explained, beige shellac nails tapping on a keyboard.

Kitty ran her finger along the desk calendar and picked a date just before the ninety days would be up. She was paying full price so she could always change the flight if she decided to come back sooner.

In the departure lounge she used her laptop to book an airport hotel room in which to rest on arrival, then organised a hire car for the next ninety days, which cost an eye-watering sum. By focusing on practicalities, she tried to stop herself thinking that Tom would already be home. He’d probably be wondering why she wasn’t there to prepare lunch – unless Amber had called to warn him that Kitty knew his secret. What would he do next? Which friends would he phone? Would he notice that her passport was missing?

On the flight she drank four miniature bottles of white wine, ate a re-heated dinner and dozed off in front of the new Ridley Scott movie. The time passed quickly, although she felt nauseous with sleep deprivation when she queued to get through customs in John F Kennedy airport. She conked out in the anonymous hotel room and slept for a few hours, waking as dawn broke outside the hermetically sealed windows.

She went to collect her car from the rental agency, typed the zip code of the cabin into the Sat Nav and let the woman’s confident voice guide her off Long Island and due north towards the Adirondacks. It was 254 miles, she was told, and would take over four hours. Kitty was a confident driver, and she hoped to get there around lunchtime to give her time to decide in daylight whether the cabin was habitable.

The traffic thinned after she left the interstate and for a while the road skimmed the shores of Great Sacandaga Lake before heading up into the mountains. It was warm and sunny and the views were glorious: hills covered in forests like plush green velvet, a flash of blue denoting a lake between the trees, a few white clouds against a bright sky. Her heart wouldn’t stop pounding though. She tried to find a music station on the radio but the reception was too crackly. She hadn’t eaten breakfast and her stomach growled, but she was pretty sure she would throw up if she ate anything. You bastard, Tom, she thought from time to time, but mostly she tried to keep her mind blank and focus on the driving.

Chapter Seven
Eastern Front, Prussia, January 1915

Postal deliveries to the front line were erratic but Tatiana wrote so frequently that Dmitri seldom had long to wait between her letters. He thrilled at the sight of her handwriting on the envelope, at the way she always called him ‘Malama sweetheart’, at the faint hint of her scent that he imagined he could detect on the pages, and at her sentiments, which became more affectionate with each exchange. She wrote that Ortipo’s snoring kept Olga awake at night, and that she had been playing a game called ruble with her sisters; she told him of her patients on the wards, of books she had read, and always she told him that she missed him.

Dmitri found it easier to overcome his natural reserve and express his feelings in letters than he had done in person, and Tatiana reciprocated his endearments. They became bolder and he felt he learned more of her character with each letter. He imagined she must seem very private and reserved to those who didn’t know her, but to him she wrote with a straightforward honesty that was unprecedented amongst the women of his acquaintance. There were no games, or sulks or flounces.

Was there a chance he might one day be her husband? Or did her parents have other suitors in mind for their eldest daughters? He plucked up the courage to ask and was overwhelmed by her reply:

Malama sweetheart,

You asked about the marriages my parents have considered for Olga and me and now I think I will make you laugh because we have endured so much speculation on the subject based on virtually no substance.

First of all, I am told that David, the eldest son of the British King George V, is believed to have taken a liking to me when we visited there in August 1909. Of course, I was only twelve and far too young to be aware of it, although I remember dancing with him at a ball on the Standart, while fireworks lit up the sky. He was rather a good dancer, and I recall he was wearing a uniform because he was at naval college, but I can’t remember making conversation. Mama said to me afterwards that she was only twelve when she first met Papa, and that it is possible to know your own mind at that age. I think she was keen that either Olga or I should one day be Queen of England but nothing came of it. We haven’t seen David since then and I imagine he must be terribly busy with the war.

Then in 1912, I think, the newspapers started reporting that Olga was to be married to Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovevich – which was news to Olga, who had always found him rather coarse. The rumour persisted for years with absolutely no foundation, much to Olga’s annoyance.

You must have heard about the marriages with Balkan princes that our parents have been rumoured (erroneously, I believe) to be arranging for some time. For a while I corresponded with my cousin George of Battenberg, but never with any intention of marrying him, let me assure you! Olga was asked to consider Prince Carol of Romania, who came to visit us in Livadia last summer, but she does not want to leave Russia when she marries, so we came up with a cunning plan: we both suntanned our faces before they arrived, knowing that in royal circles it is considered paysan. We were polite to Carol but I think he took the hint because no further meetings have been arranged.

Olga and I are agreed on two things: that we only want to marry Russian men, and that we want to marry for love, as our parents did. I can imagine nothing worse than being forced to marry someone I do not like for political reasons, but am assured by Mama that will never be the case and that we may choose our own husbands. Now I am embarrassed to have told you so much, but you asked and so here is my answer.

I hope you are keeping warm, mon amoureux, and not straying into the way of any more bullets. Do you ever think of me or is your life too full of plans for defeating the Kaiser’s army? Are you comfortable in your bunker at night? Are you getting enough to eat? Is there snow where you are? The snow here is five foot deep and I worry that you may catch cold. Every night as I lie in my cosy bed, I worry about where you are lying and wish you could hear my thoughts through the frosty night.

Did you receive my letter in which I told you of Anna Vyrubova, Mama’s lady-in-waiting, being in a train crash? She is most seriously injured and we are all terribly concerned but at least she is conscious and able to eat a little. Mama is nursing her personally. She is so very dear to us.

As you are very dear to me.

Que Dieu vous garde.

Tatiana

It was minus five degrees outside but Dmitri was flushed as he sat in his bunker reading and re-reading this letter by candlelight. The earthen walls glittered with ice and his breath misted the air. We only want to marry Russian men and we want to marry for love. Surely it was a hint, perhaps even an invitation? He could imagine her blushes as she wrote and wished he could kiss those pink cheeks over and over.

All of a sudden he yearned for her with a passion that was tantamount to madness. He couldn’t bear their separation one moment longer; it was tearing him apart. What was it about her that moved him so? His feelings could not be reduced to logic; quite simply, he adored the very essence of her.

Dmitri felt so sick with longing that it could only be assuaged by writing back to Tatiana straight away and spilling his feelings on paper. Recklessness took hold and he wrote with the question that was foremost on his mind:

Mon Ange,

Your letter has filled me with hope and drives me to write that I wish with all my heart and soul I might one day be the Russian man you choose to marry. I don’t have royal blood or a fortune anything like the size of your family’s, but I promise I would alternately worship and tease you in exactly the right proportions for the rest of our lives. The possibility that I might have a chance of gaining your parents’ approval fires me with renewed determination to survive this grotesque war. My love for you gives me an invisible cloak that bullets and shells cannot penetrate.

Please do not tell anyone of this proposal lest your father think it disrespectful that I have not asked his permission first … but a private understanding between us would make me the happiest man in the world.

When the letter was finished Dmitri lay back on the wooden pallet that served as his bunk and daydreamed about marrying Tatiana. Maybe the wedding could take place in the Romanovs’ private chapel, the Grand Church at the Winter Palace, with its ostentatious gold stucco and its dome with lunettes picturing the Apostles. He imagined his parents and sisters sitting alongside the Tsar and Tsarina. His father was a stern, critical man who believed Dmitri was not rising through the army ranks as rapidly as he should, but surely he would be proud of a son who married a Romanov? His sisters would love to become acquainted with the grand duchesses, and undoubtedly the relationship would enhance Valerina’s marriage prospects. Dare he send the letter?

Dmitri thought about it overnight and when his feelings were the same the following morning, he rushed to give it to the postal clerk before he could change his mind. As was his habit, he addressed the envelope to Tatiana’s maid, Trina, so that the officer who censored their mail would not discover the true object of his affections. He could not risk gossip leaking out.

All that day he did not tell anyone, not even his friend Malevich who had at last returned to the front fully recovered from his wounds. That evening as they sat around the fire slurping bowls of watery venison stew, his fellow officers teased him for being silent and withdrawn and Malevich led the ribbing.

‘I think Cornet Malama has a sweetheart,’ he joked. ‘Have you noticed how eagerly he awaits postal deliveries, and how he rushes to his bunk to read any letters in privacy? Pray tell us, Malama, who is the lucky lady?’

Dmitri shook his head, grinning. ‘As if I would tell a bunch of delinquents like you lot!’

‘See how he blushes,’ another mocked. ‘He definitely has a secret.’

‘It’s the heat of the fire,’ Dmitri maintained.

He wished he could talk about Tatiana – he wanted to tell the world of their love – but any wrong move at this stage could spoil his chances, especially if it spilled into the newspapers. His heart was so full he scarcely felt the biting cold of the Prussian plain where they were dug in. Huddled in his bedding roll that night, he imagined Tatiana’s arms around him, her face against his, as he sank into dream-filled sleep.

Chapter Eight

The war continued to go badly for the Russians. The Germans introduced the new long-barrelled howitzers, which they hauled around on wheeled carriages, and now they could wreak destruction wherever they chose. Massive shells hurtled down without warning. The ground shook, stones rained from the sky and more bodies had to be buried after each ear-shattering explosion. It took hours of hacking at the frozen earth with a pickaxe to dig a grave, and many bodies were piled in together, without the dignity of solitude in their final resting place. Dmitri spent his days trying to direct their own shelling towards the howitzers but felt they were making no progress.

When he came off duty each evening, he rushed to the postal clerk. A few letters arrived that Tatiana had sent before receiving his; they were charming, but he was going mad waiting for her response to his proposal. When it came, he knew instinctively this was the one. The envelope was of the same type as the others, it was sealed in the same way, but his heart pounded and he felt sick with nerves as he tore it open.

Malama sweetheart,

I received your letter of the 28th of January this very morning and have rushed to my room to write as soon as I could. The answer to your proposal is yes, yes, yes; with all my soul I wish to be your wife. You should see how I blush to say these words. I know Mama and Papa will agree, since you are so courageous and noble and true. Mama has already told me she admires you, and I know Papa will too. I can’t wait for the day when I can call you my husband. If only the war could be over next week and you could rush home to claim your bride! I fear the waiting will be unbearable.

Dmitri read and re-read the paragraph, unable to believe his eyes. Was he misunderstanding it? The underlined ‘yes, yes, yes’ seemed unequivocal. Was it really true that he might become Tatiana’s husband? He read on, giddy with excitement:

I understand that until then we must keep our engagement secret but I hope you will not mind that I have confided in Uncle Grigory. Do you know him? The Siberian spiritual leader they call Rasputin, who is a great friend of our family. He saw me sitting pensive by a window and guessed that I was pining for a loved one so I found myself telling him about you. He asked to see a letter from you, because he says that men can judge other men’s intentions far better than women. After some hesitation I produced your proposal letter from the folds of my gown, where I had tucked it to keep it close. He read it, and when he finished he handed it back, saying ‘He truly loves you, and he is obviously a good man.’

I was overjoyed, as you can imagine, and told him how much I want to marry you. I explained that my mother and sisters do not yet know we are in love, although they have met and admired you, and I made him promise to keep our secret. Uncle Grigory closed his eyes and held my hand for several seconds, one finger on my wrist as if he was feeling for the truth. He has mystical powers and his predictions always come true. ‘Yes, you will marry him,’ he said. ‘Yet there are dark days ahead.’ I suppose he means because of the war.

I hope you do not mind me telling him, Malama. Since your letter arrived I have been bursting with the news that we are to wed. I find it hard not to tell anyone else, but I agree that is how it must be since you must apply to my father for permission and I can’t see how he might give it till the war is over. Until then it will be our precious secret, something I can hug to my breast to ease the agony of missing you.

I must go to the hospital now but will write later. When I am writing I feel close to you and wish there were more hours in the day so I could write more.

Mon amour est pour vous, à jamais.

Tatiana

Dmitri stared at the letter, with a tumult of emotions. There was the exhilaration of Tatiana accepting his proposal but also irritation and alarm that she should have told Rasputin about it. Dmitri had not been introduced to the bearded wild man, but had heard only ill of him. The thought of him touching Tatiana’s wrist and reading the intensely private letter made Dmitri wild with jealousy. What if Rasputin told the Tsarina, to whom he was said to be very close? It could utterly spoil his chances of one day being accepted into the family. What had Tatiana been thinking?

‘What do you make of Grigory Rasputin?’ he asked the men that evening as they ate their meagre bowls of stew, accompanied by hunks of rough, gritty bread.

‘Who is he?’ a young officer asked.

Malevich replied: ‘He’s a self-seeking charlatan who presents himself as a man of God while spending his time carousing in brothels and bars. He has inveigled his way into the Romanovs’ inner circle and their relationship with such a reprobate does them no favours. I hear the Tsar would banish him to Siberia but the Tsarina has fallen under his spell and will not hear of it.’ He shook his head in disbelief.

‘What do you think he seeks from them?’ Dmitri asked sarcastically. ‘Surely not riches, power and influence?’

Malevich snorted. ‘Of course. It’s a very lucrative connection for him.’

Another joined in. ‘It’s a shame the assassination attempt in May was unsuccessful. I hear he is trying to convert the Tsarina and her daughters to the Khlysty sect, who believe that you must sin as much as possible and then ask for forgiveness later. They claim repentance is only genuine for the greatest sinners: a very cynical philosophy and one that suits Rasputin right down to the ground.’

‘That would certainly account for his many transgressions,’ Malevich agreed. ‘Nude swimming; wandering round the palace in his nightshirt; even entering the bedroom of the grand duchesses while they lie sleeping. It is not a healthy association. I heard he makes love to every lady he meets – including his own daughter.’

‘Oh, that’s vile …’

Dmitri was disturbed. How could the Tsarina not see through such a man, with his crazy eyes, dishevelled clothing and disrespectful manner? Back at his tent, in a burst of ill humour, he scribbled off a hasty note to Tatiana:

My very own angel, I wish you had not been so trustful of Rasputin. No doubt he is all smiles and weasel words inside the palace walls but believe me when I tell you that in the outside world he is known as a scoundrel. I am afraid that if he spreads our secret it could ruin any chance of us one day being wed. Of course, I understand your desire to tell someone of our love – I feel the same way myself – but could you not have whispered it to Ortipo instead? She would have made a better choice of confidante than the wild Siberian, and I expect her response would have been more intelligent. I cannot stop to write more now but will try to find a moment soon.

Your very own, Malama.

He sealed the note and hurried to the postal clerk’s tent to send it, still feeling discomfited. How could Tatiana not see through such a ruffian? Was she so lacking in judgement?

He pondered the question as he lay in bed that night, unable to sleep, and it came to him that her very limited exposure to the outside world must mean she did not have well-tuned instincts about human nature. She was a good creature who saw only good in everyone she met. It would be his role gently to teach her more of the world.

As soon as he realised this, he regretted the pompous tone of his note and hoped it would not upset her or even change her opinion of him. He lay awake long into the night worrying and as soon as the camp awoke the following morning he rushed to the postal tent to retrieve his letter, only to find it had already been dispatched.

Chapter Nine

All day Dmitri agonised over his note. Would Tatiana be hurt that he sounded critical? Might she even fall out of love with him? His turmoil continued till nightfall, when he was distracted by devastating news: the Russian XX Corps had been surrounded in Augustow Forest by four German corps without any Russian commander getting wind of it. For five days they had held out under intense gunfire, in a snowstorm, until all hope was lost. It sounded as though most of the 70,000 men had been killed outright and the remainder taken prisoner. Yet again it had been possible because of lack of information about German troop movements.

There were urgent meetings of Russia’s commanders and a counter-attack against the right flank of the German front was called for the next day. Too little, too late, Dmitri thought gloomily as he prepared his horse, oiled his pistol and sharpened his sabre in a biting wind beneath dark grey, snow-heavy clouds. He couldn’t bear the thought that he might die the following day and the last correspondence Tatiana would receive from him would be that curt rebuke, so he sat down to compose another letter, hoping it might overtake the first.

Mon Ange,

Forgive your jealous lover for his temper of last evening. I could not bear to hear of your intimacy with another man, one who is renowned for his promiscuity, no less. It was agony for me to think of him close to you, reading my most personal letter. Like an impetuous fool I responded in haste but now repent and beg you not to love me any less for my outburst.

Affairs go badly in our part of the front. It seems we will not be able to defeat the German army with any speed, although I hope we will now restrain them at the border so they cannot sink their boots into Russian mud. If only this war would soon be over so that I can rush home to your arms. I yearn to hear your pretty voice and look into the depths of your eyes. Forgive me, angel.

Your Malama

He kissed the envelope tenderly before taking it to the postal clerk, although he knew it would pass through many hands before hers. Oh, if only he could deliver it in person!

Over the next few weeks, Dmitri’s regiment was forced to retreat rapidly as the German and Austro-Hungarian armies combined to push through Poland. It would have been suicide for the Russians to stand and fight because they did not have the artillery and ammunition to rival their opponents. At times the Germans were so close Dmitri could hear them calling to each other, could smell the smoke of their campfires, could see their sentries shivering in the deep snow. He hoped the conditions would be harder for them, as Russians are used to snow. Sometimes he crept out under cover of the forest to set eyes on the enemy but he never asked his men to fire at the German lines for fear of those big guns. Until they had such weapons themselves it would be foolhardy to give away their location.

All this time, he heard nothing from Tatiana. Postal deliveries were scarce while the army was on the move, and the severe weather meant supplies did not reach them regularly. They shot deer and picked berries for food, and melted snow for drinking water because the rivers and lakes were covered in impenetrable ice. Dmitri knew his comrades had received no letters from their families and sweethearts, but still he feared the silence must mean Tatiana had changed her opinion of him. Perhaps she had found a new beau at the hospital, with whom she now passed her time. Would she be so fickle as to abandon him after a few months’ absence? He couldn’t believe it of her … but still, she might be cross about his rebuke over Rasputin. It was entirely his own fault.

Winter blew itself out with one last icy storm and watery sunshine began to thaw the snow. Icicles broke off and hurtled from the treetops like daggers thrown by invisible hands. The ground became boggy with snowmelt and occasional rabbits, fresh from hibernation, began to grace the camp’s cookpots. Meanwhile, the Germans took Warsaw and Krakow, and pushed on towards Lithuania and Belarus; seemingly nothing could stop them. Privately, Dmitri grew contemptuous of the commanders who could think of nothing to stop this assault, and was not remotely reassured when he heard that Tsar Nicholas intended to take personal command of the army. There was much muttering round the campfire that Nicholas knew nothing of military strategy and might as well put his young son Alexei in charge for all the good he would do.

At last, when over two agonising months had gone by without word from Tatiana, Dmitri received a bundle of letters one evening, all of them from her bar one from his mother. He hurried to his tent and began by sorting them into date order before he opened the first one, which was dated February 12th, just after she must have received his rebuke.

My dearest Malama,

I have read your note and your explanation sent the following day and of course I can understand why you resent me showing your letter to Rasputin. If our situations were reversed and you had shown one of my letters to a comrade I would have been hurt and surprised. However,I assure you that Rasputin has never been anything but respectful to my family and to me personally.

I believe Mama and Papa first met him in 1905, and were immediately impressed by his inspiring interpretations of the scriptures. When Prime Minister Stolypin’s daughter was injured in that dreadful bombing, he cured her against all the odds simply by laying his hands on her wounds. He now treats Mama for her headaches and sciatica, and helps my little brother Alexei when he suffers from painful joints. There is no doubt in my mind that he has healing powers.

One day, when you are back in Tsarskoe Selo, I will introduce you and you will see for yourself that he is a force for nothing but good. I hate to disagree with you by letter when we have no immediate prospect of being together. If only we could look into each other’s eyes and know that all is well. Believe me when I tell you that my feelings for you have not changed one little bit because of this difference of opinion. I am glad we can speak our minds with each other and am sure this is a healthy sign for our married life.

The letter finished with many endearments and Dmitri buried his face in his hands, overcome with emotion that she was still his Tatiana, his beloved. He kissed the paper and clasped his hands in prayer, thanking God for ending his weeks of mental torture.

He opened the next letter, then the one after, and read through all in sequence. She wrote of her sadness after the death of a young patient at the hospital. She drew a picture of the special tag, encrusted with tiny jewels set in filigree vines, she had commissioned Fabergé to make for Ortipo’s collar then wrote that the little floozy did not deserve it, having got pregnant by another of the palace dogs, provoking quite a scandale. She wrote of the books recommended by her English tutor, Pierre Gilliard, and of all she was learning from Doctor Vera Gedroit, who flattered her by saying she had a talent for nursing. And as the letters progressed she became increasingly anxious about Dmitri’s welfare, saying she had received no word from him throughout the spring months when it seemed all news from the front was worse than the last.

Mon chéri,

I beg you to send two lines telling me you are safe. I’m full of such fear that I find it hard to concentrate on my work. My sisters talk to me and I realise after several minutes that I have not been listening because all my thoughts are with you in Poland. I will not rest easy until I hear you are safe.

The most recent letter told him that in October she and Olga would be joining their father at Stavka, the army headquarters in Mogilev, where Alexei was visiting the troops. It was her fondest hope that Dmitri might be close enough to ride over for even an hour: ‘To see your face and hear your voice would be bliss, even if we cannot be alone together. I will only be assured that you are well when I can see it in your eyes.’

Dmitri cursed. Mogilev was several hundred miles south of his current position. He went to ask his commander if there might be some mission that could take him down that way, perhaps delivering a message to the Tsar, but was told that he could not be spared.

It was unbearable to think of Tatiana coming comparatively close yet not be able to see her. Mogilev was not on the front line but if the Germans made a sudden push forwards it was not unthinkable that their shells might penetrate so far. What was Tsar Nicholas thinking? It proved he had no concept of how strong this German opponent was or he would not have considered bringing his family to the area. Dmitri tortured himself with images of Tatiana being torn apart by a howitzer shell and knew he would not sleep easy till she was in St Petersburg once more.

Chapter Ten
Lake Akanabee, New York State, 20th July 2016

The morning after her arrival at Lake Akanabee, Kitty drove into the nearby town of Indian Lake to buy tools and provisions. A row of purply-red clapboard houses and shops with white eaves and sloping roofs were set along a dusty main street, with skeins of overhead wiring looping from lamppost to lamppost. There were no traffic lights and she hardly saw another car as she crawled along looking for a hardware store.

The road was lined with fast-food outlets, camping equipment stores and adventure sports shops with racks of canoes outside. She drove straight past ‘Lakeside Country Stores’ first time and it was only on the way back that she noticed their sign advertised hardware, plumbing and decorating materials as well as camping gear. She pulled into the yard and dug out the list she’d scribbled. She needed a battery-powered chainsaw, a drill, woodworking tools, a spade, and a brush and shovel; she also needed a gas cooking stove, an oil lamp, and some cups, plates and cutlery. The man behind the counter piled up her purchases, obviously delighted to make such a substantial sale.

‘Do you have a sliding bevel?’ she asked, checking against her list.

‘You sure you need one?’ he asked, an eyebrow raised in a manner that indicated he didn’t think women knew about such things.

‘Yes. I have some steps to rebuild and need to get the angles right.’

He shrugged and began searching the shelves. ‘Just arrived?’

‘Yesterday.’

‘Your husband with you?’

Kitty bristled. Why did men in DIY stores always assume there must be a man behind the scenes? ‘Nope,’ she said shortly.

He produced a bevel and she unfastened then retightened the wing nut before adding it to her pile.

‘You’ve come at the right time,’ the storekeeper said. ‘We’re nearing the end of bug season. A couple of weeks ago you would have had to fight your way through swarms of them.’

‘I did get a couple of bites last night,’ she admitted, scratching her neck. ‘Is there anything you recommend?’

‘Yup,’ he said, and added a large bottle of insect repellent to the pile. ‘Round here we wear this twenty-four seven, April to October.’

The chip and pin machine wasn’t working so she had to sign for her purchases.

‘Is there a supermarket nearby?’ she asked.

He directed her to one further down the main street. ‘You can’t miss it.’

‘How about a jeweller’s?’ She fingered the pendant she’d found, which she’d slipped inside her purse. It would be interesting to get it valued.

‘Lake George is the nearest jewellery store, but my brother-in-law used to work in the trade and he still keeps a stock of gift items. You’ll find him down Bennett Road.’ He wrote the name and address for her on the back of his business card. ‘Say Chad sent you.’

Kitty went to the supermarket first and stocked up on the type of tinned foods that could be heated over a camping stove, as well as crackers, cheese, apples, coffee and a few bottles of wine. The car was full to bursting as she drove down to Bennett Road, which was easy to find as there were hardly any other cross streets off the main road. When she rang the bell, two Great Danes came bounding across the yard, followed by a bearded man in a disconcertingly bright cerise shirt.

‘Hello,’ she began. ‘Chad said you used to work in the jewellery trade. I was hoping to get a valuation on a pendant.’ She took it from her purse and handed it to him.

He had a quick look. ‘Sure. Come inside.’

She took a seat at his kitchen table, which was covered in a floral waxed tablecloth. The man fetched a jeweller’s loupe from another room and held the pendant up to the light of the window before giving a low whistle. Kitty waited. He examined the setting of the stones then turned it over and squinted at the back. There was silence while he concentrated, then finally he turned to Kitty.

‘This is Fabergé! It’s one of the most beautiful pieces I’ve come across.’

‘You’re kidding!’ Kitty was not a jewellery expert but Fabergé was probably the world’s best-known luxury brand. Her grandfather must have been wealthy; or perhaps it was a family heirloom.

‘If I’m not mistaken, it’s rose gold set with a sapphire, a ruby and imperial topaz. The engraving on the back is a maker’s mark. It’s a little worn but it looks as though the workmaster’s initials were H.W.’

‘Can I see?’ Kitty peered through the loupe but couldn’t make out anything that looked like either ‘Fabergé’ or ‘H.W.’

‘It’s the Cyrillic alphabet,’ the man told her. He produced an iPad from a drawer and typed in a password then looked something up. ‘As I thought … it’s Henrik Wigström, who was their head workmaster from 1903 through to 1918.’

‘Was he Russian?’ Kitty asked, wondering if Dmitri had brought the object over from Russia with him.

‘Wigström was from Finland but he worked at the company headquarters in St Petersburg, under the great Michael Perchin, the most famous Fabergé workmaster.’ He glanced up to see if she recognised the name, but she looked blank. ‘The company was so popular in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that they used independent artisans to make up orders based on sketches supplied to them by Fabergé’s designers. You’ll have heard of the famous Fabergé eggs …’

‘Erm … I think so.’

He seemed disappointed by Kitty’s ignorance. ‘They were extraordinary jewelled creations that the royal family gave each other for Easter, with hidden surprises inside. Only sixty-five of them were ever made and recent prices at auction have reached close to ten million dollars each.’

‘Oh my God!’ Kitty was stunned. ‘For an Easter egg?’

The jeweller laughed. ‘Yeah, well, the one Tsar Nicholas gave to his mother in 1913 was made of platinum and gold, studded with’ – he read from his iPad – ‘1,660 diamonds on the outside and 1,378 in the little basket inside. Not your average Easter gift, I agree, but they were by far the richest family in the world. It was an absolute monarchy for three hundred years and the Russian people were serfs, so all the country’s wealth flowed into the family coffers.’

Her eyes widened. ‘Does that mean my pendant is valuable?’

‘It’s only small but I reckon it would fetch several thousand dollars at auction. Do you want to sell?’ He weighed the object in the palm of his hand. ‘I still have contacts in the business.’

‘Sorry, no. It’s a family piece. I just wondered …’ He looked disappointed so she continued: ‘Perhaps you could sell me a gold chain to wear it on?’

He padded off and came back with a small tray of neck chains. She chose one with fine links that complemented the filigree setting of the stones and paid cash for it.

‘If you change your mind about selling, you know where I am,’ he called after her.

As she drove back towards Lake Akanabee, with the pendant resting on her breastbone, Kitty was overcome with curiosity about her great-grandfather. If he could afford a Fabergé jewelled pendant, he must have been rather a good writer. Why had she never heard of him?

A mile or so before the track to her cabin, she passed a vacation park with a coffee shop and reversed to have a look. On the sign it read ‘Free Wi-Fi’, so she parked and went inside with her laptop tucked under her arm.

‘Hi, can I be cheeky and ask for your wi-fi code and some electricity?’ she began, explaining that her cabin, a few miles up the road, had no electric hook-up.

‘Be my guest,’ the lad serving the coffee said, pointing to a socket where she could charge her laptop. His name was Jeff, he told her, pouring her a latte, and he worked there for the summer then went back to college in the fall. She explained about her inheritance and Jeff was amazed when he heard which cabin she was renovating. ‘I thought that was a goner. You must know what you’re doing.’

‘I’ve never taken on a challenge quite like this,’ she told him, ‘but I’ll work it out as I go along.’

When her laptop had charged sufficiently, she opened her browser and googled the name Dmitri Yakovlevich. First of all she found biographies for a Russian Arctic explorer, a Jewish composer and a Constructivist artist, but none of their dates seemed to fit. She added ‘writer’ after her search term and up came a short Wikipedia page about a man who had been born in 1891 in Russia and had written five novels: Interminable Love (1924), Exile (1927), The Boot That Kicked (1933), In the Pale Light of Dawn (1944) and Toward the Sunset (1947). There was nothing else about him, not even a date of death.

Next she went to the site of a second-hand book dealer and entered Dmitri’s name in the search facility. The only book of his in stock was Interminable Love. Kitty ordered a copy, paying for it with her credit card, and Jeff said she could have it delivered to their office, since the local mailman was unlikely to trek down to her cabin.

Next she hovered over the icon for opening her email account. It was tempting to click on it and see what mails came in. She had texted her editor at the newspaper to say she’d been called away on family business, so she wasn’t expecting any work emails. There would almost certainly be some mails from Tom – either pathetic attempts at self-justification or perhaps he would be asking for a divorce. The thought made her shudder. She was sure Amber would have been in touch as well, but if she contacted Amber she would have to discuss Tom’s infidelity and that would mean thinking about it and she simply did not feel ready. Out there in the wilderness, on a separate continent, she had already begun to feel like the independent, capable person she used to be before she got married. To get back in touch with Amber and Tom – with anyone from her old life – would make her feel sad and anxious and needy.

So many questions would have to be considered. If Tom wanted a divorce, what would happen about money? She couldn’t live on the pittance she earned writing theatre reviews and the money she’d made doing up properties had been swallowed up by the house they lived in now, but her pride wouldn’t let her take a penny from Tom. They’d have to sell the house and she’d need to get a proper job doing God knows what. But if he wanted to save the marriage, would she ever be able to trust him again? Would she be able to make love without thinking about ‘Karren’ with the double ‘r’? Memories of the naked woman on Tom’s phone made Kitty’s gut clench and tears welled up in her eyes. She took her last sip of coffee.

Let him wait. Maybe it would give him time to get Karren out of his system. Meanwhile she would fix up her cabin. When she had woken that morning, she’d gone for an early swim in the shimmering crystal water, listening to the noisy chatter of birds disputing their territory. There was dense green forest, sparkly blue water and hazy blue sky for as far as the eye could see. The sense of being part of this awe-inspiring landscape brought a kind of clarity in the midst of her emotional turmoil. After one night there, she was already falling in love with Lake Akanabee.

Chapter Eleven
Eastern Front, Lithuania, 5th March 1916

Time weighed heavy for Dmitri during the winter of 1915 to 1916 and made him yearn for Tatiana more than ever. Both the Russian and German armies had dug into the earth, trying to find shelter from the brutal blizzards that obscured their vision two feet ahead and made it impossible to venture out of the trench for fear of accidentally wandering into no man’s land. Dmitri still rode out on reconnaissance missions but it was clear that cavalry would play little part in the next stage of the war so he also took lessons on how to position the big guns that were just beginning to arrive from Russian armaments factories, guessing that this would be the only way to drive the Germans back from the territories they had captured in Poland, Lithuania and Belarus.

He got through the days by dreaming of the life he and Tatiana would lead together once the war was over. Would they stay in St Petersburg in a wing of one of the palaces? He would prefer to be in the country; he was more at home in wide open spaces. Still it didn’t feel real; he couldn’t allow himself to believe they would be married until her parents had given consent. In truth they had not known each other long. They’d had less than three months together before he came back to the front, and he could sense Tatiana had changed while he was away. Before she had been light-hearted and almost carefree; now she had grown up. She said as much in her letters:

Malama sweetheart,

Can you believe it is fifteen months since that December day when I waved farewell to you outside the Catherine Palace? I was a mere child in those innocent weeks at the start of the war, with no idea of what I would have to confront. Now I often assist as surgeons amputate men’s limbs; I dress stinking gangrenous wounds; I give injections and distribute medicines; I comfort those who are dying; and yesterday I was even able to calm a man who had some kind of fit of terror. He was staring straight ahead, rocking backwards and forwards and uttering a moaning sound that disturbed the other patients. At first I just talked in a low voice but he didn’t seem to hear or see me. Finally I began to sing, upon which he stopped moaning to listen, and at last he fell asleep for the first time since he arrived on our ward. I think my singing must be particularly soporific!

The patients give me a little insight into the life you are leading at the front and I am terrified on your behalf. I know that you are holding the line somewhere in Lithuania and are not currently in battle, but that shells pound the earth and snipers watch for any careless movement. Malama, I beg you to be extra-cautious and avoid any heroics. Souvenez vous que vous tenez mon coeur entre vos mains.

Tatiana’s endearments still amazed Dmitri after all this time. He was loved by his mother and sisters – perhaps his father even loved him in his own strict, old-fashioned way – but they were family and were supposed to love him; Tatiana had chosen to love him and he couldn’t understand why. What was special about him? He could list a thousand reasons why he loved her but they only made him feel even more unworthy: her gentle nature, her quiet dignity … he loved the way her eyes sometimes seemed to be gazing from a place deep inside her and focusing somewhere far in the distance, hinting at the intelligence of her inner world.

He glowed with pride when she sent him a newspaper clipping describing Olga and her as ‘The White Sisters of the War’. As well as nursing, Tatiana told him she headed a committee that helped to provide aid for the refugees who had poured into Russia from German-occupied territories, and she travelled the country inspecting facilities. Dmitri knew she was being modest in her letters when she wrote that she felt shy at committee meetings and wanted to dive under the table. He heard from other soldiers that Tatiana’s was by far the most popular of the picture postcards of the grand duchesses being sold to help fund the war, and surely that spoke volumes about her achievements as well as her beauty.

Her mother, on the other hand, was increasingly criticised in the press. ‘Rumours Spread that Rasputin urges Alexandra to Broker Peace with Germany’, ran one headline that reached them at the front, followed by: ‘A Third Government Minister Sacked by the Tsarina for Daring to Criticise her “Close Friend”’; ‘Tsarina will not Believe Stories of Rasputin’s Corruption’. Perhaps it was inevitable that the populace would be suspicious of Alexandra, as she had been born in Germany and still had family there; certainly it had been short-sighted of Nicholas to leave her in charge when he went to take command of the troops, allowing the disreputable Siberian to stay by her side.

One day Dmitri overheard a group of soldiers speculating that Alexandra was having an affair with Rasputin. This was treacherous talk and he could have disciplined them for it but he knew such sentiments were widespread and decided to pretend he hadn’t heard. He couldn’t discipline every soldier who thought that way, although he didn’t believe the rumour for one second. Alexandra was too proper, too insistent on recognition of her exalted position to entertain such a scruffy fellow in her bed. She seemed to him rather a cold mother, although Tatiana always sang her praises.

He wondered if Alexandra ever read the newspapers? Certainly Tatiana could not, because she seemed oblivious to the criticisms of Rasputin’s relationship with her mother. Since their argument she was cautious when she mentioned him in letters and there was no more ‘Uncle Grigory’. Still she maintained that Rasputin increased her understanding of God and Dmitri felt sure that her rather eccentric views on spirits almost certainly came from him. One day she wrote of a woman who came to the hospital to read soldiers’ palms:

She was a hearty type, like any farmer’s wife, but there was a mysterious look in her eyes when she communed with the spirits. Every soldier she spoke with seemed convinced of her powers, so I asked her to read my palm. She wondered if I had a question to which I sought the answer, so I asked if she could see when I would marry. She held my right hand and pored over it for some time, tracing the lines with the tip of her finger, then she said that my love line is strong and I will marry someone I love truly. She hesitated before adding that the line of fate is interrupted, making a sharp turn off to the right, and that this means I will pull off something extraordinary in the future. She would tell me no more, but I am greatly cheered that we will marry, Dmitri, because it must mean you will survive this war.

Dmitri rolled his eyes. So did it mean he could walk unguarded onto the plain separating them from the German front line without being shot? He found it amusing that someone as clever as Tatiana should be taken in by this spiritualist nonsense. He would tease her about it when next they met.

‘Oh God, I can’t wait,’ he breathed.

On the 7th of March 1916, new orders arrived for Dmitri. He ripped open the envelope and couldn’t believe his eyes: Tsar Nicholas ordered him back to St Petersburg to serve as an equerry at Tsarskoe Selo. Dmitri was stunned. It was completely unexpected, and he wasn’t immediately sure how he felt. Of course it would be wonderful to be reunited with Tatiana but he would feel as though he were abandoning his comrades. Instead of firing shells at the Germans, he would be supervising the care of the Tsar’s horses. It was a great honour, certainly, but it felt like a soft option.

His orders were to leave the day after next, so he just had time to write a quick note to Tatiana and tell her the news. As he scribbled, he wondered how she would feel about his return. She had been a girl when he left and now she was a woman. Despite her affectionate letters, perhaps their romance had been a childish whim for her. Perhaps, when they met again, she would wonder what she had seen in him. His own feelings had not wavered for a second, but she might look at him critically with her newly mature eyes.

He caught a train to St Petersburg and continued the journey to Tsarskoe Selo in a military truck he had spotted pulling out of the station. It was early evening and he wondered if Tatiana would be in the hospital with her patients, or at home with her family, or possibly off touring medical facilities in another city. His truck pulled up at the gates of the Alexander Palace and he presented his credentials to the guards and swung his knapsack over his shoulder to head towards the stables.

Suddenly a slender figure appeared from a palace doorway, all in white like a ghost. She seemed to fly across the distance between them and straight into his arms. Dmitri encircled her and squeezed tight, breathing in her scent before he looked down. Her face was thinner and her cheekbones more pronounced but otherwise she was the same Tatiana.

‘How did you know when I would arrive?’ No one knew. He himself hadn’t been sure whether he would get a lift that evening or would have to wait till the following morning.

‘I’ve been watching from the window all day.’ She seemed short of breath and he wasn’t sure whether it was from the run or because her emotions overwhelmed her. ‘Oh, Malama, promise you won’t ever leave me again.’

Chapter Twelve
Tsarskoe Selo, Russia, 17th March 1916

Far from the long separation lessening Tatiana’s feelings for Dmitri, if anything it seemed the reverse was true. When they were together it felt as if a bewitching aura surrounded them. Colours were more intense, the sun shone brighter, the grey days of winter’s final weeks seemed to flash past. Once again Dmitri’s head swirled with the words of the great love poets as he gazed into Tatiana’s eyes and listened to the soft tones of her voice – but now he knew more of her personality from the hundreds of letters she had written, their love felt stronger and more unshakeable.

He hadn’t been back a week before she came running into the stables on her way to the hospital and announced, ‘Mama would like to invite you for luncheon tomorrow at noon. Do say you’ll come.’

He was astonished. ‘Your Mama has invited me? Whatever for?’

‘Because I asked her to!’ Tatiana grinned impishly. ‘Don’t worry. She likes you. And you’ll get to meet my siblings as well.’

Dmitri had been in the company of members of the imperial family on numerous occasions but only as a member of the guard, never as a guest, and he was nervous about the protocols. He wished he could consult his mother, who was an expert in such matters, but his parents had not yet had a telephone installed at their home. Instead he had a chat with Anna Vyrubova, the Tsarina’s lady-in-waiting, who assured him that luncheon in these days of wartime was very informal and that he should just be his amiable self.

The following afternoon Dmitri presented himself at the Alexander Palace, his boots and buckles shiny, his chin clean-shaven and his hair carefully oiled and combed flat. A butler showed him to the Formal Reception Room and as the double doors opened, the brightness from the ceiling-high windows reflecting off the mirrors and the lavish gilt décor momentarily blinded him. He blinked and saw Alexandra sitting at a writing desk and her five children on sofas round the fire. Tatiana leapt to her feet to welcome him then led him around, making the introductions. It seemed they spoke English to each other and Dmitri had to concentrate to keep up because he did not often use the language.

‘You’ve met Mama, of course, when she awarded your St George medal.’ He bowed to Alexandra, who gave him a cordial nod then returned to the letter she was writing, but not before Dmitri noticed a strong smell of garlic about her. He wondered what she could have eaten for breakfast.

Next Tatiana led him to her brother, who lay with his feet up on a sofa. ‘This is Alexei, who is recently returned from the front line.’ It was some years since Dmitri had seen the boy. He was now thirteen years old but looked much younger, and Dmitri was shocked to note the deep purple shadows under his eyes and his general air of frailty.

‘Did Your Imperial Highness see any action?’ Dmitri asked

The boy replied with a dejected tone: ‘Sadly, I was not allowed anywhere within range of the German guns.’

His sisters laughed, and Tatiana remarked, ‘I should hope not.’

Next he greeted her older sister, Olga, and Tatiana introduced him to Maria, a slightly plump sixteen-year-old with merry eyes, and fourteen-year-old Anastasia, whose waist-length hair still hung loose in the childish fashion rather than being arranged on top of her head.

‘Don’t ever play a board game with Anastasia,’ Maria warned him, gesturing at a chequerboard and some scattered ivory pieces. It looked as though they had been playing halma. ‘She is an appalling cheat.’

‘There speaks a poor loser,’ Anastasia replied, sticking her tongue out at her sister.

Tatiana quickly interrupted to tell Dmitri that the younger girls had begun visiting the hospitals to entertain the soldiers, and that they were already very popular.

‘I am sure they are.’ He smiled as Tatiana beckoned him to sit in an armchair close to her. ‘Their spirit and beauty would cheer any man.’

Maria asked him about the retired imperial horses who now lived in stables behind the Alexander Palace, where they were able to enjoy their old age. Alexei wanted to know which of the imperial racehorses Dmitri considered would be the fastest when the Stoverstnöm resumed after the war. They all seemed very keen on horses and Dmitri gave his opinions, conscious that while the girls were competent horsewomen, Alexei had never been allowed on horseback because of his frail joints.

A butler announced luncheon and they seated themselves around a table near the window. There was a bunch of peach-coloured roses in the centre, and Dmitri assumed they must have been cultivated in the palace greenhouse; how else could they have roses in April? The cutlery was heavy silver, although Alexandra apologised that they were not using the best plate and that the meal was very plain. Dmitri thought it not at all plain, with a cream soup, followed by fish fillets in a light-as-air sauce, mutton in gravy, and then a dainty dish of apple compôte. The girls led the conversation, alternately teasing each other, asking Dmitri whether he had seen any wild bison or bears at the front (he had, but only from a distance), and discussing patients in the hospital. Tatiana seemed reserved in their company, often stepping in to broker peace between her two younger sisters, and Alexandra seemed distracted, scarcely talking at all.

After the meal, Dmitri was surprised when Alexandra asked if he would join her for tea in the adjoining Portrait Hall. He immediately rose to his feet and followed her, with just a glance of farewell to Tatiana. What did she want to talk about? How much did she know about his relationship with her second-oldest daughter? Might she be about to ask him his intentions towards her, and if so what would he reply?

The Portrait Hall was vast and airy, with burnished gold pillars, a slippery parquet floor and the most exquisite chandelier Dmitri had ever seen, with cascades of what looked like millions of tiny crystals. Alexandra sat on a settee under a huge portrait of Catherine the Great and he took a chair nearby as a waiter poured steaming cups of tea from a heavy silver samovar and set a little bowl of chocolates between them. Dmitri was tempted to take a sweet, because they looked scrumptious, but Alexandra didn’t so he felt it might not be correct etiquette. On a side table, there was a display of the elaborate Fabergé eggs the family gave one another for Easter, each worth thousands of roubles.

Tatiana had told him the family had stopped buying new clothes with the outbreak of war and were having to patch and mend old garments, but the Tsarina looked very grand in a chocolate-brown gown with embroidery of bronze foliage. She wore four strings of pearls around her neck, a diamond-encrusted Star of the Order of St Alexander Nevsky on her breast and a huge aquamarine ring on her finger.

‘Tell me, when you left the front line, had any of the mobile field guns arrived?’ Alexandra began. Her manner was austere but not unfriendly.

‘Yes, they had, but the men have not had much practice in firing them,’ he replied.

‘Is it difficult to fire them?’

‘The machines are heavy. One man in my company was seriously injured by the backwards thrust of a …’ He hesitated, struggling to think of the English word for a shell casing. Alexandra nodded to indicate she understood.

‘Do you think they will make a difference?’ she asked. ‘You may speak freely. I know there are some successes in Galicia but we seem to have reached a stalemate to the north of the line. What do you think it will take to push the invader back behind their own borders again?’

Dmitri noted the term she used: ‘the invader’. These were her own people by birth. What an awkward situation she found herself in. He told her his opinion, that there was no point in pushing forwards at one point in the line only. As they had discovered early in the war, the German troops were quick to cut off and encircle advance parties, with catastrophic consequence. ‘I believe we should not mount another attack until the whole line from north to south has the new weapons and the men are ready to use them in one concerted push.’

She nodded, as if he had confirmed her own views. ‘Tell me, are supplies reaching the men? Were they adequately fed in your part of the line?’

Dmitri hesitated. ‘There were supply problems during our retreat but now that we are static, the situation has improved.’ He could still smell the garlic scent, which seemed to emanate from her pores rather than her breath.

After ten minutes of war talk she announced abruptly that she must retire to rest before her afternoon’s duties and Dmitri leapt to his feet and bowed as she walked out. At the doorway she turned and regarded him with a friendly smile: ‘Please take those chocolates with you, Cornet Malama. They are too sweet for my tooth.’

‘Thank you, Your Imperial Highness.’ His face was scarlet as he bowed again. Had she noticed him eyeing them? All the same he decided to accept her offer, so he scooped up the contents of the bowl before the butler showed him to the door.

Walking back to the stables, rich chocolate melting on his tongue, he mused over what had passed. Had he been invited solely so that Alexandra could pick his brains about the war? What had she thought of him? Should he have been less frank, more obsequious?

He got his answer that evening when Tatiana rushed into the stables in her uniform, fresh from her evening lesson with Vera Gedroits. ‘My darling, you have charmed the entire family. I knew you would. Mama wrote to Papa this afternoon telling him she thought you would make an admirable son-in-law. Can you believe it? I’ve been so excited, I couldn’t wait to tell you.’ She was bouncing up and down like a gleeful child.

Dmitri blanched. ‘She wrote that? Does it mean …? Do you think she might let us marry soon?’

‘Oh, mon chéri.’ She cocked her head. ‘Not during wartime. We wouldn’t be able to make suitable arrangements, and our wedding must be a state occasion. Besides, my sister Olga should be allowed to marry first. I will urge her to hurry and choose her husband. She has too many favourites and must try to narrow it down to one!’

‘Can we at least announce our engagement?’ Dmitri asked. ‘Many have guessed we are close and I would not like to compromise your reputation.’

‘I will ask Mama, but I get the impression she wants it to be an unofficial engagement for now. It’s good for us to have this time in which our love is secret, so we can get to know each other better without the eyes of the world watching …’ She glanced at the door. ‘I can’t stay now as I must get back to sterilisation duties. I simply couldn’t wait to tell you the news.’

They embraced quickly and Dmitri inhaled the scent of her hair. It made him remember something from earlier: ‘What is that strange perfume your mother wears? I didn’t recognise it.’

Tatiana glanced round to check no one was listening, then wrinkled her nose. ‘She smells peculiar, doesn’t she? I give her daily arsenic injections for exhaustion and it appears to cause that odour. Olga has it too – didn’t you notice? I’ll see you tomorrow, dearest. By the side gate at two-thirty.’

They slipped into the habit of spending an hour together each afternoon. In fair weather, they took Ortipo for a walk round the park, trying in vain to teach her to fetch a ball, or rode out on horseback; on rainy days, they played card games, read poetry to each other or simply sat conversing. They never ran out of conversation, and Dmitri saved things to tell her: snippets of conversation he’d overheard, or amusing anecdotes about the horses, sometimes a joke. Usually there would be a ladies’ maid somewhere in the background, acting as chaperone, but she tactfully kept her distance and it was easy to feel as though they were alone.

One morning Dmitri turned a corner in the park and overheard some guards gossiping about the elder Romanov girls. He should have stopped them straight away but instead he paused to listen.

‘They’ve both got favourites amongst the men, I hear. Olga is completely smitten with that Mitya and Tatiana’s in love with Volodya.’

The pain in Dmitri’s heart was like a stab wound. Who was Volodya and what was he to Tatiana? He rushed to the guardroom and made enquiries, learning that he was a second lieutenant in the 3rd Guards Rifles Regiment, who had spent several weeks in hospital the previous autumn. He was a friend of Olga’s sweetheart Mitya and had a reputation as a ladykiller. It seemed the four of them had sometimes played croquet together, before Volodya had been cured and sent back to the front the previous Christmas.

Just as well for him, Dmitri thought grimly. He was consumed with such raging jealousy that had the man still been in town, he would have been tempted to seek him out and beat him to within an inch of his life.

Chapter Thirteen

At the beginning of May 1916, just over a month after Dmitri’s return, the Romanovs, including Tsar Nicholas, went on holiday to Crimea. It was their first trip since 1913 and Dmitri knew how much Tatiana loved it there, but watching their Delaunay-Belleville automobile disappear down the road towards the station made him feel ill. His limbs were heavy, his brow fevered and his head aching. How would he last three weeks without her? She had promised to write, but letters were no longer enough to satisfy him. He only felt truly alive when in her presence. ‘I am so terribly glad to see the sea,” Tatiana wrote.

Olga and I have been lying in the sun so I hope you will not mind your fiancée’s face being brown as a nut. The warmth appears to be helping Mama’s health, and little Alexei is quite animated, badgering the sailors to tell him stories about German U-boats. We sailed from Odessa to Sevastopol but do not have time to travel to Livadia as Father and Alexei must soon return to the front.

Dmitri read her letter with a sour feeling in his stomach. How could she enjoy herself when he was bereft without her? And then he rebuked himself: what kind of lover would resent his loved one’s happiness? Was love always so selfish? He should be pleased for her, and he tried, but he was out of sorts and moody with the staff in the stables and didn’t regain his cheerful spirits until her return.

Tatiana’s nineteenth birthday fell on the 29th of May, and Dmitri bought her a pair of amethyst drop earrings, which he thought would bring out the violet in her eyes. They were well beyond his means on army pay, and would involve repaying his debt to the jeweller monthly for over a year, but it was worth it to see Tatiana’s delight with the gift. She hugged him and kissed his cheek before threading them through her earlobes and seeking a mirror to check her reflection.

‘I have far less jewellery than you might suppose.’ She turned her head one way and another, admiring the effect. ‘Mama used to give us each a single pearl on our birthdays so that by our sixteenth we would have enough for a pearl necklace, but I have few pairs of earrings and certainly no amethysts. I do believe this is my favourite stone.’

‘Will you celebrate with your family later?’ Dmitri asked, smiling at her girlish excitement and delighted by the apparent success of his gift.

‘Just my sisters. Papa and Alexei are at Stavka.’ She hesitated. ‘I believe Mama has asked Rasputin to stop by.’

Dmitri glowered. ‘On your birthday? Is he so close to the family?’

Tatiana pursed her lips. ‘Yes, he is. I must introduce you so you can see he is nothing like the image you have. He’s a very sweet, gentle man.’

Dmitri snorted. ‘Even if he is a good man and all the stories I have heard are wrong, the fact remains that the Russian people mistrust him. They blame his influence for all that is wrong with the country: for the food shortages, for the lack of progress in defeating Germany, for the railway strikes … He boasts of his power over your mother, saying he can make her do anything.’

‘I didn’t know there were food shortages and railway strikes.’ Tatiana frowned. ‘But how could these be Rasputin’s fault? He is a holy man, a healer.’

‘Of course they are not his fault directly, but people think they are, and that’s what matters. Your mother would do well to ban him from the palace while she is running the country’s affairs. Perhaps he should go back to Siberia, at least till after the war.’ He worried about speaking so frankly to Tatiana, who looked upset and bewildered, but it felt as though he had a duty to do so when he might one day be a member of the family.

‘There’s something I must explain,’ she said quietly. ‘Come, sit down.’ They were in the grounds of the Catherine Palace and she led him to a bench with a view over the chain of waterfalls that gushed into the Great Pond. He waited as she chose her words.

‘It is a family secret but, as you are to be one of us, I think it is time you were told … You know that Alexei has frail health?’

Dmitri frowned. Everyone knew that.

Tatiana bit her lip. ‘I am worried that you might change your mind about marrying me if I tell you the rest.’

Dmitri grabbed her hand and squeezed it tightly. ‘Whatever the secret, I promise I will not change my mind.’

She nodded, as if she had known this would be the case, then continued. ‘Alexei suffers from the bleeding disorder known as haemophilia that also afflicts some of my cousins in Prussia.’ Dmitri gave a sharp intake of breath and Tatiana continued: ‘When he bumps his leg even mildly, it can mean bleeding into his joints and he has almost died several times in his short life. Back in 1912 after he injured himself jumping onto a boat, he was so poorly that he was given the last sacrament. But every time, Uncle Grigory manages to heal him where the doctors have failed. He has brought Alexei back from the edge of the grave many times. This is why the family cannot be without him. But of course we can never explain this to the Russian people because Alexei is the male heir who must carry on the Romanov line …’

Dmitri could see the problem; they could not admit to such fragility in the succession. ‘I’m so sorry, angel. It must be a terrible worry for you all.’ Suddenly Alexandra’s reliance on the wild man and Nicholas’s forbearance of him made sense.

‘It is something you must consider,’ Tatiana told him. ‘Were we to have a son, there is a chance of him inheriting this vile disease because it is passed through the female line. That’s why it is only fair to warn you now in case you wish to reconsider your proposal.’

Dmitri was aghast: did she know him so little? He fell to his knees on the path in front of her, his voice shaking with emotion. ‘There is nothing that would make me reconsider – nothing. Now I know the truth about your brother, I love you more than ever.’

‘You are so pure and unselfish,’ she marvelled, placing her hand on his shoulder.

He felt unworthy, remembering his recent burst of selfishness when she went on holiday. Sometimes his love felt like a kind of uncontrollable madness. But he was proud beyond measure that she had shared with him the very sensitive family secret.

The trust between them had grown daily that spring. She had often confided in him when her sisters annoyed her, or when her mother’s illnesses were hard to bear, but to share this particular confidence meant she considered him one of the family, and he was deeply honoured.

After Tatiana went back to work, Dmitri pondered what she had said. If Alexei proved too frail to produce an heir, how would it affect the succession to the throne? Would Nicholas be succeeded by Olga and her husband, followed by their children? And what if Olga failed to marry, like his sister Valerina? Would the succession pass to Tatiana and himself? He did not want to be tsar. The desire to rule was not in his nature. His deepest wish was that one day he and Tatiana would have a home in the countryside where they could keep horses and dogs, and have children of their own, God willing. If one of their sons inherited the bleeding disorder, they would deal with it in due course.

He felt as though it was tempting fate to think so far ahead. What if the war continued to go badly for Russia? How many years might it be until they could marry? What if she fell for someone else before then? Was there a possibility that Tatiana could be forced into an arranged marriage as part of a peace treaty? He tortured himself with these imagined scenarios, and only relaxed during his afternoons with Tatiana when he felt the sureness of her love calming him.

The weather in St Petersburg that June was magnificent: warm and cloudless, with just an occasional overnight shower to freshen the flower displays that bloomed profusely across the royal estates in both formal and informal gardens. At last the news from the front was encouraging: General Brusilov’s offensive had forced the Austro-Hungarian army to retreat and by the end of the month they had advanced sixty miles and taken 350,000 prisoners. It proved what the mighty Russian army could do when they had a decent leader at the helm, and gave them all succour.

However, the picture changed in July when German troops were diverted from the Western Front to fight back and Russian casualties once more began to mount. On the 27th of August, Romania decided to declare war on Austro-Hungary, and as a result Brusilov had hundreds more miles of front line to defend, right down into the Balkans. Suddenly, there were whispers in the guardroom that all able-bodied men were to be called back to the front and Dmitri prayed fervently he would not be among them.

One evening in early September he heard that a new influx of wounded officers had arrived at the Catherine Palace and among them was the man named Volodya, with whom Tatiana was rumoured to have formed an attachment in his absence. He had suffered a spinal injury, Dmitri heard, and could be there for some time. Jealousy gnawed his insides like a hungry rodent.

He had never asked Tatiana about Volodya, partly because he was too proud but also because he feared that some tiny passing expression would give away the truth that she’d had feelings for him, and he couldn’t bear that. He considered visiting the hospital to catch sight of his rival but couldn’t face the anguish if he walked in and found Tatiana chatting to him, smiling at him.

Then, as cruel fate would have it, the morning after Volodya’s arrival a letter came with fresh orders for Dmitri: he was to report to a post in Moldova by the 20th of September. He slumped to the ground, his heart beating rapidly. How could he leave Tsarskoe Selo when his rival was there and Tatiana would see him every day? Dmitri sat breathing hard, all kinds of crazy plans flashing through his mind. He would sneak into the ward by night and hold a pillow over Volodya’s face. He would ask Tatiana to elope with him and they would run off together to a country that was not involved in this bloody war.

And then came an idea that was not quite so far-fetched. There was only one way he could return to the front with any kind of equanimity. It had to be worth a try.

Chapter Fourteen

Dmitri told Tatiana of his orders while they sat in the wildflower meadow just beyond the Llama House in the grounds of the Alexander Palace. She had woven a garland of camomile flowers and placed it around his neck, where it hung over his uniform, the white petals already drooping.

Immediately she burst into tears. ‘Oh, Malama, I can’t bear it. How shall I live without you?’ She clutched his arm, distraught. ‘You have no idea how scared I was when you were at the front line before. I woke every morning with a lump in my throat, as if a stone were lodged there. And now we are so much closer, it will be unbearable …’ Her shoulders shook with sobbing.

‘Hush, angel.’ He put an arm around her, close to tears himself. Tatiana brought out a softness in him that he was not familiar with.

She continued: ‘At least with Papa and Alexei, I know they will be kept out of danger. But you – you are the type who rushes out in the face of enemy fire. I can’t lose you, Dmitri, I simply can’t.’

He kissed her hair, his insides melting at her anguish, then he leaned over so his forehead rested against hers. ‘Can you read my thoughts?’ he asked.

She shook her head and a silky strand of hair tickled his cheek.

‘I have faced death many times during this war,’ he told her quietly, seriously, ‘but never when I had so much to lose. The strength of our love has grown so vast these past months that I find myself unable to risk losing you.’

‘You will never lose me,’ she replied huskily.

He breathed hard, his forehead still resting on hers, and continued: ‘I’m going mad, Tatiana. I feel like banging my head against a wall with frustration that I must wait till this infernal war is over to marry you – and that I might die without ever knowing that sweet joy. The only thing that would make this parting bearable would be if you would marry me before I go.’

She drew a quick surprised breath and he spoke hurriedly.

‘I know we can’t have an official state wedding but why not a secret ceremony, just for us? I am not asking that we lie together, much as the idea thrills me. I only want us to be united in God’s eyes so that if my time is up I will go to Heaven knowing that you truly loved me and that you will one day join me for all eternity.”

Tears pooled in her eyes. ‘I couldn’t bear for you to die. Please don’t talk that way.’

‘Being married to you, I would have everything to live for. I would know for sure you’d be waiting for me on my return and that I could trust your love to be as strong as ever. I promise you, Tatiana, that if you do this for me, I will ensure I survive.”

She leaned her head back to look him in the eyes. ‘But who would perform such a ceremony?’

‘A friend of mine, Father Oblonsky. He is a priest from my hometown. I have already asked if he would be willing to conduct a secret ceremony between me and the girl I love, and he has agreed. His chapel is a few miles down the Kuzminka River. We could go there by night to avoid being seen. No one need know.’ He waited for her to drink this in, grateful that at least she hadn’t ruled it out straight away.

‘But if we then married formally after the war, would it not be bigamous?’

‘Father Oblonsky says not.’ He had only half-listened to the old priest’s explanation about how it could work, overjoyed to hear that he was prepared to conduct a ceremony. He watched as love and duty wrestled in Tatiana’s mind.

‘My parents must never find out. And you must promise with all your heart that you will not make me a widow.’ Her eyes were sad, but she had a determined air. It was only then Dmitri realised with a start that she must love him almost as much as he loved her; otherwise she would not take such a risk.

‘I promise.’

He touched her eyelashes with the tip of a finger to brush away a tear caught there.

Three nights later they met at a side entrance of the Alexander Palace at midnight. Dmitri led two horses, and they jumped on horseback and rode to the riverbank, where he had moored a rowing boat. He lit a candle for Tatiana to hold as he rowed downstream, and her eyes were wide in the flickering light. Neither spoke, each lost in their own thoughts, with the lapping of the water against the edge of the boat and the hoot of an owl the only sounds.

‘Are you sure about this, angel?’ Dmitri asked as he helped her ashore at a little mooring.

‘I’m sure.’

The door of the chapel was open and Father Oblonsky was waiting in his vestments of rich red and gold pattern, with a gold mitre on his head and a heavy gold cross around his neck. He ushered them in, quickly blessed the rings Dmitri handed over, then began the age-old rituals to bind them for life. They were each given a candle to hold. Tatiana’s hand was trembling and she looked dazed but incredibly beautiful in her chaste white gown with throat-hugging neckline. The sweet fog of incense rising from the censors, the priest’s deep lilting voice, the glittering gold icons of the chapel interior made it seem like a dream.

‘Eternal God that joinest together in love them that were separate, who hast ordained the union of holy wedlock that cannot be set asunder …’

They followed instructions as the priest asked Dmitri to put his larger ring on Tatiana’s finger, then her smaller one on his own little finger, and signed them with the cross.

‘O Lord, our God, who hast poured down the blessings of Thy Truth according to Thy Holy Covenant upon Thy chosen servants, our fathers, from generation to generation, bless Thy servants Dmitri and Tatiana, and make their troth fast in faith, and union of hearts, and truth, and love …’

This was the moment at which they officially became man and wife, and they caught eyes shyly: Tatiana smiled but Dmitri was too overawed to react. His ears were buzzing, his legs like jelly, his brain on fire: it was the most precious moment of his life and yet he felt he was barely conscious. He wanted time to slow down so he could savour each second, analyse each word of the service, live this moment to the full. They both took sips from the proffered cup of rich altar wine then the priest wrapped his stole round their joined hands, to unite them till kingdom come.

All too soon it was over and they embraced, letting their lips graze the other’s, the most delicious sensation Dmitri had ever experienced.

‘May God bless you and keep you safe for the rest of your lives,’ Father Oblonsky said in farewell. ‘I wish you all the happiness in the world.’

They did not have time to linger as it was already three in the morning. Back on the river, Dmitri had to strain to row against the current. Black trees waved their branches against the moonlit sky. Tatiana was silent and he wondered what she was thinking. Even at this moment when they should be closer than any two people in the world, he was frustrated by the ultimate unknowability of another person. Was she regretting their actions? Did she feel he had forced her into it?

‘Are you all right?’ he asked tentatively.

She sighed, sounding blissfully happy. ‘I am going over the priest’s prayers in my head. I never want to forget a single detail of this night. No grand state wedding could ever compare to the beautiful simplicity of the promises we have made.’

A sob escaped from Dmitri’s throat and he lifted an oar from the water so he could wipe his eye with his sleeve. His father used to chide him for crying, saying he was like a silly chit of a girl who needed to learn to control his emotions. A few moments later a bend in the river brought his face into the moonlight and he knew Tatiana would see that his cheeks were glistening with tears, but he also knew it didn’t matter because she would understand.

Chapter Fifteen
Lake Akanabee, New York State, end of July 2016

Kitty threw herself into work on the cabin with a passion. First she used her chainsaw to hack down the branches overhanging the track so she could drive along it. That was vital so she could transport planks of wood and panes of glass for her repairs, as well as take away all the rubbish and the old bed to a dump. She climbed onto the cabin roof and mended a rusted patch then pushed her broom down the chimney to clear the abandoned birds’ nests inside. She cut down the sapling that had grown up through the porch steps, chopping it into lengths for firewood. She painstakingly rebuilt the steps, planing, sanding and weatherproofing the wood then adding curved banisters on either side. In her head was her father’s quiet voice: ‘Slow and easy, now; don’t cut corners or that’s where the rot will set in.’

She scrubbed the interior of the cabin, clearing out age-old spiders’ webs, the skeletons of small rodents and clusters of fungi. She patched a couple of gaps in the walls forced open by creeper roots and hired a local firm to empty the septic tank. They confirmed her water came from a well and advised her it couldn’t be drunk because of rust in the supply pipes but was perfectly good for washing.

Every morning she set herself tasks for the day: replacing the window glass, scrubbing the ancient grime on the bathroom fittings, digging a fire pit for barbecues, reconstructing the swing seat … there was always more to do. She bought a camp bed, a little folding chair and a coolbox to keep insects out of her food supplies, but otherwise left the cabin unfurnished, apart from Dmitri’s old desk and the stove that looked nice but was too rusty to use for cooking. Her bags were piled in one corner of the spacious main room, and the only decoration was a bunch of wildflowers thrust in a plastic tumbler on the desk. She rather liked the minimalist look.

At the end of each day, when she had achieved her goals, she had a long swim round the tip of her bay and into the next, to cool down and cleanse the dirt and sweat from her pores. Afterwards she sat on the edge of the porch with a glass of wine, letting the breeze dry her hair, looking out over the lake and planning what she would tackle tomorrow. Thoughts of Tom hovered in the periphery but she kept them there. As an only child she was good at managing without company, but it wasn’t easy to forget a marriage; at some point she would have to decide what to do. Later. For now she was focused on making her cabin perfect. The surroundings were so stunning that she wanted to do them justice; she decided this would be her finest building project ever.

Jeff at the vacation park proved very helpful, letting her drop in to recharge her power tools and advising on local suppliers. One day when she stopped by he handed her a parcel: the copy of Dmitri Yakovlevich’s novel Interminable Love had arrived. Its old-fashioned cover with a pattern of bottle-green, taupe and black swirls gave no clue as to the contents, and there was no description on the inside flaps of either the story or its author. She took it back to the cabin and sat in her little canvas chair by the water’s edge, naked because the heat of the day was stifling. She kept a big t-shirt nearby in case any ramblers appeared but clothes seemed superfluous so far out in the wilderness.

The story began with a young country boy called Mikhail who sees a local girl, Valerina, falling off her bicycle and rushes to help. The grazes on her hands and knees are bleeding and obviously painful but she bites her lip and blinks away the tears and at that moment he finds himself starting to fall in love with her.

The translation of the text was uneven with some awkward phrasing but Kitty was soon hooked as young Mikhail explored the sensations of love: he wished he could get inside Valerina’s skin and experience her every thought and feeling so that he would never say or do the wrong thing; he was tortured with jealousy when he saw her in conversation with anyone else; he felt as though he was losing his mind to some overpowering affliction that brought more pain than it did reward. Soon his devotion paid off and she fell in love with him too but he found it hard to believe. His emotions swung from exhilaration one moment to anxiety the next and, without meaning to, Kitty found her thoughts wandering back to her early days with Tom.

She had first spotted him playing his songs to a small group at the students’ union, and she liked his absorption in the music, his unruly hair, the striped Pierrot t-shirt and braces he was wearing, and his grin when everyone applauded at the end. For a few weeks she stalked him, looking for a way to introduce herself, but in the end he made the first move, appearing by her side when she was placing an order at the bar and saying, cheekily, ‘Mine’s half a bitter.’

‘Can you add half a bitter?’ Kitty asked the barman, and Tom was shamefaced.

‘I was joking. You don’t have to buy me a drink. Let me give you the money.’

She insisted on paying and he followed her over to join the group she was with, introducing himself around the table. He was affable and everyone seemed to like him, but Kitty was so attracted to him at close range that she could barely focus on the conversation. She longed to place her hand on his thigh, nestle into his shoulder, press herself against him. She’d never felt such lust for anyone and wondered how he could be oblivious to the sheer force of it. But it seemed he wasn’t: at the end of the evening, as the others rose to leave, he took her hand and whispered, ‘Can I come back with you please?’

Kitty was staying in student accommodation, where they weren’t supposed to have overnight guests, but she sneaked him in. As soon as the door closed behind them they ripped off their clothes and spent the night in a frenzy of steamy, compulsive sex that left her head feeling as though it was stuffed with cotton wool. When she got up to make tea in the morning, Tom said, ‘This is a little awkward, but I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name.’ And they both collapsed in giggles; it still made her giggle now. And then she remembered Karren with the double ‘r’ and stopped abruptly.

She got up and laid the book to one side while she waded into the cool waters of the lake. It was shallow close to shore but she always swam out until the cabin was barely distinguishable amongst the dense woods that surrounded it. From that distance she could see how isolated it was, with no other man-made structure for at least a mile on either side.

It was three weeks since she arrived at Lake Akanabee and she hadn’t been in touch with anyone back in England. She knew this might be construed as eccentric behaviour but the solitude was feeding something within her. She could feel herself getting stronger with each day of self-sufficiency and she supposed before long she would be tough enough to go home and deal with her marital problems. Perhaps she could also deal with her discontent about the whole fabric of her life. She was thirty-five years old and it was time to decide how she wanted to spend the next few decades. If she wasn’t going to be with Tom, she should look for someone else before the wrinkles and grey hairs set in. She shook her head to dispel this image. The thought of being with another man filled her with dismay: all that adjustment as you learned someone else’s tastes, their sleeping habits, their moods …

She dived down through the clear, cool water. She could see the bottom but it was further than it looked and she had to turn and come up for air before she reached it.

The heat was too intense for hard physical work so Kitty decided to take a day off and immerse herself in her great-grandfather’s novel. It was strange to get a glimpse of his personality through the story while living in his cabin and walking in his footsteps. She felt a kinship with him as she lay in the shade of the trees he must have looked up at, and read Interminable Love, his first novel.

Civil war separated Mikhail and Valerina when their families were sent to opposite sides of the country and he was forced to fight, but their love remained strong as ever. Neither would marry; neither could contemplate being with anyone else, so they lived half-lives shadowed by the memory of their first and only love.

As the sun set, Kitty lit a fire, cooked herself a burger on a rack set over the flames, opened some wine, and continued to read in the orange flickering glow. In the final chapter, Mikhail tracked down the remote Siberian village where Valerina now worked on a collective farm. He asked around to be told she was out in the fields operating one of the new-fangled tractors that had just been delivered. Modernity was often portrayed as evil in the novel, with machines taking the place of people in a metaphor that suggested the unquestioning obedience to the regime of its cowed citizens. Mikhail spotted Valerina from afar and began to run towards her. She saw him approaching, realised who it was, and tried to turn off the tractor’s engine – but something went wrong and it started to accelerate. It was heading straight for Mikhail so she pulled down hard on the steering wheel and as the vehicle turned it toppled onto its side, crushing her underneath. Mikhail struggled to lift the tractor but it was far too heavy. He called for help but there was no one in earshot. Valerina’s injuries were too severe for her to survive so he lay on the earth beside her, kissing her face as she slipped off into the blackness of death.

It was something of a clichéd ending but tears were streaming down Kitty’s cheeks. She wiped them on the hem of her t-shirt but couldn’t stop crying and soon she was sobbing out loud, with huge painful spasms that hurt her chest. She hugged herself and buried her face in the crook of her elbow, crying with the abandon of a child. She hadn’t even cried like this when her parents died. Was it because she was tipsy? What was this about? And as soon as she asked the question, she knew: it was because she missed Tom. There was so much she wanted to tell him. She wished he could see the work she had done on the cabin. She wanted to tell him about this Russian great-grandfather who had been an author. Perhaps he could help her to decide how to make her life more fulfilling … But he was not ‘her Tom’ any more. She couldn’t talk to him because the huge matter of his infidelity lay between them and until she could decide how to deal with that it was easier not to be in touch at all.

As she lay in bed that night, wrung out from crying, Kitty’s thoughts turned again to Dmitri Yakovlevich: he must have been a romantic soul to write so movingly about love. Why had he been living in such a remote spot? Was he alone there? Did he ever come to London to meet his great-granddaughter or was he too elderly and frail to travel by the time she was born? His bed had been in the spot where she now lay, in a corner beneath the window, so he must have looked out at the silver birch tree branches swaying in the moonlight just as she was doing now. She didn’t believe in ghosts but at that moment she felt as if she could almost sense his presence, standing a few feet away, calmly watching over her.

Next morning, she drove to the coffee shop with her laptop and tried to find out more about Dmitri. She went to an ancestry website she had used for journalistic research at college. It had a US immigration section, but she couldn’t find anyone with Dmitri’s name. She tried her grandmother Marta’s maiden name and the search engine whirred and finally came up with a child of eight years old, who had entered the United States in 1934. That sounded about right. Travelling with her, in a second-class cabin, were her mother, Rosa Liebermann – a name Kitty had never come across – and her brother Nicholas, aged nine. She’d heard there had once been a great-uncle Nicholas, so this must be them. She looked further up the page and there it was: Dmitri Yakovlevich Malama, aged forty-three years and four months. Was his real surname Malama? Why had he used Yakovlevich on his novels? The party’s place of departure was given as Berlin. It took Kitty only a few seconds to speculate that the reason for their departure from Germany in 1934 might lie in Rosa’s Jewish-sounding surname. But how had Russian-born Dmitri come to be in Berlin in the first place?

She tried several other searches but with no more success. She couldn’t find where Dmitri and Rosa had lived on arrival in the US, what schools the children had attended, or where he had worked.

She closed the computer and drove to Indian Lake for some pots of varnish. She wanted to cover the entire cabin with a weatherproof coating while the weather was dry. The man in Lakeside Country Stores recommended the type he said was most effective against the cold, snowy winters in these parts. He was respectful now, as if he’d accepted she knew what she was talking about.

While she worked on the front wall that afternoon, she heard an outboard motor on the lake and turned to see a mahogany-skinned, silver-haired fisherman close to the shore. She waved and walked down to the broken jetty to greet him.

‘Y’all bought the cabin, have you?’ he called, squinting up at it.

‘I inherited it,’ she explained. ‘My great-grandfather used to live here.’

‘Well, I’ll be!’ he exclaimed. ‘You’re Dmitri’s kin? I thought that cabin was a write-off but he would be happy to see you doing it up all nice.’

Kitty blinked. This man had known Dmitri. Rather than spend an hour on the internet, why had she not thought to ask around locally? ‘Can I offer you a beer? Or a coffee?’ she asked.

‘A beer’d be nice.’ He tied his boat to one of the broken struts of jetty and leapt to shore. ‘Name’s Bob. I live over the far side.’ He gestured.

Kitty fetched two Buds and a bottle opener and they sat on the grass facing the water. He offered her a Marlboro and lit up himself when she refused.

‘It’s funny you should come along because I’ve been trying to find out about Dmitri,’ she began. ‘Were you two friends?’

Bob shook his head. ‘We said hi when we bumped into each other at the store, but he never invited me here and I never invited him to mine. We lived our own lives.’

‘Did his wife stay here with him?’

Bob frowned. ‘I never saw a woman. Just him padding around on his own, with his dog at his heel. He was a writer so I guess the solitude suited him.’

‘I read one of his books yesterday. Until recently I had no idea we had a writer in the family.’

‘Yeah, I’ve got all his books. He gave them to Sue and me as a wedding present. My wife likes reading but I’ve no time for it.’

‘That’s amazing!’ Kitty was delighted. ‘Have you still got them? Do you think Sue would mind lending them to me?’

‘I’m sure she wouldn’t mind.’ He glanced over towards his home and chuckled. ‘See that glint in the trees over yonder? It’s probably her looking out for me with the binoculars. She’ll be wondering what I’m doing drinking beer with a pirtty lady.’

Kitty saw a dancing point of light in the direction he indicated. She hadn’t considered anyone might be watching through binoculars and flushed to think they could have seen her wandering around naked.

‘You not lonely here?’ Bob asked. ‘Is your boyfriend coming over?’

‘My husband’s back in England,’ she said. ‘I’m keeping myself busy, as you can see.’ She waved an arm at the half-finished coat of varnish.

‘Let me give you my cell,’ Bob said. He scribbled the number on the back of the foil in his cigarette pack with a pen from his shirt pocket. ‘You call if you need anything. It’s a remote spot for a young girl like you.’

She was touched by his concern. She felt completely safe in the cabin but it was good to have a neighbour’s number in case of an emergency. When he left, he promised to return in a day or so with Dmitri’s books.

She went back to her varnishing, annoyed to see that the stretch she had already coated was now covered in dead and dying flies, like the bloody aftermath of some miniature battle.