The Secret Wife: A captivating story of romance, passion and mystery

‘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 (#ulink_512c7bbc-e1f5-502c-9a77-bf903fd4d3d9)

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.’