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

‘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 (#ulink_02b123c9-4568-5935-83b5-0b23dabe9508)

‘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.