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Chapter Twenty
The Streets of St. Petersburg
1:50 PM
It was bad luck to question good luck. He knew this and yet he could not help but wonder why
she had agreed to meet him here, in the center of town, far beyond the palace gates. St. Petersburg
was a large city, as he had reminded her many times before, and size afforded anonymity. The
chances they would be observed strolling the parks or drinking wine in some café were slim, and in
fact one could quite reasonably argue that it was safer to tryst in the crowded streets than within the
walls of the palace. And yet she had always hesitated, as if the very act of seeing him in the full light
of day would force her to recognize that their affair was real.
But this morning a note had come. A suggestion they should take luncheon together, in a most
public place, Senate Square. And she had further surprised him by announcing – announcing it
abruptly, before the menus had even been brought to their table – that she was prepared to leave Filip
and run away with him to Paris. He must go at once, she said. In fact, he must leave this very day.
He could get a job in a French dancing school and she would follow in a few months, after enough
time had passed that no one would draw any correlation between his absence and her own. Money
was no longer the problem they had always assumed it to be, nor were the tickets, or travel papers or
even the letters of introduction. The Grand Duchess Ella Feodorovna had seen to all that.
His initial reaction was disbelief. He had been dancing with Ella for some time and had never
noticed her heart to be within the clutches of any particular altruistic impulse. He knew that he and
Tatiana had been far from discreet, but the last person he would have worried might guess their secret
was the notoriously self-obsessed Grand Duchess, who was so disinterested in the stories of others
that she had never inquired about the village of his birth, the source of his training, or whether his
parents still lived.
She certainly had never asked if he would like to go to Paris.
Tatiana slid a piece of paper across the table. A brief glance revealed it to be a train ticket. He
placed his wine glass over it, so that the paper - so that his very freedom – would not blow away in a