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We could run these halls forever and not find them, Emma thought, but by then Rayley had
joined them. From his vantage point of the central door he must have seen more of what happened,
for he had already concocted a plan by the time he reached Emma and Davy.
“Stay in the theater,” he barked to Emma. “Don’t argue with me and don’t try to follow. Find
the tsar’s guard, for there must be some of them around, and tell them the littlest grand duchess has
been seized. Send them in the direction of the gentleman’s enclave. Which is where we are going as
well,” he added with a gesture to Davy. “There are only two ways they can get her out, by boat or on
horseback. You take the dock and I shall take the stable.”
Davy nodded and the two of them disappeared. Emma leaned against the doorframe and yanked
her dance shoes off, blinking back tears as she did so. She looked around but saw no one who looked
like a member of the guard, even though there were a dozen or so ladies of exalted birth in the
ballroom, moving about laughing, chatting, or preparing to dance.
We are fools, she thought. We knew this was going to happen and yet, with all five of us in
attendance, it still happened. A movement from the door across the expanse of the ballroom caught
her eye. It was the door where Rayley had been waiting and now another man stood there, a man
three times the size of her friend. A man who was looking directly at her in her red dress. A dress
like the one Xenia wore, like Ella owned, and a dozen other ladies, including his own wife. Emma
screamed again, this time at the sight of Filip Orlov. But that sound, like all the others, was absorbed
into the persistent rhythm of the waltz.