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direction, came Rayley. “Gad, Welles, are you all right?” Rayley asked.
Trevor nodded, shards of glass sliding down his shoulders. “See to the girl,” he croaked to
Tom, jerking his hand in the direction of the sack. And then to Rayley he added, “We must hurry. I
fear he’s trying to escape through the stables.”
9:26 PM
Running barefoot, with her dress grasped up in her hands like a farm girl at the village barn
dance, Emma made it to the Queen’s suite of rooms in record time. If she had worried that the police
stationed there would ignore her, as it turns out that concern was unwarranted. Instead they tackled
her.
As she thudded to the carpeted floor, the weight of a young man in uniform crashing down
beside her, the resultant scuffle caused the palace police inside the suite to open the door. And
knowing that the cracked door offered her only chance, Emma shrieked again, for perhaps the tenth
time of the evening.
“Your Majesty,” she cried. “It’s Emma.”
She was surrounded by gray boots but there, from her humiliating posture on the floor with
some random Russian astride her, she mercifully saw the bottom of a black shirt approaching. And
the bell-like voice of Victoria said, with absolute calmness, “Release that young woman at once.”
9:26 PM
When Filip reached the portico which connected the men’s enclave to the stable he saw many
things which he had anticipated: horses, groomsmen, and various means of transport. But he also
saw something which he did not anticipate and which made his heart promptly sink in his chest. The
carriage that was to take Tatiana and Ella to the coast was still sitting in the courtyard. The driver,
who had obviously given up on the idea of leaving any time soon, was slumbering in his seat on top,
his head rolled to the side and his mouth gaping.