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Not to panic. Not yet. His cover had not been blown. He strode up to the carriage and<br />
wrenched open the door.<br />
“It is so hard to say goodbye, sweetheart,” he called inside. “I have come for a second kiss.”<br />
The women startled as the door opened. They were waiting for what Ella had sworn to be the<br />
last of her endless requests, one of the Fabrege eggs Serge had given her with a miniature portrait<br />
tucked inside. Although sunlight still streamed and the night was warm, there were silken robes in<br />
bright colors tucked around them and they were reclining against great pillows. His Tatiana was<br />
encased in a pod of light green and dark pink, her hair twisted up in a casual but most becoming<br />
fashion. As Filip leaned into the carriage, their eyes locked.<br />
The police may have taken him at his word, and possibly the Grand Duchess Ella as well. But<br />
his wife was not in the list bit fooled by his claim he had come for a second kiss.<br />
“Why are you here?” she asked.<br />
“Perhaps I shall come to the coast with you,” he said.<br />
The Grand Duchess seemed confused by this exchange. “But we are a party of ladies,” she<br />
said, as if were an impossible notion that a man and his wife might travel together in a carriage.<br />
Filip could see they were a party of ladies. The tangle of silken colors around them made it<br />
seem as if his wife and the Grand Duchess and even the maid had been consumed by some great<br />
flower. Tatiana was drinking champagne. Her fingers, tight with tension, gripped the stem of the<br />
glass and the bedclothes smelled of lilac.<br />
She belongs in this world, Filip thought. It was made for her.<br />
And then there was a clatter behind him, so that he turned, one foot on the step of the carriage<br />
and the other still on the cobblestones, and looked over his shoulder. Gregor, wild-eyed and waving<br />
his pistol in the manner of an actor in a very bad play, had also run into the courtyard.<br />
As the groomsmen moved toward him, Gregor gestured with his gun, shouting for them to get<br />
back, and they did. And then he looked at Filip and did the last thing Filip would have ever expected<br />
him to do.<br />
Gregor smiled.<br />
Plan B was to exit by the stable instead of the docks. To commandeer a carriage for escape and<br />
Gregor apparently thought that Filip was doing just that. He smiled and began to move toward the
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