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her friends being mistreated during their transit to the station…Do you think her version of events was
accurate?”
“Certainly. Gerry may be dramatic, but I’ve never known her to be dishonest.”
“That’s what I thought. And do you have any guess as to who the officer in question might be?”
“Hard to say,” Trevor answered. “It could have been any man on the force, even one you’d
never suspect of such crudity. The suffragettes seem to bring out the very worst in our gender.”
“True, but for an officer to set upon a group of women like that, women who were clearly
middle class or better…To muffle them with their own scarves…” Rayley broke off from that train of
thought and abruptly changed the subject. “Where will you be traveling with the Queen?”
“Russia.”
“Russia?”
“That’s what I said.”
“Good God, man, you might never come back. Why would she want to go there?”
“She doesn’t. But it seems the Grandmother of Europe is now focused on the fate of a
particular granddaughter. One of the girls from the German branch. Alix of Hesse, the youngest
surviving child of the Queen’s dead daughter Alice, and thus a bit of a pet, or so I take it. And the girl
has her heart set on marrying the tsar’s oldest son.”
Rayley snorted. “English girls, even those come by way of Germany, have no business
marrying Russian boys.”
“Precisely as the Queen sees it.”
“The solution seems simple enough. The Queen orders the girl to find someone else.”
Trevor shrugged. “I can only assume the situation is more complex than it appears on the
surface. Another granddaughter is already over there, remember. Alix’s sister Ella.”
“Indeed. That’s probably what set the whole plan in motion, the older sister playing
matchmaker for the younger. And can I assume that the tsesarevich is equally smitten with the idea of
Alix?”
Trevor raised a questioning eyebrow at the unfamiliar word.