309828-0830-3333

And in that remark, so benign on the surface but with so much implied, Cynthia at last saw the
full of Ella’s situation. It was quite clear which of the two was dispensable. Not the brother of the
tsar, but a princess from a minor German principality. If the marriage were to fail, all blame would
fall to the blameless Ella. The real question was whether or not Cynthia should share this tale with
the Queen. She had been sent to collect a very specific type of information, only relevant to whether
or not Ella was in danger. Would an unconsummated imperial marriage count as danger? How long
would the dynastically-obsessed Romanovs continue to tolerate a barren bride?
Alina ground out her cigarette on the sole of her shoe and then tossed the stubby remains over
her shoulder, into a nearby rose bush. They had dallied for some time already and should return. Ella
loved her naps but no woman, not even a royal one, could sleep forever.
Cynthia wanted to ask Alina why she thought Ella would stay in this sham of a marriage. Ella
who’d had so many options, who had been courted by so many men, who could run home to her
grandmother at any time. But perhaps that was the very reason she stayed. How humiliating would it
be to return from her marriage childless, rejected, a virgin? After she had defied Victoria, refused so
many suitable suitors to marry this man, to cross this great distance, to insist upon this cold and empty
bed over every other one in Europe?
She will never admit her mistake, Cynthia thought. She would rather live out her life without
love than without dignity. This information went a great way toward explaining the woman’s
personality – the cool reserve with everyone around her, punctuated only by her inexplicable
fondness for that dancing master, the handsome one with the dark ponytail and the Asian slant to his
eyes. The excessive gaiety expressed in her letters back to London. Why she did not flirt at the balls
and grand dinners but sat instead with the sort of vague, far-away stare that one generally only sees on
the face of saints in church paintings.
Cynthia tossed her own cigarette and the two women stood. Alina was still smiling, proud of
the potency of her gossip and the effect it had had on the obviously shaken Cynthia. News of this
weight was worth another pot of jam at least, for this was surely the most interesting story being
swapped in all the back rooms and courtyards of all the elite chambers in the Winter Palace that day.
But she was wrong. For down another hall and in another courtyard, this one smaller and less
carefully tended, two more maids had also brought their heads together. One of them was whispering
to the other that it had now been nine weeks since she had last burned the pads of Tatiana Orlov.