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Chapter Eight
June 18, 1889
The Winter Palace – Ella’s Lounge
6:27 PM
“There is no need to fight the inevitable, Granny. I am Russian now.”
“You are not and never shall be.”
“It’s true. Your simple German princess is no more.”
“You’re not even German,” Victoria said, the tremor in her voice suggesting that the Queen was
on the verge of actually losing her temper. But Ella, standing haughtily before her, clearly had no
plans to retreat.
They had been welcomed in a flurry of hugs, squeals, and tears. Ella had greeted them halfway
down the long promenade leading from the dock up to the palace and her joy at seeing her sister and
grandmother had been touching to behold. The young grand duchess, whom Trevor considered even
lovelier in person than in her portraits, then had escorted them to her private apartments for a late
luncheon and it was there – amid tassels, gold gilt, great dangling prisms, and, in short, the rather
flashy sort of glamour that made the very roots of Trevor’s teeth ache – that the conversation had
devolved from reunion to argument with shocking haste. Now the entire group sat awkwardly in
chairs scattered about the cavernous room, holding their tea cups too tightly and striving without
success to ignore the royal tempest brewing around them.
“A woman becomes whomever she marries,” Ella said. “The virgin is sacrificed on the altar
of marriage and reborn as a wife. I was taught that from earliest childhood and let us think, who
might have been my council on such matters? Why, I believe it was none other than you, Granny dear,
and if this is true, it must also follow that a woman becomes a citizen of whatever nation she marries
into. So when my mother married my father she became German, as were all the children from that
union. I was German until I married Serge, and now I am Russian. Whatever position or influence I
have within the walls of this palace stems from that singular fact. It is not a difficult thing to