The Secret Wife. Gill Paul

glanced round to check no one was listening, then wrinkled her nose. ‘She smells peculiar, doesn’t she? I give her daily arsenic injections for exhaustion and it appears to cause that odour. Olga has it too – didn’t you notice? I’ll see you tomorrow, dearest. By the side gate at two-thirty.’

      They slipped into the habit of spending an hour together each afternoon. In fair weather, they took Ortipo for a walk round the park, trying in vain to teach her to fetch a ball, or rode out on horseback; on rainy days, they played card games, read poetry to each other or simply sat conversing. They never ran out of conversation, and Dmitri saved things to tell her: snippets of conversation he’d overheard, or amusing anecdotes about the horses, sometimes a joke. Usually there would be a ladies’ maid somewhere in the background, acting as chaperone, but she tactfully kept her distance and it was easy to feel as though they were alone.

      One morning Dmitri turned a corner in the park and overheard some guards gossiping about the elder Romanov girls. He should have stopped them straight away but instead he paused to listen.

      ‘They’ve both got favourites amongst the men, I hear. Olga is completely smitten with that Mitya and Tatiana’s in love with Volodya.’

      The pain in Dmitri’s heart was like a stab wound. Who was Volodya and what was he to Tatiana? He rushed to the guardroom and made enquiries, learning that he was a second lieutenant in the 3rd Guards Rifles Regiment, who had spent several weeks in hospital the previous autumn. He was a friend of Olga’s sweetheart Mitya and had a reputation as a ladykiller. It seemed the four of them had sometimes played croquet together, before Volodya had been cured and sent back to the front the previous Christmas.

      Just as well for him, Dmitri thought grimly. He was consumed with such raging jealousy that had the man still been in town, he would have been tempted to seek him out and beat him to within an inch of his life.

       Chapter Thirteen

      At the beginning of May 1916, just over a month after Dmitri’s return, the Romanovs, including Tsar Nicholas, went on holiday to Crimea. It was their first trip since 1913 and Dmitri knew how much Tatiana loved it there, but watching their Delaunay-Belleville automobile disappear down the road towards the station made him feel ill. His limbs were heavy, his brow fevered and his head aching. How would he last three weeks without her? She had promised to write, but letters were no longer enough to satisfy him. He only felt truly alive when in her presence. ‘I am so terribly glad to see the sea,” Tatiana wrote.

       Olga and I have been lying in the sun so I hope you will not mind your fiancée’s face being brown as a nut. The warmth appears to be helping Mama’s health, and little Alexei is quite animated, badgering the sailors to tell him stories about German U-boats. We sailed from Odessa to Sevastopol but do not have time to travel to Livadia as Father and Alexei must soon return to the front.

      Dmitri read her letter with a sour feeling in his stomach. How could she enjoy herself when he was bereft without her? And then he rebuked himself: what kind of lover would resent his loved one’s happiness? Was love always so selfish? He should be pleased for her, and he tried, but he was out of sorts and moody with the staff in the stables and didn’t regain his cheerful spirits until her return.

      Tatiana’s nineteenth birthday fell on the 29th of May, and Dmitri bought her a pair of amethyst drop earrings, which he thought would bring out the violet in her eyes. They were well beyond his means on army pay, and would involve repaying his debt to the jeweller monthly for over a year, but it was worth it to see Tatiana’s delight with the gift. She hugged him and kissed his cheek before threading them through her earlobes and seeking a mirror to check her reflection.

      ‘I have far less jewellery than you might suppose.’ She turned her head one way and another, admiring the effect. ‘Mama used to give us each a single pearl on our birthdays so that by our sixteenth we would have enough for a pearl necklace, but I have few pairs of earrings and certainly no amethysts. I do believe this is my favourite stone.’

      ‘Will you celebrate with your family later?’ Dmitri asked, smiling at her girlish excitement and delighted by the apparent success of his gift.

      ‘Just my sisters. Papa and Alexei are at Stavka.’ She hesitated. ‘I believe Mama has asked Rasputin to stop by.’

      Dmitri glowered. ‘On your birthday? Is he so close to the family?’

      Tatiana pursed her lips. ‘Yes, he is. I must introduce you so you can see he is nothing like the image you have. He’s a very sweet, gentle man.’

      Dmitri snorted. ‘Even if he is a good man and all the stories I have heard are wrong, the fact remains that the Russian people mistrust him. They blame his influence for all that is wrong with the country: for the food shortages, for the lack of progress in defeating Germany, for the railway strikes … He boasts of his power over your mother, saying he can make her do anything.’

      ‘I didn’t know there were food shortages and railway strikes.’ Tatiana frowned. ‘But how could these be Rasputin’s fault? He is a holy man, a healer.’

      ‘Of course they are not his fault directly, but people think they are, and that’s what matters. Your mother would do well to ban him from the palace while she is running the country’s affairs. Perhaps he should go back to Siberia, at least till after the war.’ He worried about speaking so frankly to Tatiana, who looked upset and bewildered, but it felt as though he had a duty to do so when he might one day be a member of the family.

      ‘There’s something I must explain,’ she said quietly. ‘Come, sit down.’ They were in the grounds of the Catherine Palace and she led him to a bench with a view over the chain of waterfalls that gushed into the Great Pond. He waited as she chose her words.

      ‘It is a family secret but, as you are to be one of us, I think it is time you were told … You know that Alexei has frail health?’

      Dmitri frowned. Everyone knew that.

      Tatiana bit her lip. ‘I am worried that you might change your mind about marrying me if I tell you the rest.’

      Dmitri grabbed her hand and squeezed it tightly. ‘Whatever the secret, I promise I will not change my mind.’

      She nodded, as if she had known this would be the case, then continued. ‘Alexei suffers from the bleeding disorder known as haemophilia that also afflicts some of my cousins in Prussia.’ Dmitri gave a sharp intake of breath and Tatiana continued: ‘When he bumps his leg even mildly, it can mean bleeding into his joints and he has almost died several times in his short life. Back in 1912 after he injured himself jumping onto a boat, he was so poorly that he was given the last sacrament. But every time, Uncle Grigory manages to heal him where the doctors have failed. He has brought Alexei back from the edge of the grave many times. This is why the family cannot be without him. But of course we can never explain this to the Russian people because Alexei is the male heir who must carry on the Romanov line …’

      Dmitri could see the problem; they could not admit to such fragility in the succession. ‘I’m so sorry, angel. It must be a terrible worry for you all.’ Suddenly Alexandra’s reliance on the wild man and Nicholas’s forbearance of him made sense.

      ‘It is something you must consider,’ Tatiana told him. ‘Were we to have a son, there is a chance of him inheriting this vile disease because it is passed through the female line. That’s why it is only fair to warn you now in case you wish to reconsider your proposal.’

      Dmitri was aghast: did she know him so little? He fell to his knees on the path in front of her, his voice shaking with emotion. ‘There is nothing that would make me reconsider – nothing. Now I know the truth about your brother, I love you more than ever.’

      ‘You are so pure and unselfish,’ she marvelled, placing her hand on his shoulder.

      He felt unworthy, remembering his recent burst of selfishness when she went