‘After all these years!’ Stana was shaking her head with astonishment. ‘Can you believe it!’ Her eyes welled up. ‘Can you?’
‘Why now? Why after all this time?’
‘I don’t know! Maybe he wants to marry the whore? Maybe he just wants to be rid of me! Maybe he wants to run into the deep blue Mediterranean and drown himself!’ She laughed. ‘I don’t care. Perhaps he has at last engaged his very mediocre brain and realized that life is short and he doesn’t want to be unhappy.’
‘Or maybe the whore is pregnant? And he doesn’t want a bastard?’
‘Perhaps. I don’t mind, I don’t care; I never want to have to see the man again.’ Stana was speaking quickly. ‘I am just glad, so glad, so very glad, he has come to his senses. I’ve endlessly asked him, endlessly pleaded with him.’ She looked up at her sister. ‘Begged.’
Stana did, in fact, look a little shocked. This was almost too much for her to take in. Years of pain, years of misery and years of embarrassment at her situation were about to come to an end.
‘Oh, thank God!’ she said, throwing her arms around her sister and hugging her. ‘Thank God! At last.’
‘Thank God,’ agreed Militza. ‘It is over.’
Stana sighed deeply, closing her eyes. Could this really truly be happening after all this time?
‘You will have to get the permission of the Tsar and Tsarina,’ added Militza.
‘She’ll grant it.’
‘I know,’ confirmed Militza, tucking her sister’s hair behind her ear and kissing her on the cheek. ‘Of course she will. When they say brothers and sisters are not allowed to marry it means just that and not brothers- and sisters-in-law.’
Stana smiled. ‘The relief…’ she whispered as she brushed a tear off her cheek. ‘It is only now I realize quite how terribly unhappy I have been.’
‘How about Elena and Sergei?’
‘The children will be fine. Sergei is sixteen, practically a man himself and Elena is only two years younger. Besides,’ she said, shaking her head, ‘they are very fond of Nikolasha.’ She looked at her sister. ‘I know,’ Stana said, nodding her head and clasping her hands in front of her. ‘I know; I love that man with all my heart.’
It was a couple of days before the Tsarina agreed to see them. She was ill, again. She had been visiting wounded soldiers, with the girls, at the nearby hospital and had strained her back, picking up a tray of medical equipment. The pain was so bad that when they did finally meet, Alix was pushed into the Maple Drawing Room in a wheelchair.
‘Oh my goodness!’ declared Militza, leaping off the curved polished bamboo sofa. ‘How are you?’
‘It is really nothing to worry about,’ said Alix with a weak smile, as she was wheeled around one of the many bearskin rugs that lay on the floor. ‘I only need to rest; rest and relaxation is what the doctor ordered, only, sadly, these days one gets very little of either. I have been given aspirin. So all should be well soon.’
‘Well, just so long as you are not in pain,’ added Stana.
‘I am always in pain,’ Alix sighed. ‘There is always pain. Some days are more painful than others. But let us not dwell on that.’
The three women looked at each other. The reason for their requesting such an urgent audience hung like a question mark in the air.
‘Every time I come here I think Meltzer has done such a fine job in this room,’ said Stana brightly, as she walked around admiring the new decorations. ‘Look,’ she declared, peering through a glass-fronted cabinet at an extensive collection of Fabergé eggs. ‘How darling! What does this pink egg do?’
‘You press a button and there’s a sweet little crown inside,’ Alix smiled. ‘Dear Nicky…’
‘How charming!’ said Stana.
‘I think the mezzanine is charming myself,’ Militza enthused.
‘So do the children,’ said Alix, smiling. ‘They keep suggesting it might be a wonderful place to put on a play.’
Militza couldn’t help noticing how frail Alix looked. Her face was strained and all the life had disappeared from her pale blue eyes. Her skin and hair was grey and she exuded a sort of sorrowful lassitude. How ironic, she thought, that Alix – who should be the happiest woman alive, with her four beautiful daughters, a husband who loved her and a much wished for son – was living in a permanent state of anxiety, was almost a recluse. She rarely left the palace and her daughters’ freedom was being increasingly curtailed.
‘Have you seen all the photographs?’ Alix indicated lethargically towards the window where there was a large display of silver-framed photos, mainly of the four sisters dressed in matching white dresses with picture hats, fooling around somewhere on the estate. ‘Nicky is obsessed with that Brownie of his… Also have you seen? Someone’s already drawn on the new window already. They’ve tried to scratch something using a diamond. So irritating… I am sure it is one of the children, or Nicky, only the handwriting is so bad I can’t tell who it is…’
It was difficult for Militza and Stana to know when to pick their moment. After all these years they had never asked for a direct favour for themselves. For Montenegro and their father their demands had been endless, but on the subject of their own personal happiness they had remained silent.
They had decided the Tsarina would be easier to approach for permission than the Tsar. Nicky was not known to be terribly sympathetic to affairs of the heart – they only had to recall the terrible business of Nicky’s younger brother, Michael, to realize they’d get short shrift from him. Nicky had refused him permission to marry Princess Beatrice of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, his cousin known to the family as Baby Bee. And Michael was now, seemingly deliberately, irritating his older brother with his new choice of lover, the married ballet dancer and former lover of Nicky himself, Natalia Sheremetyevskaya. So the best way to get approval would be through Alix; Nicky, as everyone knew, always did what Alix asked him.
‘But the children are well?’ asked Militza, trying to think of an easy way to bring up her sister’s divorce.
Alix grew a little more animated. She discussed the girls, their visit to the hospital and particularly how the ‘Bigs’ were growing into their roles and their responsibility so very well. She would make nurses of them yet. The ‘Littles’ still had a lot to learn but they were making her terribly proud, as was Alexei, who was so very splendidly talented at playing with his new train set.
‘That is good news,’ began Stana rather tentatively. ‘I also have some good news…’ Alix looked at her expectantly. ‘Um, George has decided to grant me a divorce.’ She smiled a little hesitantly.
‘Isn’t that wonderful news?’ Militza enthused immediately.
It was not how she would have introduced the subject, but she had to back her sister. Alix looked from one sister to the other; the appalled look on her face said it all.
‘I am so thrilled,’ continued Stana, for she had no choice. ‘All these years. All these lonely years… And at last…’
She looked across at the Tsarina for a whiff of empathy, but there was none. Alix was stony-faced; her thin mouth had hardened and her pale hands gripped the wheel of her chair. Had she the strength to wheel herself out of the room, she would have undoubtedly done so.
‘And all I need now is your—’
‘No.’
The Tsarina’s response was barely audible. The two sisters strained forward.
‘No,’ she repeated a little louder. ‘Absolutely not.’
‘But…’ said Stana.
‘He’s had a lover in Biarritz for years,’ said Militza, trying not to sound shrill. ‘The marriage has been over for a long time. He’s an adulterer.’