‘Dmitry Alekseevich,’ she said softly. ‘There’s no reason for us to be enemies.’

There was nothing suggestive in the tone with which she had spoken, but he chose to make her think he had taken it that way.

‘You’re insatiable,’ he said, attempting to convey disgust.

She smiled, as if at some comment that he had not heard. ‘When it comes to your father, yes I am. He loves you very much, you know.’

It was evident she was not going to rise to his bait. ‘Possibly – but it seems questionable whether he loves his wife.’

‘So who are you angry with?’ she asked. ‘Me or Aleksei?’

‘He loved her before he met you – loved us both. But not every whore that sleeps with a soldier during a war tries to dig her claws in.’

Her eyebrows dipped in the middle as she frowned. Dmitry could not help but note that it made her look even more attractive, but he was not so distracted by it to not also observe her surprise that he knew so much about her past.

‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘I know all about how you found him. Whereabouts was it – that brothel? Near here? How many soldiers did you get through in a night? And did you manage more or less once the French got here?’

Now she seemed genuinely puzzled – not surprisingly. ‘But you were… five. How could you know?’ Still there was no anger though.

‘Your other former clients don’t hold you in quite the same esteem as my father does,’ he lied. ‘There’s still stories going round Moscow about Mademoiselle Dominique. You were a fool to give it up – if you did.’

‘I can’t change my past,’ she said.

‘You could change the present,’ said Dmitry. ‘Leave him.’ It certainly wasn’t something he had come here planning to say – he’d had no plan.

‘For you?’ Her smile mocked him.

‘If that would get you away from him.’ He meant it – he thought – as a joke, but it fell flat.

‘How noble,’ she said.

‘I’m sure there are plenty of others you could turn to. You’d only be losing – what – one night a week?’

‘And Aleksei would go running back to your mother – the happy family once again?’

‘There’s nothing wrong with my family!’

‘No,’ she said. ‘No, I don’t think there is. He’s certainly raised you well enough.’

‘What would you know?’

She shrugged. ‘Does Marfa Mihailovna know?’

Dmitry clenched his jaw at the sound of his mother’s name on the whore’s lips. ‘Don’t bring her into this,’ he said coldly.

‘I’ve brought no one into it.’ There was anger in her voice now. ‘You’re the one who’s come to my home; who’s spied on me; who waited till his father was away so that I’d be undefended. Why couldn’t you leave me well alone?’

It was an anger he’d been waiting for, one that allowed him to release his own wrath. He’d hated this woman for years, silently brooding, unable to mention it to his mother – certainly not to his father – sharing it with the only true friend he had in the world. And now she was here, in front of him, and she dared accuse him; accuse him of destroying his family, of being a spy, a coward.

He raised his hand and brought it across her face. She was fast, bringing up her own arm to fend him off. Even then it must have hurt her arm – but at least it saved her looks. How typical of the woman.

‘Would your father do that?’ she asked. She had lost her anger, and had never showed fear. Dmitry lowered his hand. He had no idea of the answer to her question. He tried to place Aleksei in his situation, but he could not make him carry out any action. The worst of it was, she seemed to be pretty confident about how his father would behave.

This time he grabbed her wrist with his left hand before lashing his right across her cheek. Her head jerked to one side. She looked up at him, raising her hand to her face and touching the wound. She winced as her fingers made contact, but there were no tears in her eyes. She looked at her fingertips and saw the blood Dmitry could already see on her lips.

Then she said something that made no sense to him at all.

‘How very like your namesake.’

She turned and headed back into the house.

Dmitry looked back up at the window. The little red-headed girl was standing there looking down on them. Dmitry smiled to himself. With any luck she would tell her parents what she had witnessed, and then they’d have no choice but to fire her nanny.

The chapel of the Winter Palace, in the heart of St Petersburg, was at present as royal a location as any in Russia. Every member of the royal family who could reach it had come to attend a mass that had but one objective – to pray for the life of the one member of that family who beyond all others they wished could be there: His Majesty Tsar Aleksandr I.

Grand Duke Nikolai opened his eyes and, still with his head bowed, glanced around. As family gatherings went, it was not the greatest of turn-outs. The dowager empress, Maria Fyodorovna, was there. It would be a tragedy for her to hear of the death of her eldest son. She was sixty-six years old now, and had lived as a widow for twenty-four of them, as long – inescapably – as her son had reigned. Nikolai was the only one of her sons that was present. Grand Duke Konstantin, the tsarevich, was in Warsaw. It was his duty; he was viceroy, in practice if not in name. But Nikolai suspected it was more than duty that called him there. He shied away from Russia, and from his responsibilities there. He was not suited to take the crown – he was too like their father.

Grand Duke Mihail – youngest of the four sons – was at least returning from that same city, as far as Nikolai understood, but would not arrive for many days. A number of the dowager empress’s grandchildren were there, including his own son, Aleksandr – just seven years old. He felt a surge of pride at the thought the boy would one day be tsar.

He glanced over towards his mother again. Her eyes were closed and she was deep in prayer. He asked himself the question he had gone over again and again. Did she know the role her own son had played in the death of her husband? Nikolai had not been aware of it for very many years, and even now he could not be sure how much Aleksandr had been told. It was men like Volkonsky who were to blame. Nikolai would never trust him, however he might smile at him when they met. He’d been four at the time of his father’s death – and scarcely a man when he first heard the rumours of what had really happened. Initially he had been shocked, but the more he spoke to those who had been close to power at the time, the more he appreciated how unsuitable Pavel had been for his role. But was that a good enough reason for him to die? Could a tsar not… retire?

No, it was ridiculous. He was thinking like his elder brother. More than once Aleksandr had expressed the same wish. But it was a foolish idea. It was not what the Lord had ordained, nor what the people would want. The serfs could not retire and live in their dotage by the sea; what would they think if their tsar could do so? And yet that was effectively what his other brother, Konstantin, had engineered, with Aleksandr’s connivance. He had wed beneath him, and by thus entering into a morganatic marriage, he had voided his right to be tsar, and so the throne would pass to Nikolai, and one day to his son.

Nikolai did not fear the responsibility, but the circumstances of the transition would be difficult. Few outside the inner circle of the royal family knew what arrangements had been made. It would be all very well for Nikolai to declare himself tsar, but until Konstantin returned to Petersburg, there would be those who believed that Nikolai was trying to usurp his brother. Perhaps Nikolai should delay; acclaim Konstantin as tsar and then, once they were together, announce the true succession. The more he considered it, the better an option it seemed.

But he was writing his brother’s obituary. There was still hope – more than hope – and also confusion. Two days ago – on the evening of 25 November – a courier had arrived from Taganrog with the news that Aleksandr had died six days before. But the following day a letter had arrived from the tsaritsa, full of optimism that Aleksandr was over the worst. Nikolai suspected that people were clutching at straws, but there was nothing else to clutch at. Two masses had been organized for today; this small one for family and the highest nobility, and another for high-ranking civil servants and officers at the Nevsky Monastery. The Lord would be in no doubt as to the will of the Russian people, but the Lord might have His own plans.