She looked startled, then she shrugged. “Of course you do. He was silly enough to come into your room by mistake, and I was foolish enough to forget about his picture on your wall. He painted that picture for me, you know. He’s a brilliant artist. He always had talent, even as a small boy.”

As she talked she slipped her arm through mine and steered me away from the other girls and the clatter of sewing machines. At first I hadn’t a clue what she was talking about, but gradually light began to dawn. She’d dropped enough hints that she didn’t love Nicholas, that she’d wanted to stay in Paris. So she’d fallen in love with another man. But the phrase about the small boy was baffling.

“You knew him when he was a boy?”

“Of course,” she said. “He grew up in this castle.”

“In this castle?”

She nodded. “His father works for us. We played together when I came here in the summers. We were always such good friends as children. And then I was sent to Paris and I found he was there too, studying art. This time we fell in love—wonderful, passionate love. Then my father informed me that I must marry Nicholas. I begged him to change his mind, but he wouldn’t listen. A princess always puts duty first, he said. I told him I loved someone else but he forbade me to see him again.” She reached out and covered my hand with her cold one. “In the end one does one’s duty. Just like you and Siegfried. I’m sure you don’t love him. You can’t love him. But you do what the family expects of you.”

I nodded. “It must be really hard for you. I’m not sure I can actually marry a man I don’t love.”

“Vlad wanted me to run away with him,” she whispered, glancing up to make sure that the other occupants of the salon were still far away and engaged in activity. “We’d live together in Paris and be happy. But I’d been brought up with duty rammed down my throat. I couldn’t do it.”

“So you asked to have the wedding here because of your happy memories?”

“Vlad suggested it so that we could be together one last time,” she said. “He promised he’d find a way to come and see me. He knows this castle so well. You saw him climbing up the wall, didn’t you? He always was one for taking horrible risks, but how else could he get in to see me without being seen himself?”

“You left a rope for him hanging down?”

“No, I had no idea he was going to try to scale the wall. We attached the rope afterward, from my maid’s room, in case he had to make a hasty retreat.”