“I’ll tell your father, of course, but the others don’t need to know. Now, let’s get to work on your letter. I imagine it will be collected by someone who works for Thomas Preston, the British consul in Ekaterinburg. Victoria met him when she was here just before the war. Perhaps he will be able to put it in a diplomatic pouch going back to Britain.” She opened her Moroccan-leather writing set and pulled out a sheet of notepaper with the Romanov mauve-and-cream crest, a quill pen, and a silver inkwell with a gold filigree lid.

There was no table in the bedroom, so Maria balanced the leather case on her lap as she wrote My dear Dickie. She stopped and looked at Alexandra for guidance.

You can’t imagine how surprised I was to receive your letter, her mother dictated, and how delighted.

Maria wrote as she was told. She had always been the most obedient of the five children.

* * *

Next morning, an hour before breakfast, she took her letter to the kitchen, where Ivan Kharitonov was baking bread.

“Will you slip this in the exact same place as you found the last one?” she asked.

“Of course I will, Miss Maria.” He nodded, taking it from her with a discreet smile.

She wandered back to the bedroom, feeling the weight of the world on her shoulders. When would the letter reach Dickie? What would he think?

Her reply felt dishonest. She had given him hope when really there should be none. She had deliberately misled him. But what choice did she have when the safety of her family was at stake? She hoped fervently that before they met again, he would have fallen in love with some other girl and would not hold her to any implied commitment. Of all possible outcomes, she decided that would be the best.

Historical Note

During the war, anti-German sentiment in the UK persuaded the Battenbergs to change their name to Mountbatten. Lord Louis Mountbatten went on to have a long and distinguished career in the Royal Navy, oversaw the transition to Indian independence in 1947–48, became First Sea Lord in 1955, and served as Chief of the Defence Staff in the early 1960s. He married an English heiress, Edwina Ashley, in 1922 and they had three children. He was particularly close to Prince Charles, to whom he was a great-uncle. In 1979 he was assassinated when the Irish Republican Army blew up his fishing boat off the coast of County Sligo. Until the day he died, he kept a photograph of Maria Romanova on a mantelpiece in his bedroom.

Historical Afterword

WHEN THE ROMANOV royal family were placed under house arrest following the February 1917 revolution, few could have believed the Tsar and Tsarina would be executed less than seventeen months later, along with their five children. After all, they were the wealthiest family in the world and closely interconnected with several European royal dynasties.