‘Alicky loves me,’ he said, when Willy asked him how things stood between him and Alicky. ‘She loves me with all her heart, Willy, but the dear girl simply cannot bring herself to forswear her religion for Orthodoxy. Ella has tried to get her to change her mind, for although Ella didn’t convert when she married Sergei, she has converted since; and Sergei’s mother was born Lutheran and she, too, converted when she married. So Alicky has two wonderful examples to follow, but neither Ella nor Aunt Miechen has been able to get her to change her mind and, as the Tsesarevich, I absolutely cannot marry her unless she does so.’

A tingling sensation ran through Willy’s body. If he could get Alicky to agree to marry Nicky, he would be seen as the matchmaker par excellence in the family, while at the same time achieving a masterstroke of international diplomacy. For with Russia’s future tsarina a German, Russia was never likely to be a military threat to Germany, which was becoming an ever-increasing concern on the international stage.

‘Leave it to me.’ He slapped Nicky hard on the back. ‘I’ll speak to Alicky the minute tomorrow’s church service is over. I’ll get her to change her mind.’

Nicky had no faith at all in Willy’s confidence. He couldn’t see how, if both Ella and Miechen had failed to change Alicky’s mind, Willy would be able to, for it wasn’t as if he and Alicky were close. He’d never even heard her mention Willy’s name.

So deep in despair that he couldn’t see how he was going to get through the next few days, let alone the rest of his life, he went to his room to write Alicky another desperately pleading letter.

The next morning, after Ernie and Ducky’s wedding ceremony and in the interval before the wedding guests sat down to the wedding breakfast, Willy asked Alicky if he could speak to her privately, as a Kindred Spirit.

Alicky was too taken aback to say no, for although she and May had kept the Kindred Spirit bond affectionately alive between the two of them, Willy had long regarded it as too childish to be taken seriously and had thereby broken the blood-bond between them, and she was surprised he even remembered it.

‘I want,’ he said when the door of a small room had closed behind them, ‘to speak to you about why you should no longer keep refusing Nicky’s proposals of marriage.’

Alicky’s eyes, red-rimmed from a night of crying, opened wide with shock. ‘As Kaiser, you’re Head of the German Lutheran Church! You, of all people, know why I cannot marry him!’

‘And in that role, I can tell you that you will not be abandoning the Church of your birth if you adopt Orthodoxy. Instead, your adoption of Orthodoxy will enrich and deepen your Lutheran faith.’