Alicky stared at him, stunned. For a moment Willy thought she had stopped breathing. ‘And will I truly not be breaking my promise to my mama if I become Russian Orthodox?’

‘How can you be, when the vows to love God and to live in service to Him are the same, although expressed differently, for both Lutherans and members of the Russian Orthodox Church?’ He was so convincing, he almost believed what he was saying.

Alicky certainly did so. Slowly, but very purposely, she rose to her feet.

‘I need to find Nicky,’ she said dazedly. ‘I need to tell him I now see my way clearly. I need to tell him I have changed my mind.’

‘You’ll find him in the little snug outside Ernie’s room, waiting for the outcome of my conversation with you,’ Willy said, even more highly pleased with himself than usual.

He would have said more – that Nicky would be in a state of near-collapse waiting to know if she had, or hadn’t, changed her mind – but Alicky had run from the room, the door swinging on its hinges behind her.

Ignoring dozens of her startled relatives, she sprinted in the direction of the palace’s main staircase. On reaching it, she scooped her skirt up in her hands, taking the wide steps at a run, narrowly avoiding knocking over a startled Louis of Battenberg, who was coming down them.

Breathlessly, her heart hammering, she ran in the direction of the set of rooms that were Ernie’s. Almost sick with the fear that Nicky would no longer be in the snug, and gasping for breath, she flung open the door.

He had been standing facing the fireplace. At her entrance he spun round, every line of his body taut with tension.

With blazing happiness on her face she rushed across to him, throwing herself into his arms, saying, ‘I will marry you, darling Nicky. I will, I will!’

With a sob of overwhelming thankfulness, he burrowed his face in her hair. ‘Oh, thank God, sweetheart. My life would be nothing to me without you in it. I love you so much. My whole life is yours, Alicky. Always and for eternity!’

And his mouth came down on hers, hot and sweet, passion uniting them in a way that would never, to the end of their lives, fail them.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

JUNE 1894, YORK COTTAGE

‘And the dear darling just burst into tears when I told him.’

Alicky was sitting with a heavily pregnant May in the garden of York Cottage, Sandringham.

‘The family – and there were more than sixty of them gathered there – went wild at the wedding breakfast when we announced our news. Ducky was dreadfully miffed, but that couldn’t be helped. We simply couldn’t keep such tremendous news to ourselves, and it was perfect being able to tell everyone all at once.’