What else? Thank you for your update on Kindred Spirit Willy. I am glad you and he are still on such easy terms. Nicky does his best with him, but Willy will harangue Nicky about Russia’s relationship with France (Willy wants Russia to sever all ties with France, on the grounds of it being a republic and not a monarchy and therefore, as far as he is concerned, completely untrustworthy). All in all, Nicky finds a little of Cousin Willy goes a long way – as, of course, does nearly everyone else, apart from your infinitely patient self.

I’m beginning to feel the same way about Ducky as Nicky does about Willy. She says I am very unfeeling about her situation, but Ernie is my brother and so of course I see things from his point of view, as well as hers. It isn’t as if he beats her, or ill-treats her in any physical way; and he has given her the most exquisite little daughter. She has told Ernie she wants a divorce. A divorce, can you imagine? The word alone is enough to give Granny Queen a heart attack. I sometimes wonder if Ducky and Missy are mentally quite the thing. (There are some very salacious rumours going the rounds about Missy’s behaviour in Romania, but not ones I can put on paper!)

And now I must close, giving much love to you and Georgie and lots of precious kisses to little David and baby Bertie. (Wouldn’t it be nice if, in another fifteen years or so, there was to be a romance between David and my darling little Olga? Not a royally arranged marriage, of course, just a natural and wonderful falling in love. How happy that would make Granny Queen, and what a couple of proud mamas we would be at the wedding!

Love, love, love, Kindred Spirit Alicky

Having finished her letter, she was about to hurry to the nursery to scandalize Olga’s head-nurse by announcing yet again that she, and not the nurse, was to give Olga her morning bath, when there came a rumble of approaching carriages accompanied by what sounded like an entire regiment of outriders.

Her heart sank. Nicky was in St Petersburg for the morning, in deep discussion with his uncles over matters to do with the coronation. Ella, when she visited, never arrived with an ostentatious number of Hussars accompanying her. Her mother-in-law, however, always did. But why on earth was she visiting this morning, when she would know that Nicky was in St Petersburg, meeting his uncles? Had she come in order to spend time with baby Olga? Or had she come to demand back some of the imperial crown jewels she had been so loath to part with?