Sergei remained where he was. Despite his sister Marie being the Queen’s daughter-in-law, he knew Queen Victoria had no time for Russia and that she certainly wouldn’t be happy when she learned that Ella would shortly be leaving Darmstadt for a life as a grand duchess in St Petersburg. That she wouldn’t be happy didn’t bother him at all. Ella’s widowed father had consented to their marriage, and so what a stout old lady dressed in black silk thought was, where he was concerned, of no account whatsoever.

Musingly he turned his thoughts back to Alicky. She was a funny little thing; very fine-featured and pretty, and yet very withdrawn. He wondered what on earth she meant by saying that she was kindred spirits with her cousin Willy and with May Teck. Not in a million years could he imagine what she could possibly have in common with either of them. Willy was a self-opinionated know-all who, in reality, knew next to nothing; and although he had never met the Teck girl, Sergei knew she wasn’t even full-blown royalty and that her parents lived a hair’s breadth away from being inmates of a debtors’ prison.

He took a cigarette from a diamond-studded cigarette case and lit it. Queen Victoria was a notorious matchmaker and would no doubt be putting her skills to good use during her stay in Darmstadt. Her motherless Hesse granddaughters held a special place in her heart and he was fairly sure that, having failed to make a match between Ella and Eddy, Victoria already had another prospective bridegroom in mind for Ella. If she had, the surprise she was about to get when his and Ella’s engagement was announced was going to be doubly unpleasant.

But what about Alicky? In four years’ time she would be of marriageable age and Queen Victoria no doubt had a bridegroom in mind for her. Would it once again – where a Hesse granddaughter was concerned – be Eddy? He rather thought it would. When Alicky was sixteen, Eddy would be twenty-four and, if she accepted his proposal, she would, as his wife, one day be Queen and Empress of over a quarter of the world’s population.

Except that Sergei was determined she wouldn’t be.

He ground his cigarette out beneath his booted heel and lit another one. He had long ago decided that his future sister-in-law would be Russia’s next empress. Russian royalty had a long history of marrying princesses from the little duchies and kingdoms of Germany, and his beloved late mother had been a princess of Hesse. Once, when he had visited Darmstadt with her and Alicky was no more than three or four years old, his mother had turned to her lady-in-waiting and said, ‘Kiss this child’s hand. She is your Empress-to-be.’

It was something he had never forgotten, and something he was determined to bring to fruition.