Five years ago, at Osborne, she had indicated to May that the prospect of one day becoming a queen and an empress had filled her with a certain satisfaction – but that had been five years ago, and she knew a great deal more about life now than she had then. She knew that the vast majority of royal marriages were, where the brides were concerned, desperately unhappy. The men, married to a wife who was suitably royal and fulfilled dynastic requirements, found love and passion outside marriage. But the same option wasn’t open to their long-suffering wives.

It was public knowledge, for instance, that Uncle Bertie was serially unfaithful to Aunt Alix with actresses and other ladies of the demi-monde, and that nearly all married men in the family behaved in a similar manner – and did so blatantly.

It was not the kind of marriage Ella wanted; nor did she want the other kind of marriage: the faithful kind that was built around close physical intimacy. For a long time her secret desire had been to become a nun, but knowing how such a desire would be received by Granny Queen at Windsor had been enough to make her see the impossibility of it. Sergei, too, had no wish for any kind of physical relationship in marriage. His true interests lay elsewhere, although his fierce Russian Orthodoxy and innate Puritanism ensured he didn’t pursue them. The two of them understood exactly the kind of marriage they were about to embark on and, having been close companions since childhood, it was one they were certain was going to suit them – and if it didn’t, it was absolutely no one’s business but their own.

The next few days were a misery for Alicky. The palace, the palace gardens, even Darmstadt itself were thronged with relatives, and finding somewhere she could sit in the seclusion that was so necessary to her was impossible. Not even her schoolroom was sacrosanct, for when she opened its door, it was to find her one-eyed Uncle Christian displaying his collection of coloured glass eyes to Toria, Looloo, Maudie, Missy, Ducky and his daughter, Marie-Louise. She and Marie-Louise were to be two of tomorrow’s twelve bridesmaids and, as they were the same age and the same height, they had been paired together to walk hand-in-hand behind the bridal couple.

But that was tomorrow. For now, Alicky wanted somewhere quiet where she could anticipate seeing Vicky in the bridal gown that had been their mother’s. As her uncle replaced one glass eye in his eye socket with another and his audience shrieked in enjoyable horror, Alicky closed the door on them. She had thought of one room in the palace where no one was likely to be, and that was Frittie’s bedroom.