For the moment, though, he wished to remain alone in his study to think about Ella. Her photograph stood on the desk in front of him. Having it there was no insult to Dona, for no one entered his study except at his invitation, and in eight years of marriage he had never extended that invitation to his wife.

Ella – a stab of pain knifed through him. How could he have so wanted to marry her, and for her not to have wanted to marry him? Even worse, how could she then have married Sergei Romanov? Although not much was known about Sergei outside Russia, other than that he was arrogant and not much liked, the rumours about him within Russia were sinister enough to make Willy’s flesh crawl. ‘I have it on good authority that he is a sadist,’ Willy’s Ambassador to St Petersburg had told him.

Even thinking about Ella being married to such a man made bile rise in Willy’s throat. How could his darling Ella, the most loving, caring and compassionate of girls, have married such a man? And not only have married him, but continually have insisted that her marriage was a happy one?

Desperately he tried to think of something else and forced himself to focus on Looloo and her desire to marry the non-royal and middle-aged Lord Fife. His Aunt Alix was a claustrophobically possessive mother and he knew, from time spent in her company, that she had no desire for any of ‘her chicks’, as she persisted in calling her daughters, to marry. ‘Why should they?’ he had once heard her say gaily, ‘when they have lovely Sandringham and Marlborough House to live in, and horses to ride; and when their Motherdear loves them so much and would be so distraught if they were to marry and leave her?’

Although it had always been easiest to think of Toria as the eldest of the sisters, it was the self-effacing Looloo who was actually the eldest and he knew that she was May’s age, which was twenty-one. Being twenty-one in a family with a history of arranging marriages when a girl was as young as fourteen, and where it was commonplace for them to marry at sixteen, was to be on the shelf, especially as it meant that even as a debutante, no proposal had been received. It was no wonder then that, if Looloo had received a proposal from Fife, she was eager to accept it.

Willy’s thoughts reverted to Ella. How could they not, now that he knew Alicky was staying with her in St Petersburg? His jaw tightened and he clenched his good hand into a fist. Ever since Ella had so adamantly refused to marry him, he had vowed never to see her again; not because his love had turned to hate, but because the pain of seeing her would have been more than he could bear.