Her relief was so vast that she gasped and then, aware of how many eyes were on her, disguised the gasp by turning it into a hiccup.

‘Welcome to St Petersburg,’ Nicky said, as he would have said to anyone he was meeting formally at the station, but the smile he gave her and the expression in his eyes told Alicky she wasn’t just anyone, but someone who was very, very special to him.

Her father was afforded the honour of travelling with Uncle Sasha and Nicky to the Anitchkov Palace, where Aunt Minny was waiting to greet them, while Alicky and Ernie travelled in another carriage, accompanied by Ella and Sergei.

‘Why is Aunt Minny at the Anitchkov and not the Winter Palace, Ella?’ Ernie asked. ‘If the Winter Palace was my palace, I’d never move out of it.’

‘Uncle Sasha finds the Winter Palace too vast and chilly at this time of year, which incidentally is my favourite time of year. Have you ever seen anywhere as beautiful as St Petersburg under snow?’

Alicky hadn’t. Snow, so blinding-white it hurt the eyes, lay in drifts several feet high at the sides of all the wide boulevards. It glittered like crystal on the city’s hundreds of onion-shaped domes and elegant spires. It coated the leafless branches of the trees and rose in flurries from beneath the hooves of the royal horses. As their carriage turned into Nevsky Prospekt, Alicky saw that the nearby Fontanka River was frozen to a sheet of shining silver and was crowded not with boats, but with skaters.

‘Even the Neva freezes in the winter,’ Ella said as their carriage turned in through the Anitchkov Palace’s great triple-arched entrance. ‘We’ll be going to lots of skating parties while you are with us, Alicky.’

‘And toboggan parties,’ Sergei added. ‘Nicky loves toboggan parties, and you will be seeing a lot of Nicky.’

Over the top of Alicky’s head, Sergei’s eyes met Ella’s, and although Alicky didn’t see the look they exchanged, Ernie did.

He sucked in his breath. Were Ella and Sergei hoping to snare Nicky – a man who would one day rule over one-sixth of the world’s surface – as a husband for his little sister? If so, it was one heck of an ambitious project. Sergei might have married a princess of Hesse, but he wasn’t heir to the Romanov throne. Nicky was. When it came to his marriage, Uncle Sasha and Aunt Minny would be looking for a marriage alliance that would bring dynastic and political advantages to Russia – and that wouldn’t be achieved by Nicky marrying Alicky.

In the palace, Aunt Minny, petite, dark-eyed and, even though it was only late afternoon, laden with jewels, greeted them with a warmth that Alicky found reassuring.