They were too small a family group for her and Nicky to exchange eager, urgent glances, but as they moved from where Aunt Minny had greeted them and along an ornately gilded gallery to where, in a jasper-columned drawing room a steaming-hot samovar and refreshments were waiting for them, Nicky managed to whisper from close behind her, ‘Dearest Alicky, I thought you were pretty the last time you visited St Petersburg, but you are even prettier now.’

Alicky flushed scarlet, but because she blushed so often when uncomfortable at the social situations she found herself in, no one – not even Ella or Ernie – suspected that this time the scarlet banners in her cheeks had been caused by dazzling, heart-stopping happiness.

Later, as he readied himself for the ball that was to take place that evening, Ernie pondered what was, to him, the odd character of both his cousin, Nicky, and his brother-in-law, Sergei.

Because they were both the same age, and because his oddness was baffling and not, as in Sergei’s case, unsettling, Nicky was the easiest conundrum. At twenty, there was still something immature about him, and in a young man who would one day be Emperor-Tsar-Autocrat over a country so vast that as the night was falling on its western borders, day was breaking on its eastern shore, his gentleness and the air of submissiveness that Ernie detected in him seemed bizarre. One thing he was quite sure of, though, was that Nicky wasn’t – as he was – homosexual.

That wasn’t a certainty he felt, where Sergei was concerned. Ernie had grown up feeling comfortable around Sergei, who had always been such a regular visitor to Darmstadt. Sergei and Ella’s marriage had been a surprise, but only because Ella was so beautiful and had such a magical quality about her that Ernie had assumed she would be snapped up by someone able to offer her a throne; someone like Eddy, or Willy. Her choosing to marry Sergei, who was so much older than her and had an off-puttingly austere manner, had been decidedly unexpected.

And then, over time, had come the rumours that the reason Sergei and Ella had no children was because he was a homosexual; or, if not a homosexual, a sadist. The accusation of sadism didn’t ring true to Ernie, for if Sergei was a sadist, surely he would have sensed it? Ella’s marital happiness was obvious, and he couldn’t see how that was possible if Sergei gained sexual pleasure from inflicting pain.