The Romanov Bride by Robert Alexander

Yet such a carefree life was not entirely pleasurable, for among other things I could not deny that I was pained by the absence of little feet running about the Palace. And so it was that in my great disappointment and loneliness I longed to do more good for the people, the suffering ones, just as my own dear mother had taught me.
    Heavens, as I readied myself for our public appearance at the opera that evening I couldn’t help wonder what gossip would make the rounds of tomorrow’s tea tables. On the subject of my married life, the most horrid things had been told and retold about my husband’s predilections, and over and over it came as a great astonishment that people could talk of such things. And while these stories hurt me, all I knew was that if one were guided by gossip scant good would get done in this world. Such was my life and my fate, however. I just had to keep in mind that my only duty was to obey the vows of marriage, which were sacred before God and could not be altered. As a member of the reigning family, it was up to us to set the best example for the nation… and yet as of late there had been a rash of unequal marriages, even a few divorces. Shameful, it was, not to mention simply immoral, all these morganatic unions. Even Sergei’s younger brother, the dear, dear Pavel, had broken this firm family law by taking a bride not from another ruling house but from a lower station-and not even a princess at that but a commoner-for which the Emperor had banished him from the Empire.
    I had long held it dear to my heart that to live in amplitude one must have an ideal. Ever since my childhood in Germany mine had been to become eine vollkommene Frau zu werden. A perfect woman. And most definitely that was difficult because first one had to learn how to forgive everything, and to do so with full understanding. And could I do that? Could I achieve my ideal? I was always striving, but feared it would forever escape my grasp.
    I loved Sergei, I truly did, but what I had never revealed to anyone was that the first person I had to forgive-and which was proving so very difficult for me-was none other than him, my husband, from whom I so craved kind word and soft touch.

Chapter 12 PAVEL
    My secret group had been tracking the Grand Duke for weeks, and it was true, we were so confused by the way he darted from the Neskuchnoye Palace on the banks of the Moscow River to the Governor-General’s Palace on the Tsverskaya, next to the small Nikolaevski Palace within the Kremlin. We had no idea why he was moving around like a scared mouse, darting here and there. Some of us proudly convinced ourselves that he was dashing around because he was afraid of us and thus trying to lay no regular path, others had heard rumors that there was to be a shake-up in the government, still others claimed that all the stories were true, that the Grand Duke was no lover of women and was simply darting from boy to boy. And while I had no reason to doubt these tales-I had heard tell that there were a handful of other grand dukes inclined to stable and ballet boys alike-I really didn’t care where or with whom His Imperial Highness dabbled after dark. All I was certain of was that he was not so high and mighty, or so pure and noble, as he pretended. On account of his irregular movement, however, it was nearly impossible for us to pinpoint a time and place for our attack. It was so frustrating for us who were so ready to kill for the sake of our toiling workers and Mother Russia’s hungry peasants.
    When, however, we saw in the Moskovskaya Vyedomosti, that major newspaper, that the royal couple would be attending the opera at the Imperial Bolshoi Theater on the night of February 2, well, we developed our plan almost instantly and quite easily, too. It was not far at all from the Kremlin to the Bolshoi, and there really was only one route for them to follow from that ancient, massive fortress-through the Nikolsky Gate, to the left across the end