Free Rasputin's Daughter by Robert Alexander

already been accused and investigated for being a member of the sect, but what about Prince Felix? Could he belong to a local ark, a Khlyst community of nobles devoted to group sinning? Had a flying angel-one of their mysterious couriers who moved from ark to ark, keeping them all in secret contact-really just come to town?
    I had heard many such rumors, that an ark of the highest-born personages gathered in the depths of some palace right here in the capital, some said even within the shadow of the Winter Palace. Others whispered that a certain Prince O’ksandr headed an ark that gathered beneath one of the Kremlin cathedrals. I had no idea what was true, but was Prince Yusupov, like Madame Lokhtina, who had been clutching my father’s member and screaming that he was Christ and she was his ewe, seeking the penetration of my father as a way to sin, repent, and cleanse himself of his “grammatical errors”? I shuddered at the thought.
    And yet…
    I had witnessed how the Holy Spirit had come down upon Papa. Not only did he have the greatest of Christian gifts, the gift of healing hands, and not only did he possess second sight, but many women claimed he was also able to treat the sin of lust. Was this the key to Papa’s suddenly intense relationship with Prince Yusupov? Was he performing treatments upon the prince just as he would upon one of his female devotees? Was he trying to restore the purity of love between Prince Felix and Princess Irina, the Tsar’s own niece?
    I knew Papa would never speak of any of this, any more than I could ever bring myself to ask. But the prince, gossipy and open, would certainly tell me. And I could certainly broach the subject with him. In this night of extremes, I was determined to find out, and so I dashed over to the nook and peered around the curtain. Immediately, Sasha started to get up.
    “No!” I whispered harshly. “Just stay there. I’ll be right back!”
    I hurried to the kitchen door, which I threw open. Without a cloak or even a shawl, I moved through the hall and to the top of the steep rear stairs.
    “Fedya!” I called in a loud whisper. “Fedya, stop!”
    Though I could hear his steps quickly descending, he apparently could not hear my voice. I charged downward. Why was Prince Felix-sole heir to an enormous fortune that included Rembrandts, Tiepolos, jewels like Marie Antoinette’s, dozens of estates, and some 125 miles of the Caspian coast-so interested in a dirty peasant with a dirty reputation? What could someone so high and noble want from someone so low and uneducated? Had he found the same kind of love for my father that Empress Aleksandra Fyodorovna had?
    Or did he mean to harm him?
    After all, it was no secret that Prince Felix’s mother, Princess Zinaida, was one of Rasputin’s greatest enemies. She-the stunningly beautiful matriarch of Russia’s richest family who was once one of the Empress’s close friends-had essentially been banished from the palace because of her hatred for my father. Was Prince Felix keeping his visits to our apartment secret in order to deceive his mother, or, God forbid, were his visits perhaps under her shadowy auspices and part of a greater plot? Rejected by the Empress, Princess Zinaida had become, I’d heard, especially close to several of the Tsar’s uncles, the very grand dukes who despised Rasputin and saw in him the ruination of the Romanov dynasty.
    I flew down the dark narrow rear steps even more quickly than I had so recently come up the front staircase. No matter my haste, however, I couldn’t catch the young prince. By the time I had descended from our third floor, the back door of the building was shut tight. Wiping the frosty ice from a window, I peered out. From the back I saw Prince Felix, wrapped in his heavy coat, moving quickly through an arched passage, and the next instant he disappeared.
    I was so tired and confused I didn’t hesitate. Would Fedya really tell me all I wanted to know? I was just so