Free Rasputin's Daughter by Robert Alexander Page B

accompanied Papa to the Aleksander Palace, where we dined with the royal family en famille. Afterward, over tea in the Maple Room, I had sat on a pillow at the feet of the Tsaritsa herself, and while she kindly stroked my tresses, I listened as she told Papa of the reports being circulated about the two young men. Upset by the dishonesty that would certainly be apparent in a marriage between Grand Duke Dmitri and Olga Nikolaevna, Papa minced no words-he strongly condemned the union. And the very next day Empress Aleksandra Fyodorovna quashed the royal engagement. Ever since, needless to say, Grand Duke Dmitri had viewed Rasputin as his archenemy.
    Knowing this, I wasn’t at all shocked when I spied Dmitri kissing Felix, not even Siberian style, three times on the cheeks, but kissing him quite fully on the lips. In the next moment, the grand duke took the prince by his gloved hand and pulled him into the dark backseat of his motorcar, and off they sped, either for a night of revelry among the Gypsies or perhaps a night of seduction.
    Or was I all wrong? Just a few hours earlier, when Papa and I had been whisked off to Tsarskoye Selo, I had taken note of the grand duke’s gorgeous red palace on the Fontanka. The huge windows had been ablaze with, I had assumed, a kind of inappropriate party, a gathering of nobility flaunting their fine wines and rich meats while the rest of the city suffered shortages of simple bread. Prince Felix could have been there at the time. But what if I was mistaken? What if the palace was full not of drinkers and dancers and Gypsy musicians but of a party of plotters?
    Trembling with terrible fright and cold, I turned and scurried home through the blustery night. This much I had learned: In my father’s life it was as impossible to tell who was a friend as who was a lover, let alone who was an enemy.
    Even worse, that truth seemed paramount for me as well, for when I returned to our apartment and checked the nook, Sasha was not resting on the cot. He had disappeared.
     
    No one of good society talked of anything else but Rasputin and the need to do away with him. And yet no one took any action, not even the senior grand dukes! That was when and how we came up with the plan. We-a small group of young titled men-were dining in the Winter Garden at the Astoria Hotel, and suddenly Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich-the Tsar’s own cousin-blurted it out: It was up to us to do the deed and save the dynasty.
    Of course, everyone looked immediately to me, not only because of my connections but because they knew I was the only one who could successfully infiltrate Rasputin’s home.

CHAPTER 6
    Ya spala kak ubeetaya-I slept like the dead.
    Partly out of depression, partly because I was exhausted, I didn’t rise until noon. And when I finally did get up, the first thing that came to mind was a question I couldn’t ask a soul, let alone answer: Why had Sasha fled yet a second time? Immediately, a better question came to my mind: Why had I allowed him into our apartment in the first place?
    Making my way to the kitchen, I found Dunya distraught about the blood smeared against our front door as well as around the sink. Obviously, I had not cleaned up well enough to deceive her thorough eyes.
    Lying to Dunya for the first time ever, I said, “When I got home last night, one of Papa’s petitioners was huddled against the door. He was bleeding badly, and the best I could do was wash him up and send him on his way.”
    “Oi,” muttered Dunya, with a shake of her head. “Will people never leave your father alone? The poor man, he didn’t return home until after ten this morning. I just hope he sleeps all the way until suppertime…or tomorrow!”
    Oh, Papa, I thought as I turned away. I took several steps toward the dining room, then stopped. I hated these days of rumor and innuendo, spy-mongering, war and death. How would it all end: in victory, defeat, or, as so many were whispering, revolution? I stood there