Free The Romanov Bride by Robert Alexander

shadows of the Aleksandrovski Gardens. Instead, I waited a moment too long, and in that moment I saw not just the Grand Duke and Grand Duchess Sergei but two others sitting right opposite them. And not two other adults… but children! Bozhe moi, my God, it was their young charges, the girl and the boy! Nothing could have stunned me more. We had rejoiced at the idea of blowing up the Grand Duke Sergei. We had all agreed, if need be, to kill his wife, the Madonna of Romanov princesses, as well. But young ones? Could I throw the black rag to the cobbles and thereby condemn these children to a bloody and violent death?
    Without even thinking, I turned away, my body shivering madly. Killing a man known and hated for his iron rule was one thing. Even murdering his wife as well was somehow acceptable. But blowing to pieces these young ones, royal or not, was not right. I couldn’t do it! We hadn’t talked of this possibility, that the young Grand Duchess Maria and Grand Duke Dmitri might be accompanying their foster parents to the opera, but there they were, sitting opposite their guardians!
    I turned and hurried off without dropping the black rag, proving beyond a doubt that despite the murder of my own wife and unborn child there was still something human left alive in my dark heart.

Chapter 15 ELLA
    “Why do you always do that?” asked my husband.
    “Do what?” I replied as we drove toward the Bolshoi.
    “Greet people like you just did with that man back there. He charged up to our carriage and you met his curiosity with a pleasant nod of your head.”
    “Well… well…” I said, rather flustered. “I suppose I was simply trying to do my duty.”
    “In the future you shouldn’t be so open. People are always staring upon us, and if you acknowledge them in any way it only encourages them. Is that what you want, people looking upon us as if we were monkeys?”
    My face burning, I muttered, “Of course not.”
    I folded my hands in my lap and glanced out the window, not venturing another word and not daring to gaze upon the children, either, for I knew they were studying me, perhaps taking delight in my humiliation. But… but wasn’t that my duty, to reach out to our people, to inspire the best in them? Of course it was. And yet I couldn’t counter my husband, not in front of the young ones.
    I wanted to cry. I wanted to lash out. Instead I reached out and rested my trembling hand upon my husband’s arm. Sergei ’s inner soul, I knew, was so conflicted, so tortured, and I had to remind myself that my greatest duty was to him, and my greatest task then was to soothe the poor man, who, it was true, had become embittered not just by his own appetites but by the murder of his father as well. Yes, it was Sergei’s own father, Aleksander II, who had freed the serfs in 1861, saying “Let us liberate the serfs from above or they will liberate themselves from below.” It was Aleksander II, as well, who had planned to end autocratic rule in Russia by introducing a European-style constitution. This would have long come to pass were it not for the revolutionaries, for just days before the constitution was to be released they had blown the Tsar apart.
    And with what result?
    The revolutionaries had believed this death would spark a great revolution, but in fact it created not a single demonstration, only widespread mourning. And the new Tsar, Aleksander III, what did he and the Grand Dukes think, including my dear Sergei? Well, they came to hate any kind of revolutionary or progressive thought, for it was the revolutionaries who had killed their father. Worse, they fully believed the murder of Aleksander II was God’s punishment for the Tsar’s folly with liberalism. My husband, shocked by the savage murder of his father, especially felt this, just as he believed that the only way to deal with unrest was by force. And so the great constitution, Russia ’s first, was promptly withdrawn.
    Oh, I knew revolutionaries wanted