Barbara Cleverly - The Blood Royal

She twirled round again for Lily, hands extended in a parody of a mannequin’s pose. ‘Just look at me. What do you see?’

Lily could not tell her the sad truth. The girl resembled nothing so much as a sofa doll, one of those slim, silken puppets with huge glass eyes and painted faces whose floppy limbs her mother liked to drape along the couches to startle the unwary visitor. Half alive and wholly sinister.

But Zinia wasn’t interested in hearing a response from Lily. ‘The princess could hardly believe her eyes when I arrived looking like this.’ Her voice took on a tone that managed to be both imperious and petulant. ‘Wearing a five-year-old rag cobbled up at the hem. And a single strand of mediocre pearls. She didn’t know where to look. I couldn’t bear the disgrace. What you see me in now is all I have left. I’ve sold off and pawned everything of value I had. Since I married the scoundrel six months ago he’s got through all I own. He found my last precious gem, a diamond brooch that I had from my mother, and donated it … donated it! … to Princess Ratziatinsky for her auction tonight. His way of buying access to English royalty.’

‘You married him. And yet you can never have loved such a man.’

‘In my world one does not marry for love,’ Zinia announced. ‘My parents died of the influenza soon after we came here. I was alone for months in a foreign country, my wealth eroded, living like a mouse. Someone introduced him to me. He offered to marry me and remake my fortune. Oh, he told me exactly who and what he was before I accepted him. He confessed his roguery with disarming honesty, he promised to involve me in an adventure. “Bury the past,” he told me, “it saps the strength. The future is for those who have the wits and the energy to make it theirs.” And it seemed an entertaining future. Too late I discovered the chapters in his life he had omitted. The violence, the perversion. The murder.’

Unmoved by the dramatic delivery, the tears, the flashing eyes, Lily came straight to the point. ‘If he isn’t Prince Gustavus, then who is he?’ She was sure Sandilands would expect her to establish an identity.

‘Oh, when he says he’s the son of a Serbian prince, he’s telling nothing less than the truth,’ said Zinia, annoyingly Sphinx-like. ‘In fact he’s the spitting image of Gustavus Alexis, they tell me. But he’s his illegitimate son. One of many. His mother was a serving maid or something of the kind.’ Zinia shrugged a shoulder. ‘He was brought up alongside his half-brother, the legitimate heir, in a ramshackle castle in a remote corner of a continent about to burst into flames … as his brother’s valet.’

‘Good Lord! What a very medieval way of going on.’

‘On the death of their father, and the ruin of the estate in the war, they harnessed up the one remaining carriage and set off, master and man, to try their luck in Paris.’

‘Don’t tell me. Only one of them survived the journey?’ Lily was eager to cut short a predictable and most probably deceitful story. She was quite certain she’d read something of the kind in a book by Alexandre Dumas. Zinia’s wild pronouncements were beginning to irritate her and annoyance sharpened her tongue. ‘Another tawdry tale in the annals of Mendacia, my granny would say.’

Zinia was not affronted. She replied to Lily’s jibe with a look of knowing superiority. ‘Oh, it does happen. Someone has popped up recently in Germany claiming to be the Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia. The remaining members of the imperial family have been assembled to pass her in review and establish or demolish the young woman’s claims.’

‘I had heard. Varying opinions given, I believe.’

Zinia’s lip curled. ‘I can tell you the outcome of that claim. Whatever the truth of it, the woman will be rejected and Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova will be buried a second time.’

‘Why so certain?’

‘The last thing Europe wants to see is an heir to the Tsar’s fortune making an appearance. It has been removed, apportioned and secreted away. And — dare one say it? — even spent. The Tsar was far sighted enough to take out insurance with European banks against his premature death in favour of his children. An enormous amount. No one wants to pay out such sums to a doubtful claimant — or a genuine one! Besides, the young Anastasia was a fiend. Better not resurrected. No, the present custodians of the fortune are not going to surrender it, however compelling the case. The world has outgrown the Romanovs. There is no place for them. If the Tsar himself were to rise from the dead, he’d have to take his chances at the roulette table like the rest of us. Like Gustavus.’

‘Murder and impersonation? The behaviour you’re describing does not go unpunished in England. This is a civilized country. I have a friend …’ Lily said hesitantly, ‘a friend of some influence who might be able to help you if you were to lodge a complaint with him.’

‘An influential friend?’ the Russian said, eyes narrow with suspicion. ‘You have avoided answering my question. Who are you? Who are you to intrude on my unhappiness, offering to pin up my hem and repair my life?’

‘An emissary. Lily Wentworth. I’m the guest of the Prince of Wales this evening. We were rather expecting you to join our table. If you come up now, you’ll be in time for the last of the caviar. And we’re promised a peach pavlova for dessert.’

But her positive tone couldn’t penetrate the gloom in which the Russian had cocooned herself. She shook her head, determined to hold fast to her despair. Lily took her by the hand.

‘Listen, Zinia, there is only one way out of here and that is up the stairs and through the Grand Salon to the door. Hold on to my hand. I won’t let you come to harm.’

Lily suffered a minute or two of exasperation as the girl sniffed and sighed, made her mind up, and changed it, made it up again. Finally, she allowed herself to be led from the room. They climbed the stairs and made their way along the short corridor to the Grand Salon. Lily pushed open the door, still holding tightly to her captive. She was determined not to release her before Sandilands had had a chance to get a look at her face. He would be able with the flick of an eyebrow to let her know whether this was — improbable though Lily thought it — the girl who’d passed herself off as Harriet Hampshire. After that, the lady would either be in handcuffs or free to go wherever she wished.

They reeled back before the happy din of an inebriated crowd underpinned by the strict rhythm of Cecil Cardew, who was well into a post-prandial slow waltz. But the happy sounds were torn apart by a woman’s shriek.

As everyone fell silent, the shriek was followed by another, and a female voice babbling incoherently. It was coming from the royal table, Lily was certain. She was almost sure that the voice belonged to Connie Beauclerk.

Tugging Zinia along in her wake, she hurried towards the source of the noise, now pierced by the clatter of falling dishes and the sound of a wine glass shattering.

Into the general silence that follows breaking glass, Connie’s voice rang out again: ‘I told you he’d had enough, Rupert! You should never have given him that last glass!’

And, from a concerned male voice which might have been Sandilands’: ‘No, no! He’s not drunk. Well, he may be, but that’s not the worst of his troubles … Oh, good Lord, he’s having a heart attack! Tuppy! Help me with this!’

A further howl from Connie startled everyone within earshot. ‘Fetch someone! The prince is having a seizure! The prince is dying!’

‘Connie! Calm down!’ The Prince of Wales’s voice was surprisingly firm. ‘Fetch someone? We have Scotland Yard and Harley Street here. Who else do you want to conjure up? Florence Nightingale?’ He threw an arm round her shaking shoulders and gave her a hug.