Barbara Cleverly - The Blood Royal

She found the door she wanted, stared at it for an age, then knocked.

A bad moment. She’d caught her man dressing for dinner and he appeared at the door flustered, a tiny bloodstained patch on his cheek and in his shirtsleeves.

A series of unintelligible exclamations followed. Gasps and snorts and giggles. And then, at last, a few words that Bacchus, by straining his ears, could just make out. Nothing out of the ordinary. Boring stuff.

‘You’re looking well, Anna.’

‘You too. Oh, you’ve cut your face again!’

‘And you’ve cut your hair …’

‘Oh, it’ll grow … At least I’ve managed to get rid of the hair dye.’

‘Glad about that. We never did say goodbye, did we?’

‘… in the middle of a conversation as far as I remember …’

‘I say, are you sure this is all right?’ Bacchus heard him murmur gallantly.

At last Miss Peterson found her courage. She put her hands on his shoulders, pushed him back into the cabin and stepped inside after him. Bacchus heard the door click shut.

Grinning with relief, the Branch man went to dress and prepare himself for a lonely dinner.

Scotland Yard, Sunday morning

‘Well, that’s it. For better or worse, they’re afloat. The lovebirds are out of our reach on the high seas,’ Joe announced happily, waving a message sheet at Lily. ‘And Bacchus is safely aboard to ensure a good outcome. The admiral’s funeral went as well as you could expect and no one else dropped down dead, though a certain young airman made a hasty departure, looking, I’m pleased to say, rather green about the gills. I took your advice. The boot was firmly put in. Well, thank you for coming in on a Sunday morning. Charge it to overtime, won’t you? I thought the least I could do was to invite you to come along with me for a final confrontation with the princess. She owes us a macaroon or two.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Might even get a sherry.’

‘The princess! Do I have to? Honestly, sir, I’ve seen enough of that double-dealing old fiend for a lifetime. The acting! I still can’t believe how she pulled the wool over my eyes. She knew what was going on right from the beginning. She’d always known who Anna was. She sat there and listened to the guff you made me spout without cracking a smile. She actually twisted a lock of dear dead Tatiana’s hair around her finger, sighing with emotion.’

Joe grinned. ‘And the dear, un-dead girl was hiding in the woodwork at the time. She’s awfully good, isn’t she, the Princess Rat? I sometimes wonder what she’d get up to if we didn’t have Foxton keeping a close eye on her. Oh, yes, she’s well aware,’ he added in response to a lifted eyebrow. ‘We both pretend his presence in the house is for her own safety … as indeed it is, of course. Damn dangerous place, London. And she was right to conceal Tatiana’s identity. The girl wouldn’t have lasted five minutes if it had become known.’

‘But wait a minute, sir. What was that you said about lovebirds? They , sir? Are you saying Bacchus is watching two people?’

‘Yes. What did the princess tell you? About countering a great force of hatred?’

‘She spoke of an equally great love, sir.’

‘Well there you are, then. A great love. She performed in accordance … provided same.’

‘But where do you come by such a thing at a moment’s notice? They don’t have that on the shelves at the Co-op. What’s she been up to? Are you saying she’s got a bloke lined up and given him marching orders to get aboard ship with that killer? Sir! This can’t be right!’

‘Oh, I don’t know … seems to be working. Get your hat on, Wentworth. We’ll go together to put the screws on the old girl. Find out what she’s stirring up and who it is she’s cajoled or bribed to cosy up to our Anna. I shall go on referring to her as Anna. And I want you to do the same. Remember I’ve got your signature where it counts!’

Foxton was expecting them. ‘Her Highness is up in the drawing room where she hopes you will join her in a glass of champagne,’ he said, smiling a conspirator’s smile.

The champagne was chilling in an ice bucket and a manservant was on hand to uncork, pour and offer dry French biscuits to accompany it. The princess, Joe noted, was looking very chipper. She’d chattered non-stop since they entered the room and seemed to have had a load lifted from her shoulders.

When they were all equipped with flutes of Dom Perignon she dismissed the manservant and waited for a moment, examining the bubbles. ‘A toast, Commander?’

‘Certainly. Let’s drink to Stout Cortez! And may our absent friend be struck with the same paralysing wonder when she claps eyes on the Pacific.’

‘Ah! Cortez! Now tell me — wasn’t he the Spanish gentleman who set the fashion for burning one’s boats?’ The princess dimpled and twinkled and sipped her champagne in a high good humour.

‘Indeed. I understand he set fire to his whole fleet to prevent any retreat from the New World to Europe,’ Joe confirmed with relish. ‘And a further toast to the equally stout-hearted gentleman who is at present accompanying our adventurer. I’m thinking he too deserves our good wishes. Are you ever going to tell us, Your Highness, who it was who drew the short straw?’

‘Villain!’ The princess smiled flirtatiously. If she’d had a fan she would have tapped him with it, Joe thought. ‘I’m only surprised you haven’t worked it out, Commander. He’s the best of men and now has what he’s long wanted. He would expect our congratulations. It was difficult to decide and I cannot be certain even now that I made the right choice. If I’ve got it wrong, you’re not to tell me!’

Sandilands poured out more champagne and waited.

‘Choice?’ Lily filled the silence. ‘You mean there was more than one candidate for this position?’

‘You are surprised? She is rich (I have seen to it that her affairs are in order) and lovely. There are many men in her past who would have died for her. But there was one special man, an officer in the White Army, with whom she fell in love when she was nursing. He is alive. I have kept him in focus all these years, never quite knowing whether I might need to call on him. He lives in France now … something of a wastrel it has to be said, but free. I do not enjoy playing God and I might well have done the wrong thing. I shall try to think of myself as God’s instrument,’ she said with a slight smile. ‘But I rejected him. A gambler I’m told. I take no risks with the Romanov fortune.’

Sandilands and Wentworth exchanged anxious glances and waited.

‘When Tatiana fetched up on that doorstep in Murmansk, your consul identified her correctly — indeed she made no secret of her identity to him. She declared herself and demanded protection. He knew there was a price on all Romanov heads — they were being purged all over Europe. A discreet man who had the good sense to trust no one, not even the secret services available to him, he gave her an alternative identity that she could fit into easily. That of her own dearest friend Anna Petrovna. She had heard of Anna’s death with that of her family. It was the consul who whispered in the right ears the story that the body had never been recovered — indeed, it hasn’t, but in the chaos that reigns over there, who will ever know? The consul’s wife had a bottle of black hair dye and used it to good effect to turn out a convincing Anna. The three of us — the consul, his wife and I — were the only ones who were aware of her identity. From that moment she had become in all our minds, and in her own, Anna Petrovna. And, of course, when she arrived, she slipped easily enough into English life since she spoke English as her first language, albeit with a strong Scottish accent.’