Robin Bridges - The Gathering Storm

As I looked for my cousins, the imperial family was announced, and the empress appeared at the entrance to the brightly lit ballroom. The orchestra immediately began to play the empress’s favorite procession, the cortege from Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Snow Maiden. As everyone present curtsied and bowed, Miechen glided away from Maman toward the empress.

Both faerie queens were the perfect illusion of grace, pretending to forget their usual hostilities toward each other. Miechen’s son, Kyril Vladimirovich, followed his mother. I realized then that all five of the empress’s children were standing behind her.

Dressed in a white velvet gown embroidered with silver thread, Grand Duchess Xenia looked almost exactly like her mother. They shared the same dark eyes, but there was something mischievous in the daughter’s glance. She was only thirteen, yet already beautiful enough to break some poor prince’s heart.

Maman and I made our way to the empress so we could give our greetings. I noticed Xenia laughing at something her brother George was telling her.

I sensed the empress’s gaze on me as my mother and I curtsied. “Good evening, Your Imperial Majesty,” Maman said. “We hope you and your family are well this holiday season.”

I trembled a little under the empress’s piercing stare. She was using her faerie sight. I could feel it shimmering over me, illuminating even the darkest stains on my soul. I grew slightly dizzy. And a little sick.

The orchestra began to play a Christmas carol. Kyril Vladimirovich stepped up and asked the grand duchess Xenia to dance. I had been spared for now. “Of course,” she said, eyes twinkling as she allowed him to lead her to the dance floor.

The empress turned and spoke a word to her three sons before moving on to greet the next noble family waiting to speak with her. The tsarevitch remained with his mother, greeting Miechen’s guests, while the younger two grand dukes strolled out to the floor, immediately choosing partners. George Alexandrovich’s eyes met mine, briefly, and then he took Dariya’s hand and swept her across the ballroom.

“Your Imperial Highness, will you do me the honor of this dance?” I turned to see Miechen’s twelve-year-old son, Boris Vladimirovich, looking at me solemnly.

“Of course,” I said with a polite curtsy. Angels and ministers of grace, defend me.

Many of my distant relatives, and even my closer cousins, whom I only saw on occasions like this, were present. I glanced around the room as Boris and I danced. Uncle George’s son Alexander Georgevich looked uncomfortable, unable to excuse himself from chatting with the elderly princess Cantacuzene.

“I hope we get to eat soon,” Boris murmured as he stepped on my foot a third time. “Aren’t you hungry?”

“Katiya!” Dariya rushed up to me, out of breath, as the dance concluded. Boris bowed, thanking me graciously, then skipped off to find something sweet to eat. The servants had just laid out a tray of iced pastries and sugar-frosted fruits. Dariya was dressed in a white silk dress embroidered with tiny pearls. She wore large ostrich feathers in her hair and in the bustle of her skirt. My cousin was so much more beautiful than I was. Her long dark blond hair was a tumble of curls down the back of her head. All the young men flocked around her.

Dariya and I made our way out of the overheated ballroom and walked through one of Miechen’s elegant parlors. Here several small tables were heavy with canapés and caviar. We helped ourselves to cups of punch and sat on the damask-covered settee to catch up.

“I am so glad you did not have to go to Cetinje,” Dariya said. “I don’t see how Elena could possibly think the crown prince is the man of your dreams.”

I shrugged. “Please do not mention him again. Or Cetinje. It is all Maman talks of.”

“I’d rather go to Paris,” my cousin said. “I hear it is a beautiful city.”

We’d both been to visit our grandmother’s villa in Biarritz, a resort town on the Atlantic coast, but neither of us had seen the capital of France. Dariya and I used to play French Revolution when we were little. We’d take turns being Marie Antoinette. Our grandmamma caught us once and had us whipped for revolutionary sentiments. We were six years old at the time and had no idea even what revolutionary sentiments were.

I tried to avoid the imperial family during the ball, but Grand Duchess Xenia was getting punch in the grand rotunda and spotted us. She gave us a knowing smile. “If the two of you are together, there is mischief in progress,” she said. “Are Auntie Miechen’s dogs safe?”

During a children’s ball Maman had thrown many summers earlier, Dariya and I found a kitten that had wandered upstairs and we tried to get it to dance a mazurka with Maman’s French bulldog, Lola. The kitten wanted nothing to do with the mazurka or Lola and scampered up Maman’s silk curtains. Lola ran downstairs, in the opposite direction, then straight through the orchestra and under the violinist’s legs. Fortunately, Dariya and I did not get punished, but we were not allowed to play with Lola anymore. The curtains, alas, were never the same.

Xenia was still laughing at us when her brother walked over. “Georgi, do you remember when Katerina Alexandrovna and Dariya Yevgenievna brought the kitten to a ball?”

I hadn’t noticed the grand duke approaching. Dariya curtsied prettily. “Katiya’s mother wouldn’t let us play together anymore after that,” my cousin said.

“I thought your mother disallowed it,” I said, surprised.

“Both mothers were very wise,” George Alexandrovich said, his lips pressed tightly together, almost as if he was trying not to smile. “You two are an extremely dangerous duo.”

“Nonsense.” Dariya smiled. “Nothing bad has happened tonight.”

The grand duke was looking straight at me when he said, “But the night is young.”

I met his eyes evenly, expecting to see disdain, or even hatred. Instead, there was heat, an intense but strangely wonderful fire. It frightened me even more.

Xenia giggled and then squealed with delight. “Sandro is here!” she said, running off to dance with her older cousin.

Her brother frowned. “If you will excuse me.” He bowed slightly and followed his sister.

“How disagreeable he is!” Dariya murmured as we both watched him leave. “Though he does dance well.”

It felt as if the wind had been knocked out of me. I shook my head, trying to get the grand duke out of my mind. “We should rescue Alexander Georgevich from Princess Cantacuzene,” I said. “She will talk him to death.”

The elderly princess sat on a velvet sofa in the rotunda outside the main ballroom. Alexander was grateful when we offered a cup of punch to her.

“Thank you, dears,” the ancient woman said. Still in mourning for her late husband, she was wearing a black high-necked ball gown. He had died long before I was born.

Princess Cantacuzene patted Alexander on the knee. “Young man, you must go and dance with one of your pretty cousins! Take Dariya Yevgenievna. Katerina Alexandrovna will be happy to sit with me.”

Dariya smiled as she and our cousin hurried away, glad to escape back to the dancing. I sat down next to the princess, cursing my luck. There would be no one to rescue me from the addled woman’s rambling stories. She was a frequent member of Maman’s séance parties.

“My dear, I fancy a turn in the gardens. Would you oblige me?” she asked.

“Of course, Your Highness.”

She rose regally and took my arm as we exited the ballroom. “You have drawn the attentions of the Montenegrins, I hear,” she said.

I let out a heavy sigh but remembered not to slump. “My mother has been gossiping.”