The Unfailing Light

"And the empress's dress was exquisite! Ice-blue silk embroidered in silver with sapphires and diamonds! Oh Katerina, I wish you could have seen it!" Erzsebet could not stop talking about the ball over breakfast the next morning.

Even Princess Alix seemed to have enjoyed herself. She blushed a little when I asked if she liked the dancing. "Of course. It was an honor to represent Smolny Institute in front of everyone at the Winter Palace."

Elena and Augusta rolled their eyes. I glanced up and saw an older woman following Madame Tomilov across the dining hall to the kitchen. It was Dr. Bokova. I wondered if she'd been summoned to attend the kitchen girl, Olga. I hoped the poor girl's head was feeling better that morning. I could not understand how Olga had provoked the ghost into causing such harm.

Elena leaned closer to me and whispered, "Danilo was most disappointed he did not get to dance with you last night. He came all the way from Cetinje to see you."

It was my turn to blush. "I'm sorry he wasted his time."

Elena shrugged. "Perhaps Madame Tomilov will let him visit us here. Surely she cannot begrudge a sister a visit from her brother. And if he happens to see you at the same time, all the better."

I set my spoon down on the table beside my bowl. "Elena, please get it into your head that I am not going to marry your brother. He needs to get it into his head as well."

"He is taking me back home to Cetinje for the Christmas holidays. Perhaps you would like to come and spend Christmas with us?"

I glared at her. "You know I do not." I would never willingly set foot in Montenegro again. It had not been willingly the first time I visited.

"You are no fun, Katerina. I don't know what Dani sees in you."

"Power. Untapped, beautiful power." The crown prince had been listening to our conversation through me all morning. Before losing my temper, I closed my eyes and counted to ten. "Of course I've been listening. My name was mentioned. I had hopes you were thinking wicked thoughts of me."

I reached ten and then continued counting to twenty.

"Do not be angry, Duchess. They will only think you are insane." He laughed. He knew he was the reason for my apparent nervous breakdown. I had to find a way to get him out of my head. I wondered if an exorcism would work.

The wicked thoughts I was having of the crown prince were not the ones he had in mind. I smiled, imagining him tied up and dragged behind a horse, or thrown into the Black Sea.

"Katerina? Are you all right?" Augusta asked. All the girls at the table were looking at me curiously.

The voice in my head was silent again. I smiled even more. "Perfectly," I said, and finished my porridge.

The girls in my Blue Form class would not stop whispering about the gossip they'd heard regarding the ball, and some of them seemed to know about the kitchen incident. But I was not interested in listening to them.

"Focus on your lessons, mes petites," I told them. "We have several weeks left of class before the Christmas holiday begins. Open your textbooks to page one hundred fifty-four." I turned around to write a sentence on the blackboard.

"But Mademoiselle Katerina," Charlotte asked, "is it true they served pineapple sherbet sprinkled with gold dust at the Winter Palace?"

"Did you really dance with the tsar's son?" asked Sarah, another student.

I turned around and looked as stern as I could. Madame Fredericks was sitting in the back of the room, absorbed in a Marie Corelli romance. But I knew she was listening to everything that happened. "I will only answer questions that you ask en français," I told the students.

The girls were happy to comply and I spent the rest of the hour regaling them with stories of the Smolny Ball. From the previous year.

I was counting down the days until the end of the school term. I missed my parents, not to mention my brother, Petya. And I was certain that George Alexandrovich would have to return to St. Petersburg to spend the holidays with his family. We had much to discuss. Surely the empress could not expect me to stay at Smolny during Christmas? Would she be that cruel?