to take up my new, unasked-for duties. As you have no doubt surmised, I did not take kindly to having been bounced from battle to babysitting without a moment to catch my breath.’
‘Though Napoleon’s defeat has made it unlikely that you’ll have to fight any battles any time soon, has it not? Now that Europe is at peace you can surely be more easily spared to devote yourself to your new duties.’
Aleksei blinked at this unexpected riposte. Miss Galbraith, it seemed, had recovered her composure, and inadvertently unsettled his by pointing out a truth which had not occurred to him and which he had absolutely no desire to contemplate. ‘I am a soldier, have always been a soldier, and have no wish to be anything other than a soldier. Peace has certainly granted me the freedom to fulfil the obligations my brother forced upon me, but that does not mean I wish to spend the rest of the foreseeable future acting in loco parentis.’
‘I see.’
She did not. She thought him callous. Aleksei bristled. He did not need to justify himself to her. ‘The children will be far better off in the care of a guardian who understands the workings of the court, and how best to raise them to take their place in it.’
‘To be perfectly frank, I know nothing of royal courts and their etiquettes. I hope you were not expecting...’
‘You need not concern yourself about that. Apart from anything else, the children are too young, though Catiche...’
‘Catiche? I’m sorry, but I know only that there are two girls and a boy, I have no idea of their names and ages.’
‘That, I am pleased to tell you, I can easily remedy,’ Aleksei said. ‘Catiche—that is Catherine—is thirteen. Elena is ten. Nikki, my brother’s heir, is four. You will make their acquaintance the day after tomorrow. When I had word that your ship had docked this morning, I packed them off to stay with friends for a couple of nights, to allow you time to settle into your new surroundings.’
‘Thank you, that was thoughtful. May I ask how the little ones have coped with the loss of their parents? They must have been devastated.’
‘They seem perfectly well to me,’ Aleksei replied, frowning, ‘though my time is so taken up with my brother’s man of business that I see very little of them which, assuming they are being raised as my brother and I were, is no change to the status quo. They have a nanny, a peasant woman as is the tradition, who has cared for them since they were in the nursery. If they were devastated by anything, it’s more likely to have been the loss of Madame Orlova, their governess of some years’ standing.’
‘Loss? Good gracious, don’t tell me that she too perished? Was there some sort outbreak in the palace, a plague of some sort?’
‘No, no—you misunderstand. Madame Orlova left her post somewhat abruptly the day before my brother died.’
Miss Galbraith said something under her breath in a language he did not recognise. ‘Those poor little mites. What appalling timing. What prompted her to leave?’
‘I have absolutely no idea and nor have I been able to discover a single person in the army of servants here who does. I’ve tried to locate her, but if she’s in St Petersburg then she’s very well hidden, and I’ve been unable to widen my search since I am loath to leave the children for any sustained period without proper supervision. Now you are here, I intend to make tracking her down a priority.’
‘You intend to reunite her with her charges?’
Aleksei hesitated, reluctant to blatantly lie. ‘I must establish why she left in such haste before deciding anything.’ That much was true enough.
‘I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me before, but while I was assured that both English and French are widely spoken in polite society here, I didn’t ask specifically about the children. Obviously I speak no Russian.’
‘There will be no need for you to do so. The children will have picked up Russian from their nanny as we all did, but they have been taking French and English lessons from Madame Orlova from a very young age, so you need not fear you will be unable to make yourself understood.’ Indeed, Aleksei thought, Catiche’s fluency was such as to render any English tutoring virtually redundant. No matter, by the time Miss Galbraith discovered this for herself, he’d have explained the true reason for her presence here.
Which he most decidedly did not wish to do just yet. It was time to conclude this most extraordinary conversation. Miss Galbraith had already demonstrated that she had a sharp mind. It would not be long before she asked him why the devil he had not found someone closer to home to perform what must seem to be a fairly straightforward task, and he wasn’t ready to answer that question just yet. Not until he’d made sure that St Petersburg society, that hotbed of scandal and intrigue, took Miss Galbraith, English governess, at face value and did not question her presence in the palace.
Aleksei had intended to introduce her at a soirée or a small party. There was, in the euphoric aftermath of victory at Waterloo, no shortage of social events to choose from. As it so happened, this very night a much grander affair was taking place. It would be a baptism of fire, but he was confident that she would emerge unscathed. It wasn’t only the guarantees he’d received from The Procurer—though they certainly helped. No, it was Miss Allison Galbraith herself. She was confident—once she had got the better of her quite understandable early nervousness. She was without question clever. And feisty, a woman whose fiery temperament matched her red hair. He reckoned she would fight her corner, so he’d better make sure they were in the same corner. And as for her other qualities? Irrelevant. Absolutely, completely, ravishingly irrelevant.
But also, without question, an absolutely completely, delightful bonus. A most unwelcome distraction from the task in hand undoubtedly, but from a personal point of view a very welcome one. For the first time since he had read that life-changing letter from Michael’s man of business, he felt his spirits lift. ‘If you have finished your tea, I will have a servant show you to your quarters. You have...’ Aleksei consulted his watch. ‘...three hours to prepare.’
She stared at him blankly. ‘To prepare for what?’
‘Your introduction to society,’ he informed her blithely. ‘I did not expect The Procurer to send me a sultry redhead, but your appearance could actually work in our favour. By tomorrow morning, all of St Petersburg will know that there is a new English governess at the Derevenko Palace.’
Four hours later, Allison found herself standing in the foyer of the Winter Palace, the official home of the Russian royal family. Her hand was resting lightly on the arm of a disturbingly attractive man she had met for the first time today. And she was wearing a dead woman’s ball gown. Not, the maid Natalya had hastened to assure her, that the Duchess Elizaveta had ever worn the garment, it was one of many gowns the Duchess had owned but never worn. All the same, were it not for the fact that she possessed only one evening gown, and that not at all suitable for a ball at a royal palace, Allison would have refused to have worn it. It felt both inappropriate and slightly macabre.
She had had no option, however, and though she selected the very plainest of those offered to her, the luxurious garment was outrageously glamorous and utterly unlike anything she would ever have chosen to purchase. White silk with an overdress of creamy net, the evening dress was embellished with tiny gold-thread flowers, a seed pearl at the centre of each. There was a demi-train, the puff sleeves and the surprisingly modest décolleté
