Katrina was decked out in an elegant gown—a brocade of royal blue trimmed with florets of pearls and diamonds. The dress would have given anyone who did not know her the impression that she was several years older than she actually was.
An unfortunate tear in her original dress had rendered it impossible to wear to the most important occasion of the season. No one in the Fedorcenko mansion thought to question the “accident,” and Katrina put up a sufficiently admirable display of disappointment to bamboozle her mother. In order to placate her heartbroken daughter, the Princess Natalia allowed her to spare no expense on a new gown and gave her much latitude in its style—more latitude, indeed, than she would have liked once she saw Katrina’s choice, but then this was the New Year’s ball, and she couldn’t bear to see her daughter disappointed.
The result was stunning! Katrina had no idealized misconceptions about not wanting to appear too made-over. She intended to knock the breath from Dmitri’s lungs, and make him unable to look in another girl’s direction. If the daringly low neckline didn’t do it, perhaps the two soft silk handkerchiefs smuggled into her chemise would add to the effect. She made Anna pull her corset as tight as it would go to accentuate her bust all the more.
When her mother hinted that the dress looked a bit old for her, attempting as she spoke to pull the neckline up an inch or two, Katrina knew she had made the right choice. The moment they were seated in the sleigh and her mother was distracted looking the other direction, she adjusted her shoulders and gave the dress a tug back downward.
Katrina’s greatest coup of the evening, however, had been securing permission from her mother and father to remain up for the whole ball. After making her grand entrance to the ballroom on her father’s arm, however, things went downhill for the young, ambitious princess. It was more than an hour before she even laid eyes on Dmitri, and then it was only briefly from a distance, where he seemed to have plenty of beautiful and charming young ladies hovering about, one of them draped on his arm. It seemed to poor Katrina that all St. Petersburg was aware that the young Count Remizov was the most handsome and eligible bachelor in town. But neither he nor Sergei came anywhere near her. An annoyance toward her brother began to fill her, gradually becoming stronger as the evening wore on. Obviously he had forgotten his promise, or else Dmitri was ignoring his request, which was worse!
In the meantime, fifteen- and sixteen-year-old boys seemed intent on vying for Katrina’s attentions on the dance floor. Katrina displayed an aloof indifference toward their efforts to please her and make conversation. She would not waste her red lips and teeth of pearls for such juveniles! Her jewels of red and white, and the flashing green of her eyes, were reserved for more important quarry.
At about twenty minutes after nine, a hush of anticipation began to spread like a silent fire through the huge ballroom. Two or three minutes later, the towering mahogany doors, magnificently inlaid with gold, swung open, and the Grand Master of the Ball entered, bearing in his hand the gold-embossed staff topped with the double-headed eagle of the tsar’s coat-of-arms. This staff he tapped three times on the floor. The echo commanded an immediate hush over the already quieting crowd. He opened his mouth and bellowed rhythmically:
“Their Imperial Majesties!”
Every man in the place bowed at the waist. The women at their sides curtsied low to the floor amid colorful flounces of silk and lace and satin.
The Emperor, Tsar Alexander II, appeared in his formal military attire, profuse with ribbons, medals, shiny buttons, polished belt and buckle and boots, and gold woven cords colorfully accenting the uniform of blue and red. He wore a warm, personable expression, his heavy moustache and mutton-chop whiskers hiding a decided weakness in mouth and jaw. He looked every inch the benevolent monarch, and the expression about his eyes seemed to indicate that he was anticipating a gay evening. Despite chest ailments that had plagued him through childhood and even during his adult years, the middle-aged tsar, even as he now approached his fifty-ninth year, had long been reputed for his enjoyment of a good time. He loved to dance, and he did so determinedly, even while struggling and gasping for breath.
At his side in regal gold brocade walked the Empress Maria Alexandrovna, the German-born princess from Hesse-Darmstadt. Alexander had fallen so madly in love with her in his youth that he had defied even his domineering father in order to marry her. But after twenty-five years of marriage, that passion had ultimately grown cold, a process assisted in large measure by the tsar’s meeting of the beautiful Catherine Dolgoruky in 1865.
Keeping a mistress had been practically a Romanov tradition. But there were unspoken codes to be followed in bedrooms as well as around conference tables and on battlefields—matters, if not exactly of ethics then certainly of reputation and convention. Even adultery, if you happened to be a tsar, carried with it certain responsibilities of protocol.
But with decorum, it turned out, Alexander was unconcerned. He had so utterly transferred his loyalties and passions to the young Dolgoruky woman that in the eyes of many he had all but made a mockery of his royal station, not to mention the tsaritsa. Sleeping with the woman was one thing. Infidelity could not exactly be forgiven—the tsar was, after all, the head of the Orthodox Church. But it could at least be circumspectly overlooked, conveniently ignored. Alexander, however, did more than sleep with her; he gave her all the due respect owing a wife, and expected others to do the same. Dolgoruky was more than a mere mistress; Alexander had elevated her to the status of a full consort.
How the empress continued to hold her head up with what pride was left her remained a wonder to all who knew her. Yet she managed to do so, and, in order to retain her imperial influence, managed also with the rest of St. Petersburg to turn a pretended blind eye to her husband’s most obvious indiscretion.
Yet the strain of ten years of Alexander’s unfaithfulness and public humiliation had begun to tell on the empress, not much past the prime of middle age herself. Rumors had begun to circulate that her health was failing. Tonight she appeared fit enough, despite her pale complexion and the slightly hollow, melancholy gaze of her eyes.
Katrina wondered if the Princess Dolgoruky would be here tonight. How she would love to catch a glimpse of the twenty-eight-year-old mistress who, at merely seventeen, had swept the tsar off his feet. Who was to say that Katrina, at almost sixteen, could not do the same to the Count Remizov?
Even the emperor and autocrat of all the people of Russia, however, would not have had the audacity to allow his mistress into the Winter Palace. Katrina quickly resumed her preoccupation with her own problems once the flurry over the entrance of the emperor and empress had subsided. Within minutes she was again growing perturbed with her brother, and began actively searching the crowd for sight of his face. But she could spot him nowhere among the multitude of guests, dancing and moving freely about again now that the orchestra had resumed its playing. He was probably in one of the dozens of smaller rooms or parlors where refreshments were being served and smaller ensembles and chamber musicians were playing. It would take her all night to locate him if she tried to search every one.
“May I be honored by your hand for this dance?” said a high-pitched voice breaking into Katrina’s thoughts.
She glanced around to see none other than the hideous pale face of Alice Borodnovna’s cousin at her elbow.
She looked down into his face, and a cutting denial sprang to her lips. She caught it at the last instant, however, and, without so much as a word or smile or any other acknowledgment that he had spoken, she reached down, took his hand, and led the way into the waltz which had just begun. What better way to scan the entire dance floor? she thought. She could lead this timid little puppy wherever she wanted, and she certainly would have no trouble seeing over his head.
Without a smile, without a word, indeed without their eyes once meeting, the thin stripling lad gazed into Katrina’s face. She, meanwhile searched the crowd, and he followed her movements as she circumnavigated the entirety of the ballroom. He would say nothing, for his heaven was for the moment gained. It had been his dream to see Katrina here, and perhaps, if fate was with him, to dance with the goddess herself. And now here she was, in his arms!
The waltz came to an end. A pause. Still she stood with him. Again came sounds from the violins, another dance began, a livelier one this time. The goddess Katrina began to turn and spin. Did she mean for him to follow? She reached out her hand, and pulled him into the dance with her. A half-smile of disbelief broke from the boy’s lips with the realization that she meant to dance with him a second time.
He followed in timorous ecstacy. Still she seemed to be looking all about, scarcely paying attention to the dance. The rhythm was lively, and the pace of the dance quick. Keeping time to the steps, the boy bumped and jostled some standing nearby. He was not as skilled at this dance as she. But the goddess spun and twirled, and his elation just to be with her could not have been greater.
She entered a fast-spinning pirouette. His hand was above her head, where her fingers clung as by a thread to his. Around and around—
Suddenly the boy felt his hand go empty! The goddess caught her heel in the swirling fabric of her dress. She stumbled backward, off balance from her swift pirouette.
A tiny cry left her lips. The boy lurched forward awkwardly. He must catch her before she crashed to the ground. He stretched his arm, grabbing wildly for her.
But it was too late. In a blur of frantic movement and the scurry of the nearby crowd, a mighty uniformed figure suddenly appeared as out of nowhere.
Catching nothing but air with his flailing arms, the frail boy tumbled to the feet of the rescuing Adonis, whose muscular arm in an instant supported the slender waist of the stumbling princess and helped her regain her balance.
“Dmitri!” sighed Katrina in breathless ecstacy, her red face suddenly flushed from more than the exertion, as she gazed up into the eyes of her deliverer.
“It appears,” he said with a laugh and a smile, “that you are in need of a helping hand!”
“I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t caught me!” she exclaimed, letting her body melt into the arms which now held her.
As his arms tightened about her waist and drew her up again to a standing position, Dmitri could hardly keep his eyes from resting upon her face, so close to his. In that instant as he held her body close, something suddenly awoke in his consciousness that told him the sister of his best friend had become much more than a little girl.
Just as suddenly as it had come, the moment passed. Dmitri set Katrina firmly upon her feet and moved a step or two back. The few dancers who had been in the vicinity now glided back into form.
Clambering back to his feet, the embarrassed lad stood with red face, while Dmitri offered him Katrina’s hand, which he was still holding.
“Here you go, my good man,” he said with a jovial smile. “I believe you lost this a moment ago!”
Those nearest by laughed, and with a bow and flourish Dmitri disappeared into the crowd to rejoin his partner.
Katrina stood unmoving, unable to recover so easily. Her heart had melted in that fleeting moment of rapture; her whole body was giddy from forehead to toes. Her heart fluttered, and the flush on her face turned to a pale white.
Misinterpreting her dazed appearance, an older woman, an acquaintance of Katrina’s mother, took her hand away from the boy. While he stood there watching the proceedings like a statue, she went off with the young princess in search of Natalia.