The emperor led his wife beneath the pine trees that shaded the lane, satisfied with his home and the impression of simplicity it presented to the world.
“This garden is so charming,” Princess Tatiana Borissovna Potemkina exclaimed as she descended from her carriage and stepped tentatively onto the lawn. “Absolutely breathtaking.”
In her absence, the czarina had asked her youngest son, Nicholas Nicolaïevitch—Nicky—and his favorite maid of honor, Anna of Georgia, to welcome Princess Potemkina and take her round the cottage until she returned.
The moment he saw the carriage, Nicky went running off in search of Jamal Eddin.
“Since my father is always saying he should feel at home here, the least he could do is come out and fill in for me, play the son of the household,” he groused as he strode through the park. “Look after La Potemkina, take my place and receive the old witch and her dwarves.”
That was the last thing Jamal Eddin intended to do.
Anna, on the contrary, went running down the lawn to greet the party the moment the dowager arrived, primarily because her mother, Princess Anastasia of Georgia, and seven of her brothers and sisters accompanied La Potemkina. They were staying at Gostilitsy Palace, a few hours from the imperial domain.
The two princesses, lifelong friends and both close to the imperial family, were paying a neighborly visit. They would stay for lunch and spend the afternoon here. The czar was fond of both and liked to tease them, calling Anastasia “my fertile Ceres” in reference to her prolificacy and dubbing the holier-than-thou Potemkina “my good nun.” Both took his teasing as a mark of affection, and rightly so. Rarely did he appear as relaxed as he was in their company. He found La Potemkina, with her Bible in hand and a thousand projects in mind, amusing. She read to him from the Gospels before lunch and they discussed the day’s lesson at siesta time. At teatime, she would beg for subsidies for her unfortunate charges. Ever the good prince, the emperor would always comply with her requests. And then the empress would insist she stay for dinner.
Grand Duke Nicky knew from experience that La Potemkina would end up spending the night. Everyone said her own palace was filled with hangers-on and converts. Even here, she arrived with a gaggle of children and nannies who followed her coach in a train of three carriages. This tribe was all too content to escape the caravanserai at Gostilitsy and looked forward to their summer break in the country.
“Isn’t he lucky, our handsome Cherkess, to live in such a setting,” the dowager remarked as she leaned with her full weight on Anna’s arm.
The young woman’s mother, who had ballooned to nearly the size of their friend after the recent delivery of her last baby, took her other arm. Their skirts blending in a rustle of silk, the three walked up the lawn arm in arm toward the house.
Behind them, the horde of siblings—Varenka, Gayana, Gregory, Georgi, Lili, Piotr, and Dmitri, who had stepped down at the foot of the hillock—weaved their way slowly through the flower beds.
“And how is he getting on, here in this Eden?” La Potemkina persisted, her eyes searching the shadows beneath the trees.
“Is he here?” Gayana asked breathlessly, rushing forward and falling into step with them.
Anna smiled. The older woman’s glance toward the woods had not escaped her, but she pretended to address only her little sister.
“Are you looking for him, galloping with your nose to the ground through the bushes?” she teased. “Of course he’s here, Gayana. He’s spending the summer with us, just like last year. And like Christmas and Easter too. But I doubt you’ll run into him before lunch. Between the boats and the horses, he has plenty to keep him busy.”
“Such magnanimous hospitality is so typical of our angels,” La Potemkina sighed. “On the pretext that this orphan has no place to go during vacation, they invite him to paradise. All the same, the lad would be more in his place at Gostilitsy with the Muslims under Father Alexis’s instruction. He has so little time to learn all he does not know.”
“He already knows quite a lot,” Anna smiled. “He draws, he’s taking piano lessons with the empress, and he’s a much better musician than His Highness the Grand Duke Nicholas Nicolaïevitch. Which, of course, is no great achievement,” she giggled.
Anna did not like the grand duke. Worse, she was afraid of him, even though he was three years her junior. He followed her everywhere and persisted in his attentions, oblivious to her rebuffs.
This was a long-standing obsession for Nicky. Ever since he had turned ten, he had had crushes on all of his mother’s maids of honor. He had a vast choice since there were nearly a hundred debutantes every winter who offered their services to the empress. And during the season of balls in Saint Petersburg, their ranks swelled with her sisters’, aunts’, and cousins’ attendants. In total, over three hundred ingénues of seventeen to twenty, all aristocratic damsels of Russia, Poland, Georgia, Lithuania, and all the conquered and annexed states, would be part of the intimate imperial circle, leaving court in a year, or two, or four, to marry.
They were an inexhaustible source of intrigue and passion. Nicky’s brothers, Czarevitch Alexander and Grand Duke Constantine, had sampled their charms abundantly before him, often to the ire of indignant parents. For the Romanov boys—at least the older ones—always tempted their conquests with the promise of marriage. These scandals always ended in travel. The broken-hearted young lady was sent home. The irresponsible young prince was sent abroad, and the uncles in Prussia or Austria were asked to find among the crowned heads of Europe a spouse better suited to his station.
But at sixteen—Nicky and Jamal Eddin’s age—a little crush on one or another of the girls they had grown up with was a perfectly harmless, almost childish sentiment. Or so the empress thought.
For the young people, falling in love in the summer was infinitely more dangerous and exciting than the lighthearted gallantries they indulged in at the palace. In this setting, their dreams became such an obsession that they colored every other aspect of life. The young people’s passions for horses and dogs, for sailing and the sea heightened their sense of romance. Love was as much a part of cottage life as sled races on the quays of the Neva were part of Christmas and lights in the forest were part of the czarina’s birthday celebrations in July.
And this August 1847, the graceful Anna of Georgia was the incarnation of love. Favorite reader and secretary, accommodating bearer of parasol and pruning shears, the carefully selected maid of honor was kept in Olympian seclusion for her virtue. With tresses as black and shining as a bird’s plumage, dark eyes, and red lips set in a perfectly oval face, she enchanted the entire family. Even the czar cast long looks at her and invented strange and elaborate compliments for her. Even the brooding Jamal Eddin readily gave up his solitude for her company. At siesta time, they would go off to some corner or the gazebo in the garden to recite The Prisoner of the Caucasus or Pushkin’s verses in praise of their mountains. As for the empress, she gardened, embroidered, painted on porcelain, and went for strolls with her chosen demoiselle.
“For Anna and me, our atelier is our own little world,” she would smile. “When we’re working there together, we’re so content that we don’t like to stop, not even for a moment.”