Dmitri kept digging until he’d made a hole that would accommodate the coffin, and he lowered it inside. Next he lined it with a rose-coloured satin quilt so the rough wood could not scratch her skin, and he put in a little pillow for her head. Clouds scudded across the moon and stars twinkled but it was utterly silent on the lake, apart from the lapping of tiny waves on the shore and Trina’s snuffling. No owls hooted, no whip-poor-wills sang.
He found he did not have the strength to lift Tatiana so he slipped his hands beneath her shoulders and pulled her, legs dragging, to her resting place. As he arranged her so she was comfortable, he noticed that she was wearing Ortipo’s oval dog tag on a chain around her neck, with the tiny sapphire, ruby and imperial topaz stones set within fancy swirls. On a whim, he took it off and fastened it around his own neck instead.
It was April and he had seen some wildflowers blooming in the woods. Tatiana loved flowers. She should have had magnificent roses and orchids, lilies and cherry blossom, but all he could find were some tiny pink, purple and white flowers hidden in the grass. He picked a few handfuls and sprinkled them around her.
When he was done, the sky was turning salmon-pink over the eastern part of the lake as the sun nudged the horizon. It was time. He lay down and leaned into the grave to kiss her one last time, letting his lips move all over her face, her neck, her hands, in a frenzy of kisses. He could still smell her scent and he took a deep breath as if to preserve it within him forever. Then he wrapped the quilt round her to keep her safe and warm and that’s when the tears started.
As he hammered the lid on her coffin and covered it with soil, he couldn’t stop crying. Something had broken inside him and he knew it would never be fixed.
Chapter Sixty-Seven
London, November 2016
When Kitty got back to London, there was an email waiting for her from the editor at Random House, New York, asking if she was able to go for a meeting with them. She replied that she was in London and unlikely to be back in the US till the spring, whereupon they asked if she could visit their London offices, which were on Vauxhall Bridge Road, just behind Tate Britain. Kitty wondered if they wanted to talk about reissuing Dmitri’s novels. She hoped so.
She gave her name in the glass-fronted reception area and in no time at all a dark-haired, bespectacled girl called Annabel arrived to lead her upstairs to a pokey office, where she was introduced to a girl called Olivia. She had the grand title of Publishing Director, although Kitty thought she looked as if she was fresh out of university.
‘This is an unpublished manuscript of your great-grandfather’s that we found in the archives,’ she said, indicating a stack of pages covered in an old-fashioned typewriter font. ‘There was a memo attached from Alfred A. Knopf, the founder of Knopf Publishing, which is part of Random House.’ She handed it to Kitty, who read it quickly.
‘To the editorial director of non-fiction in 2020: This is dynamite! Believe me when I tell you that you have a bestseller on your hands. My good friend Dmitri Yakovlevich wanted us to publish it but not until after the death of his daughter, Marta, as she was opposed to publication for reasons that will become clear when you read it.’ He gave the last known address for Marta and asked them to liaise with any descendants they could trace. ‘Publish it sensitively,’ he advised. ‘You will not be able to prevent the sensationalist press having a field day but this man is a writer of great literary merit and I would hate for that to be lost in the furore that will undoubtedly erupt.’
‘What on earth is it?’ Kitty asked.
‘I read it at the weekend,’ Olivia told her. ‘It’s the story of your great-grandfather and his love affair with the Russian Grand Duchess Tatiana Romanova. It’s quite astounding.’
‘Who wrote it?’ Kitty asked.
‘They both did.’
‘Wow!’ Kitty grinned. ‘I had no idea they’d done that, but I’m delighted!’
‘This is a delicate question,’ Olivia said, ‘but is there any way of proving it’s true? There have been so many Romanov impostors over the years.’
Kitty showed her Ortipo’s dog tag, with the jewels set in a pretty golden oval. ‘This dates from the very beginning of their relationship,’ she said. ‘But the only way of proving it categorically will be if we have DNA tests carried out on a skeleton that I found a few weeks ago at Dmitri’s old cabin in New York State.’
Now that she knew Dmitri and Tatiana had wanted their story to be published one day, she would make sure it was. She would call the detective in Indian Lake to tell him of her suspicion that the body would prove to be a member of the Romanov royal family and suggest he contact the laboratory in Stanford University that had done recent tests on the Romanov remains. Once all the legal paperwork was completed, she would rebury Tatiana’s body in Dmitri’s grave in the Cedar River cemetery near Lake Akanabee. She and Tom could organise an appropriate service to mark the occasion.
‘Might I borrow a copy of the manuscript to read?’
‘Of course!’ Olivia agreed. ‘It’s your copyright so we will need to contract you in order to publish it. If we can prove this was co-written by a Romanov grand duchess, we will be able to offer a substantial advance.’
Kitty started reading on her journey home. It began with Dmitri wakening from a laudanum stupor to see an angel in a white dress, with whom he fell in love almost immediately. The writing was elegant and spare.
When Kitty got home she made coffee and curled her feet beneath her on the sofa to read about their secret marriage in 1916, of Tatiana’s eighteen months of house arrest, and then the shocking night of their separation in July 1918. She stopped to have dinner with Tom then returned to the sofa to read long into the night about Dmitri and Tatiana’s reunion in Prague in 1948, followed by the difficult years when she was his secret mistress in Albany and finally the traumatic rift with his children.
That explained why Kitty had never met him. She was surprised that Marta, the sweet grandmother she remembered, could have held a grudge lasting thirty years. Perhaps she avoided confrontation, like her granddaughter, and the result was that the wound was never able to heal. She felt sad that her mother had never learned the truth; surely she would have found a way to bridge the chasm between Marta and Dmitri and he could have died knowing he was forgiven. But Marta had told Elizabeth that her grandparents died before she was born. A lie like that, once told, can never be untold. Had Marta regretted it? Dmitri was still alive when Kitty was born. Did her grandmother consider breaking her silence then or was she too stubborn?
If only Dmitri had tried harder to heal the rift with his children. Perhaps he simply did not know how. Men of that generation did not have much practice at dealing with complex emotional situations. Perhaps he felt he was doing the right thing by respecting Marta’s choice. It was such a shame.
Honest communication was the only way through an emotional impasse; Kitty had learned that over the summer. Brooding never helped anyone to heal, but talking did. She had also learned that infidelity need not be the end of a relationship – some things are more important. Tragically Marta never learned that and the upshot had been a lifelong estrangement.