Ransom for a Russian Prince

By Donna Nitz Muller

Amidst the rumors swirling in her aristocratic circle in Petersburg, Russia, of debauchery at the Palace of the Czar, and fear of the holy man Rasputin, Elena’s husband fights change and her lover fights the war against Germany.
Civil unrest turns to violence as the Czar continues his absolute determination to stave off reform. Elena Starista senses danger for them all, but never believes it will lead to the murder of the Czar and his family.
In the fall of 1915, she receives the ransom note. The child Prince is alive! Facing grave peril, Elena and Boris plan their escape from Russia. Their destination is to rescue the young Prince.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Donna Nitz Muller
• Release date: Aug 18, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476003375

Donna Nitz Muller

I grew up in South Dakota, and raised six children in a small, rural farm town. My first husband was killed in a car accident when my children were small. I re-married a widower who also had small children. We became the Brady Bunch minus Alice. I worked in education and banking, neither career was particularly successful. I was too tired. I have always been a writer. Now I write and live in Colorado.

Book preview

The Lusitania Series

Book One

Ransom of a Russian Prince

By

Donna Nitz Muller

-

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2012 Donna Nitz Muller

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The Lusitania Series

Prologue

By Donna Nitz Muller

On May 7, 1915, at 2:10 in the afternoon, a fishing vessel operates outside the English Channel off the Old Head of Kinsale. The two men on the vessel hear a SOS tapping across their newly installed radio.

They pull on their gear and race at full speed to the location of the SOS about five miles to the north. From the deck they stare at the giant luxury liner, the Lusitania, as it turns bow up high into the air.

The older man recognizes opportunity and shouts, The rich bastards will pay! His pot of gold is swimming in the Atlantic sea.

The younger man cannot turn away from the sight. May God have mercy, he says.

The men lower their row boat. They row toward the sound coming across the water; the luxury liner is no longer visible. In eighteen minutes the huge vessel disappears beneath the ocean water.

The grisly man stops his oars. . . He turns to his companion and yells above the sound of waves, Only kids, we can hold five. He holds up five fingers. The two men pull from the sea six children: a young girl, two small boys, two toddlers, and an infant.

* *

The people on those ships are rich the like of which you see only in pictures. They’ll pay for the return of their children. They will pay dearly, he tells the young man as they both study the children before them.

Ransom for a Russian Prince

Summer 1915

Chapter One

Elena rolled her eyes toward the ceiling with a small smile and a wink aimed at her guest. I learned as a toddler what tantrums earned—isolation and nothing more. One did not show feelings. So, no matter how my heart might race, my fingers do not tremble. My smile sits on my face like a child’s line of red crayon.

The young Duke laughed, lifting his chin in acknowledgement of Elena’s humor. The young man, leaning like a perfect line against the mantle of the white marble fireplace, felt free to discuss tantrums—more precisely, the tantrums employed by the young man’s mistress.

We have to sin to be forgiven, he said quoting Rasputin with straight-faced sarcasm revealed only by the slight smile curving his thin lips. At this Elena gave a genuine laugh.

As she laughed, the feeling of cold fingers played her spine like piano keys. Holding her breath, she thought the feeling was a warning of something about to happen.

She could not keep her glance from the door. Where was the Prince?

The Czarina’s Priest was the talk of society. The fascination with Rasputin and his ungodly influence over the Palace was replaced for the moment with the sinking of the Lusitania. Everything about the Lusitania fascinated her guests: the passenger list, the story of the sinking, the wealth onboard, and the repercussions to the war effort.

Her guests, from the highest circles of Russian society, gathered in her sitting room every Thursday afternoon. They talked easily of war and the Czar’s family. The only topic never broached was reform. Count Andrei’s property was two blocks off Nevsky Prospect with a view of the Moika River from the garden and a view of the Winter Palace from the upstairs balcony.

Elena moved gracefully among her guests, stopping before a group of three pretty, young women. As she inquired about their comfort, she noticed the remarkable lavender color of the skirt worn by the woman sitting in the middle. The waistband sat high on the woman’s midriff, allowing the hemline to show some ankle. The color of the silk material amongst the gray and black-and-white that filled the room struck Elena’s eye.

What a lovely color you found for your skirt, she said to the young woman who appeared pleased by the comment. Imported from China, the woman answered. They find the best dye. Elena lost the woman’s words in her own preoccupation.

The Prince was late.

She forced herself to focus on her guests. People would notice her distraction. Andrei would notice. Elena unconsciously trailed her fingers over the hand painted blue and white ceramic tiles that lined the mantle. It was June, and Petrograd rose to the warming sun.

You are restless this afternoon, Countess. Perhaps you should take some air for a few minutes, the calm, clipped accent of her husband’s voice broke her foreboding thoughts.

She turned toward her husband, Andrei. He wore his tea party expression of boredom on his handsome classic Russian face. Nothing in the angular line of his nose and cheeks or the thin line of his mouth indicated that blood flowed beneath his skin. His red-blond hair, cut thin and combed flat and close to his finely shaped head, seemed to have fallen in a perfect line above his mouth to form a mustache of exactly the same color.

She smiled at him. You are correct as always, Andrei. I will take a walk in the garden. The guests will not miss me. Her eyes covered the long, well-furnished room with whist tables and settees placed correctly to encourage gossip and frivolous fun. She noted that fewer people gathered today than usual. No one from the Palace honored them with their presence.

Then Andrei added an odd comment that brought her instantly back from her distracted, wandering thoughts. I will send Olga if Pavovich arrives before you return. His expression betrayed nothing, but Elena’s heart skipped. Did Andrei know? How much did he know?

She started to step away when he touched her arm. Look at them, he said to his wife as he gestured with his head toward the guests gathered at the card tables or around the fireplace or lounging on the settees. Elena studied her guests trying to find what Andrei wanted her to see. The room was oddly subdued. Her cousin was not banging on the piano the American tunes he loved to play. The conversations were not animated. The gathering resembled a wake.

Like you, Andrei whispered, they are waiting for Prince Pavovich.

Again, Elena could detect no hidden meaning in his words or expression. She turned her eyes from him to her guests. Andrei was correct; the atmosphere was a bit unnerving. Did her guests fear some horrific change? Not likely, she thought. They only waited to see the bereaved Prince. They wished assurance that anyone questioning the place God reserved for them by birthright would be soundly destroyed. Had not the Czar shown them his unquestionable power in 1905 when hundreds were shot in the streets outside his own Winter Palace?

She lifted her black silk skirt and moved slowly through the hallway entry. Once out of Andrei’s line of vision, she walked quickly down the wide hall, through the gallery lined with dark portraits and past the small windowed room filled with new plants. She opened the door into the garden from the greenhouse and stepped across the arch-covered porch and onto the flagstone path.

The servants only recently removed the winter covering that closed the porch from October to May. The routine of the seasons and the social order of her life made her dismiss the haunting thoughts of cataclysmic change. Not that she knew her own thoughts. Only vague apprehension persisted since returning home from her travels abroad to England and America.

Those beautiful months spent traveling with her mother before she was Countess Starveska looked prophetic to her now. Even then, many Americans considered Monarchy to be a thing of the past.

Once, she said to the nephew of Andrew Carnegie, Our Czar is predestined by God.

He answered, I doubt that very much. It is best to ease out of it. But Russia does not know how to ‘ease.’ It will come to war. He said this as conversation, casual talk. But she remembered it and often thought about it.

Her mother died shortly after seeing her beautiful daughter married to the Count. She had no family of her own remaining on earth.

Hundreds of years of tradition could not simply vanish, could they? The quiet green serenity that enveloped the path she trod reassured her. Things are as they have always been and ever shall be. New inventions and socialist talk did not change things—not such things as the Czar appointed by God.

As she paced, Elena’s conscious thoughts focused on her Prince Pavovich. How much, if anything, did her husband know? And what difference did it make? This last question that came unbidden into her thoughts startled her. That Andrei should discover her secret was the single greatest fear of her life. And now, amid the simplest routine of Thursday gatherings and fresh paint on the white wooden benches beneath the willow tree, Elena stood absolutely still. What difference did it make if her husband knew?

Countess, the clear, slightly high-pitched voice of Olga, her personal maid, shattered her thoughts like breaking crystal. Elena lifted her head and looked at the plump, pretty, blond-haired woman in her twenties. Elena’s smooth surface gave no clue to the tempest beneath.

Olga curtsied nicely. Master sent me to tell you that Prince Pavovich has arrived, Countess.

How does he look to you? Elena asked of the girl. Olga was often observant.

For what I know, Madam, he looks gaunt. The tragedy wears on him I should say, Olga replied. The choice of words used by her personal maid reflected the hours spent in Andrei’s library. Elena would never betray this poorly kept secret to her aristocrat husband. He would be angry, and Olga would be out of the house without a ruble.

Olga again addressed her with another curtsy. Kathryn would like a word in the kitchen if you don’t mind, Countess.

What does it concern? Elena asked with a sharper tone than she intended. Kathryn had never before asked for a word in the kitchen, and the request carried the dread of the unusual. Plus, anything that delayed the sight of the Prince to her starving eyes was more than annoying. The delay brought anger to her heart, and, she thought it had better be important.

She did not tell me. She only told me to ask you to come to the kitchen, Olga replied.

Tell Kathryn I will be there as soon as I have greeted the Prince, she said, trying not to allow either curiosity or anxiety into her voice, but, judging from Olga’s half-frightened expression, she had not succeeded.

Please, Madam, Olga nearly cowered, but forced the words through her tight lips, Kathryn said to tell you it is urgent. Reluctantly, Elena nodded.

While Olga scurried around to the kitchen entrance, Elena returned by the same path that brought her to the garden. She moved quickly past the plants and the portraits, her silk skirt swishing with the fast movement of her long legs. She slowed when she reached the hall where some straggler might see her.

She stopped for a brief glance in the mirror above the entry table. Her black hair coiled about her head with carefully curled locks along her cheeks. She wore a white blouse with a lace ruffle about her neck. Her fashion reflected the austere times, but laughingly. The material was of the highest quality, set off nicely by a single red ribbon woven through the lace and tiny diamonds set along the ribbon.

Elena possessed perfect skin and exquisite shoulders and neck. Her eyes, a deep green in color, reflected a depth of rich emotion. She had fluid eyes and black lashes and brows. Her hourglass figure had lost a little of the inward bend at her waist. For this subtle thickness she blamed her age. On her thirtieth birthday, Andrei looked at her inquiringly. Was it not reaching time to produce his heir?

Elena opened one door of the double doors and stepped softly into the parlor. She sighed in relief; her entrance went unnoticed as all eyes were on Prince Sergei Pavovich. He stood near the fireplace. Someone put a glass of cognac in his hand.

The gauntness of his appearance surprised Elena even though she had prepared for it. Only a few days had passed, less than a month, since word reached Petrograd regarding the fate of the Lusitania. While others hoped America would enter the war against Germany and talked of the lost jewels and gold, Elena considered only the fate of Prince Sergei’s wife and son who sailed on the luxury liner from America to Liverpool, England.

Bad enough, she thought as she studied his elegant, darkly poetic features, that his command lost so many soldiers in the retreat from Masurian Lakes. Add to the military defeat, the loss of his son. No wonder new lines creased the skin around his eyes.

In the privacy of her unspoken thoughts, Elena knew the loss of Sergei’s arrogant, selfish wife was not a source of grief. But the loss of his son would tear out his soul. From the doorway, she searched his face, watching as he tried to be attentive to the conversation swirling about him. She barely managed to restrain herself from crossing the room to take his face into her hands and kiss his eyes and his mouth until the exhaustion faded and the grief lifted.

Elena felt that someone watched her. Her eyes found Andrei. He stood apart, elbow on the piano, hands