RUSSIAN WINTER NIGHTS by Linda Skye

Chapter One
    Ekaterina Romanova, the eldest, most beautiful daughter of Baron Dimitri and the niece of the reigning Empress of Russia, was standing amongst the clucking chickens outside the palace kitchens, dressed in a plain peasant smock and woollen overcoat. Her thick, dark curls were unbound and tumbled carelessly down her back. Her smooth complexion was free of fashionable white powder.
    If her ageing father could see her in her current, unadorned state as she stood in a place reserved for the common folk, he would probably die of a heart attack. Her mother would swoon. Her younger sisters would tut their disapproval and hide their faces in shame.
    But Ekaterina simply could not care less about what they all might think of her.
    “Come, children,” she called in her sweet, chime-like voice. “Come have some bread!”
    A flock of hungry children surrounded the young noblewoman, their grubby hands reaching out and their sweet, high voices calling out excitedly. For Ekaterina was passing out large, steaming loaves of freshly baked bread for the children to take home to their nearly starving families.
    “Bread! Bread!” the children cried, and whistled excitedly.
    “Yes,” Ekaterina laughed. “Bread! But don’t push—there’s enough for everyone!”
    Within just a few minutes, Ekaterina had nothing left in her wicker basket but crumbs. She smiled, satisfied, as thick wet snowflakes drifted down around her.
    It was nearly Christmas, and the bread she had just distributed would be a boon to the families of the palace servants. She could imagine them smiling around their bland pots of stew with hot slices of crusty bread to warm their bellies, when normally they would be carefully rationing out tiny portions of grain in a desperate bid to save up enough food for the endless winter, when frost would make life nearly unbearable for most.
    Hardly a happy Christmas, she mused silently.
    Ekaterina resisted the urge to frown. In the North, her father tried to treat his serfs fairly, and because of the example she saw in his policies, she had always campaigned for the rights of the peasants, who were the working backbone of their livelihood. But here, at Catherine Palace, the lavish rococo residence of Russian emperors and empresses, the peasant servants were treated little better than donkeys and dogs. They were reduced to scrounging about for the most minimal of sustenance, accepting the crumbs that the Empress had tossed their way because, simply put, there was no other choice available to them.
    Ekaterina grimaced at the thought of her aunt, Empress Anna of Russia. She was a gargantuan woman, her pudgy features swollen from years of consuming the very tastiest and fattiest of foods. Ekaterina was almost surprised that her aunt could still breathe in her tightly laced corset.
    But what was even worse than her careless, decadent lifestyle was Empress Anna’s cruel and vindictive nature.
    Ekaterina slowly wandered towards the edge of the walled courtyard, her delicate brows gently creasing in thought. The summons for Ekaterina to join the imperial court in the city of Tsarskoye Selo had come as an unpleasant surprise to the Romanov family in the North. Empress Anna had always distanced herself from the old nobility, especially her siblings—so to ask for her brother’s youngest daughter to join the court did not bode well.
    Contrary to what others might have thought, such a summons was not an honour—it was more likely a subtle declaration of war. Ekaterina, as a young, unmarried noblewoman, could be used as a political hostage—or humiliated for sport. Just last year, a member of the old gentry had displeased Empress Anna in some trivial way, and she had forced the elderly man to entertain her court by stripping naked and squawking like a bird in a specially constructed gilded cage. Even worse, the nobleman’s extended family had abruptly and unexplainably disappeared during the harsh winter, no doubt thanks to the