Petersburg, January 1899 "Damn it, Amalie!" Prince Alexander hissed into the soft pink ear so close to his lips as he twirled the tall, queenly, blonde beauty through the crowd of elegantly dressed, coiffed, and bejeweled nobles dancing in the gilt-and-white rococo ballroom of the Dolgorouky palace. "You said Beckendorff was leaving town three days ago!" Amalie, eminently sure of her loveliness tonight, dressed in an exceedingly low-cut, figure-hugging violet velvet gown, the stylish train sweeping out around her as Alex faultlessly swung them among the dancing couples, lifted seductively lashed lavender eyes, coyly smiled up into the rather forbidding saturnine face regarding her, and softly placated, "But, Sasha darling, how was I to know Boris would win two nights running at the Yacht Club gaming tables? He stays yet another night to see if his luck holds." "With him it has to be luck; a more heavy-handed player I have yet to see," the prince churlishly retorted, the hours of drinking at the Yacht Club that afternoon and evening not conductive to moderating his unbridled Kuzan temper.
