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My husband’s face tightened. Though Eli had been born at sea, the boat he’d grown up on had not been nearly as fancy as a real ocean liner. He’d just been glad it never sank. Other refugees in the tsar’s flotilla had not been as lucky. He had told me once he never wanted to be on a boat again.

“So as soon as you can go, you’ll be on an airplane flying across the country,” Felicia said.

“And you will have to pretend,” Hans told her very tenderly. “When all we want to do is tell people.”

I had to hand it to Hans: he made this sound like a huge sacrifice.

Poor Felicia! She’d have to dress up and flirt with handsome men and eat good food and drink wonderful drinks, trailed by her faithful (and tired) watchdogs. While her beloved flew in the sky across the continent in a big tin can with wings.

My little sister gazed up at Hans as though his was the face of God.

“I will be back as soon as I can, Felicia,” he said. “I promise you that.”

I wondered if Hans had told her he’d been following her to see if she was worth recruiting for his cause.

“What if you had decided I wasn’t worth the trouble?” Felicia said.

Okay, he’d told her.

“That wasn’t possible, once I’d felt your power and seen you in action,” Hans said gallantly.

If Felicia had been able to blush, she would have.

There’s no telling how long we would have stood there watching them make goo-goo eyes at each other.

To my relief, the doorbell rang, and Leah rushed past us to answer it.

Konstantin’s mother and father had come to call.

Apparently Veronika had invited them to drop in.

And down the stairs Veronika came, smiling and gracious as though she hadn’t known a major crisis was taking place in her foyer.

It was lucky the Volkovs hadn’t come ten minutes before.

After some hasty introductions, and giving the excuse of pressing business, Hans departed. It wasn’t how he’d wanted to say goodbye to his new fiancée, anyone could see. But it cut short any more drama.

The good side to the Volkovs’ arrival was that Felicia had to start pretending right away.

She was real convincing as a social girl greeting the parents of a young man interested in Alice.

I couldn’t tell whether this was all news to Felicia or not.

She’d been pretty absorbed in herself, but she was fond of Eli’s younger sister.

Alice herself came down the stairs smiling and shy. She looked very pretty in a navy-and-maroon dress. Konstantin beamed. Alice beamed back.

“Love is everywhere,” I muttered. Eli gave me a quick smile. I didn’t smile back.

I talked to Levdokia and Boris, talked about the weather and the effect all the balls and parties were having on the construction schedule on Imperial Island, and stayed for a few moments while Veronika asked Leah to serve coffee.

The small plates for the cookies and tiny sandwiches were already in place.

I certainly was not wearing the right clothes, as a tiny glance from Veronika confirmed, but if the Volkovs were serious they’d learn sooner or later that I wasn’t a proper princess.

After we’d each downed a cup of coffee, Eli and I gave our excuses. Felicia left the room with us and bounded up the stairs to go to her room and shut the door. That was a good idea. She could decide whether to be happy with her engagement or miserable that Hans was leaving for who knows how long.

To my surprise, Eli didn’t suggest I go up to change into city-appropriate clothes. Instead, he walked rapidly through the dining room to the kitchen. He was intent on something, I could tell by the set of his shoulders.

“We’re going to see Felix and Lucy,” he said over his shoulder.

“How come?”

“We have to tell Felix about this.”

“Why?”

“Because he needs to know,” Eli said impatiently.

I couldn’t see why, but I figured I’d go along. Better than staying here and thinking dark thoughts. I would have understood if (for example) Felix had lied to me, because we didn’t like each other. When it was Eli and Felicia, that was pretty painful. I supposed I’d get over it.

Eli drove us to Felix’s house and parked in the driveway.

We could see Felix’s battered car sticking out, just at the back of the house.

Eli barely knocked on the front door before he put his hand on the knob and began to open it.

His sister’s face, pale and tear-stained, appeared in the narrow opening. “This isn’t a good time,” she said.

Eli was so surprised it was almost funny. “Why not?”

“We are having a talk,” Lucy said with some dignity. “We need to have some privacy to finish it.”

“They might as well come in,” Felix called from the depths of the house.

Lucy was definitely angry about that, and I didn’t blame her. She shot a mean look over her shoulder and stood aside to let us pass. I tugged on Eli’s sleeve to tell him we should go away. He pulled away from my grasp.

“What the hell ,” I whispered to Lucy.

“Yes, what the hell ,” she said. She shrugged. “My brother doesn’t seem to have any tact in leaving us alone to discuss our problems. You might as well come in, too.”

I didn’t have a choice unless I wrestled the car keys away from Eli and drove off. I stepped inside.

Felix was sitting in the small living room, and he was fairly popping with…

some strong feeling. Maybe several. Lucy, besides being angry, was looking as though she faced some terrible doom.

Kind of stunned and confused. She took an armchair rather than sit by Felix and slumped in it.

There was a balled-up handkerchief on the little table beside her.

I looked from one of them to the other. Eli waited for them to tell us what was agitating them. When neither of them spoke, he said, “You both seem to be upset.”

That was a whopping understatement. Lucy actually laughed in a sarcastic kind of way.

Felix did not look at Eli directly. Since gazing at Eli was his favorite thing to do, I found that strange. He looked kind of furtively at his Lucy. “I guess we have to tell them,” he muttered. She looked down at her hands like something was written on the backs.

Eli and I exchanged a glance, our eyebrows raised almost to our hairlines. We were baffled.

After another few seconds of nothing, Lucy raised her head and glared at us. “I am pregnant,” she said, her voice hard, daring us to say any of the things that might have occurred to us.

My jaw fell. I snapped it shut. Eli did the same thing. I did not like myself when my first thought was, Everyone but me. Even people who never wanted a baby.

I started to say something, because someone had to. But I thought twice.

Unfortunately, Eli decided to say, “You are pregnant by Felix?” I put my hand over my eyes.

“Who else ?” Lucy’s rage rolled over us.

I glanced at Felix. He was kind of hunched over. I couldn’t tell if he was just embarrassed at having had sex with a woman, or angry with her for being pregnant, or… something else.

“How far along are you?” I said.

“I don’t know,” Lucy said. “I don’t know anything about having a baby, since I never thought I would have one.”

“How many of your monthlies have you missed?” Time to be blunt.

“Three,” she muttered, looking down again.

This was like pulling hens’ teeth. She didn’t want to know what would happen now, but she had to learn.

“You’re in your fourth month,” I said. When she didn’t scream, I proceeded very cautiously.

“That means you have five more months, give or take, until the baby comes.” I hesitated, but it had to be said.

“Some women try to end their pregnancies. But a lot of the time they die in the process. The later in term you are, the more dangerous an abortion is.”

“I won’t do that,” Lucy said, and I could tell this had already been discussed. “I carry life, and I have to honor God’s decision I should do this.”

I figured God hadn’t had a lot to do with this. Somehow, these two, neither of whom wanted the other sexually, had nevertheless done the deed.

Eli had been following another train of thought. “Lucy,” he said, his voice dark and cold. “You consented? This was not done without your consent?”

I would not have wanted to be Felix in that moment. I didn’t even want to be in the room.

“I may be many things, Eli, but I am not a rapist,” Felix said, just as coldly.

Lucy nodded, a jerk of her head. “I consented.” Her cheeks were dark red. She clearly wanted the floor to open and swallow her.

“If you’re right about your times of the month, the baby will be due in May or early June,” I said, trying to sound brisk and matter-of-fact. “Have you felt movement yet?”

If Lucy had been a horse, she’d have reared and whinnied. I could see the whites of her eyes. “No!” she said, very alarmed. “Movement?”

I never understood how these families thought leaving girls ignorant was a good idea. It didn’t keep girls innocent. It kept them stupid.

“You need to go talk to your mother,” I said. “Not only has she had four children already, she’s expecting again.”

I probably shouldn’t have added that. If Lucy could be even more discombobulated, she got that way. She looked at me as though I’d grown another head.

“My mother is going to have a baby? But my mother is old!”

“Well, she and Ford have sex, and babies happen when you do that,” I said, trying hard not to sound impatient. Still trying to get this back on a steady course.

“Then how come you haven’t had one?” Lucy said, like she was accusing me of something.

It was stupid to feel like I’d been smacked in the face. “I lost our baby,” I said.

All of a sudden, Lucy’s anger drained away. “I’m so sorry,” she said.

I nodded.

Then there was a strange silence. Everyone was regrouping.

Eli gazed into the distance, his eyes not meeting anyone’s, especially mine.

Eli was trying to make a policy about how he should react to this.

He decided. He rose and went over to his childhood friend, who had only ever loved Eli.

“Felix, I congratulate you on your fatherhood,” my husband said, shaking Felix’s hand.

“I hope you and my sister have a healthy baby, who will be a blessing to you.”

Felix decided to run with that. “Thank you, Eli. I will do my best to bring your niece or nephew up right. Lucy and I will learn about this. If thousands of people go through this every year, we can, too.”

To my huge relief, Lucy decided to get on board that train. It wasn’t a happy train, but at least it was calm and steady and moving forward. “Felix, you’re right,” she said. “I can talk to my mother. At least I will not have this baby on a boat in the middle of the ocean, like my mother had us.”

“Good point,” Felix said, almost smiling at his wife. “Some women go to a hospital to have their babies now. Or we will find the best midwife in San Diego.”

Lucy nodded: short, sharp, decisive. “It will be all right,” she said, mostly to herself. “We will have a healthy, intelligent child. And it may be a grigori, like its father.” She actually smiled.

Felix brightened quite a bit at this thought. “That would be a great thing,” he said.

The odd couple looked at each other directly and smiled at the same moment. The resolution had passed.

We all took a deep breath.

Felix said, “You must have had a reason for your visit. Is there something we need to talk about?”

“Yes,” I said, before Eli could. “Here is a secret you have to keep. Felicia has decided to marry Hans Goldschmidt, the Jewish grigori—or magician, if that’s what they call ’em in Germany.

And you know what will happen there, since you were at the meeting with the seer.

This can’t become public until Hans has gotten to Switzerland.

His family’s wealth is there, jewelry smuggled out of the store where his father was killed. ”

“By whom?” Felix said. “That is, who killed his father?”

“By this Hitler’s followers. And Hans’s mother died, too, after getting the jewelry out of the country to give her kids something to live on.”

I thought I’d summarized it pretty well, but maybe not. Felix and Lucy had a lot of questions. Felix understood why we needed to keep Felicia in circulation, as if she were still deciding which of her suitors interested her.

Lucy was very pleased to be included in the conversation, which made me wonder how much Felix had shared about what was going on behind the scenes of this week’s activities. She had a lot of questions, good ones. Eli answered them as clearly as he could.

Gradually the tension in the little living room ebbed. Lucy and Eli got up to make some tea.

I was alone with Felix. I told him what was on my mind. “Lucy has a good head on her shoulders and she’s trying to be a good wife to you. Please talk to her more. Tell her where you’re going, and why you do the things you do.”

“I was thinking the same thing,” he said.

And that was the end of our little talk.

Eli had taken a moment to talk to Lucy, too. She was looking happier when she returned with a tray and teacups.

I can take tea or leave it. Though I’d had an awful lot of it lately, I wanted to keep Lucy smiling. I took a cup and emptied it.

Everything had changed in a few days.

Veronika was having a baby who wouldn’t be a Savarov, but a McMurtry. Lucy was having a baby that would be a Drozhdov. Felicia had decided to marry a young man with a sad background and a dubious future, a man she didn’t really know.

The safe marriage I had been determined to help her find did not suit her. It was never going to happen.

Something in me had known that all along.

I hadn’t listened to myself.