In the last story, Hadassah Trichenberg had discovered a damning secret about her most hated enemy, Grigori Rasputin while she was playing with the royal children. Now she and her older sister Emaria plot to destroy him once and for all.
"Who's Galina?" said Alexandra as she came to join them. "Is it someone who lives in the palace?"
"Kind of," said Hadassah with a nervous smile on her face. She knew that the moment Alexandra found out the truth about Galina, her "friend" Rasputin's days were numbered...
The moment she heard that question, Hadassah stared at the empress, hoping that she would switch to another subject. She clearly wasn't in the mood for talking, not when she and Emaria were plotting to destroy Rasputin for his nefarious deeds. Among those deeds were sleeping with various women and fathering a child out of wedlock. He also harassed Hadassah and threatened to make her his latest lover on several ocassions, which didn't sit well with her father, Leo Trichenberg.
Speaking of which, Leo himself came to the garden where his daughters and Alexandra were. He saw Alexandra and said, "I believe your ladies-in-waiting are looking for you."
"Indeed they are," said Alexandra with a scowl on her face. She never liked talking to those silly frivolous women when she had them over for tea, and she liked it even less now that Hadassah was 15 years old. Of course, those women were lining up their sons in the hopes of a possible marriage to her ward, something she and her husband didn't like. "They want me to choose one of their sons to be Hadassah's husband. I'm already dealing with rumors that various other noble families are lining up their bastard sons to be her husband, something Nicholas will not approve of."
"You should put your foot down and explain to them that Hadassah will marry on her own terms and not before she turns 18 years old," said Leo. "Plus, as her father, I get the final say in who can marry her."
"And I shall tell them and their husbands to leave you alone and stop bothering you about her," said Alexandra. "The marriage of Hadassah is a trifle, one we can deal with privately. Now I must speak to my husband and his mother about something more serious."
As she left the garden, Leo said to his daughters, "Now what did you want to tell me?"
"It's about a baby," said Emaria with a snarl on her face. "Do you know anything about a woman named Zinaida Sedelnikova and her daughter Galina?"
"I can't say I have," said Leo, "and this is a rumor I've been hearing about for a while. Now what do you have to tell me?"
"Well, I overheard some servants talking about the baby," said Hadassah, "and they say Rasputin is the baby's father."
"Oh, is that so?" said Leo. "Well, we'll see about that. He may have called me out on being your father, but he's no better, not when he's been fooling around with half the women in the imperial court and creating a bastard of his own. We'll get rid of him soon, you'll see."
Little did the Trichenbergs know that evil man in question had been listening to them the entire time. He grew angry, knowing that they wouldn't stop their schemes until he was either banished from the palace or executed.
"So the Trichenbergs think they can get rid of me," Rasputin snarled as he paced through his chambers. Bartok, who was asleep, jerked awake when he heard his master pounding on a table. "What do you speak of, sir?" He said.
"It's that Leo Trichenberg and his little brats," Rasputin snapped as he turned to face Bartok. "They don't like me, especially the baby brat who lives with the royal family."
"To be honest, sir, you are harassing her," said Bartok. "Hadassah doesn't like it when you harass her."
"What am I going to do with her?" Rasputin sighed. "She doesn't have a kind word for me, she insults me, and to make things worse, she's gotten the princesses on her side. It'll only be a matter of time before she has the Czar banishing me from the palace!"
"I see," said Bartok. "Hadassah has been quite the master manipulator. I dare say she's gotten most of the palace on her side since the day she was born. The way I see it, you'll never have a chance with her."
"Oh, we'll see about that," Rasputin snapped as he left the room. Like it or not, he would make sure that Hadassah wouldn't turn him down the next time they saw each other. 537Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡv5jzGu8wa2
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