Perhaps it was the Russian blood in his veins that made him demand more than just the affection and respect that in English circles was accepted as love.
He demanded something that was far more intense, far more spiritual.
His grandmother, a Romanov Princess, had explained to him what love meant in her country.
“A Russian loves with his soul,” she said. “It is something he is very conscious of and he is not ashamed to speak of it as an Englishman is. He can, of course, love passionately with his body, but when he meets a woman he really loves, then he gives her his soul. That, my dear Hugo, is the love we all seek and which we believe comes from God.”
The Duke had been very young when his grandmother had talked to him like that and yet he had never forgotten it.
After she was dead, he
