The Red Staircase – Gwendoline Butler

Set in St. Petersburg, Russia, this novel won the Romantic Novel of the Year Award (1981) by the Romantic Novelists' Association.St Petersburg, 1912. Rose Gowrie is a Scottish girl with a mysterious gift for healing who is hired into the aristocratic household of Dolly Denisov, supposedly as a companion for the youthful Ariadne Denisov. But Rose gets more than she bargains for when she is called upon to cure the aged Princess who lives at the top of the Red Staircase, and the frail young Tsarevitch…