The Grand Duchess approached the elder Dukovs and handed each a bouquet. Then, with a dismissive royal tone of voice, she addressed the five naked per...ons kneeling in the center of the room: ‘Collared guests of my father: I grant you permission to rise and to sit at his table.’ Maria Elena’s companions responded in unison: ‘Thank you Grand Duchess Anyia.’ Anyia’s attendants took up positions around the table, with the Grand Duchess sitting at one end and her father sitting at the other.. Steve chuckled at the memory. At the last Fourth of July picnic, he and Barbara had come upon Barbara's grandmother sitting at a table with the CEO and CFO of the firm where Steve worked and their wives. Astonished, Steve had said he hadn't even known Lydia was acquainted with them. The group had laughed. Lydia told him she'd known these two men and their wives since they were all toddlers sharing the same toys in a sandbox.Steve had suddenly understood how and why the firm's policy on married. Everyone laughed but they knew now that Camy was tough when she had to be.Bill walked with Camy down to the beach. Bill asked Camy if she had ever had martial arts training. Camy said she had been in one foster home where the parents ran a martial arts school in the basement. She had learned a lot and could even kill with her hands if need be.Bill told her he was very proud of her, she had prevented an incident that would have ruined the trip for them. Camy said that she was glad she had. There he met and married my mother, Hilde, who was also of German birth, but again caught up in the border changes arranged during the armistice.”“And then they had you, born sometime in the 1920s?”“Yes I was. Things weren’t good there in the twenties and thirties, with war almost inevitable, so we moved to Austria for a couple of years when I was too young to remember it. Austria soon hotted up, so Grandmama insisted we go to Oxfordshire, where her family had kept a cottage for us.”“So that’s.