protest, and Boris was forced by the Emperor to apologize. By the summer of 1916, Grand Duke Boris fell in love with Zinaida Sergeievna Rachevskaya (1896–1963), the daughter of Colonel Sergei Alexandrovich Rachevsky, who had died in 1904 commanding the fortifications at Port Arthur. The couple had met at a ball towards the end of the previous year. Zinaida, a vivacious brunette twenty years younger than Boris, belonged the minor Russian nobility. In late 1916, Zinaida was pregnant. Grand Duke Boris would have liked to marry her, but as he was close in line to the Russian throne a morganatic marriage would not have been authorized. To get out of his predicament, Boris quickly arranged Zinaida's marriage to Peter Eliseev, a military officer from a prestigious family who accepted the deal in exchange for the grand duke payment of his gambling debts. Immediately after the wedding, Zinaida was sent away to Genoa, where, at the beginning of January 1917, she gave birth a child who did not live. Back in Russia, a divorce was obtained for her. Grand Duke Boris began to live openly with his mistress at his dasha in Tsarskoye Selo as the Russian Empire began to crumble. When Nicholas II abdicated, Boris was at Gatchina with Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich, who declined the throne. This marked the fall of the Russian monarchy and Boris was one of the few members of the Romanov family who went to Mogilev to pay final respects to Tsar Nicholas II. Revolution During the period of the provisional government Boris Vladimirovich was living in Tsarskoye Selo. In March 1917, he was put under house arrest because of compromising correspondence with his mother. In July his arrest was lifted. In late August he was still in his dacha in Tsarskoe Selo. He was able to gain entrance to the Vladimir Palace. Disguised, with the help of Englishman Albert Stopford and a caretaker, Boris retrieved the money and jewels from the secret safe in his mother's bedroom. Stopford took the jewels to safety abroad, depositing them in a London bank. Before the Bolsheviks took power, Boris escaped the former Imperial capital to the Caucasus with his mistress Zinaida Rachevskaya. In September 1917, he joined his mother and younger brother Grand Duke Andrei Vladimirovich in Kislovodsk, a spa and resort town in the Caucasus. He lived in a villa with his brother, but their mistresses