Page 112 of A Queen's Match
The two other young women stepped apart, and Hélène turned to face May, fists clenched at her sides. “I do want something, as it happens. I want you to admit how despicable you are. It wasn’t enough for you to ruin my life, and Eddy’s? Now you have to set your sights on George, too?”
May felt an unexpected urge to cry. “I love George,” she protested weakly.
“You don’t know the first thing about love! What Eddy and I shared, the willingness to do anything for each other—thatis love. Did you know he offered to give up the throne for me?” Hélène exclaimed.
Alix reached a supportive hand toward Hélène, who squeezed it gratefully.
“I didn’t know, but I’m not especially surprised. Eddy was always impetuous,” May said softly.Like when he got engagedtomejust to hurt you,she didn’t need to say aloud. That had been the most reckless, impetuous thing of all.
Hélène frowned, as if thinking along the same lines. “I don’t know what hold you have over George, for him to marry you despite knowing what you did.”
Despite knowing what she’d done? May blinked as the realization hit her.
“You told George, didn’t you.” She’d always assumed thatEddyhad shared everything with George before he died. But, no, it had been Hélène.
Of course,she thought, with a hollow sense of regret.
The marriage game had always been a match to the death—between women, between her and Alix and Hélène. Because that was the way the world worked. It pitted women against each other, kept them divided.
“Yes, I told George,” Hélène said triumphantly. “I saw you two making romantic eyes at each other when you thought Eddy wasn’t looking. Then after Eddy died”—there was only the slightest catch in her voice as she spoke the worddied—“I decided that George needed to know the truth about you.”
As ifyouknow the truth about me,May wanted to say, but the words lodged in her throat, sticky and hot.
It seemed so simple for other people—Hélène, Alix, George—this notion of doing the right thing. When had it become complicated for May? How had she waded into such murky, gray territory, justifying all her actions, no matter thecost?
She fixed her gaze on Hélène. “You’re right; I never loved Eddy. The truth is, I didn’tbelievein love back then. I thought it was a fairy tale, invented for those novels you read.” She waved a hand in Alix’s direction. “Or worse, a hoax thatparents tell their daughters in order to convince them to marry cruel men. Like my father.”
That last was spoken in a near whisper. May wasn’t sure why she’d said it. Perhaps because nothing else seemed to matter anymore—not the lies, or the great game of pretend that she had played for so long. What was the point of any of it, when she had lost George?
She wanted someone in this world to know the real her, and it might as well be Hélène and Alix.
“What do you mean, cruel like your father?” Alix asked carefully.
“Neither of you would understand. I’ve seen you with your parents, Hélène, the way they look at each other—and at you.” May’s next words were directed at Alix. “And you—do you remember what you told me two summers ago, on the train to Balmoral? How your parents were so in love that your father has never recovered from the death of your mother?”
Alix nodded. Hélène stared at May, something shifting in her expression.
“My father is nothing like that. The complete opposite, in fact.” May sighed. “At least now he’s living on the Continent, far from me and my mother.”
Alix made a low, distressed sound. “Are you saying thathe…”
“He does not hit us,” May explained, because she didn’t want to lay claim to injuries she hadn’t suffered. “But for as long as I can remember, he has treated us in an ugly and hateful way.” She thought of the years of shouting, the candlesticks hurled at Mary Adelaide’s head. The insults, the constant belittling, the mockery.
These young women would never understand, because they hadn’t grown up around that sort of vicious cruelty. They had grown up cherished, loved.
“My brother Dolly left home the moment he could, but what could I do? Sandhurst does not accept female recruits,” May said bitterly. “Why do you think I was so determined to marry, and marry someone higher born than my father? I needed to get away, and protect my mother from him.”
To May’s surprise, Alix stepped forward and hugged her, the way she had hugged Hélène. It brought unexpected tears to May’s eyes.
“I’m sorry for telling Maud about your fainting spells,” May murmured, voice breaking.
“It’s all right,” Alix assured her. “I never wanted to marry Eddy.”
And now Alix was engaged to Nicholas. Once upon a time May wouldn’t have believed Alix could be tsarina: she’d thought of Alix as so shy, so timid. Now she saw that beneath Alix’s stillness lay a quiet blade of strength.
She felt suddenly desperate to say all her sins aloud, as if voicing them would earn her absolution, like a Catholic at confession.
“I told Aunt Vicky about Missy,” May said, wincing. “That’s why Ferdinand kissed her that night.”
