Page 43 of A Queen's Match
As her heartbeat slowed, the reality of her situation began to sink in. She was alone, in a closet, with a man. Just as Ernie had been earlier today.
“What are we doing, Nicholas?”
He winced apologetically. “We won’t do this at a crowded event again. I will come back to Osborne House, or we can sneak you onto—”
“No,” she interrupted. “I mean, what are wedoing?”
Hélène and Eddy had spent a year in exactly this manner: meeting for flustered, frantic kisses at parties, stealing hours together whenever they could. Living separate lives in public and falling in love in secret, in the middle of the night.
Look where it had gotten them. Eddy was engaged to a woman who only wanted him for his title, and Hélène was heartbroken over it.
“I don’t understand.” Nicholas reached for her hands, and Alix, knowing she shouldn’t, let him take them.
“We need to talk,” she explained.
“If you’re upset about last night, I take full responsibility. We do not have to—I mean, we can go back to the way thingswere—”
“Please do not think I have any regrets about last night,” Alix whispered fiercely.
“Then what is it?”
“We will never get your parents’ permission to marry, will we.” She didn’t phrase it as a question.
Nicholas’s brow furrowed. “I promise, I will talk with them upon my return.”
“And their opinion will be the same as it has always been! They have only allowed you at the regatta because they think you’re here to court Hélène!” Alix’s voice quavered as she thought of what she’d seen this morning—that moment between him and Hélène, which both of their families had watched with eager smiles. Her realization that she would never be the type of princess that Hélène was.
“I intend to tell my parents that Hélène and I are just friends,” Nicholas began, but Alix tore her hands from hisgrip.
“And they’ll insist you marry her anyway! They’ll probably be grateful that you consider her a friend, unlike every other princess they have thrown your way!” Alix tried to step back, though there wasn’t much space. “Your parents will win in the end. Our mistake was thinking we could change their minds.”
When she’d tugged him into her bed the night before, her heart aching with love, Alix had thought of nothing except Nicholas, that she wanted to be as intensely close to him as possible.
She hadn’t realized that she was making herself into his mistress.
“I don’t know why you’re saying this,” Nicholas argued. “You got out of an engagement to Eddy. Why don’t you think I can do the same with my engagement to Hélène? It’s not even official!”
“Because the only person I had to convince was my grandmother! The Romanov dynastic machine is something else entirely.”
Nicholas’s voice caught on his reply. “What are you saying, Alix?”
“I’m saying that we need to stop seeing each other.”
“No!” he cried out. When she flinched, he lowered his voice. “No, Alix, I refuse to accept this. You said you loved me, and you know I love you.”
“Of course I love you. I’m just no longer convinced that it’s enough. Look at us,” she hissed, gesturing to the shadowed closet. “This is all we’re ever going to be able to do together. If we can’t marry, then—I can’t go on. Not like this.”
Alix was not Hélène, bold and brave and impetuous. Shecould not live on stolen moments and slivers of time, hoping that somehow, someday, she could be with the man she loved despite the odds.
If she and Nicholas continued down this path, it could ruin her reputation—and it would certainly break her heart.
She had given her whole self to Nicholas, heart and body, and if she kept on doing so, over and over, what would be left when he walked away? He might not marry Hélène, but it was abundantly clear that he would never be able to marry Alix. Eventually he would choose someone else as a wife, and it would destroy her.
Alix had to walk away now, out of self-preservation. While there was still enough of her left to save.
She allowed herself one last moment to relish it all: the feel of Nicholas’s breath on her cheek, the murmur of his voice as he begged her not to do this. The way his deep blue eyes fixed on hers, the tears streaking down her own cheeks.
Quietly, deep inside herself, she was letting him go.
