Page 57 of A Queen's Match
“London? We came from St.Petersburg! Ducky in particularenjoyedherself,” Missy teased.
Ducky came to loop an arm through Alix’s as they ascended the stairs. “Missy always says too much. Though I suppose I should thank her. If she hadn’t told May about me and Kiril, May wouldn’t have helped me wriggle out of that engagement to Eddy. I believe you and I have that in common, right, Alix?”
“I…what?” The Coburg girls’ frankness continued to surprise Alix. She was never so forthright. And who was Kiril?
“Forgive me, I thought you knew. May said that you and Eddy had been promised, but you got out of it,” Duckymurmured, too quietly for anyone to overhear. “I got out of the same engagement. May gave me wonderful advice.”
“It’s not as if she had selfless motives. Now she’s engaged to Eddy herself,” Alix said testily.
“Yes, she wanted to be queen. I wish her joy of it.” Ducky shuddered. “I have no desire for that life, and I can tell that you don’t, either.”
Alix was spared from replying by Aunt Marie. “Alix, we have a surprise!” she called out. “Look who we ran into on the train! We insisted that he come say hello, of course.”
Alix turned around to see that a third carriage was rattling down the driveway. Somehow she knew, even before it drew to a stop, that Maximilian would step out.
His gaze darted to hers for an instant before he quickly bowed to her father, then to Uncle Alfred and Aunt Marie. “I am just stopping by on my way to Prussia,” he explained. “I’m afraid I have business with Emperor Wilhelm.”
“We are headed to Prussia as well, if you’d like to keep traveling with us,” Aunt Marie offered loudly.
“Maximilian, you must stay!” Ernie insisted. “Surely the kaiser can wait a few days.”
Maximilian looked to Alix, a question in his hazel eyes. She knew that he would stay or go as she commanded.
“Of course you should join us,” she said gently.
A smile tugged his mouth upward. “It’s settled, then.”
Later that evening, Maximilian wasthe first to enter the drawing room, where everyone would gather before dinner.
Alix looked up guiltily; she was ensconced in an armchair, her feet curled up under the skirts of her loosely corseted dress, a book on her lap. When she saw that it was Maximilian, she let out an amused breath.
“You caught me in the act,” she said, holding up her copy ofHistory of Rome.“My progress through Livy has been slow; I’m still only at the Gallic invasion. I must say, though, it makes me want to visit Rome.”
Hesitantly, Maximilian took the armchair next to her. “You’ve never been to Rome?”
“No. We are mostly here in Darmstadt, aside from our annual trip to London.” And the occasional visit to Ella in Russia, but for some reason Alix didn’t mention that.
“We are even, then, as I’m not finished the Palliser novels. Though I must admit, I expected happier stories for some of the characters,” Maximilian told her.
“Oh, I know. Poor Alice!” Alix agreed.
“Poor Alice?” Maximilian lifted an eyebrow. “Surely you didn’t want her to marry George? He was awful.”
“But she loved him!”
“Perhaps she shouldn’t have,” he said softly.
Alix opened her mouth to answer—then closed it again, suddenly unsure. She’d always thought that Trollope did wrong by Alice, marrying her to John, who was steady and reliable and just a teensy bit boring, when she’d had such a passionate romance with George. Then again, Alice’s relationship with George was volatile, with moments of anguish as much as joy.
“You may be right,” Alix said slowly. “Perhaps I should reread it with the benefit of experience.”
Maximilian looked at her curiously, but refrained fromasking what experience, exactly, she meant. Instead he merely said, “Thank you for all the letters.”
The words were polite, but there was something intimate about the way he spoke them, as if the letters were a shared secret.
Alix swallowed, suddenly flustered. “I have enjoyed our correspondence very much.”
This was the same Maximilian she had met months ago, who’d taken her on that quiet walk in the Buckingham Palace gardens, and yet he felt like an entirely different person. There washistorybetween them now, anecdotes and opinions and jokes.
