Page 8 of A Queen's Match
“My plans involved napping.” Ernie leaned back so that he was lying on the sun-warmed grass, folding his arms behind his head. “If you insist on drawing me, it will be like this. You can title itArthurian Knight in an Enchanted Sleep.”
Alix snorted. “Arthurian knight? More like,PrinceErnest of Hesse, Sleeping Through the Sermon at Church.”
“I only did that once! And you must admit, Father Anton is excruciatingly dull.”
“What does it matter if he’s dull? It’s church, not the music hall. You aren’t there for entertainment.”
Ernie huffed in drowsy protest and shut his eyes.
Silence fell as Alix’s pencil darted over the paper. She had no burning artistic ambition; she’d learned the basics of drawing, like any other well-bred young woman. But she’d always found something soothing in the ritual of it: sitting, arranging the pencils in a neat row, quieting her mind. Looking at a person and reducing their face to a study in line and form and shadow, rather than fretting over their opinions of you.
Soon the paper was covered in swooping pencil marks that captured Ernie’s eyelashes, the lock of hair falling onto his forehead. After a few moments he began to snore. A breeze rippled the surface of the water in a nearby fountain. Years ago the fountain had held live goldfish, which Alix and her siblings would scoop up with their hands, giggling at their sliminess. Their mother, Alice, would laugh, encouraging their daring.
They’d had such fun here: playing games of blind man’s bluff, packing fresh-baked pies or bilberries and cream and picnicking out on the grass. Sometimes they would pile into a cart and ride out into the countryside, delivering baskets of bread or medicine to the sleepy little villages, where fields of poppies waved next to acres of golden corn.
Alix had lost her mother when she was six years old, yet some memories remained achingly fresh in her mind. She recalled how she used to slip into Alice’s dressing room on the nights her parents went out.Here, try it on,Alice would urge, helping her daughter into oversized gowns and furs, threading jewels into her bright blond hair.Look at you,her mother would murmur, pressing a hand to the center of Alix’s chest.You are so beautiful on the outside, but most of all you are beautiful here. In your heart.
“Miss?”
Alix put down her pencil and glanced up in surprise. A few feet away stood Johann, the new footman, holding a pile of envelopes in his gloved hand. His eyes flicked to Ernie before he flushed and addressed Alix.
“Pardon me, miss, but you requested that I bring the day’s mail to you at once. It just arrived.”
“Thank you.” Alix nearly jumped to her feet, reaching for the mail so eagerly that she knocked Johann off-kilter.
“Anything from Russia?” Ernie lifted himself onto one elbow, rubbing sleepily at his eyes, but his question was serious.
Johann bowed and retreated. Alix fanned through the mail, but there was only a letter marked with Hélène’s typical scribble. Not the handwriting she was looking for. “Nothing from Russia,” she said meaningfully.
Alix didn’t know how she and Nicholas would ever get his parents’ permission to marry. It felt so impossible, and yet she couldn’t bring herself to give up hope. Not entirely.
She hadn’tmeantto fall for the Tsarevich of Russia. Things would have been so much easier if she could have been happy with Eddy, the prince everyone expected her to marry. But the moment she’d seen Nicholas last year, standing outside the Winter Palace to greet her carriage, Alix had been a lost cause. It was like she’d been struck by some new illness—Alix was no stranger to ailments of the body—except that instead of making her weak, this one strengthened her. Loving Nicholas made Alix feel acutely alive, bright and wondrous and full of possibility.
When he’d proposed, Alix had said yes with hardly a moment’s hesitation.
His parents, however, had been less than thrilled at the news.You will never marry Nicholas, not while I have breath in my body,the tsar had roared at Alix, at the wedding in Athens last fall.
Devastated, Alix had run outside, where she’d found Hélène in similar distress. It turned out they had the same problem, both unable to be with the man they loved.We’ll fight for them,Alix had told Hélène that night. But…how? It seemed impossible.
Then Alix had returned to Darmstadt, and the letters had started to come.
Nicholas couldn’t write regularly, but the notes he did manage to send were so utterlyhim—so intelligent, so thoughtful—that Alix felt like he was right there with her. Even if he was thousands of miles away.We will change my parents’ minds,Nicholas repeated in each letter.I know we will find a way forward, as long as your feelings for me haven’t changed.
Of course they hadn’t changed. Alix cherished his letters, reread them so often that they tore at the creases. She loved Nicholas so much that it frightened her.
The possibility that she might lose him frightened her more.
“I’m sorry, Alicky,” Ernie said quietly. “I know how hardit is.”
“It’s all right; I’m sure he’ll write again soon.” Alix paused as her brother’s words registered. “Wait—what do you mean, you know how hard it is?” Was Ernie also in love with someone he couldn’t be with?
“Just that all this pressure to marry is awful,” Ernie said quickly, and smiled. “Really, Alix, I need you to find a way to marry Nicholas so that Grannie will stop pestering me. She and Papa keep demanding that I marry, insisting that the duchy needs an heir. Speaking of which…” He held out a letter in Alix’s direction. “Grannie wrote.”
Ernie and George were probably the only grandchildren who’d ever called Queen VictoriaGrannie.Even Alix had always usedGrandmama.
“I assume she wants to plan our summer trip?” Alix asked. The prospect of going to England again, as she and Ernie had done practically every year of their lives, felt suddenly wearying. There was no question of her marrying Eddy anymore; perhaps she could stay away for a year, let Hélène fight for Eddy as best she could.
“Grannie says that Uncle Bertie and Aunt Alexandra are having a party for their silver wedding anniversary. She wants us there.” Ernie glanced over. “I think we should go, for yoursake.”
