Page 81 of A Queen's Match
“That’s incredible. What was it like?” Eddy’s questionsounded sincere, but Hélène saw the twitch of his lips. He was fighting back a smile.
“Ah. Well, I couldn’t see much past the blue curtains.” John cleared his throat and nodded at Hélène. “I wonder sometimes if we should follow your country’s example. Exile the royal family and stop paying for all their nonsense.”
“Why do you say that?” Eddy asked carefully.
“The queen is, of course, exemplary,” John insisted. “But what will happen when she dies? We all know the Prince of Wales is dissolute and lazy. It’s too early to know about his son, but my guess is that the young prince will be more of the same.” John shrugged as if none of this mattered to him all that much. “And that young woman he got engaged to; who is she? No one had evenheardof her before this month.”
Hélène cast a worried glance at Eddy, who seemed like he was about to say something he might regret. “If you’ll excuse us, this is my favorite song! It was good meeting you,” she added, tugging Eddy away.
They skirted the edge of the dance floor, reemerging into the main streets of Greenwich Fair. It was getting late. The vendors’ stalls were now lit by torchlight, which fell over towers of boiled oranges, cheap glass beads, and bottles of wine. Eddy was uncharacteristically silent.
“Eddy, you can’t worry about what John was saying.”
“Ishouldworry, if that’s what people really think about my family.”
“About your father,” Hélène corrected him. “You are not your father, or your grandmother. You are going to be a different sort of king, the kind that can talk to ordinary people, and dance at a fair, and recite Shakespeare! How did you even know that speech?”
Eddy shrugged. “You know I can never remember things I read, but hearing them is different. And I went to the theater a good bit with George, back before you—back when I thought I’d lost you. He said I was sulking, and needed to getout.”
“You do have an unfortunate tendency to sulk,” Hélèneteased.
“Well, I missed you.”
The raw grief in Eddy’s tone took her aback. She leaned closer, nuzzling her head into his neck. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s just, facing a life without you…”
“You don’t have to. I’m here now,” Hélène assured him. “I’m here, and I’m not going anywhere. I swear it.”
Chapter Thirty
Alix
“Uncle Max?” A three-year-old boy,a stuffed bear clutched tight in his hand, stared solemnly up at Maximilian. “Can you help me build a house?”
Alix watched Maximilian kneel, bringing himself level with the toddler. “Of course, Erik. What would you say to a pillow fort?”
She smiled as Maximilian began constructing a house for Erik out of sofa cushions and throw pillows. “If you want your walls to be structurally sound, you need to think about support,” Maximilian was saying. “Each pillow should have something holding it up, like so….”
“Typical Maximilian, trying to teach my son engineering before his fourth birthday.”
The Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden, Maximilian’s cousin, came to stand next to Alix. She nodded in Maximilian’s direction before taking a hearty sip of her coffee. Grandmama wouldn’t have let Alix walk around holding a coffee like that—Go sit at the table! You look like a railroad worker, walking around with it in your hands!she would have said. Not to mention that Grandmama wouldneverhave let Alix build a fort out of her decorative, tasseled silk pillows.
Things were delightfully casual here in Baden-Baden.
“It’s easy to see how much your boys love their uncle Max,” Alix remarked, amused. Maximilian looked so endearingly ridiculous, kneeling on the carpet in his shirtsleeves as pillows tumbled down around him.
Back in Darmstadt, after he’d seen Alix’s episode—after they had decided to start courting—Maximilian had invited Alix to Baden-Baden, the famous spa town on the edge of the Black Forest. It was several hours from Baden’s capital city of Karlsruhe, but Maximilian’s family had owned an estate there for over a hundred years. It was customary for the Grand Dukes of Baden to take the waters every summer.
This was new territory for Alix: being courted the proper way, with chaperoned trips and the approval of both families. She knew that Grandmama, in particular, was bursting with excitement at the match—so delighted, in fact, that she hadn’t even insisted that Ernie join this visit to Baden-Baden.
And really, the house was quite full of chaperones. Alix had already known that Maximilian was close with his family: because of his oldest uncle’s mental illness, he and his sister had spent a great deal of time with their uncle Frederick, the acting duke, and Frederick’s children. Maximilian’s three cousins were like siblings to him.
Somehow, all those cousins had come to Baden-Baden at the very same time. The ducal estate was full to bursting with boisterous laughter and the shrieks of children.
Alix sensed that they were here for her sake. Not to pass judgment on whether she was good enough, as the Romanovs had done, but simply because Maximilian wanted them to meet her.
“Mama,” Erik called out to Princess Victoria, gesturing to the rather haphazard pillow structure. “Look at our fort!”
