Chapter Forty-One May
Chapter Forty-One
May
May of Teck still hated weddings.
Or at least, she regretted accepting the invitation to this one. The ducal estate in Darmstadt was decidedly too small for so many guests—though no one else seemed to mind the cramped ballroom, since they kept lining up for jostled, sweaty dancing.
What had Ducky been thinking, choosing Ernie when she could have had a future king? There was simply no understanding some people.
But the real reason for May’s irritation was standing a few feet away.
George had stayed dutifully near her, though he was currently talking to the widowed—and very beautiful—Crown Princess of Austria.
May knew he wasn’t actually flirting; he was just expressing sympathies for the death of Stéphanie’s husband, but still.
Couldn’t he pay a fraction of that attention to her?
When Queen Victoria had asked if she and George would like to attend this wedding—chaperoned by Uncle Bertie, of course, since they weren’t married—May had jumped at the chance.
A trip might be just what she and George needed.
Surely he couldn’t ignore her for all those hours of travel, together onboard ships or on railway cars.
And yet he did. He was invariably, perfectly polite: he sat next to May at dinners, strolled around the deck of the ship with her, held out his arm to accompany her into a party.
But he had become a quiet, withdrawn version of himself.
Nothing like the George who used to confess his daydreams with a shy smile.
May almost wished he were cruel. At least she knew what to do with cruelty, could fight back against it. This studied indifference cut her to the quick.
A prickle of awareness traced down May’s spine. She glanced up—and her eyes met those of Hélène d’Orléans.
Yet another reason she shouldn’t have come. If May had known her enemy would show up, she would have let George and Bertie handle this wedding on their own.
Still holding May’s gaze, Hélène tilted her head in unmistakable invitation, then walked out into the corridor.
May could have ignored her, of course. But a contrary part of her itched for this confrontation. So she followed Hélène down the hall, to a room filled with armor, where bayonets and swords hung on the wall. How appropriate.
Hélène placed a palm on the back of an armchair, studying May through narrowed eyes. “My condolences to George. Dare I ask how you tricked another prince into proposing?”
“Yes, George and I are engaged,” May said evenly. “Don’t expect a wedding invitation.”
Hélène scoffed. “I wouldn’t dream of attending such a farce of a wedding.”
Before May could reply, a third figure entered the room. “Hélène? I saw you marching off, and you looked so angry,” Alix began—then she caught sight of May, and her expression hardened. “Oh. It’s you.”
“It’s me,” May echoed, slightly sarcastic.
“Alix!” Hélène took a step forward. “What happened with you and Nicholas? Are you…”
Alix burst into a smile. “We’re engaged.”
Well, May thought, there seemed to be a lot of engagements happening lately.
“Oh, I’m so glad!” Hélène pulled Alix into a fierce hug, and the two women stood there, embracing like sisters. They seemed to have forgotten that May was in the room at all.
May watched them with confusion, and something like regret, or perhaps yearning.
She cleared her throat, suddenly exhausted. “Hélène. Did you want something, or shall I return to the party?”
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—that is 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 engaged to me just 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 that Eddy had 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 word died—“I decided that George needed to know the truth about you.”
As if you know 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 the cost?
She fixed her gaze on Hélène. “You’re right; I never loved Eddy.
The truth is, I didn’t believe in 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 that parents 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 that he…”
“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.”
Alix tried to assuage May’s guilt on that point, too. “Missy is excited to marry Ferdinand, did you know that? Ducky tells me that they are happily planning the wedding.”
May had saved the most difficult apology for last. She turned to Hélène and, tears stinging her eyes, said, “I’m sorry that I kept you apart from Eddy.”
Hélène’s eyes flashed. “That seems a very easy thing for you to say, now that Eddy is dead. Now that you’re engaged to his brother. You won, May.”
“It doesn’t feel much like winning, since I’m in love with a man who doesn’t love me back!”
May wasn’t sure why her eyes kept betraying her like this, sending tears sliding down her cheeks.
She wiped at them angrily. “I love George,” she repeated, looking back at Hélène.
“You may not believe me, but it’s true. I have done so many things that I regret; I schemed and manipulated, and in the end I wound up, impossibly, engaged to a man I love.
But thanks to you, he despises me. So perhaps you won. ”
“I did not win! The man I love is dead, or did you forget that?” Hélène exclaimed, and May flinched.
Of course. That had been thoughtless of her to say.
“I think we’re done here,” Hélène said heavily. “Goodbye, May.”
May twisted her engagement ring back and forth beneath the leather of her glove. “Goodbye,” she repeated.
The three of them stood there for a long moment. They had been so many things to each other over the years: enemies, rivals, and for a fleeting moment—before Eddy came between them, before May made all her mistakes—friends.
But Eddy was dead now, and there was nothing connecting them anymore. May would run into Alix at family events over the years, since Nicholas and George were cousins, but she suspected that they would keep their distance.
As for Hélène, May doubted they would cross paths again.
May knew, with sudden certainty, that the three of them would never again be in a room together. They had reached the end of it—the era where their lives had been so hopelessly, heartbreakingly entwined.
Hélène was the first to go; she stormed from the room in a whirl of satin skirts and outrage. But Alix lingered on the threshold. Her enormous blue-gray eyes met May’s, luminous with sympathy.
“I’m sorry about George,” Alix said softly.
“For what it’s worth, I think he still loves you.
He’s just hurting from everything that happened, and perhaps he feels that he needs to punish you, for Eddy’s sake.
But I saw the way you two were together, when you thought no one was looking.
He just needs to remember that feeling.”
Then Alix was gone, and May was alone, Alix’s words echoing through her mind. I think he still loves you.
What if Alix was right, and some reluctant corner of George’s heart still cared about her?
After all, he’d never told the queen about May’s blackmail of Hélène.
Surely if he despised May, he would have unearthed that secret—would have listed every last one of May’s transgressions in an effort to avoid marrying her.
But he had held it back. May had assumed he’d done so to prevent further scandal… but what if he’d been protecting May?
If he’d loved her for as long as he said he did, then surely there was something left. Surely he would fall in love with her again, if only he remembered.
May would make him remember. She hadn’t survived this long and climbed this high to fail when it really mattered.
She tilted her chin up in a gesture she’d unconsciously learned from Hélène, and headed back into the party to find her fiancé.
She was May of Teck, after all, and could do anything she set her mind to.