CHAPTER THREE
Alix
THE NEXT MORNING, ALIX VICTORIA Helena Louise Beatrice, Princess of Hesse, forced herself to smile as she glanced around the patio of Marlborough House.
The reception last night had been hard enough, and now Princess Louise was having a send-off breakfast, too? Why did these weddings involve so many events?
Everyone else seemed to be in a jubilant mood. The sky was a brilliant blue overhead, the table bright with smiles and laughter as twenty-odd guests—only close family, not the extended cousins and foreign royals who’d been at yesterday’s wedding—toasted the newlyweds.
“I can’t believe you and Ernie are leaving so soon,” said Prince George, who was seated across from her.
“I know. I’ll miss you.” Alix had always been especially fond of George, who was similar to her in so many ways. Perhaps he, too, was ready for the endless social rounds of this wedding to be over.
Though she doubted that his reasons for hating crowded events were anything like hers.
Her gaze drifted down the table to where her own brother, Ernie, sat with Prince Eddy and Alexander Fife, Louise’s new husband.
The three of them were laughing uproariously at something Eddy had said.
Eddy shifted in his seat and stretched his long limbs, the movement lazily graceful, as if he were a panther settling itself in the sun.
“It’s nice that Lord Fife gets along with the family,” she observed.
There was a flash of hurt in George’s smile. “Yes, he and Eddy are two of a kind, aren’t they?”
Poor George, forever forced to come in second place.
He and his brother had been inseparable as children: born hardly a year apart, they’d been effectively raised as twins, with the same tutor and same governess.
During the (admittedly brief) interlude when they’d both served in the navy, they had even been staffed on the same ship.
Alix had always thought that George would have made a perfect second son in medieval times, back when they sent the spare into church service.
Now he was doomed to live in Eddy’s shadow.
Alix used to be that inseparable from her older sister, Ella.
But it was different for them, because she and Ella were both princesses—or at least they had been until Ella married Sergei, one of the Russian Grand Dukes.
Whereas Eddy and George were forever set apart by the single, crucial thing that divided them: Eddy was the future King of England, and George was not.
A lanky figure approached her chair from behind, casting a shadow over the dining table. “Alix. Would you walk with me in the gardens?”
She blinked in surprise, as if there might be some other, different Alix here that Eddy was speaking to.
She and Eddy were cousins, yes, but Alix had a lot of those: thirty-seven on her mother’s side alone.
When they’d been children at Balmoral, Eddy had gravitated toward her siblings and mostly ignored Alix.
He and Ernie used to gang up together, playing at pirates or sneaking into the aviary, or pulling some prank on Ella, who responded with gratifying shrieks of outrage.
Whenever they had tried to tease Alix, she’d just walked away.
“It’s a lovely day to explore the gardens,” Eddy repeated. As if he needed to explore a landmark that had been familiar to him since childhood.
Alix cast a puzzled glance around the table, but everyone else was deep in conversation or focused on their breakfast plates. A niggling suspicion arose in the corner of her mind; she resolutely ignored it.
“Of course.” Alix stood, the peach-colored fabric of her day dress swishing around her legs.
Eddy’s fingers twitched, almost as if he meant to reach up and tug one of her pigtails, the way he had when they were children, but then he held out a hand. Alix placed her palm in his, letting him lead her into the Marlborough House grounds.
“I’m so glad you and Ernie came for Louise’s wedding,” he began.
“She and Lord Fife seem happy.”
“He’s a lot of fun. We’re going to Scotland soon to visit them. You and Ernie should join us,” Eddy added.
For a moment Alix marveled at the cavalier way he’d invited her to be a guest in someone else’s home. Perhaps when you were going to rule the entire country someday, you felt like the whole thing belonged to you.
“Thank you, but I need to get back to Darmstadt.”
She might be a princess, but Alix’s life was nothing like that of Eddy and George’s sisters.
Louise and Maud lived in grand style, while Alix was simply the daughter of the Grand Duke of Hesse, a minor German duchy.
In Darmstadt she spent her days quietly, managing her father’s household, sewing shirts for the poor.
Yet she was happier there. Alix wasn’t equipped to navigate the hive of gossip and ambition that was the English court. Not to mention the attention that focused on her like a spotlight whenever she entered a ballroom.
Alix was self-aware enough to know that she was beautiful.
People had been telling her that her entire life: seamstresses and dressmakers, other young women, and especially men.
They had a disconcerting way of staring at her, their eyes unabashed and bold, as if she weren’t a person at all but an object of scenery—a mountain, or a rosebush.
As if she had no feelings about their stares, and they were entitled to look at her for as long as they liked.
“Tell me more about Balmoral. I haven’t visited in several years,” Alix said, realizing the silence had gone on for a moment too long.
To her relief, Eddy launched into a story about how he and Alexander Fife had tried to race their horses to Loch Nagar, only to end up at the wrong loch, where they’d befriended a band of local fishermen.
He had a jocular, enthusiastic way of recounting things that always made them sound more thrilling than they’d probably been in real life.
Alix smiled and nodded, occasionally making little exclamations of surprise when appropriate. She and Eddy might not have anything in common, but at least he was an avid talker. Alix was always grateful when someone else bore the conversational load.
They turned deeper into the gardens, and Eddy fell silent. Roses and junipers bloomed around them, their fragrance thick in the summer air.
“Alicky,” Eddy said, and she startled at the old childhood nickname. No one but her siblings called her that anymore. “I’m so glad you’re here, because I want to talk to you about something important.”
Anticipation knotted in Alix’s chest. She walked a little faster, as if to outrun her growing suspicion.
“You know I’ve always admired you. You’re so poised, and elegant, and beautiful. All the things I’m not,” he added ruefully.
“Your Royal Highness,” she said haltingly. Eddy waved away the title, but she’d used it on purpose.
Titles felt safer. Titles meant distance between them, and propriety, and rules.
“Everyone assumes we’re already courting, so, you know…” He looked at her with a self-deprecating smile. “I suppose I should get the formalities aside. May I have permission to court you?”
Alix stared at him. For a wild moment she thought this was another of his outlandish pranks, like when he and Ernie once let two ponies loose in the halls of Sandringham.
“You want to court me?” she asked slowly, numbly.
“We’ve always known that we would get married someday. I think it’s time we made things official, don’t you?” Eddy spoke with indulgent patience, as if explaining something to a small child.
Had they known that? Maybe he was right, and everyone in their family—everyone except Alix—had always taken their engagement as a given.
This was the sort of thing a mother would have helped explain to her, except that Alix had lost hers when she was six.
A suspicion crossed her mind, and she glanced over at Eddy. “By everyone, did you mean Grandmama?”
“Well…” Eddy seemed at a loss. Then he smiled as if suddenly understanding. “I do want to court you, Alix. What does it matter if it was Grandmother’s idea first?”
She should have known. Queen Victoria was the puppet master silently arranging all their marriages, scattering her children and grandchildren across the thrones of Europe like pieces on a chessboard.
Before she could help it, the truth spilled out of her lips. “How can you want to court me when we aren’t well matched?”
The moment she’d said it aloud, Alix winced, but Eddy seemed unbothered by her observation. He kept moving, leading her around a marble fountain where a goddess—Persephone, most likely—was forever strewing stone flowers.
“I know our temperaments don’t align, but that’s precisely why we are well matched.” Eddy said this without an ounce of compunction; if anything, he seemed pleased. “We complement each other so well. The best marriages are when each partner has different interests, different strengths.”
Alix thought of her parents, both quietly joyful, both soft-spoken, who’d been extremely happy together before her mother passed. She wasn’t certain Eddy was right.
“You’re so beautiful,” he added warmly. “You’ll be a spectacular queen.”
Queen. Of England.
Somehow in all the shock of Eddy’s words, Alix hadn’t thought that far ahead, to the fact that he would someday be king.
Her breaths came faster, shallower. She clenched her hands into fists so tight that her nails dug into her palms, willing herself not to fall into one of her episodes. She had no desire to reveal that side of herself—her sickness, her brokenness—to Eddy. He would never understand.
“I’m sorry, but I—I don’t know,” she stammered.
For the first time, a wounded expression flickered over Eddy’s features. “You don’t know,” he repeated. She heard the unspoken subtext: You, the princess of a minor German duchy, aren’t sure about becoming queen of the greatest empire on earth?
The sun was beating down on her; Alix felt sweat gathering at her brow, along her armpits. She felt like she was falling backward, off a cliff into some chasm of shock. Oh god. She was going to descend into the familiar dark panic, right here in front of Eddy—
“I’m sorry. This has all taken me by surprise.” Miraculously, Alix found the strength to sound calm.
“Of course. It’s a big step,” Eddy agreed. “Which is why we need to make our courtship more formal, to give you time to adjust to it. You’ll sit with me at the opera tomorrow, won’t you?”
She nodded, and he flashed her a blithe smile, tucking his hands into his pockets.
“Wonderful. Well, I’ll give you a moment.” Whistling cheerfully under his breath, Eddy started back toward the terrace.
Alix watched him go, a bee droning in the rose trellis behind her.
What happened today wasn’t a proposal, she reminded herself. He hadn’t gone down on one knee, didn’t have a ring. All Eddy had done was ask to court her.
But they both knew where such a courtship would lead.
Could she go through with it—marry Eddy, become queen someday?
Alix tried to imagine being like Aunt Alexandra, and then someday like Grandmama, living an excruciatingly public life.
Everyone in the country, in the world, would know her name.
She would ride in parades and wave from balconies, and each time she walked through a doorway, the entire room would fall silent.
And she would do it all as Eddy’s wife. The reality hit her like a blow to the stomach: she would wake up with him, go to sleep with him, sit across from him at breakfasts and dinners. Eventually, though it was hard for Alix to imagine, she would have children that were half Eddy and half her.
He was handsome, of course. And good-natured, and entertaining. Yet it felt inexplicably wrong, as if she were shoving a puzzle piece where it didn’t fit.
Alix slumped down to sit cross-legged on the ground, for once not caring that her dress would get grass stains. She braced her hands on the sun-warmed earth, wishing that she could cry, but no tears came.
She never cried anymore, not since the awful thing she had done all those years ago. Perhaps that was how grief worked. When you’d done something truly horrible, every other unhappiness paled in comparison. Even the prospect of marrying a prince you didn’t love.