CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Alix
WITH THE WALESES, A “FAMILY dinner” could mean anything, a casual gathering of five people or a formal meal for forty.
Tonight’s family dinner, hosted by Uncle Bertie and Aunt Alexandra at Marlborough House, veered toward the latter.
The official reason for celebrating was that Uncle Alfred and his family were visiting from Coburg, though everyone knew that Bertie needed no excuse to host a party.
Sometimes he gathered his friends for an eight-course dinner on a Monday evening for no other reason than boredom.
Alix stole another glance around the massive dining table, which was nearly at capacity.
The light from the chandeliers cast the guests in a golden glow, setting off their profiles against the deep blue wallpaper.
Technically speaking, this was a family dinner, since nearly everyone was related to someone else at the table.
Half of Queen Victoria’s nine children were here—Uncle Bertie, Uncle Alfred, Uncle Arthur, and Aunt Beatrice—along with their spouses and children.
Not to mention Nicholas and Tino, who were still staying at Marlborough House.
The queen herself wasn’t in attendance, and Alix sensed that Bertie was secretly relieved by this. It meant he got to pour more wine, laugh louder, tell off-color jokes—all the things he so rarely got to do with his younger brother, who’d moved to Coburg a decade ago.
“I once saw a black-billed thrush in the woods outside Rosenau,” Alix’s companion remarked in German.
Alix managed a distracted nod, hyperaware of the fact that Nicholas was on her other side.
In just a few short minutes, when the soup course ended, she would finally be allowed to turn and speak with him.
She and Nicholas hadn’t originally been seated together.
Apparently Nicholas had solved this before the dinner, when Aunt Alexandra was lamenting the number of guests in Alfred’s entourage (“They’re bringing Coburg cousins who don’t even speak English!
”). At which point Nicholas had pointed out that Alix spoke German, and rearranged the place cards himself.
Now here she was, with one of the Coburg cousins—a Baron von Stockmann, or was it von Stockmar?—to one side, and Nicholas on the other.
Realizing that the baron was staring at her expectantly, Alix smiled in apology. “Forgive me. You were saying?”
“I would love to know if you’ve seen any robins yet.
” At her blank stare, he pushed his glasses further up his nose and added, “They migrate during the winter, many of them coming from Russia or Scandinavia all the way to England. Some even make it as far as Spain! They cannot stand the harsh northern winters.”
“A tiny robin flies all the way from Russia to Spain?” Alix asked, surprised.
“They do indeed! They are small but mighty.”
He was so earnest that Alix found herself warming to him. “How marvelous. I feel a kinship for them, for I too have only migrated here for the season.”
The baron nodded assiduously. “And, like the robin, will you stay throughout the winter?”
They were speaking in German, so she didn’t expect anyone to understand, yet Alix felt Nicholas tense next to her. It would seem that he, too, was waiting for her reply.
“I suppose it depends upon a number of factors,” Alix admitted.
At that moment, an army of liveried footmen materialized to whisk away the guests’ soup tureens. This was the moment that, as etiquette dictated, a lady should break off conversation with the gentleman on her left and turn to the one on her right.
“Nicholas,” she said eagerly, beaming.
His blue eyes fixed on hers. “What factors does your decision depend on?” he asked, in English.
“I didn’t know you spoke German.”
“I wouldn’t say I speak it, but I understand a little. Enough to follow the gist of important conversations.”
“I suppose one of the factors is sitting next to me.” Emboldened by her own daring, Alix ventured, “And you? When will you be headed back to Russia?”
“I don’t know. I have many reasons to go home, and one very crucial reason to stay,” he said softly.
Alix could only nod in reply. As she’d suggested, Eddy would go to their meeting with Grandmama tomorrow—bringing Princess Hélène with him instead of Alix.
She prayed that it would all go smoothly.
Not just for her own sake, although Alix needed the queen to accept that she and Eddy were done, but because she genuinely wished them well.
Alix believed what Eddy had said, that Hélène hadn’t spread those rumors about her. Which made her wonder…who did?
Under the table, Nicholas’s foot nudged the hem of her skirts, and she drew in a breath.
“Sorry,” he muttered. “I didn’t—”
“No,” Alix said quickly, before he could move his foot away. She flushed, but held his gaze. “I’m sorry, what were we discussing?”
A mischievous note entered Nicholas’s voice as he replied. “Birds, I believe. Or at least, that’s what you and Baron von Bird-watching were talking about.”
“Alas, I know very little about birds.”
“I know a bit, actually. My grandfather was a bird enthusiast,” Nicholas explained, as a pair of servers placed the next course before them: a glazed partridge stuffed with foie gras. “He used to take us out in the mornings to look for birds, usually when we went to Livadia.”
“Livadia?” Alix carved a small sliver of meat with her knife but didn’t eat it, too intent on his story.
“Our summer palace.”
“I thought Peterhof was your summer palace,” she said hesitantly.
“Peterhof is our summer palace in Russia. Livadia is in the Crimea,” Nicholas explained, as if it were perfectly reasonable to have multiple summer palaces.
The closest thing Alix’s family had was an open-air cottage on the grounds, where they used to do lessons on hot days.
She felt a stab of self-consciousness. Talking to Nicholas, it was so easy to forget his family’s staggering wealth, their immense reach and power. Compared to his, her life was provincial, almost quaint.
“Livadia is beautiful,” Nicholas went on, sensing her discomfort and changing the subject.
“I wish you could see it in the mornings, with the sun rising over the water; the skies are such an impossible blue. I know everyone says the south of France has the prettiest beaches in the world, but I challenge France to find a prettier view than the one from our back terrace.”
Alix loved this about him: his unabashed love for his homeland, his unshakable pride in being Russian.
“What birds did you see there?” she asked.
Nicholas looked sheepish. “Gulls? Or maybe ospreys? All I really remember is sitting outside with Grandfather while he drank his morning coffee. It was the most peaceful I ever saw him.”
Alix hesitated. This would be hard to say, but it felt crucial that she acknowledge his loss openly—instead of skirting around it, the way people always did when her mother was mentioned.
“I’m sorry about your grandfather. I know it must have been a shock, losing him so suddenly.”
Nicholas stared down at his dinner plate. “I miss him. All of Russia misses him.”
“You must hate the anarchists,” she blurted out.
“My father does.” The tsarevich sighed. “I obviously wish that they had found another way to make their point, instead of reverting to violence. It made things so much worse in the end. My grandfather was on their side.”
Alix knew that Alexander II had been the most liberal tsar in Russia’s history. He had emancipated the serfs and modernized the judiciary, and he had been working to reform the National Assembly when the terrorists blew him up.
Nicholas’s father, in retaliation, had promptly undone many of his father’s reforms.
“I was there, you know, on the day he died.” Nicholas’s voice was barely a whisper.
Alix blinked, shocked. “Not in the carriage, surely?”
“No, but they summoned me to his bedside immediately after the bomb exploded. Misha and I were walking to the pond to ice-skate. They sent Misha home, but as for me…Father said I needed to see it.” Nicholas’s face looked pained at the memory.
“There was so much blood. And Grandfather’s legs were just… gone.”
Alix could picture the scene: a frightened twelve-year-old Nicholas, dressed in a scarf and coat for an afternoon of ice-skating with his younger brother, dragged to the bedside where his grandfather lay legless and dying.
She could practically smell the incense they would have brought into the room, could hear the hypnotic chants of the priest reciting his last rites.
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t speak of such things, especially not at a dinner party,” he amended.
“No, I’m glad you did.” Alix clenched her hands in her lap to keep from reaching for Nicholas.
It felt like the more he shared, the more desperate she felt to keep listening. She wanted to understand every last part of him, to see the way his mind worked.
“I know it must have been hard on you, but at least you got to say goodbye,” she offered, in a small voice.
“I never got that with my mother. They refused to let me look at her afterward; they said the illness had ravaged her body, and they wanted me to remember her as she was before. But it made it harder to digest, somehow.”
Nicholas nodded sympathetically. “I’m sure it felt less real to you, which is hard on a child. Did you secretly imagine that it was all a mistake, that they’d gotten the wrong person and your mother would come back and laugh about the misunderstanding?”
“All the time,” Alix confessed.
There was movement around the rest of the table—people exchanging stories about hunting or fashion or ocean voyages, women clapping in delight, Uncle Bertie’s raucous laugh underpinning it all—but Nicholas held her gaze as steadily as if they were alone.
Through the skirts of her gown, Alix felt his leg pressing against hers again.
Not in a flirtatious way, but in something like support, or solidarity.